Philip Mezey, president and chief executive officer, Itron, said the company has eliminated 70 new jobs and shut down its electric meter facility in Saudi Arabia, as part of its ongoing restructuring plan.
Itron earlier announced its plans to cut 750 jobs to increase efficiency and lower costs.
“We completed over 65 percent of the total workforce reductions. We will be closing an electric meter facility in Saudi Arabia and consolidating production into one facility in Hungary,” said Philip Mezey, president and chief executive officer, Itron, during an analyst meet.
In the gas segment, Itron closed a production facility in the Ukraine.
The restructuring will drive 30 million to 35 million of annualized cost and expense savings once completed.
Water revenues grew 10 percent in Q1 2014 driven by smart water projects in Ireland, growth in heat meters and heat cost allocators in Germany and strong performance in Latin America. Gross margin increased 300 basis points to 36 percent due to increased volumes and operating efficiencies.
Gas revenues rose 6.7 percent to $146 million, driven by strong performance in North America where Itron had higher module shipments, an increase meter shipments to Southern California Gas. Gross margin was up 300 basis points mainly due to the mix of increased modules.
Electric revenues increased 5 percent to $180 million grew over 5 percent. Growth in smart metering in North America offset declines in other regions. The growth was driven by key projects in North America including Detroit Edison, Duke Energy, Consumers Energy, FirstEnergy, Texas and Mexico Power and others.
Gross margin decreased 190 basis points year-over-year driven by the impact of product mix, lower volumes and slightly higher special warranty charges.
Recent deals
Its Q1 bookings included 2 million endpoint OpenWay contract with FirstEnergy for grid modernization project in Pennsylvania.
In February, it announced a smart meter contract with Gaz De France that plans to replace 11 million gas meters in France with smart meters between 2016 and 2022. Itron was awarded 3.7 million meters for the project.
In water, it signed new business with Saudi Arabia’s national water company to supply a 141,000 residential and commercial water meters with wireless communications for the city of Jeddah.
It announced an agreement with Mitsubishi Electric Company to provide software and services to Chubu Electric Power in Japan. Japan is an attractive opportunity with a replacement of 85 million Electric meters being driven by National Energy Policy. Chubu who will be using Itron’s OpenWay meter data collection software is the third largest electric utility in Japan.
Duke and Itron will collaborate to introduce new grid applications using Cisco’s IOx operating system for the utilities meter as a sensor project.
Rajani Baburajan
editor@greentechlead.com