FreightCar America reports Q4 EPS (75c), two estimates (59c)

Reports Q4 revenue $44.9M, one estimate $45.4M. Q4 backlog totaled 1,650 railcars with an aggregate value of approximately $206M. Jim Meyer, CEO of FreightCar America, says: "While industry conditions remained challenged, we focused on maintaining our internal momentum by executing against the last few steps of our 'Back to Basics' strategy. This included strong performance against our goals to remove over $5,000 per car in material costs over the last two years. It also included significant work to revamp our product portfolio to better align with customer needs. Lastly, we took important steps to optimize our manufacturing footprint through further domestic consolidation and a new partnership to expand into Mexico. The latter will allow us to increase the competitiveness of our portfolio. When complete, our footprint will include the industry's newest production facilities in both the U.S. and Mexico. As importantly, we completed this hard work while maintaining a solid and supportive balance sheet, despite the significant downcycle in our markets. All of our efforts in 2018 and 2019 have laid the framework for FreightCar to succeed in the next market cycle."