FreightCar America, Inc. has reported consolidated revenues of $113.5 million for the third quarter ending September 30, 2016, compared to revenues of $241.1 million in the 2015 third quarter. The company reported a net income of $0.1 million, or $0.00 per diluted share, for the quarter compared to a net income of $14.8 million, or $1.20 per diluted share, in last year’s third quarter. Third quarter 2015 results included a pre-tax gain of $4.6 million related to the sale of the railcar repair and maintenance services business.
“We are focused on making continued improvements in our production processes and reducing our overhead costs,” stated Joe McNeely, FreightCar America’s president and CEO. “We are encouraged with the progress of the production improvements initiated in the third quarter and their contribution to the bottom line improvement from last quarter. We remain on track with our cost reduction efforts, which we continue to believe will improve pre-tax operating results by $5 million when fully implemented by the middle of next year.”
Third quarter 2016 railcar deliveries totaled 1,214, all of which were new railcars, compared to last year’s third quarter deliveries of 2,846 railcars, which included 2,076 new and 770 rebuilt cars. As of September 30, 2016, the company has a diversified backlog totaling 5,613 railcars valued at $557 million.
Consolidated operating loss for the third quarter of 2016 was $0.1 million, compared to operating income of $22.9 million in the third quarter of 2015.
FreightCar America expects inventory to decline during the fourth quarter based upon current production and customer delivery schedules.
“Looking forward, we now expect to deliver between 5,400 and 5,700 railcars for the full year 2016,” concluded McNeely. “We anticipate that deliveries in 2017 will include deliveries of a significant portion of the existing backlog along with certain new car orders, which cannot be estimated at this point given the softness in the market demonstrated by the recent ARCI statistics for new railcar orders.”