In the second quarter of 2015, compounding and resin distribution leader PolyOne Corp. posted the highest adjusted earning per-share of its 15-year history.
The 57 cents per share in adjusted earnings was an all-time high for Avon Lake, Ohio-based PolyOne. It also represented a 6-cent gain from the same quarter last year. “I'm pleased we achieved double-digit EPS growth, which remains our ongoing objective,” president and CEO Robert Patterson said in a July 27 news release.
Investors were less happy with the result, since it was 1 cent per share less than analysts had expected. As a result, PolyOne's per-share stock price was down almost 9 percent to $33.70 in late trading July 27. The broader stock market was down about 1 percent in the same comparison.
For the first half of 2015, PolyOne's profit zoomed up more than 60 percent to $97.2 million, even as total sales fell 12 percent to just under $1.8 billion. Lower selling prices and an unfavorable foreign exchange rate vs. the euro contributed to the sales drop, officials said.
Among PolyOne's five reporting segments, Global Color, Additives & Inks fared the best in the first half, with sales falling only 5 percent to $426 million. First-half sales in the firm's Designed Structures & Solutions unit — which primarily makes plastic sheet — tumbled almost 32 percent to less than $231 million. Several of that unit's manufacturing plants have been closed since the business was acquired from Spartech Corp. in early 2013.
First-half operating profit for Global Specialty Engineered Materials jumped 16 percent to $43.2 million, while Global Color, Additives & Inks grew 7 percent to $73.4 million in that same category.
Looking ahead, Patterson said that PolyOne's innovation pipeline “has never been stronger, with $1.9 billion of market opportunity identified for newly developed products.”
“As these projects are commercialized, we see tremendous upside to our profitability potential as outlined in our Platinum Vision for 2020,” he added.
Counting the July 27 drop, PolyOne's per-share stock price is down about 11 percent so far in 2015. It had begun the year near $38.
PolyOne ranks as North America's largest maker of compounds and concentrates, and as one of the region's largest resin distributors. The firm posted full-year sales of $3.8 billion in 2014.
