LyondellBasell Industries Q1 Revenue Miss Estimations

LyondellBasell Industries NV LYB said its earnings from continuing operations of $1.0 billion, or $2.37 per share for the first quarter. The company said its results included $68 million non-cash, pre-tax charge for the impact of a lower of cost or market (LCM) inventory adjustment or $47 million after-tax.

Excluding adjustment, earnings from continuing operations would have been $1.1 billion, or $2.48 per share. That is a good $0.20 a share more than the Street expectations of $2.28 a share. LyondellBasell said in February, its fully-owned subsidiary Petroken Petroquímica Ensenada S.A. (Petroken) was divested for an after tax gain of $78 million impacting its earnings by $0.18 per share.

The company's sales and other operating revenues dropped to $6.74 million from $8.18 billion in the previous quarter thus missing the Street predictions of $7.08 billion.

LyondellBasell's CEO, Bob Patel, commented, "The first quarter of 2016 developed as we anticipated. LyondellBasell's operations were strong and we completed planned maintenance as expected. The value of our global footprint and integrated businesses was evident in the excellent results from the Olefins & Polyolefins, Europe, Asia and International segment and our global polypropylene businesses. Markets for our products were generally tight with prices responding quickly to supply and demand dynamics."

Moving ahead, Patel said, "As we look forward to the remainder of the second quarter, a significant amount of industry capacity will be offline in both the U.S. and Asia for scheduled maintenance. We believe this is tightening global olefin and polyolefin markets. Within our system, we have begun the maintenance turnaround and 800 million pound ethylene expansion at Corpus Christi and expect to ramp up toward full utilization of the expanded capacity during the third quarter. During the second quarter our refinery will operate at reduced rates as we repair damage from an April fire. At the same time, the refining and oxyfuels businesses have started to benefit from seasonal margin improvements."

The stock closed 0.29 percent higher on Thursday.