Oshkosh Corp. announces 50% hike in quarterly profit

Corp. on Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $93.5 million, up more than 50% from a year ago.

The company also confirmed it is interested in a new headquarters in the city of Oshkosh to consolidate its offices in one location.

“This is something we’ve been analyzing. And there’s an opportunity to get out of a significant number of leased buildings, put our people together, get out of some pretty significant maintenance costs, and again, be much more efficient,” Wilson Jones, president and CEO, said in a conference call with analysts.

“Our work environment here needs to be improved. It really doesn’t match the personality and purpose of our company,” Jones said.

However, “no decision has been made yet on whether we are going to make a move or not,” he said.

Oshkosh said it had net income of $1.23 per share in its fourth quarter, compared with 83 cents in the year-ago period. Earnings, adjusted for restructuring costs, came to $1.38 per share in the recent quarter.

The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $1.02 per share.

The heavy-vehicle manufacturer for the military, emergency and commercial companies posted revenue of $1.96 billion in the recent quarOshkosh ter, up nearly 12% from a year earlier. Nine analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $1.88 billion.

“We grew revenues in all four of our segments, leading to higher adjusted consolidated operating income and adjusted operating income margin,” Jones said.

For the year, the company reported profit of $285.6 million, or $3.77 per share. Revenue was reported as $6.83 billion.

Oshkosh said its military business remains strong.

In August, the company received a $195 million order for hundreds of U.S. Army vehicles under a contract the company won in 2015.

The fifth order under the contract was for 748 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and several thousand vehicle armor kits.

The JLTV is a bigger, more powerful sequel to the military Humvee, which has been a troop carrier for decades but wasn’t designed for protection against improvised explosive devices that have killed many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army and Marines plan to buy thousands of the JLTVs at a cost of about $250,000 each, supporting many years of work in Oshkosh.

Other countries also have shown interest in the vehicles.

“We continue to expect that international JLTV orders will follow the U.S. government’s full-rate production milestone in 2019 with potential sales beginning in 2020,” Jones said.

“We continue to make progress ... on the Middle East opportunities that we’ve discussed previously. While there is still a chance that we could secure orders in time to get a small amount of sales in 2018, we currently believe that the vast majority of any sales would occur in 2019,” he said.

Oshkosh said it expects full-year 2018 earnings in the range of $4.25 to $4.65 per share, with revenue in the range of $6.9 billion to $7.1 billion.

Its shares have risen 39% since the beginning of the year. The stock has increased 69% in the last 12 months.

“We grew revenues in all four of our segments, leading to higher adjusted consolidated operating income and adjusted operating income margin.” Wilson Jones President and CEO Oshkosh Corp.