Vehicular Products Segment—"North American light vehicle builds remained at very robust levels during the quarter and MacSteel's operations ran close to their rated capacity,” comments Jean. “Backlogs in the third quarter remain healthy, although light vehicle inventories at the retail level are a concern. Our Vehicular Products segment also benefited from excellent heavy duty truck production during the second quarter, which continues to outpace year ago figures by nearly 50%.

“Excluding Monroe's results, MacSteel's shipments were up about 14% for the quarter over the year ago quarter,” continued Jean, “While operating income was down some 34% because of lower operating margins. Rapidly increasing steel scrap costs were a major issue during the second quarter as average raw material costs were up about 25% for the January to March period compared to December.

“However, several favorable developments occurred late in our second quarter. MacSteel experienced a significant drop in raw material costs in April, down some $45 per ton from March levels. MacSteel also adjusted the quarterly formula-based steel scrap surcharge, effective April 1, to more accurately reflect the higher costs we experienced in the January through March period. These two actions, along with productivity gains and high value added product sales, enabled us to recover some margin during April," Jean said.

"While Piper Impact continued to struggle with the reduction of base business during the quarter, we did benefit from both lower manufacturing costs and new business opportunities, which allowed us to report positive operating earnings for the quarter. Although air bag component sales fell again in the quarter, Piper continued to experience improvement in other markets. Earlier this quarter, we announced both a restructuring plan for Piper, which is now being executed, as well as our intention to sell the business," said Jean.

Building Products Segment—"Engineered Products, excluding TruSeal's excellent results, reported very strong sales for the quarter, in part due to the relatively mild winter season experienced by our customers, which in turn allowed for an early start to the Spring building season," said Jean. "Housing starts and remodeling activity remained higher than expected throughout the quarter and customer demand is expected to again be strong in our third quarter."

"Nichols Aluminum continues to improve with both sales and operating income up markedly from the year ago quarter. Shipments remained strong to our building and construction customers and demand in our other aluminum markets continued to pick up momentum. The Golden facility, which supplies food packaging and container products, also reported good customer activity in key market niches. Nichols has an excellent backlog of business and customer demand in the capital equipment, service center, and transportation markets continues to improve. The division successfully pushed through higher prices to help offset increases in material costs, while production efficiency gains continued to benefit the bottom line significantly," said Jean.