IMCO Recycling Inc., Irving, Texas, has reported second quarter 2004 income some $50 million higher than its year-ago results, but higher expenses that included severance payments to its former CEO cut into its net earnings.
The company has reported second quarter 2004 income of $288,000 or $.02 per common diluted share. These results include severance and associated costs of $2.3 million ($3.7 million before tax), or $.15 per share, related to the April retirement of its former chairman and CEO Donald Ingram.
Excluding those costs, IMCO’s earnings in the period would have been $2.6 million, or $.17 per share, level with the company’s net earnings in the second quarter of 2003, which were $2.5 million or $.17 per share.
“IMCO’s total processing volume was nine percent higher in 2004’s second quarter than in the same period last year,” notes current president and CEO Richard L. Kerr. “Overall segment income of our domestic aluminum, international aluminum and zinc businesses also was greater than in the second quarter of 2003, but this improvement was offset by higher interest expenses and an increase in selling, general and administrative expenses that included severance costs.”
Kerr said the recovery in U.S. industrial activity and a stronger overall aluminum market raised the operating rates of IMCO’s domestic aluminum recycling plants in the second quarter. Income in that segment increased by 73 percent compared with the same period of 2003, and its processing volume rose by six percent.
The zinc segment’s second quarter processing volume about equaled that of the same period of 2003, but its income increased to $2.9 million from $1.4 million because of a rise in the zinc price that resulted from that industry’s better supply/demand balance.
With regard to the company’s proposed merger with Commonwealth Industries, IMCO Recycling has filed a Form S-4 with the SEC and several teams of employees from both companies are engaged in integration planning.