Transfer hurts company's earnings

Park Electrochemical Corp., a Melville-based maker of printed circuit materials and composite aerospace parts, said profits for its third fiscal quarter would have fallen from a year earlier if not for a onetime charge taken in the corresponding period last year.

Company officials attribute the decline to the costs of transferring a composites manufacturing business from Connecticut to new quarters at an expanded plant in Kansas. “That’s certainly the largest factor,” vice president and chief financial officer David Dahlquist said in an interview.

The company, which employs about 600 worldwide, said sales rose to $47.3 million in its 2012 fiscal year’s third quarter ended Nov. 27, from $46.9 million in the 2011 third quarter. 

Net earnings in last year’s quarter were $5.4 million but would have been $6.3 million without a charge of $1.3 million for the closing of its Neltec Europe SAS business unit in Mirebeau, France. The company reported $5.4 million earnings for the 2012 third quarter.

Dahlquist said  the transfer of the composite business is scheduled for completion by the end of the fiscal year, in February.

Founded on Long Island in 1954, Park also has manufacturing facilities on the Island and in Connecticut, Arizona and California as well as in Singapore, China and France. The expanded 90,000 square foot Newton, Kan., plant is operated by subsidiary Park Aerospace Technologies Corp.

Park’s shares closed yesterday at $25.71, down 75 cents on the New York Stock Exchange.