Chemicals giant BASF reports that its sales and income from operations (EBIT) before special items for the full year 2015 are slightly below the level of the previous year.
Sales declined by 5% to €70.4 billion (2014: €74.3 billion) and EBIT before special items in 2015 is expected to be €6.7 billion (2014: €7.4 billion).
According to the company, the decrease in sales is primarily due to the divestiture of the natural gas trading and storage activities and the decline in EBIT before special items is due in particular to significantly lower earnings in the oil & gas and chemicals segments in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with the same period of 2014.
For the full year 2015, EBIT of BASF Group is expected to be €6.2 billion. This decline compared with the level of the previous year (2014: €7.6 billion) is mainly due to impairments in the oil & gas segment, BASF says, following strong decline in oil and gas prices in the past months.
This story uses material from BASF, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.