Fleetwood to Add 1,000 Jobs as Orders Pick Up

Citing strong orders for recreational vehicles and an upturn in its long-slumping manufactured-home business, Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. said Thursday that it would hire more than 1,000 workers over the next year.

Fleetwood stock soared $2.25, or 27.4%, to $10.45 on the New York Stock Exchange, reaching a two-year high. It was the biggest percentage gainer on the NYSE. The shares fell as low as $3.06 in March amid the Riverside-based company’s mounting financial woes.

Fleetwood, the nation’s largest RV manufacturer, already has added 400 workers this year at plants in California, Georgia and Tennessee. Nearly all of the new jobs will be in states where Fleetwood had closed plants, including Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida and Texas.

The hiring at Fleetwood comes as California and the rest of the nation struggle with a persistent hemorrhaging of factory jobs that has plagued the economy. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that manufacturing employers shed 56,000 positions last month, pushing up the country’s jobless rate to a nine-year high of 6.4%.

Fleetwood had closed more than a dozen manufactured-housing plants and scores of sales centers that resulted in the elimination of 8,000 jobs since 2001. But the company’s RV sales were up 22% through the first five months of this year, and orders are increasing for its prefabricated homes.

“Our business has been picking up and becoming very strong again,” especially on the RV side, President and Chief Executive Edward B. Caudill said. “We believe consumers are feeling better and better about the economy, and that’s what’s helping the turnaround.”

If the pickup in business continues, Fleetwood said, it could add an additional 3,000 jobs within three years. The company now employs 13,500 people nationwide.

Some analysts agreed that the worst could be over for makers of prefab homes.

“The industry has turned a corner,” said William Gibson, a manufactured-housing analyst at Banc of America Securities.

Gibson said he holds shares in Fleetwood through Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the company run by investor Warren Buffett, which has been increasing its stake in the manufactured-home business. Buffett’s presence could signal that a long-awaited recovery in the industry may be in the works.

Fleetwood’s latest expansion comes after the company lost more than $100 million over the last two years, when a recession, shaky consumer confidence and the threat of war in Iraq steered people away from splurging on items such as motor homes.

The manufactured-housing sector has been taking a hit since 1999, hurt by too much inventory and too few lenders willing to make loans on prefab homes, which are considered higher risk. Now, however, more major lenders are getting back into the action, analysts say.

Fleetwood’s Caudill said orders for mobile homes through May were up 30% to 40% from last year. But he said a true recovery was probably 12 to 18 months away.

“We’re hiring back cautiously right now,” said Caudill, adding that none of the new jobs were considered temporary. “You hope you can read the economy correctly, but that’s getting harder and harder to do.”