It’s earnings time! This week we skim through first quarter financial statements from Paccar, Volvo and International parent company Traton. We highlight the forthcoming acquisition announced within Rush Enterprises’ Q1 earnings report and all the industry transactions that closed in April. Then we touch on the criminal case of First Brands’ founder and ex-CEO Patrick James, and how he allegedly turned the company into a “liquidity generating and value extracting enterprise.” We highlight a parts training event jointly produced by Karmak and Automann and tease the ongoing ACT Expo.
Lucas: Hey everyone. Lucas here this week for the TPS weekly news roundup. I’m going to begin today with earnings reports.
We started getting some earnings reports from, from Q1 in the last week or two. We got a bunch of them this week, several OEMs announcing. We’ll get some more in the coming weeks. But a couple notable ones. Um, Paccar, Volvo and Traton, which is the parent company of International, all announcing earnings this week. Whether it’s earnings, revenue, sales, whatever the metric is, just about everybody down in Q1, but a lot of optimism for Q2 and the rest of the year. Specifically Volvo and Mack North American orders up 78 and 86% year over year in Q1. International’s North American orders up 81% year over year at Traton. So, a lot of optimism for manufacturers moving forward. Be sure to go on the website you can check those stories out.
In the dealer channel, Rush — which represents Traton as well as Paccar with the International and the Peterbilt brands — revenue down 9%, but their incomes were up 2%. Rush optimistic for the rest of the year. They announced that they are in the process of acquiring some dealer locations from Dobbs Truck Group in Louisiana and Mississippi. That information and that deal should close later this year. But obviously the Rush business and the Rush team optimistic for the rest of the year. So, some good signs for dealers moving forward. The manufacturers are pretty hopeful that the struggles we saw in Q1 will be short lived and business will be better.
Also in the First Brands case, the criminal case against founder and ex-CEO Patrick James. A court examiner’s report was released this week. Again, everything [released] in this case; this case is not [yet] to trail. Everything is alleged, but the court examiner’s saying that First Brands seemed to be operating, and I quote, as “a liquidity generating and value extracting enterprise” for Patrick James and other executives named in the suit. So, check that story out. Really interesting, some salacious stuff in there about how this business was being run and how it was being run, allegedly, illegally. Again, we’ll follow that news as it moves forward, but some fascinating data in that story.
We had our M&A roundup, that story published and was in the newsletter Friday. If you didn’t see it, please check that out. Mostly in April, it was manufacturers and suppliers making news. There was a couple dealer announcements in there. But if you didn’t see that, check that out.
And then lastly, I want to note Automann and had a parts training expo at Automann’s new Georgia location in April. They talked about new features and new best practices for Karmak Fusion business system. Talked about best practices for pricing, inventory, purchasing. Also did a tour of the facility to learn more about Automann. Check that story out. Make sure you, if you’re a Karmak user and you want to go to a future event like that, make sure to reach out to your representatives.
ACT Expo is going on this week, the Alternative Clean Transportation Expo. We’ll have stories about that. There’s a couple on the website today. There’ll be a couple more next week. So if you’re kind of keeping up on alternative power or what’s new and alternative power, if anything’s happening, be sure to check that out. I think that’s about it this week.
Be sure to check out the newsletter. Be sure to check out the website. If you haven’t been able to do so, there’s been some other stuff, so be sure to jump into that. Like and subscribe to our newsletter, or like and subscribe to these videos. Make sure you’re registered for our newsletter, make sure you’re keeping up with the news. Have a great weekend. We will see you next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.
