DuPont Co. has warned investors of lowered financial results for the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, sending the firm's stock price down more than 10 percent.
In a Jan. 24 news release, Chairman and CEO Ed Breen said that as Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont finished 2023, the firm saw "additional channel inventory destocking within our industrial businesses, as well as continued weak demand in China."
"We are seeing similar trends continue and expect sequential sales and earnings to decline in the first quarter of 2024," he added. "Our current expectation for full year 2024 financial performance includes expected sequential improvement in sales and an approximate 10 percent operating EBITDA increase in the second quarter from first quarter."
The firm also is expecting "a return to year-over-year sales and earnings growth in the second half of the year," Breen said.
DuPont will release its fourth-quarter financial report Feb. 6. The firm now expects to report full-year sales of a little more than $12 billion for 2023, down more than 25 percent from 2022. DuPont's first quarter projection of earnings per share of between 63 and 65 cents is well below analysts' expectations of 88 cents.
The Jan. 24 earnings announcement sent DuPont's per-share stock price down 14 percent to $64.20. The price was below $64 in late trading Jan. 25.
DuPont has exited most of its plastics materials businesses, but the firm still makes numerous plastic products, including Tyvek film, Tedlar PVF sheet, Kevlar aramid fiber, Kapton polyimide electronic films, and Styrofoam-brand extruded polystyrene (EPS) insulation sheet.
In late 2023, DuPont added to its downstream plastics businesses with its $1.75 billion acquisition of Spectrum Plastics Group. Spectrum is a major extruder of medical tubing and related products that posted 2022 sales of $450 million.
