Wellman Q3 net earnings off 48% to $5m on seasonality

25 October 2001 21:46  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (CNI)--Polyester producer Wellman said Thursday its third quarter net earnings excluding one time charges dropped 48% to $4.6m (Euro5.17m) "on competitive market pressures and seasonality."

For the period ended 30 September, the Shrewsbury, New Jersey-based company said earnings/share were 15 cent compared with 28 cent/share in the year ago period, with sales flat at $272m.

The figures do not include about $2.5m in lost profits from an outage at the company's Darlington, South Carolina plant in May, the company said. The outage reduced net income by $1.6m or 5 cent/share.

Tom Duff, Wellman chairman and chief executive said the slowing economy, exacerbated by the repercussions of the events of 11 September, is expected to reduce profitability of Wellman's fibres businesses.

He added: "While we expect competitive conditions to exert pressure on the PET resins business in the fourth quarter, we expect capacity utilisation and margins in PET resins to continue their upward trend next year.''

For the first nine months, normalised earnings, excluding the effect of the plant outage, were $17.1m or 53 cent/share compared to $23.2m or 73 cent/share for 2000.

By: Mike Sheridan
+1 713 525 2653

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