US DowDuPont may need more time to spin off companies

HOUSTON (ICIS)–US-based DowDuPont may need more time to complete its plan to spin off its three businesses, the CEO said on Thursday.

DowDuPont now expects to complete the spin-offs 18-24 months after the completion of its merger, versus an earlier timeline of 18 months, the company said.

The companies announced the completion of the merger on 1 September.

The completion of the merger kicked off the 18-month timeline for DowDuPont to spin off its Materials Science, Specialty Products and Agriculture businesses into three publicly traded companies. Materials Science would be the first to go, and it will inherit the Dow name.

Within days, DowDuPont announced it would shift some businesses from Materials Science to Specialty Products.

Because of that shift, DowDuPont may need more time to prepare the businesses for the spin-offs, said Ed Breen, CEO. He made his comments during an earnings conference call.

“When you look at what we are moving over to align it properly, it’s parts of divisions, in many cases, of Dow,” Breen said. Moving parts of divisions between two businesses is a more significant task than moving whole divisions, he said.

DuPont had done something similar when it sold a portion of its crop-protection business to FMC, Breen said.

“We’re doing that in multiple scenarios now on the Dow end, and that carve-out work, legal entity work, harmonisation of our IT systems, is really the extra work we now have to do,” he said.