FMC Technololgies to pay $2.5 million to settle SEC charges.

FMC Technologies has agreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty for overstating its profits during parts of 2013 and 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Thursday.

The SEC alleged that the Houston equipment maker pressured its energy infrastructure segment to improve its financial performance. The business segment’s controller, Jeffrey Favret, and an employee who reported to him, Steve Croft, reduced the company’s costs for employee time off by $800,000, according to the SEC.

Croft later switched to a new accounting system that overstated earnings in early 2014, regulators alleged.

Favret and Croft, both of whom left the company in 2014, settled the SEC charges without admitting or denying the allegation and accepted $30,000 and $10,000 penalties, respectively, regulators said.

“Companies must accurately report their financial performance,” Stephanie Avakian, deputy director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement. “Favret and Croft manipulated results to create the impression that the business was performing better than reality.”

FMC did not respond to a request for comment. Favret and Croft could not be reached.

Last month, oil field services company Weatherford International agreed to pay a $140 million penalty to settle charges that it inflated its profits through deceptive accounting practices.

The SEC alleged that Weatherford executives committed intentional fraud — not gross negligence — in the commission’s largest case of financial fraud this year. Weatherford allegedly overstated its earnings by nearly $1 billion from 2007 to 2012 and had virtually no oversight over its tax department, according to the SEC.

Weatherford’s accounting firm, Ernst & Young, agreed to an $11.8 million fine this week for its role in the fraud.