Modine Manufacturing Co. today reported a loss of $41.0 million, or $1.28 per share, for its fiscal fourth quarter, which was worse than its loss of $2.8 million, or 9 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

The Racine-based thermal management company's net sales increased in the quarter to $478.5 million from $414.7 million.

Included in the results are repositioning charges of $8.0 million in connection with the company's announced restructuring in its North American and European operations, long-lived asset impairment charges of approximately $16.0 million, including $12.1 million related to the company's Korean operations, and a valuation allowance charge of $6.7 million recorded against its Korean net deferred tax assets. In addition, the company continues to be unable to benefit from taxable losses in the United States, resulting in incremental valuation allowance charges of $17.6 million during the fourth quarter.

For the full fiscal year, Modine reported a net loss of $65.6 million, compared with a net profit of $42.3 million in the prior year.

"In closing out a difficult fiscal 2008, our fourth quarter was particularly challenging for Modine as we took additional and necessary steps to address underlying business performance issues," said Modine president and chief executive officer Thomas Burke. "We are accelerating our efforts to improve our gross margin to ensure our long-term competitiveness. Our challenges in North America and Korea overshadowed the solid results we are experiencing in our original equipment - Europe, South America and commercial products segments. We are taking steps to realign our manufacturing footprint through the closure of three plants in North America and one in Europe. These actions are expected to result in annualized savings in a range of $20 million to $25 million and improve asset utilization in our North American operations when fully implemented over the next 18 to 24 months. We also have accelerated the pace of our portfolio rationalization strategy, including completion of the previously-announced sale of our Electronics Cooling business on May 1. In addition, we are embarking on a plan to address continued, significant underperformance in our Korea-based operations and we are taking actions currently in an effort to assist that business to achieve acceptable financial performance."

"As we look toward our 18 to 24 month recovery plan and goal of achieving an 18 to 20 percent gross margin and an 11 to 12 percent return on average capital employed, we are moving forward in a decisive manner to address the fundamentals in our Korea-based business," said Bradley Richardson, executive vice president of corporate strategy and chief financial officer.