Mr Brian Lipke chairman & CEO of Gibraltar Industries Inc said that "We have made significant progress in the past few years leveraging improved profitability from Gibraltar's business, without the benefits of a significant recovery in our end markets. Since late 2007 we have essentially reconfigured the business, reduced our annual operating expenses, managed commodity costs more effectively, and reduced our working capital by nearly half. We also rationalized and refocused our business portfolio and our product lines through strategic divestitures and acquisitions."

He added that "These strategic initiatives have enabled us to drive organic and acquisition driven volume growth while improving our margins. As a result, we have increased Gibraltar's earnings from continuing operations in an end market environment that, overall, has been stubbornly resistant to sustained improvement, while generating positive cash flow and strengthening our balance sheet, including reducing our borrowings by nearly half. When our end markets begin meaningful improvement, we are positioned to realize incremental profitability for Gibraltar from sales volume growth and from further portfolio management as we acquire new businesses that take us further up the value chain."

Mr Brian Lipke concluded that "Overall, we are optimistic about Gibraltar's prospects and we look forward to reporting YoY improvement in our financial results for 2012."

Source - Gibraltar Industries Inc

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