Kaman Corp. President and CEO Ian K. Walsh acknowledged Friday that the Bloomfield aerospace manufacturer’s restructuring efforts have led to job cuts, as the company continues to trim costs.
The impact, if any, on Kaman’s Connecticut workforce wasn’t immediately known.
Despite reducing headcount, Kaman still employed more people at the end of 2022 than it did a year earlier. Kaman said it employed 3,063 workers at the end of last year, compared to 2,846 at the end of 2021, according to its most recent annual report.
The company has been involved in several merger and acquisition deals in the past several years, which has impacted employment levels.
Walsh mentioned Kaman’s restructuring efforts, which include moving away from some products and programs, in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release.
Kaman reported a $54.9-million loss in the fourth quarter, driven in part by $79 million in one-time impairment charges. That included a $51 million impairment charge for its K-MAX program, which Kaman recently announced it was winding down.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Kaman reported a $9.2 million profit.
Despite the red ink, Kaman’s fourth-quarter sales grew 12% to $197 million.
Sales for the full year were $687.9 million, which beat the company’s outlook, according to Walsh, but were still down about 3% from 2021.
Last year was a year of change for Kaman, which Walsh emphasized Friday. The company announced in December it would be moving away from its Joint Programmable Fuze (JPF) production, and in January the company said it would be cutting an undisclosed number of jobs and closing at least one manufacturing plant in Orlando, Florida.
“As we head into 2023, we continue to have a clear path forward on more stable footing with strong backlogs in our highest gross businesses,” Walsh said.
In addition to pivoting away from its long-established joint fuze program and discontinuing production of its K-MAX heavy-lift helicopter, Kaman has a renewed focus on the development of its unmanned aerial vehicle, KARGO UAV.
The company is nearing its first full-scale test flight of KARGO UAV sometime early this year, Walsh said.
“We’re very close to that, and as you can imagine that’s a very important milestone for us,” Walsh said. “We’re full steam ahead with KARGO.”
Looking ahead, Walsh said the company’s outlook for 2023 takes into account the small amount of joint fuze program orders it has remaining, no K-MAX aircraft sales, and no margin contribution from its structures business, which makes medical and aerospace components and struggled in 2022.
