Mechanical hitch hits ATC sales

18 May 1998 00:00  [Source: ACN]

Aromatics (Thailand) Co (ATC) lost as much as Baht750m (US$19.4m) in sales as a result of a mechanical failure at its 350 000 tonne/year paraxylene facility.

The outage at the plant, production at which was due to resume by the end of last week, or early this week (see p36), led to rumours that the company would need to seek emergency loans or even issue new equity to cover the loss of revenue. They resulted in ATC's shares falling in value by 13%.

'We have no intention whatsoever of either taking out additional loans or seeking more equity,' said an ATC spokesman. 'The loss of earnings is only a short-term nuisance which we intend to compensate for by raising our operating rate to 110% and increasing our paraxylene sales.'

The spokesman added that ATC's Q1 results, yet to be released as ACN went to press, will show a strong growth in sales compared with Q4 1997 and a dramatic fall in foreign-exchange losses in response to the strengthening of the baht.

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