Investment bubbles burst, corporate scandals erupt and the global economy lurches from exuberance to despair — but revenues at Sauer-Danfoss Inc. have increased by double digits annually since 2002. Investors have noticed; while the U.S. stock market was tanking in early June, Sauer-Danfoss’ stock price hit 52-week highs. Global success translates into more Central Iowa jobs, too; as Maytag Corp. workers wonder what to do next, Sauer-Danfoss is recruiting a few of them to work in its big manufacturing plant at the east edge of Ames.

You might think a global company with that kind of record and 800 local employees would be a household name in Central Iowa, but then, not many consumers go shopping for hydraulic pumps. The 300,000-square-foot building next to Interstate 35 is the largest Sauer-Danfoss plant in the United States, turning out a steady flow of hydraulic devices used in agricultural, construction and lawn-care equipment. It has been in operation since 1971, but back then it was owned by Sundstrand Corp. Now it’s one of 25 manufacturing facilities operated by Sauer-Danfoss in 12 countries, including China, Slovakia, Brazil and several Western European nations.

As machinery becomes more sophisticated, with buyers demanding more hydraulically driven functions, that’s good for Sauer-Danfoss. As construction booms in China and India, that’s good for the company too.

In the first quarter of 2006, the company reported record sales and earnings, with net sales up 15 percent from the year-ago period. Stockholders have received a dividend for 33 consecutive quarters; it’s now 14 cents per share for an annual yield of 2.3 percent.

A German company, Sauer Getriebe, formed a joint venture with Sundstrand in 1987. In 1989, the companies merged. An initial public offering followed in 1998, with 20 percent of the company’s shares sold to the public. In 2000, Sauer merged with Danfoss Fluid Power, a Danish firm, to form the current company. The future is likely to bring more growth through acquisitions.

Each part produced at the Ames plant is likely to be shipped the same day it’s made or the next. “Most of our customers have only four or five days of inventory in their pipeline,” said Director of Operations Dave Dirks.

The plant floor holds more than 40 machines designed for different types of milling, and each machine is worth more than a half million dollars. Rather than building new plants, “we’re trying to grow in the plants we have now,” Dirks said. “We’re trying to make maximum use of these expensive machines.” The plant typically operates 24 hours a day, five days a week.

Pumps and other parts are machined from castings trucked into the factory; 80 percent of those castings come from two foundries in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Some parts are produced by independent shops in nearby towns, including Nevada, Story City and Huxley, and are delivered daily. For the past year or more, the company has used Web cameras in its own plant and in the facilities of suppliers as a visual reference for inventory needs.

Although the workforce has steadily grown — new employees on the production floor start at about $11.75 per hour — the plant is heavily automated. A computer uses lights to guide human assemblers to pick the correct parts. The milling machines, some of which are equipped with 100 different tools, receive information from a computer that tells them which program to run for a particular part. Robots paint completed parts, relying on information from a radio-frequency-identification tag attached to each part to recognize the size and shape to be painted.

More than 80 percent of the items produced in Ames are shipped within North America. Ames is also the distribution point for Sauer-Danfoss products made in other countries and sold to U.S. customers.

“We’re very interested in acquisitions right now,” said Ken McCuskey, vice president and chief accounting officer. “We’ve been inwardly focused the last couple of years, but now we’re looking at acquisitions that would give us additional technology – companies that tend to be small mom-and-pop operations – and geographical acquisitions that would give us inroads in places such as China and India. Asia will be our biggest growth area.”

McCuskey said the company might issue more stock to help finance those moves. He also noted that the relatively small number of Sauer-Danfoss shares currently on the market has a dampening effect on investment. Two families in Germany and Denmark control about three-quarters of the shares. “Our trading volume is low” because of that, McCuskey said. “One representative of a big mutual fund told me their minimum investment is $50 million.” Making such a purchase of Sauer-Danfoss shares would be a long, drawn-out process.

The largest holders of the company’s stock, outside of the two families, are NWQ Investment Management Co. LLC, which owns 1.8 million shares, or 3.9 percent of the total, and Barclays Global Investors N.A., which owns 1.1 million shares, or 2.3 percent.

Sauer-Danfoss makes 48 percent of its sales in North and South America, 43 percent in Europe and 9 percent in Asia. Currency fluctuations have some effect on the company’s financial results, but that’s minimized by the fact that 90 percent of the products sold in the Americas are produced in the Americas, and the same ratio applies to its European operations.

The company’s major customers include Deere & Co., Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Inc., CNH Global NV, AGCO Corp., AB Electrolux and Toro Co. Sauer-Danfoss has engineers stationed at the facilities of about four large buyers, and customer representatives also come to Ames to discuss new products and applications. It can take two to five years to develop a new piece of equipment, and Sauer-Danfoss often is involved from the brainstorming stage all the way through field testing.

The company translates its corporate materials into 13 languages, and managers such as McCuskey log thousands of air miles and take part in conference calls at odd times to accommodate Sauer-Danfoss’ farflung operations. McCuskey, a Minnesota native who has been with the company for 18 years, has made several trips to Germany this year, and noted, “my mornings are tied up with conference calls with people all over the world.”

As quiet as Sauer-Danfoss’ presence might be out there on the edge of town, it has an influence on Ames, too. Aside from the $40 million payroll and the $290,000 in property taxes, “you can’t go to the Gateway Center [hotel] without seeing people from Germany and Denmark, here in town on business,” McCuskey said.