Equipment manufacturer and distributor Manitex International Inc reports 39% organic sales growth for the second quarter ended 30 June after excluding the impact of new operations.

Manitex's Italian CVS Ferrari operations accounted for about USD8 million of Manitex quarterly sales of USD37.1 million. The company had sales of USD19.5 million for the same period last year. Manitex reports profit of USD1 million for the quarter versus USD200,000.

"We continued to show progress as demonstrated throughout our second quarter results," says David Langevin, chairman and chief executive officer of Bridgeview-based Manitex. "New bookings across our business units resulted in healthy backlog growth, and strong year-over-year increases in sales, EBITDA, and earnings per share. Other equally important measures of our success in the quarter included the finalisation of the CVS Ferrari acquisition, and the expansion and extension of our credit facility."

Caution remains. "We are very aware that in these uncertain economic times we must be very cognisant of controlling our costs and remain vigilant," Langevin notes.

For the second quarter, the Manitex lifting equipment division reports operating income of USD3.1 million on sales of USD33.3 million in comparison with the comparable quarter operating income of USD1.7 million on sales of USD18.4 million.

The lifting equipment segment saw sales of boom truck crane increase approximately 80%, reflecting strong demand for larger tonnage units from the domestic and foreign specialty energy and utility markets.

"In container handling, we received another solid performance from CVS Ferrari," says Andrew Rooke, president and chief operating officer. "With the completion of the asset acquisition on July 1st (Forkliftaction.com News #519), we believe we have improved opportunities for commercial success in this growing global business."

CVS designs and manufactures a range of reach stackers and associated lifting equipment for the global container handling market.