Northwest Pipe Upbeat on Year After Challenging Q1

The Vancouver, Wash.-based pipe producer saw Q1 net income dropped 34% from the year-ago quarter to $2.4 million, with sales down 9% to $99.1 million.

“As we expected, the first quarter was challenging due to severe weather events and customer-driven production delays,” commented president and CEO Scott Montross.

Northwest had noted the challenging start to the year in its Q4 earnings report.

The company’s engineered pressure pipe segment ended Q1 with a near-record backlog of $370 million. The segment’s revenues are expected “to be on an upward trajectory back towards 2022 levels” starting in the current quarter.

The Precast segment’s order book of $58 million at the end of Q1 was stronger than anticipated. The company’s Geneva Pipe and Precast plants in Utah are being impacted by the “stresses of the residential housing market,” while its ParkUSA locations in Texas are seeing strength from the nonresidential market.

“We expect our second-quarter Precast revenue to improve over the first quarter of 2023 and for the Precast segment’s full-year performance to be down only modestly from a record year in 2022 with similar margin levels,” Montross noted.

Northwest Pipe operates 13 manufacturing facilities across the US.

By Laura Miller, laura@steelmarketupdate.com