Last year, the Dixie Group had sales of $406,588,000 and income from continuing operations of $673,000, or $0.03 per diluted share, compared to sales of $344,374,000 and income from continuing operations of $5,556,000, or $0.42 per diluted share for 2013. The company had a loss in discontinued operations of $2,075,000 in 2014 as compared to a loss of $266,000 in 2013 for discontinued operations. Net loss for 2014 was $1,402,000 as compared to net income of $5,290,000 in 2013.
“We put together a growth plan to take advantage of the unique opportunities after the downturn of 2008-2009, and that plan has driven our sales success over the last five years. Since 2009, our carpet product sales have grown 96%, while the industry, we estimate, grew only around 12%. While we had planned on 10% growth per year, we became capacity constrained in 2013 as our sales grew over 30%. As a result, we accelerated our plan to grow our capacity from $350 million to a range of $550 to $600 million, depending upon product mix. In addition, we made the decision to merge our two West Coast dye houses as a result of the purchase of Atlas in the first quarter. Further, in the fourth quarter we decided to discontinue the Carousel brand, a small non-core line of products that was part of the 2013 Robertex acquisition. Therefore, 2014 was a year of expansion and facility re-alignment which impacted virtually all of our facilities. We had $3.2 million in facility consolidation and asset impairment expense in the fourth quarter, the peak in terms of investment on re-aligning and expanding our capacity, and thus had the most impact to our bottom line in added operating costs as well.