WD-40 reported net income of $14.5 million for the quarter ending May 31, down 20% from a year earlier, with net sales for its maintenance products group down 16 percent at $87.9 million. The company cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a major factor in decreased sales.
Earnings reached $1.06 per diluted share in the company’s third fiscal quarter, down from $1.30 a year earlier. San Diego-based WD-40’s fiscal year goes from Sept. 1 to Aug. 31.
Net sales were down 5 percent in the Americas at $50.1 million, down 27 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at $32.5 million and down 5 percent in Asia-Pacific at $15.6 million.
The company said the steep decrease in Europe, the Middle East and Africa was due primarily to lower sales of its WD-40 Multi-Use Product throughout the company’s European direct and distributor markets. The company attributed these decreases to disruptions related to the pandemic, which also was a key factor in other regions.
“Our total sales in the third quarter declined by 14 percent due to disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” WD-40 Chairman and CEO Garry Ridge said in the company’s earnings news release. Ridged said that as a global business operating in 176 countries, the company saw each location impacted by the pandemic in different ways.
He noted that ease of product availability, especially through online channels, is key to sales during the pandemic. “In geographies and trade channels where our products remained easy to buy, like in e-commerce and in certain countries that were not subject to movement restrictions, we performed very well in the third quarter,” he noted. “However, in markets with strict movement restrictions in place or less developed e-commerce adoption, our sales were more severely impacted.”