DowDuPont Unit To Expand Global Glycol Ethers Capacity

DowDuPont Inc.’s (NYSE:DWDP) subsidiary — The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) — has declared a series of phased, incremental investments for expanding its global glycol ethers facility. The move will help the company to address the increasing demand in major end-markets and applications. Once completed, the company’s existing capacity of these product lines is expected to nearly double.

Notably, the company intends to boost production capacity of select p-series and performance glycol ethers product lines, which includes Dowanol Glycol Ethers, through a series of seven de-bottlenecking and incremental expansion projects. Phased investments will start this year and is likely to continue over the next several years. The company expects first increments of the new capacity to be available by end of 2019.

Per the company, demand for glycol ethers is rising due to evolving and stricter regulations, escalating sustainability challenges, urbanization and a growing middle class. Glycol ethers are used in various applications to help deliver improved performance and reduced environmental and health impacts of the end products.

DowDuPont’s shares have gained 2.1% over the past three months, modestly outperforming the industry’s 2% rise.

The company, during its first-quarter 2018 call, stated that it has realized cost-synergy savings of more than $300 million in the quarter and is on track to deliver a 75% run rate against its $3.3 billion cost-synergy target by the end of third-quarter 2018. It also returned around $2 billion to shareholders in the first quarter through dividends and share repurchases.

DowDuPont expects net sales in the second quarter to increase more than 10% and operating EBITDA to rise more than 20% on a year-over-year basis.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

DowDuPont currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks worth considering in the basic materials space are The Chemours Company (NYSE:CC) , FMC Corp. (NYSE:FMC) and Westlake Chemical Corp. (NYSE:WLK) , each 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 earnings growth rate of 15.5%. Its shares have gained 28.2% in a year.

FMC Corp. has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 14.3%. Its shares have moved up 16.8% in a year.

Westlake Chemical has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 12.2%. Its shares have rallied 71.8% in a year.

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