In this week's C&EN (article by Alex Tullo):
Unexpected factors have forced Dow to lower its guidance for third-quarter performance. The company expects sales of $10.6 billion for the period, down from the $11.1 billion it forecast in July. Dow also predicts that earnings before taxes will be $1.3 billion. The company says it suffered an unplanned outage at one of its ethylene crackers in Texas in late July and has been hit by higher input costs in Europe, which are pinching profit margins. But Dow is getting a lift from higher selling prices and lower feedstock costs in North America.
It would be interesting to understand (maybe from the annual report) exactly how much of that $500 million adjustment could be attributed to the cracker being down - guessing the pressure to get it back up must be pretty high...
