Cooper Tire Impresses with Third Quarter

FINDLAY, Ohio (TheStreet) -- Cooper Tire & Rubber(CTB Quote) shares spiked by more than 10% Monday as investors appeared to cheer the company's third-quarter financial report.

Cooper steamrolled through Wall Street's profit expectations. Net income came to $47 million, or 77 cents a share, which includes restructuring charges -- largely related to shuttering a plant in Albany, Ga. -- of 22 cents a share.

Analyst normally exclude those types of charges and items. On average, they were expecting Cooper to bring home 66 cents a share.

As for the top line, Cooper posted third-quarter revenue of $803 million, better than analysts' forecasts of $715 million.

A year ago, the company was deep in the red, losing $55 million, or 94 cents a share, on revenue of $794 million.

Cooper attributed the upside surprise to declining raw materials costs and "improved utilization of capacity." Cooper added that "Quarterly sales volumes showed improvement and had a minor positive impact on a year-over-year basis," but those gains were trimmed by the reduced prices that the recession-weakened market has demanded from tire makers.

In North America, the company's biggest geographical segment by revenue, sales slipped 2% to $574 million from a year ago. Yet Cooper actually sold more tires in this third quarter than in 2008's -- total shipments increased 2%, slightly worse than the general industry, which saw shipments grow 3% from a year ago, according to an industry trade group. The company blamed the top-line in North America on softer prices.