Procter & Gamble Earnings Surge 31 Percent

Procter & Gamble Co. said Thursday that fiscal third-quarter earnings rose 31 percent from the same period a year ago, when the company sustained big losses on interest-rate derivatives.

The consumer goods maker earned $631 million, or 88 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31. That compared with earnings of $482 million, or 66 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

In the 1994 January-March quarter, the company took a one-time charge of $102 million to cover losses on two interest-rate swap contracts. The latest results reflected a $50 million charge to cover the costs of rebuilding plants damaged in the Jan. 16 Kobe, Japan, earthquake and helping Japanese employees.

In other earnings reports:

Delta Air Lines credited a cost-cutting program with shrinking losses in its fiscal third quarter to $11 million from $78 million a year ago.

The loss for the January-March quarter was 66 cents a share, compared with a loss of $2.10 a share in the same period a year earlier.

The Atlanta-based airline, which has suffered record losses over the past three years, said an austerity program enacted last summer is paying off. The program included cutting 15,000 jobs.

Dow Chemical Co. said Thursday that its profits tripled in the first quarter as all but one if its core operations recorded significantly higher sales.

The company earned $584 million in the three-month period ending March 31, up from 173 million last year. After the payment of preferred dividends, the earnings per share was $2.10 in the recent quarter, up from 62 cents last year.

First-quarter earnings included a one-time charge of $49 million, or 13 cents a share, for drug subsidiary Marion Merrell Dow’s acquisition of Selectide Corp.

Shell Oil Co. reported Thursday that first-quarter profits rose 90 percent, continuing a string of quarterly improvements for companies in the industry as demand for chemicals and crude prices increased.

Shell, the Houston-based subsidiary of the Royal Dutch-Shell Group, earned $340 million in the three months ended March 31, vs. earnings of $179 million in the same period last year.

Revenues rose nearly 18 percent to $5.66 billion from $4.81 billion.

“This was one of our best first quarters in the past 10 years,” said Shell Oil president Philip J. Carroll. “We achieved these results in the face of depressed margins in oil products and lower natural gas prices.”