Whirlpool domestic sales boom for an easy beat 2Q

NEW YORK (AP) - Shares of Whirlpool edged higher last Friday after it issued a more optimistic forecast for the year.

The maker of Maytag, KitchenAid and other appliances also reported a larger second-quarter profit than Wall Street had expected. U. S. sales, thanks in part to a hot housing market, continue to improve, in contrast to other parts of the world.

Net income nearly doubled to $320 million, or $4.15 per share. Excluding one-time gains related to tax adjustments and other one-time items, Whirlpool earned $3.50 per share, way better than the projections of $3.35 from analysts that follow the company, according to a poll by Zacks Investment Research.

Its revenue inched down to $5.2 billion from $5.21 billion a year ago. That also edged out analyst expectations.

Whirlpool, based in Benton Harbor, Michigan, now expects an annual profit of $14.25 to $14.75 per share excluding restructuring costs and other one-time items. In January the company said it would earn between $14 and $14.75 a share.

Company shares rose $1.59 to $184.31 in early trading. The muted trading might be attributable to the performance of other industrial companies like General Electric and Honeywell which, battling the strong dollar, did not fare so well.

GE reported a decrease in orders compared with a year ago, and Honeywell's second-quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street forecasts.

Whirlpool shares have climbed 25 percent in 2016, four times the pace of the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

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Elements of this story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on WHR at http://www.zacks.com/ap/WHR.

Published: Tue, Jul 26, 2016