Dow Chemical Inks License Pact With Agriculture Victoria

The Dow Chemical Company’s (NYSE:DOW) fully-owned subsidiary, Dow AgroSciences announced that Agriculture Victoria’s commercial arm, Agriculture Victoria Services Pty Ltd. (“AVS”) is taking a commercial license to the EXZACT Precision Technology Platform to continue the development and commercialization of new forage grass varieties to benefit growers in Australia and around the world.

The commercial license agreement aims at the development of forage grass varieties and related fungal endophytes produced using precision genome editing technologies. The license agreement acknowledges the advances Agriculture Victoria has made researching and developing innovative forage products using this gene editing platform that Dow AgroSciences has developed under an exclusive license and collaboration deal in plants with Sangamo BioSciences, Inc.

Dow’s focus is on the farmers and the commercial license confirms the broad application of the EXZACT technology that can transform into new products for farmers around the world, and also proves the advantages of collaboration to advance technology. The collaboration between Dow AgroSciences and AVS has allowed the development of a number of innovations for crop improvement.

Dow’s price has gained 6.53% compared with the Zacks categorized chemical industry rate which has gained 2.29% in the past three months.

Dow’s adjusted earnings for third-quarter 2016 topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate, aided by its productivity and cost-reduction actions. Sales from the company’s Agricultural Sciences division rose roughly 6% year over year to $1.2 billion in the quarter on higher volumes and pricing. Dow should benefit from its productivity and aggressive portfolio management actions as well as strategic investments in the U.S. Gulf Coast and the Middle East.

The company is also moving forward with its planned mega-merger with DuPont (NYSE:DD) , which is expected to create significant synergies. Dow should also gain from cost synergies associated with Dow Corning Silicones business in 2016.

Dow Chemical currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Stocks to Consider

Better-ranked companies in the chemical space include The Chemours Company (NYSE:CC) and FMC Corp. (NYSE:FMC) , both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Chemours has an expected long-term growth of 15.5%.

FMC has an expected long-term growth of 10.88%.

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