Sales up at Hooker Furniture, but backlogs are "historic"
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MARTINSVILLE, Va. - Hooker Furniture, one of the largest U.S. furniture manufacturers, reported net sales of $162.5 million for its fiscal 2022 second quarter, a $32.0 million - or 25 percent increase - compared to the prior year.

“For the second consecutive quarter, Hooker Furnishings achieved double-digit sales and profitability increases, with all three of our reportable segments posting year-over-year sales gains of more than 20%,” said Jeremy Hoff, chief executive officer and director of Hooker Furnishings. “While we expected sizable improvements compared to the early months of the pandemic a year ago, we continue to surpass our goal to return to our pre-pandemic growth track. Consolidated sales were up over $10 million compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2020, and profits were up about 79% compared to the same quarter.”

“Consumer and retail demand remain historically strong, with consolidated backlogs nearly double and incoming orders up 27% over last year for the six-month period,” Hoff added.

“While industry-wide demand continues to be high, we’re facing significant headwinds on the supply side that will impact us in the short term,” said Hoff. “The surge of the Delta variant of COVID-19 has caused factories in our source countries of Vietnam and Malaysia to close, with reopening prospects currently uncertain. In addition, global logistics challenges with higher freight and transit costs and lower transportation capacity, along with raw materials inflation and some labor shortages, remain ongoing.”

The company said its upholstery backlogs are at historical highs, and incoming orders increased by 73% as compared to the prior year second quarter.  

“Profitability for the quarter was negatively impacted in May due to ongoing foam shortages which improved in June and July," Hoff continued. "A three-week production month in July also had an impact. There’s a lot of optimism in the Domestic Upholstery segment for the second half of the year. In addition to strong demand, we have seen stabilization of some raw materials issues such as foam allocation shortages. Our management focus is on servicing backlog with quality product and speed of delivery improvement which should drive increased profitability.”

Commenting on future outlook, Hoff said:

“In the current environment, supply chain and logistics continue to be our biggest challenges. The recent temporary Covid-related factory shutdowns in Vietnam and Malaysia in particular will have negative ripple effects throughout the global supply chain for some time.”

“Our strong balance sheet and variable cost business model give us confidence that we can weather the current industry-wide challenges and should allow us to take advantage of the healthy consumer demand environment and long-term positive economic indicators and demographic trends for home-related industries,” Hoff concluded.

Hooker is number 21 on the FDMC 300 list of largest North American woodworking firms. The company saw an estimated $515 million in sales in 2020. Hooker runs three manufacturing plants and employs around 900.

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Robert Dalheim

Robert Dalheim is an editor at the Woodworking Network. Along with publishing online news articles, he writes feature stories for the FDMC print publication. He can be reached at [email protected].