Earnings season shows losses narrowing significantly
Mike Davin, online editor, Boating Industry — Our most recent batch of news is full of quarterly reports from the marine industry, and it features a consistent story line: Companies are still losing money, but losses have narrowed considerably.
What do I mean by considerably? Well, take a look a Brunswick, which lost $13 million in the first quarter. That would hurt my bottom line, but it’s not much when you consider the company lost $184.2 million in the first quarter last year. Other companies with similar stories include West Marine, MarineMax and Marine Products Corporation.
The narrative also matches up with the data we’ve seen in recent months from Info-Link Technologies. That company’s bellwether report has shown losses gradually narrowing since last summer — although we have yet to cross over into positive numbers.
It’s something we’ve been hearing about a lot of areas of the economy since the recession began to wane: things aren’t so much getting better as getting less worse. Still, some areas are starting to cross over into actual growth, and if current trends continue, it seems like boating will eventually make that jump as well.
