- Equity earnings for the quarter exceeded $300 million, with strong contributions from EQUATE, Dow Corning, MEGlobal and OPTIMAL -- reaffirming the effectiveness of the Company's asset-light strategy.
Geoffery E. Merszei, Dow's executive vice president and chief financial officer, stated:
"This was an excellent quarter: record third quarter sales; solid price increases across virtually every business and in every geographic region; encouraging volume growth in our Performance segments; operating rates that were the highest since the first quarter of 2005; and record equity earnings."
The Basic Plastics segment posted third quarter sales of $3.1 billion, 15 percent higher than the same period in 2005.
Polyethylene reported double-digit year-over-year price increases in every geographic region, allowing some margin restoration in the face of another significant rise in feedstock and energy costs.
Year over year, caustic soda sales were also up, despite lower prices, in part because industry outages in Europe afforded Dow the opportunity to increase volume. The Ethylene Oxide / Ethylene Glycol (EG) business reported a significant increase in sales for the third quarter 2006 compared with 2005. Price rose strongly, but volume fell as many PET and polyester customers curtailed their orders due to the exceptionally high price of paraxylene.
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