Barnes Group reports higher quarterly sales and profit

Photo by Caroline Seidel Visitors pass a display for Barnes Group's Molding Solutions unit at K 2016.

Barnes Group CEO Patrick Dempsey said the company’s automotive hot runner business was strong in the third quarter, especially in Europe and Asia, while medical and personal care markets drove orders growth.

Barnes, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, is building a base in plastics processing technology. Over the past four years, the US-based industrial company has purchased Synventive, Otto M?nner, and Thermoplay — makers of hot runners and moulds — and Priamus, a supplier of mould sensing systems and process controls. In the third quarter, Barnes finalized its acquisition of Foboha, the specialist in rotating cube moulding.

Dempsey, in the third-quarter conference call on 28 October, said Barnes is looking at the businesses of its Molding Solutions group working together.

“As we move forward, we see opportunities for M?nner’s hot runner systems to complement Foboha’s highly complex cube moulds. Also we see the opportunity for the sharing of those technologies across all of the Molding Solutions businesses,” he said, answering an analyst’s question.

Chris Stephens, Barnes’ senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer, said the recent acquisitions of Thermoplay, Priamus and Foboha contributed about $10m (€9m) of the company’s total third quarter sales of $311.5m (€283.2m).

That companywide figure was up 7% from the year-ago third quarter results of $291.4m (€264.9m). Net profit for the third quarter this year was up 9.4%, to $36.8m (€33.6m).

Sales were flat for the first nine months of 2016, which ended 30 September, at about $907m (€825m).

Barnes’ plastics-related operations exhibited at K 2016. “At the show, I had the chance to meet with a number of customers and could not have been more pleased about the many exciting opportunities we discussed to grow our businesses together through a range of tailored solutions,” Dempsey said.