Annual reports, stock indexes reflect progress, despite fluctuations

Annual report snapshots and broader stock indexes both show ongoing gains by most control and automation companies, despite specific organizational changes and overall market fluctuations.Several annual reports showed sales for 1999 generally exceeded sales for 1998. The overall increase was a healthy 8%, though not as robust as 1998, which posted a 20% increase over the previous year.

By George J. Blickley, consulting editor June 1, 2000

Annual report snapshots and broader stock indexes both show ongoing gains by most control and automation companies, despite specific organizational changes and overall market fluctuations.

Several annual reports showed sales for 1999 generally exceeded sales for 1998. The overall increase was a healthy 8%, though not as robust as 1998, which posted a 20% increase over the previous year. Aggregate profit for all nine firms listed increased about 12% from 1998 to 1999, while profit increased 15% from 1997-98.

While analysis of multi-product or multi-industry companies can be hindered by a lack of divisional performance breakdowns, the recent migration of industrial control companies into large conglomerates makes this task even more difficult. The accompanying charts give a fair year-to-year picture of the industrial controls business since the figures are for divisions or segments that derive their sales either totally, or at least 50%, from discrete control products or from process control systems and products. For the companies shown, these control segments account for about 25% of the parent company total sales.

Some of the larger companies report results in large chunks. For example, for the last three years, Emerson reported 44% of its total sales as “Process Control” and “Industrial Automation.” Because the operating profits for these subdivisions aren’t reported separately, figures shown here are imputed from the segment margin.

Sales and Income/Profit of Selected Control Suppliers from Annual Reports

*Net profit is shown for Moore Process Automation Solutions (PAS) and National Instruments.All others are the operating income for the companies’ controls divisions.**ABB Automation sales are for its Instrumentation and Control Products Division while the operating income is for its Automation segment, which includes other divisions.***Data for Moore PAS are for three quarters of the years shown due to no annual report being issued for 1999 because of the impending sale to Siemens Automation.Source: Control Engineering with data from annual reports.

Sales
Income/Profit*

% changes
% changes

1997-98
1998-99
1997-98
1998-99

ABB Automation**
-3.0%
6.3%
-19.3%
6.1%

Danaher Controls
22.9%
5.8%
26.6%
19.7%

Eaton I&C Controls
2.6%
6.0%
-23.1%
29.3%

Emerson Control & Automation
5.3%
3.8%
2.2%
-1.7%

Honeywell Industrial Control
0.4%
2.7%
15.6%
8.8%

Moore PAS***
5.7%
0.6%
-19.4%
-31.1%

National Instruments
13.8%
20.3%
9.7%
24.3%

Rockwell Automation
1.2%
-3.0%
-0.7%
11.3%

Tyco International Flow Control Products
NA
19.8%
NA
32.5%