Universal Forest Products Again Named One of Top 50 Manufacturers in the U.S.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., July 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Universal Forest Products, Inc. (Nasdaq: UFPI) today announced that it again has been included on the list of "50 Best U.S. Manufacturers" as compiled by IndustryWeek magazine.
"This honor comes as we celebrate 50 years of business," said Universal Vice Chairman and CEO William G. Currie. "We're able to celebrate that milestone because of the very strengths being recognized by IndustryWeek, such as sales growth, asset and inventory management, and profit margins, and thanks to the talent and hard work of our people."
Universal is joined on the list by such firms as Exxon Mobil Corp., Harley-Davidson Inc., Gillette Co., PepsiCO Inc., Proctor & Gamble Co., and Dell Inc.
Universal has been included on the list, which is being reported in the magazine's August 2005 issue, in each of the three years that it has been published. To come up with the list, IndustryWeek considered its "U.S. 500," a list of the largest publicly traded manufacturing companies in the United States (Universal is #261 on that list, up from #302 last year). It then rated the companies' financial performance during the past three years (2001 to 2004) in six areas: revenue growth, return on equity, profit margin, asset turnover, inventory turnover, and return on assets.
Celebrating 50 years of business, Universal Forest Products is headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI. The Company markets, manufactures and engineers wood and wood-alternative products for D-I-Y/retail home centers, structural lumber products for the manufactured housing industry, engineered wood components for the site-built construction market and specialty wood and wood-alternative packaging for various industries. The Company also provides framing services for site-built construction customers. The Company has approximately 9,000 employees who work in nearly 100 facilities in North America. Universal had 2004 sales of $2.45 billion. For information about Universal Forest Products on the Internet, please visit the Company's web site at http://www.ufpi.com , or call 888-Buy-UFPI.
SOURCE Universal Forest Products, Inc.
CONTACT: Lynn Afendoulis, Director, Corporate Communications of Universal Forest Products, Inc., +1-616-365-1502