UPDATE 1-Houston Wire & Cable Q3 results beat estimates

* Q3 EPS $0.13 vs est $0.11 * Sales fall 36 pct

* Says copper price fall hurts sales

Nov 9 (Reuters) - Houston Wire & Cable Co (HWCC.O) posted better-than-expected quarterly results as the company added more customers and reduced expenses.

For the latest third quarter, the distributor of specialty wire and cable posted a net income of $2.2 million, or 13 cents per share, compared with $6.6 million, or 37 cents per share, a year ago.

Sales fell 36 percent to $63.6 million due to weak industrial demand and lower copper prices. However, sales rose 3 percent over the second quarter.

The fall in copper prices is estimated to have accounted for almost half of the sales decline, it said.

Analysts on average had expected earnings of 11 cents a share, before special items, on revenue of $63.4 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Cost of sales fell 34 percent to $50.1 million while operating expenses fell 16 percent to $5.1 million. Shares of the company closed at $11.97 Friday on Nasdaq. (Reporting by Divya Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)