The Dixie Group has reported financial results for the first quarter of the year.

For the first quarter, Dixie reports sales of $95,855,000 and a loss from continuing operations of $2,380,000 or $0.15 per diluted share compared with net sales of $85,082,000 and income from continuing operations of $4,820,000 or $0.36 per diluted share for the same period in 2014.

“The first quarter is always the more challenging period of the year," said Daniel Frierson, Dixie's chairman and CEO. "Our sales of $95.9 million represent a 12.7% increase over the same quarter last year. However, excluding Atlas Carpet Mills, our carpet sales growth for the quarter was 5% as compared with the prior year quarter."

Frierson added, “Gross profit for the quarter was 24.3% of net sales as compared with 21.3% the same quarter in the prior year. This improvement was partially due to our experiencing less weather disruptions compared with the prior year."

Frierson noted that though the first quarter started off very slow in January with sales building throughout the period, Dixie saw significant improvements each month, but still has not completed all of the training nor implemented all of the improvements needed to get back to the historical quality and waste levels it had prior to the restructuring.

"We are intent on increasing profitability through improved operations and tighter cost controls as we substantially complete the ongoing restructuring in the first half of the year," he said.

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