Greenville, South Carolina -- Span-America Medical Systems Inc, which makes polyurethane foam products for the medical market, has reported a 4-percent drop in sales to $11.7 million for the first quarter, ended 1 Jan 2011, compared to the same period last year.
Quarterly earnings were down 37 percent to $717,000 compared to $1.1 million during Q1 2010.
"Our first quarter results were down from last year due to weak demand for our premium PressureGuard support surfaces in the long-term care and home-care markets and a less profitable sales mix in our custom products segment," said Jim Ferguson, president and chief executive officer of Span-America.
He added: "Higher sales from our Geo-Mattress all-foam support surfaces, other medical product lines and our consumer and industrial products were encouraging but were not enough to offset lower volume within our PressureGuard product group."
Total medical sales for Q1 were $8.0 million, an 8-percent decrease from $8.7 million during the same period last year. The company's largest overall medical product line - therapeutic support surfaces - declined 13 percent to $4.7 million in Q1 fiscal 2011 from $5.5 million in 2010.
The company said that it expected to see an improvement in quarterly sales and earnings performance for the remainder of the 2011 financial year.
"We are beginning to see renewed interest for support surface sales from our key distributors in the long-term care market," Ferguson said.
He added: "We believe this is a positive indicator for future sales to this large and important market. We also have signed a revenue-sharing agreement with a new customer that we believe will allow us to generate support surface sales from a different part of the long-term care market."
Span-America expects the launch of its new therapeutic support services - Custom Car and Ultramax - to increase sales in the coming year. LMH
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