Powell reports Q1 EPS $1.98 consensus 84c

Reports Q1 revenue $194M, consensus $182.04M. Reports Q4 new orders totaled $198M…Brett A. Cope, Powell’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, stated, “Our first fiscal quarter was very much a continuation of the trends and strong results that we saw in our fourth quarter. Despite what is typically a seasonally slower period, we recorded $198 million of new orders which was higher sequentially by 15%. We also delivered revenue growth of 53% compared to the prior year, as we saw broad strength across most of our end market sectors. The solid revenue growth driven by the strength and quality of our backlog, coupled with terrific project execution and associated efficiency gains are translating to the improved profitability that we experienced in the quarter. Our gross margin of 24.8% was 950 basis points better than the prior year, while delivering $1.98 of earnings per diluted share in the first quarter.”…Cope added, “Our backlog of $1.3 billion is almost twice that of the prior year and is well-balanced across most of our market sectors. We continue to see encouraging levels of project activity across the majority of our core Industrial end markets. In addition, we’re supporting healthy market activity across some of the faster-growing applications of Powell’s capabilities within the Commercial & Other Industrial sector such as data centers along with other transitional energy end markets like hydrogen, biofuels, as well as carbon capture and sequestration. Our capacity expansion initiatives continue to progress as planned, which will facilitate our growth across most of the markets we serve. Overall, we remain encouraged by our first fiscal quarter results and the current activity level across most of our markets, which supports our expectation of another strong fiscal year for Powell.”