If you were following a company scheduled to report on Friday, it almost wouldn't have mattered whether, like Honeywell (NYSE: HON), your results were sound, or, as occurred with Ford (NYSE: F), you were about to disappoint. In either case, the market's attention was overcome by the chaos in Egypt.
Honeywell reported net income of $369 million, or $0.47 a share, compared with a year-ago $163 million, or $0.20 per share. But without a sizable pension adjustment, per-share earnings were $0.87 a share, a penny beat above expectations. The 12% revenue increase to $9.04 billion also topped the analysts' $8.84 billion forecast.
Beginning later this year, Honeywell will operate without its consumer products group, the producer of Fram filters, Prestone antifreeze, and Autolite spark plugs, among other products. The group is being sold to New Zealand's privately held Rank Group for about $950 million. Honeywell CEO Dave Cote called CPG "a good business (that) doesn't fit with our portfolio of differentiated global technologies."
In the past quarter, Honeywell's four operating segments all achieved year-on-year sales growth -- with three in the double digits. Transportation systems, which included the CPG products line, increased by 18%, while automation and control increased 15%, and specialty materials gained 12%.
The transportation group is working with General Motors (NYSE: GM) in the launch of a gas turbocharger for the new Chevrolet Cruze engine, with its 42 miles-per-gallon U.S. EPA rating. Furthermore, specialty materials' UOP unit was picked by Brazil's Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) for process technologies in a pair of new diesel refineries.
And as Cote noted, "We've also been selected for a number of new and derivative high-value commercial aircraft platforms. Customers continue to select Honeywell over a field of avionics competitors, citing the company's technology and product differentiation as the deciding factor."
But despite its sound results, the skittish Friday market shaved $0.60, or 1%, from Honeywell's shares. Eruptions in the land of the pharaohs didn't take many prisoners, leading to a hammering of the likes of Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), which had recorded strong results earlier in the week. And while DuPont (NYSE: DD) had obliterated the analysts' forecasts, it needed news of antitrust clearance on its Danisco purchase to eke out a $0.02 gain.
In any case, Honeywell's management raised its 2011 guidance to the $3.60 to $3.80 range, from $3.50 to $3.70. And as Cote noted, "Our performance in 2010 and 2011 is tracking ahead of the five-year targets we laid out last February." Amid a wobbly economy, a company that can make that claim should be tracked constantly on the Foolish radar.
