Steady as she goes for speciality producers

Pre-tax performance for all the set of speciality producers has remained relatively steady for most players, indicating a good resistance to prevailing economic conditions. It will be interesting to see if the speciality producers can achieve a significant improvement in performance when the economy in the US and Europe improves, as will certainly be the case with the bulk petrochemicals producers, or if this same steady performance will continue. For example, are speciality chemical producers largely unaffected by economic conditions?

 

Clariant appears to be getting back on track after its loss on continuing operations in 4Q 2007, but as the company is continuing with a programme of measures to improve operational performance, it will take several more quarters to see how these measures are affecting performance. In general, at the present time the US-based speciality producers are out-performing the European ones.

 

The comparisons are reproduced courtesy of Chemical Company Profiles, based in London, UK (www.chemicalcompanyprofiles.com). The company provides professionally researched profiles of the top international chemical companies with detailed snapshots of each company, both currently and historically. This includes the development of the product portfolio, performance and growth statistics, world coverage and manufacturing sites and the timeline including the important recent activities of the company as well as its key future plans.