Newton-based Maytag racked up huge losses last year, and Ralph Hake, the company’s C-E-O, says Maytag will sell its Hoover division. “I had said that 2005 was a critical year for our floor care business,” Hake says. “Unfortunately, we failed to achieve our revenue and margin generation goals.” Maytag had a net loss of just under 82-million dollars last year. That’s about one-dollar-per-share.
“Our performance…was well below 2004,” Hake says. “Fourth quarter floor care sales declined by 20 percent.”
For the entire year, sales in the Hoover division declined by eight percent. “We can no longer carry the burden of this under-performing product line,” Rake says. He also intends to “explore” the idea of selling off Maytag’s vending machine manufacturing line — Dixie-Narco. Neither the Hoover nor Dixie-Narco divisions of Maytag have operations in Iowa.