Westlake Chemical's Unit & Alexandria Moulding Expand Tie-Up

Westlake Chemical Corporation’s (NYSE:WLK) unit — Royal Building Products — recently expanded its relationship with Alexandria Moulding as a preferred distributor of Celect Cellular Composite Siding and Royal Trim & Mouldings by Royal across Canada to the professional channels.

Alexandria Moulding, a division of U.S. Lumber, is a leading moulding producer as well as distributor of wood and wood composite mouldings along with related products. Moreover, Alexandria Moulding serves the North American market and exports products on a global scale.

Westlake Chemical’s unit expanded its partnership with Alexandria Moulding to include distribution to professional channels. Notably, it has previously worked with Alexandria Moulding in Canada to distribute only to retail partners.

Shares of Westlake Chemical have lost 38.7% in a year’s time compared with the industry’s 39.6% decline.

Westlake Chemical faced challenges in the second quarter from lower commodity pricing due to sluggish global growth and industrial activity as well as logistics constraints and delay in shipments of its major products due to flood in the continental United States. Moreover, prolonged winter weather in North America led to a slow start of the construction season.

The company is seeing some improvements in industry fundamentals and expects the same to continue into the second half of 2019.

Recently, the company also hiked its quarterly dividend by 5% to 26.25 cents per share. The dividend is payable on Sep 11, 2019 to stockholders of record as of Aug 27. Notably, this represents the 60th consecutive quarterly dividend payout declared by the company since its completion of IPO in August 2004.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

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

Some better-ranked stocks in the basic materials space are Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE:KGC) , Alamos Gold Inc. (TSX:AGI) and Arconic Inc. (NYSE:ARNC) , all sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Kinross has an expected earnings growth rate of 160% for 2019. The company’s shares have surged 85.4% in the past year.

Alamos Gold has projected earnings growth rate of 320% for the current year. The company’s shares have rallied 72.8% in a year’s time.

Arconic has an estimated earnings growth rate of 50% for the current year. Its shares have moved up 17.2% in the past year.

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