Rockwell Reports 3.6% Profit Increase for 1st Quarter : Earnings: The change is attributed to higher profits in the company’s electronics and automotive businesses.

Higher profits in its electronics and automotive businesses pushed up Rockwell International Corp. quarterly earnings by 3.6%, the company reported Monday.

Based on the strength of those results for the company’s fiscal first quarter, Donald Beall, Rockwell chairman and chief executive, predicted a double-digit earnings gain for the year.

Rockwell posted a profit of $127.8 million, or 58 cents a share, for the three months ended Dec. 31. That compared to earnings of $123.3 million, or 54 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier and was in line with what analysts had expected.

Sales for the quarter fell 2.7% to $2.49 billion, however, a decline that the company attributed to market forces.

The earnings gain, Beall said, reflects a continued strengthening of Rockwell’s industrial automation, automotive and telecommunications businesses.

The company said it also has continued to restructure and cut costs. Part of that has been a reduction in staff, Rockwell said. The company had 79,000 employees worldwide at the beginning of the fiscal year in October, down from 87,000 a year earlier. In Orange County, Rockwell said, employment fell from 9,200 to 6,140 during the same period.

Rockwell said its first-quarter earnings are even more impressive considering that the year-earlier quarter included a gain of 8 cents a share from the sale of a product line.

The earlier figure also excluded a one-time $1.52-billion charge to reflect an accounting change for retirement medical benefits.

In Rockwell’s auto parts operations, profit increased almost 50%, to $26.2 million, while sales rose 10% to $615 million.

Part of the increase was because of cost-cutting, the company said. William Mellon, a spokesman, said Rockwell also benefited from improving markets in heavy-duty trucks in North America and in passenger cars in Europe and Japan.

Earnings for the company’s electronics operations rose 31% to $139.9 million, and its sales increased 2.8% to $1.08 billion. The gains came from its industrial automation, telecommunications and avionics businesses, Rockwell said. Defense electronics earnings, however, came in slightly below those for the same period a year earlier.

In its aerospace business, Rockwell said, its first-quarter earnings dropped 6.5% to $86.2 million because of lower sales to the space shuttle program. Aerospace sales fell almost 19% to $644 million.

Quarterly sales figures also declined in the graphics operation, which makes newspaper printing presses, to $152 million from $162 million. Rockwell said it trimmed that unit’s loss for the quarter to $500,000 from $1.5 million a year earlier.