Have to remember that corporations amortize acquisitions over a period of time, and that changes the "appearance" of the profit margin. Ruger paid out a lot of money to acquire Marlin- good money managers will spread that out over several years to maximize the tax benefits.
Ruger is still running at maximum capacity, it's only accounting magic that makes them look like they're making less money.
Acquisitions as a whole are not amortized, only the goodwill portion of the purchase. Goodwill is the amount of the purchase price that is in excess of the fair market value of all identifiable assets of the company being purchased. For taxes, goodwill is amortized over 15 years, money managers have no control over that, it is what it is. Most companies wish they could take it all at once in the first year and get the immediate tax benefit, not spread it out and have to wait for the tax benefits over years. Time value of money makes spreading the tax benefit over years less valuable. Think present value calculations.
For financial statement purposes, the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued in 2001, Statement 142, Accounting for Goodwill and Intangible Assets which not longer permitts amortization of goodwill instead, companies' auditors would have to perform numerous impairment tests to evaluate if the carrying value of goodwill was still accurate or if it had become impaired and therefore would have to be written down and expensed in continuing operations.
I was an auditor for the Big 4 firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers when Statement 142 was issues, I HATED those impairment tests, they were so subjective and my clients hated them even more because they jacked up the audit fee. Fortunately in 2014, FASB amended Statement 142 stating that amortization was not permitted for publicly traded companies (like Ruger) but non publicly traded companies can chose amortization or impairment testing, unfortunately Ruger would not be able to choose.
Ruger officials (probably the CFO and CFO staff) did release a statement recently stating the the drop in earning was related to a softening of demand in the fire arms market. I am glad it is because of less demand and not supply chain issues.
