American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AXL) reported this morning a loss for its first-quarter, on pressure from a United Auto Workers strike at five U.S. plants that started eight weeks ago.The company said it swung to a loss during the first quarter of $27 million, or 52 cents per share. This is a significant decline from the same period a year ago when the company was able to report a quarterly profit of $15.7 million. Its earnings per share also came in a year ago at 30 cents, exceeding analysts' forecast for a profit of "only" 23 cents per share. For this quarter, analysts were expecting earnings of $ 0.04 a share.
American Axle also announced a drop of 24% in its quarterly revenue, which slipped down to $587.6 million, compared with $802.2 million a year earlier. As a main factor that impacted the company's sales numbers, American Axle blamed the ongoing strike by its United Auto Workers employees that slashed revenue by $132.6 million and operating income by 56 cents per share. In addition, lower production volume of trucks and SUVs at General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) and Chrysler LLC contributed to a decline in sales.
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