Selling, general, and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 were $12,677,000, or 24% of sales, compared to $14,040,000, or 21% of sales, in the corresponding fiscal year 2023 period, and included an unfavorable currency impact of $207,000, when translating foreign expenses to U.S. dollars for financial reporting purposes. Selling, general, and administrative expenses for fiscal year 2024 were $46,029,000, or 25% of sales, compared to $49,552,000, or 22% of sales, in fiscal year 2023, and included an unfavorable currency impact of $362,000, when translating foreign expenses to U.S. dollars for financial reporting purposes. The year-over-year reductions in selling, general, and administrative expenses in both periods were primarily due to cost reductions implemented in the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 to help offset the impact of lower sales volume, partially offset by increased tradeshow costs (for IMTS) in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. Despite the reductions from an absolute dollar perspective, selling, general, and administrative expenses increased as a percentage of sales in the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024, compared to each of the corresponding prior year periods, due to the lower volume of sales year-over-year.
Income tax expense during the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 were $320,000 and $6,758,000, respectively, compared to $1,079,000 and $2,365,000 for the corresponding periods in 2023. The year-over-year increase in annual income tax expense was primarily due to an $8,449,000 non-cash valuation allowance recorded on U.S. and China deferred tax assets, as well as changes in geographic mix of income and loss that includes jurisdictions with differing tax rates, and discrete items related to unvested stock compensation. Because we have an $8,304,000 valuation allowance recorded against our U.S. deferred tax assets, we did not record a tax benefit for our U.S. net losses for fiscal year 2024. The valuation allowance recorded during fiscal year 2024 reflected a full valuation allowance of the U.S. deferred tax assets and was recorded after evaluating changes to tax laws, statutory tax rates, and our cumulative three-year income (loss) levels for the U.S. for fiscal year 2024.
Cash and cash equivalents totaled $33,330,000 as of October 31, 2024, compared to $41,784,000 as of October 31, 2023. Working capital was $180,788,000 as of October 31, 2024, compared to $193,257,000 as of October 31, 2023. The decrease in working capital was primarily driven by decreases in cash and cash equivalents, inventories, accounts receivable, net, and prepaid and other assets, as well as increases in customer deposits, partially offset by decreases in accounts payable and accrued payroll and employee benefits.
Hurco Companies, Inc. is an international, industrial technology company that sells its three brands of computer numeric control (“CNC”) machine tools to the worldwide metal cutting and metal forming industry. Two of the Company’s brands of machine tools, Hurco and Milltronics, are equipped with interactive controls that include software that is proprietary to each respective brand. The Company designs these controls and develops the software. The third brand of CNC machine tools, Takumi, is equipped with industrial controls that are produced by third parties, which allows the customer to decide the type of control added to the Takumi CNC machine tool. The Company also produces high-value machine tool components and accessories and provides automation solutions that can be integrated with any machine tool. The end markets for the Company's products are independent job shops, short-run manufacturing operations within large corporations, and manufacturers with production-oriented operations. The Company’s customers manufacture precision parts, tools, dies, and/or molds for industries such as aerospace, defense, medical equipment, energy, transportation, and computer equipment. The Company is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, with manufacturing operations in Taiwan, Italy, the U.S., and China, and sells its products through direct and indirect sales forces throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The Company has sales, application engineering support and service subsidiaries in China, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, the U.S., and Taiwan. Web Site: www.hurco.com
