Black & Decker Corp.

701 E. Joppa Rd.

Year founded: 1910

Industry: Manufacturing

Post 200 Category: Top Companies Headquartered in Maryland

Revenue: $5.40 Billion

Net Income/Loss: $456.00 Million

Earnings per share: $5.59

Dividend: $0.84

Stockholder equity: $1.56 Billion

Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP

Stock: BDK

Assets: $5.53 Billion

Market capitalization: $6.92 Billion

52-week high: 89.88 4/12/2005

52-week low: 54.44 5/10/2004

Chairman and CEO: Nolan D. Archibald

CFO: Michael D. Mangan

Employees: 26200

Local employees: 8

Description: Global toolmaker Black & Decker makes and sells power tools, hardware and home improvement products under its own name and the brand names Baldwin (hardware), Kwikset (locks), Price Pfister (plumbing) and Dewalt (tools). It has plants in 11 countries and markets in more than 100.

Developments: Black and Decker nearly doubled sales of power tools to professionals with the closing in October of its $788 million purchase of Pentair's tool division, which specializes in woodworking and stationary machines such as sanders and table saws. Total sales rose 20 percent, to $5.4 billion, in 2004, fueled by acquisitions, the weak dollar's boost to European sales and stronger North American sales. Flush with cash, the firm announced record earnings from continuing operations of $5.59 per diluted share for 2004. The quarterly dividend was raised to 28 cents in March, up from 21 cents in December, and management embarked on a program to buy back nearly 5.4 million of the 82 million shares outstanding as of the end of 2004. Senior Vice President Barbara B. Lucas said the company is interested in further acquisitions but is limiting prospects to healthy "bolt-on" companies that are "clearly related to what we do and easily integrated. They have to be strategically compelling." Nearly two years after shutting down its plant in Easton, the company continues to cut costs by shifting production out of the United States. In January 2004 it announced plans to eliminate 350 jobs in Tennessee and move the work to Mexico. This month, the company announced it would close a plant in Fayetteville, N.C., by 2006, moving those operations to Tennessee and Mexico. Gross profit margin improved to 36.4 percent, from 35.6 percent in 2003, as the company realized some of the benefits of a three-year restructuring. In October, a federal judge ruled that the company was entitled to a $57 million tax refund, rejecting Internal Revenue Service arguments that it had employed an abusive tax shelter. The IRS has appealed.