Dow Chemical To Draw Earnings Growth From Thicker Margins

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The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) is scheduled to announce its 2014 third quarter earnings on October 22. We expect the company to primarily draw growth from thicker margins as a result of productivity cost savings and higher operating leverage. According to Dow’s recent presentation at the Credit Suisse Basic Materials Conference, a 100 basis points improvement in the annual operating rate boosts its EBITDA by more than $200 million. During the first half of this year, Dow’s operating rate stood at 82.5%, up by 250 basis points from the same period last year. [1] This was the key factor that drove the net improvement of around 50 basis points in the company’s consolidated adjusted EBITDA margin over last year. We expect to see a similar margin improvement during the third quarter. During the earnings call presentation, we will be closely watching for any updates on Dow’s ongoing divestiture program and the U.S. Gulf Coast expansion plan, which is expected to play a key role in driving its long-term cash flow growth. [2]

Dow is a diversified chemical industry giant operating in specialty chemicals, advanced materials, agro-sciences and plastics business segments. It delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 160 countries, and in high growth sectors such as electronics, water, energy and agriculture. Last year, Dow reported annual sales of approximately $57 billion and earning adjusted net income of around $2.9 billion. We currently have a $53/share price estimate for Dow, which is 18.9x our 2014 full-year adjusted diluted EPS estimate of $2.80 for the company.

See Our Complete Analysis For Dow

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We believe that Dow’s long-term growth potential and its valuation depends significantly upon the successful implementation of its margin expansion plan in the short to medium term. The company has been pursuing the divestment of slow growth, low-margin businesses over the last several years in order to increase its focus on more profitable, less volatile segments where it sells more differentiated end products. Having completed the divestiture of businesses generating more than $8 billion in revenues, in March last year, the company announced its plan to raise around $1.5 billion from further divestments.

However, looking at the volatile demand scenario in emerging markets and continued slowdown in the developed ones, during the 2013 third quarter earnings call, Dow announced an extension of its divestiture target to $3-4 billion. The company officials said that their focus would be on businesses that fall under the chlorine value chain, such as the chlorinated organics and epoxy businesses that generate single digit EBITDA margins, which compares to the more than 25% EBITDA margin that the company earns on its Performance Plastics business. [3]

In March this year, Dow further expanded its divestiture target to $4.5-6 billion. The company officials did not disclose the specific nature of the businesses that were added to the divestment plan. However, they did mention that these would be some smaller units from its Performance Materials division, which has an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 10%, compared to the company wide average of over 15%, by our estimates. [4] (See: How Does Dow Chemical Plan To Expand Its Performance Materials Margins?)

Most recently, Dow announced that it is actively marketing three of its non-core businesses for divestment and expects proceeds of more than $2 billion by early next year. [5] Through these divestments, the company aims to divert its resources towards more profitable segments, especially the Performance Plastics division, which best leverages its integrated value chain for a low-cost advantage and differentiated end products for higher margins. According to our estimates, the division’s adjusted EBITDA margin stood at around 26% last year, well above the company-wide average.

Most of the products sold by the Performance Plastics division are derivatives of the simplest unsaturated hydrocarbon, ethylene, which is most commonly derived from the steam cracking of either naphtha or ethane. With the shale gas supply boost in the U.S. resulting in a cheap source of ethane, there has been a divergence in operating margins between naphtha and ethane based ethylene production plants in the U.S. Dow is therefore pursuing huge investments (more than $4 billion) in the U.S. Gulf Coast region to tap into this opportunity. The company expects to generate incremental EBITDA of more than $2.5 billion (on a run rate basis by 2017) by ramping up its plastics operations in the U.S. Gulf Coast region. Just to give some perspective, the company’s consolidated EBITDA stood around $7.8 billion last year by our estimates. (See: Cheap U.S. Natural Gas Is Attracting Huge Investments From Chemical Companies)

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Notes:
  1. Credit Suisse 2014 Basic materials Conference, dow.com []
  2. Dow SEC Filings, sec.gov []
  3. Q3 2013 The Dow Chemical Company Earnings Release, dow.com []
  4. Dow Strategic Update, dow.com []
  5. Dow Chemical To Divest Three More Businesses, wsj.com []