Moody’s Investors Service is upgrading its outlook on Reynolds and Reynolds from negative to positive.

Moody’s also affirmed its status on the company’s corporate family and probability of default ratings at B1, first lien term loan and revolving credit facility at Ba2, and second and third lien term loans at B3.

Moody’s cited the company’s performance as well as a slower rate of auto dealership closures. Reynolds serves dealers with business management software and products.

“Although revenues declined 14 percent year-over-year in the most recent quarter, operating margin (Moody’s adjusted) for the three months ended Sept. 30, 2009 was 36.5 percent compared to 30 percent in the September 2008 quarter due to solid execution on the company’s restructuring and cost saving initiatives, and lower-than-expected dealership closures,” the service said in a note.

Moody’s put the company’s revenue and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) at $1.1 billion and $488 million, respectively.

A spokesman for Reynolds could not be immediately reached today, Dec. 22.

“We’re not immune to what’s been going on in the marketplace, really for the last 12 months or so,” spokesman Thomas Schwartz told the Dayton Daily News in June. “We’ve had to adjust the size of our business across the company from time to time.”

  The company’s County Line Road campus in Kettering had a work force of about 1,400 employees in recent months, down about 100 from a year ago, Schwartz has said. He attributed that number not only to economic conditions, but also to transfers to Houston, where Reynolds’ owner, Universal Computer Systems, is based.

At the end of World War II, there were some 50,000 auto dealers, the National Automobile Dealers Association has said. Today, that number is closer to 19,000, the association has said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.