Quaker Fabric’s 1Q loss widens to $5.1M

FALL RIVER – Quaker Fabric Corp. says it lost $5.1 million or 30 cents per diluted share in the first quarter, 23.7 percent worse than the $4.1 million lost in the first quarter of 2006.
Excluding after-tax restructuring costs of $299,000, the loss was $4.8 million or 29 cents per diluted share, compared with the year-ago $3.7 million or 22 cents per share excluding after-tax restructuring costs of $389,000.
Net sales declined 29.6 percent to $32.6 million from the year-ago $46.3 million.
“While we are making progress with efforts to restructure the company, we clearly still have a lot of work to do,” said Larry A. Liebenow, Quaker’s president and CEO.
But he added: “We are pleased by the performance of our import programs over the past several quarters, by our continued penetration of the contract furniture market and the upper end of the residential market, and by the response we have seen to our relatively new line of outdoor fabrics. In addition, during the first quarter, we reduced debt by approximately $1.0 million.”