Despite strong solar inverter sales, Advanced Energy Industries recorded a nearly 67 percent decline in net income year over year for the third quarter, company officials said Wednesday.

Advanced Energy, which bought Bend-based inverter maker PV Powered in May 2010, reported about $6.6 million in net income for the quarter ending Sept. 30. For the same period last year, the company reported $20 million.

New CEO Garry Rogerson said the Fort Collins, Colo.,-based company is cutting costs now to improve the company’s profitability and earnings per share.

“Everything we’re doing, every action we’re taking is so we do not have to cut people, cut our strategic initiatives when we’re going through these (business) troughs,” he told analysts in a conference call.

“And we’re doing a good job.”

The company operates its solar-energy business unit at the former PV Powered plant, where it employs about 120, according to Economic Development for Central Oregon’s 2011 regional profile.

But it has undergone several management changes and job cuts since the beginning of August.

Rogerson replaced retiring CEO Hanz Betz on Aug. 4.

A week later the company named former PV Powered CEO Gregg Patterson president of its Bend-based Renewables unit, one of two business divisions.

And on Sept. 28, Advanced Energy announced it would eliminate jobs, consolidate some operations and transfer some manufacturing to China. The moves are expected to save the company $6 million annually.

Most of the job cuts are expected to occur in Advanced Energy’s other business unit, Thin Film, which makes power control systems used in high-tech manufacturing, the company said Sept. 28.

Cost-cutting will go beyond simply head count, Rogerson said Wednesday, to “taking out buildings as quickly as we can.” The cuts and other restructuring are expected to occur over the next 12 to 18 months, although the company has already reduced space in its Fort Collins operations by 56,000 square feet, Yuval Wasserman, president of the Thin Film unit told analysts.

Advanced Energy plans to shift some inverter component manufacturing to its plant in Shenzhen, China.

“We have a great facility in China,” Rogerson said. “We’re going to use that facility.”

On Oct. 13, Patterson, who guided PV Powered through the merger with Advanced Energy, resigned. The company announced it in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Rogerson started Wednesday’s conference call by mentioning Patterson’s resignation.

“We made a change in management that did not turn out to be the right decision,” he said.

Although he provided no further details, he called the profitability of the solar business unit “unacceptable.”

Advanced Energy makes good solar inverters, devices that essentially convert the sun’s energy into usable electricity, Rogerson said, but its costs are too high.

“It’s our cost of manufacture,” he said. “At the moment, we are manufacturing our products in Bend and in Colorado. They have been designed for very, very high performance, which isn’t always necessary.”