Sales up 26% at BASF
Specialty chemicals company BASF saw sales rise 26% year-on-year to €15.5 billion during the first quarter. According to the company, economic recovery and restocking of inventories led to the increase. Demand has increased across all divisions, although some chemical products were in short supply, the company says. Net income was up €654 million to €1.03 billion.
Sales in the chemicals segment rose significantly as a result of improved demand and higher sales prices.
“We have thus almost achieved the level of the very good quarters before the crisis. Especially our industry business, that is the chemicals, plastics, performance products and functional solutions segments, grew substantially thanks to renewed demand from almost all customer industries, particularly from the automotive, electric and electronic industries. Regionally, we saw high demand in Asia and South America. North America is also slowly recovering. Europe is bringing up the rear,” said Dr Jürgen Hambrecht, chairman of the board of executive directors at BASF.
The company is cautious about the future as the economy is still fragile. However, Mr Hambrecht says: “We expect our sales to grow again in 2010 and outpace global chemical production. We anticipate that the income from operations before special items will improve considerably and that we will again earn a premium on our cost of capital.”
