Hot sales for a Tulsa based air-conditioning company

Tulsa-base AAON Incorporated released its first-quarter earnings. AAON makes industrial-sized heating and air-conditioning units. <br><br>And as News on 6 business reporter Steve Berg tells us, their

Monday, April 19th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Tulsa-base AAON Incorporated released its first-quarter earnings. AAON makes industrial-sized heating and air-conditioning units.

And as News on 6 business reporter Steve Berg tells us, their sales are red-hot. In spite of employing nearly a thousand people at its west Tulsa manufacturing plant, AAON is still relatively unknown by the average citizen.

But as various magazine covers can attest, the business world knows that AAON is on fire. "Our orders are really going up dramatically, so we will be hiring more people. We are getting ready to grow the company." AAON President Norm Asbjornson says one of the biggest problems right now is just keeping up with a record-high of backlogged orders.

They've begun a 120,000 square foot expansion of their metal fabricating shop, so they can build more units, more quickly. They'll hire about 130 more people for it. The company's profits have cooled a bit though because of skyrocketing prices of steel and copper.

As you can imagine, they use a lot of steel and copper. "These commodity prices have gone up dramatically in a very short period of time." AAON has another big expense because the government is requiring all air-conditioners to make the shift to a more environmentally-friendly refrigerant. That means all companies like AAON have to completely retool a lot of their machines to make parts for the new refrigerant.

In spite of both hurdles, AAON still posted a big profit. "Oh yes, we're quite profitable still." AAON's profit for the first quarter this year was $2.3-million. That's down from $3.5-million for the same time last year. Sales for the same period though are up nearly 15%.