Lubricant blender Valvoline posted $47 million operating income for the three months ending Dec. 31, down almost 30 percent from $67 million in the year-earlier period, while sales totaled $475 million, up 6.8 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Total lubricant sales volume reached 36.7 million gallons for the quarter (the first quarter of Ashlands fiscal year), down 9 percent from the year-ago period, according to parent company Ashland.
With Ashlands transformation into a specialty chemical company now complete, we are squarely focused on driving earnings expansion through organic volume growth, margin improvement, cost efficiencies and strategic capital investment, said Chairman and CEO James OBrien. We are off to a great start in fiscal 2012, with overall pricing efforts generating significant improvement in margins and profitability.
The company noted that since the end of the December quarter, the cumulative effect of pricing and lower raw material costs have helped restore Valvolines gross profit as a percent of sales to more normalized levels.
Ashland of Covington, Ky., as a whole reported operating income of $144 million, on revenues of $1.9 billion.