NEW YORK -- Dover Corp. reported third-quarter earnings from continuing operations rose 27% to $156.3 million from a year ago, while revenues spikied 21% to $1.65 billion.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company reported a gain of $274 million in proceeds from the sale of discontinued businesses. Those units include electronics OEM notables Universal Instruments, Vitronics-Soltec and Hover-Davis, among others. In the second quarter, Dover took a $106.5 million writedown against the carrying values of the discontinued businesses.

Dover's Technologies group, which includes DEK, OK International and Everett-Charles, saw sales rise 20% to $330.1 million and earnings jumped 16% to $52.3 million. In its 10Q filing with the SEC, Dover said 11% of the revenue hike was organic, and that the back-end semiconductor market showed particular stength. Operating margin was flat at 16.2%. The unit's book-to-bill slipped 0.02 points to 0.93.

Speaking about the Technologies unit CEO Ron Hoffman said on a Wednesday morning conference call, “At this point, the utilization rates are high on equipment that ODMs have in place. They are buying some parts and new fixtures but have the capacity in place. That will shift as they change in new product platforms and that will shift to new product buys.

“Anecdotally, it feels a lot like last year. We same this same phenomenon last year, and quite candidly, [customers] started buying new capacity for new platforms and suddenly we had rampant new orders for new platforms. I’d like to anticipate that lower oil prices … might drive demand for growth going into next year.”

Dover said its outlook remained solid.

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