Following a good Q1, chemicals company Lanxess has raised its earnings forecast for fiscal 2016. The company now expects to achieve EBITDA pre exceptionals between €900 million and €950 million. Previously, Lanxess had assumed earnings of between €880 million and €930 million. EBITDA pre exceptionals climbed by around 14% in the first quarter of 2016 to €262 million, compared with €229 million in the prior-year quarter. This positive development was largely attributable to increased volumes, higher capacity utilization, positive currency effects and the absence of the ramp-up costs incurred in the first quarter of 2015 for the new rubber plants in Asia. The EBITDA margin pre exceptionals rose to 13.6 % from 11.2 % a year earlier and was thus at a good level. Net income increased substantially to €53 million, compared with €22 million in the first quarter of 2015. Sales decreased by just under 6% from €2.04 billion to €1.92 billion. This resulted particularly from the adjustment in selling prices to reflect lower raw material prices.
Positive development ‘Our good business performance shows that Lanxess is becoming more stable and more profitable,’ said Matthias Zachert, Lanxess chairman of the board of management. ‘This positive development is supporting our growth course, on which we have already made further headway also in this year.’ The Advanced Intermediates segment recorded sales of €463 million, compared with €478 million in the prior-year quarter, while sales of the Performance Chemicals segment were flat year-on-year at €533 million. Sales in the High Performance Materials segment declined by around 7% to €273 million from €292 million due to lower selling prices.
This story uses material from Lanxess, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.