A.T. Cross yesterday reported that second-quarter net income rose 89.2 percent, to $1.9 million, or 12 cents per diluted share, compared with $990,000, or 6 cents per diluted share a year earlier.

The Lincoln-based company said consolidated sales rose 18.5 percent, to $43.2 million, compared with $36.5 million in the second quarter of last year. The company’s writing instruments and accessories division reported that revenues rose 8.3 percent, to $25.9 million, while the optical segment recorded that sales rose 37.7 percent, to $17.3 million from a year earlier.

The company said its sunglasses business, which includes the Costa Del Mar brand and more recently Native Eyewear, has fueled the increase in sales.

“We are very pleased with the continued and broad-based strength of our business despite a highly challenging market environment,” the company’s president and chief executive officer, David G. Whalen, said in a statement. “…We have grown our accessories and writing instrument business, lowered our cost structure, grown our optical businesses and successfully leveraged our recent acquisition.”

Cross reported second-quarter operating expenses were $21.2 million, or 49 percent of sales, compared with $18.6 million, or 50.9 percent of sales a year earlier.

The company’s product lines include fine writing instruments, timepieces, business accessories and sunglasses.

A.T. Cross stock rose 10 cents per share yesterday, closing at $7.35.

EMC

Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC Corp. said yesterday its second-quarter profit climbed 13 percent, topping Wall Street’s forecasts, as the data-storage specialist rang up record sales despite fears that economic uncertainty is tamping down information technology spending.

The company earned $377.5 million, or 18 cents per share, in the April-June period. That compares with net income of $334.4 million, or 16 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Stripping out one-time charges, EMC earned 24 cents per share in the latest quarter. That was 7 cents per share higher than the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Analysts’ estimates typically exclude one-time charges or gains, but include stock-based compensation costs.

Sales rose 18 percent to $3.67 billion from $3.12 billion last year, coming in about $100 million above Wall Street’s average forecast.

“We’ve executed very well in a very tough (economic) environment,” David Goulden, EMC’s chief financial officer, said, adding that customers continue to spend on data storage — particularly in markets outside the United States — if it helps them save money or gain a competitive advantage. “We don’t see it getting better any time soon, but we think there’s enough demand out there for us to make our plan for the year.”

EMC is the world’s largest seller of standalone disk storage systems, a steady-performing business that has grown in popularity as companies need to archive more digital material. Regulatory requirements and an explosion in the amount of data being created by the Internet have pushed that trend.

EMC stock rose $1.73 per share yesterday, closing at $14.17.

General Dynamics

General Dynamics Corp., the parent of the Electric Boat ship-yard in Groton, Conn., and Quonset Point, as well as the largest maker of armored vehicles for the U.S. military, said yesterday second-quarter earnings rose 25 percent as the Iraq war lifted sales of transports. The company said full-year profit will increase more than previously forecast, sending shares up the most in more than six years.

Net income climbed to $641 million, or $1.60 a share, from $513 million, or $1.26, a year earlier, exceeding analysts’ estimates. Sales gained 11 percent to $7.3 billion, aided by increased deliveries of Gulfstream business jets, the Falls Church, Va.-based company said in a statement. Excluding a 9-cent gain from a tax refund lawsuit settlement, earnings were $1.51 per share.

It won orders for Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, to protect soldiers in Iraq from roadside bombs, adding to revenue from the Stryker troop transport and Abrams tank.

Sales and profit grew at all four of the company’s divisions. Operating profit grew 13 percent or more at three of them.

“We have performed extremely well so far this year and built a backlog that positions us very well for the foreseeable future,” chief executive officer Nicholas Chabraja said.

General Dynamics stock rose $5.82, or 7 percent, to $89.27 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, for the biggest gain since Sept. 17, 2001.

Sovereign Bancorp

Sovereign Bancorp Inc., the second-largest bank in Rhode Island and one of the biggest in New England, yesterday reported second-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates.

Net income declined 14 percent to $127.4 million, or 22 cents a share, from $147.5 million, or 29 cents, in the same period a year earlier, the Philadelphia-based lender said in a statement. Eleven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected, on average, profit of 16 cents a share.

The company raised $1.9 billion by selling shares and fixed- rate notes this year after cutting the dividend and recording a $1.3 billion loss at the end of 2007. Sovereign, whose largest shareholder is Spain’s Banco Santander SA, curtailed lending and is shrinking its balance sheet as defaults increase.

Sovereign’s provision for credit losses was $132 million, more than doubling from $51 million in the second quarter of 2007, “due to continued deterioration in asset quality for the commercial portfolios, particularly in the for-sale housing segment,” the lender said.

Loans for which Sovereign no longer received interest rose to $490.5 million from $282.4 million in the same period a year earlier.

The lender said its net interest margin, the difference between what the bank pays in deposits and charges for loans, rose to 3.06 percent from 2.71 percent a year earlier.

Sovereign is trying to reduce risk and simplify its business, and “to the extent we could reduce loans and assets outside of our footprint, we’ve pushed that along,” chief executive officer Joseph Campanelli said.

Sovereign stock rose 75 cents, or 8.6 percent, to $9.47 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Journal wire reports

larditi@projo.com