Truck and engine maker Navistar International Corp. on Monday posted a profit that soundly beat Wall Street forecasts for its fiscal fourth quarter driven by a pickup in commercial truck volume and further military sales.

For the quarter ended Oct. 31, the company earned $86 million, or $1.19 a share, compared with a year-ago loss of $343 million, or $4.81 a share, when it took a large asset impairment charge stemming from its Ford diesel engine business.

The company said it took charges and one-time costs of 58 cents per share in this year’s fourth quarter related to asset impairment and refinancing. Excluding the one-time items, it would have earned $1.77 a share, well above the $1.52-per-share average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Analysts typically exclude one-time items from their forecasts.

Revenue fell to $3.29 billion, from $3.87 billion a year earlier. Analysts forecast revenues of $3.09 billion in this year’s quarter.

For the full year, the company earned $320 million, or $4.46 per share, compared with $134 million, or $1.82 per share in the last fiscal year.

Sales fell to $11.57 billion from $14.72 billion.

Navistar’s results were released after the close of regular-session trading Monday. Its shares rose $1.17, or 3.3 percent, to $36.68 in after-hours trading, after finishing up 33 cents in the regular session to close at $35.51.

[businessweek]