1992 a Winning Year for Wynn’s International Inc. : Earnings: The Orange-based automotive products company reports a $7.3-million profit after a subsidiary was restructured.

Wynn’s International Inc. said Thursday that it posted a $7.3-million profit for 1992 after the company cut costs and trimmed the size of its automotive air-conditioning manufacturing subsidiary.

The parent company, which also makes petrochemical and rubber sealing products for the automotive industry, said the profit was equal to $2.02 a share. For the previous year, during which the company took a onetime restructuring charge, it posted a loss of $11.2 million, or $3.02 a share.

Wynn’s annual profit was about 15% greater than its net income for 1990, when the recession had yet to take hold. The results also were better than analysts had expected. They had projected earnings equal to $1.80 a share.

Annual sales rose 7%, to $291.8 million from $274 million for 1991.

A year ago, the company, based in Orange, completed a restructuring of its air-conditioning subsidiary, Wynn’s Climate Systems in Texas, as auto sales and production dropped. The unit sells air-conditioning systems to domestic and foreign car makers and to new- and used-car dealers who install the products as dealer-supplied add-ons.

Since then, Wynn’s has reduced its inventory and phased out low-margin product lines. Also, the subsidiary was pared down to about 430 employees from a peak of 900 in 1987, said Seymour Schlosser, the company’s vice president for finance.

“We looked into the future and saw that the auto industry was cutting back,” Schlosser said. “Now they are operating at a lower cost base; (1992) was the first full year that we saw the benefit.”

Although sales by the Climate Systems subsidiary were flat, it benefited from a new contract with Rover Group, the British maker of Range Rover sport utility vehicles, Schlosser said. The sport utility market has been one of the fastest-growing segments of the automotive industry, even as other segments suffered.

“Management has made some positive changes to what had been a lagging operation into a profit contributor to the company,” said Joe Salerno, an analyst with Gabelli & Co. in Rye, N.Y. “The company’s restructuring efforts reduced inventories and further downsized operations to better serve their markets.”

The manager of the brokerage, Mario Gabelli, holds nearly 23% of Wynn’s 3.6 million shares. Gabelli has been recommending Wynn’s stock along with that of another automotive-related company, Standard Motor Products Inc. in Long Island City, N.Y.

For the fourth quarter, Wynn’s posted a profit of $2 million, or 56 cents a share, contrasted with a loss of $14 million, or $3.90 a share, for the same period a year earlier, when Wynn’s took the restructuring charge. Quarterly sales grew 4%, to $67.3 million from $64.7 million.

Another subsidiary, Wynn Oil Co., which makes petrochemical products, posted a 6% increase in revenue for the fourth quarter after expansions into Germany and Mexico. The new operations posted losses because of start-up costs, but the red ink was offset by profits in U.S. and French markets, the company said. At another unit, Wynn’s Precision-Inc., which makes molded rubber products for autos, quarterly sales grew 8%. The company does not release sales figures for its subsidiaries.

At the company’s Robert Skeels & Co., based in Compton, the woes of Southern California’s building industry cut into sales and profit. That unit sells to small builders and to hardware and locksmith supply companies.

In Thursday’s trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Wynn’s stock closed at $29.625 a share, up 38 cents.

A Turnaround for Wynn’s

Wynn’s International Inc. bounced back strongly after taking a one-time restructuring charge that resulted in a $11.2-million loss for 1991. Revenue, profit and stock price were all up last year. Revenue (In millions): 1989: 283.9 1990: 285.1 1991: 274.0 1992: 291.8

Profit or Loss (In millions): 1989: 7.6 1990: 6.4 1991: -11.2 1992: 7.3

Stock Price: Jan. 1991: $16.88 Dec. 1991: 16.38 One-time restructuring charge Dec. 1992: $26.63 Source: Dow Jones News Retrieval; researched by DALLAS M. JACKSON and SHEILA A. KERN / Los Angeles Times