- Westlake Chemical (WLK -3.3%) sinks after reporting a wide Q4 earnings miss and flat sales, even as income from operations for the full year reached a company record $1.4B.
- WLK says net income from operations fell 42% Y/Y, citing lower sales prices for all its major products as the decline in oil prices and uncertainties in international trade hurt both domestic and export prices; seasonally lower sales volumes of its downstream vinyls products; higher feedstock costs resulting from a large increase in ethane costs at the end of Q3; higher fuel costs resulting from increases in natural gas prices driven by winter weather; a higher effective tax rate; and lower other income as a result of a one-time gain associated with the settlement of certain pension liabilities in the third quarter of 2018.
- Nomura Instinet analyst Aleksey Yefremov says the Q4 miss was driven by WLK's vinyls segment, where EBITDA fell ~$90M short of the firm's $347M estimate, and Morgan Stanley's Vincent says vinyls EBITDA was $74M below estimates while the olefins segment was $32M below expectations.