Chemical maker, E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Company (NYSE:DD - News) announced that it has invested in a closely held energy-crop company NexSteppe Inc. to develop feedstocks for biofuels and other bio-based products.
The companies will focus on developing new sweet sorghum and high-biomass sorghum hybrids to add feedstock options for biofuels, biopower and other biochemical-derived fossil fuel-based products. Sweet sorghum can be used as a substitute to sugarcane in the existing Brazilian sugar to ethanol mills, and as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and other biobased products produced from sugar. High Biomass Sorghum is a high-yielding crop that can be used as a feedstock for biopower and cellulosic biofuels.
Sorghum is a crop with significant genetic diversity and great potential that has received relatively less research attention and funding. The crop is naturally drought- and heat-tolerant and has the ability to grow in marginal rainfall areas with high temperatures, where it is quite difficult to grow other crops. It has a relatively short growing season and is suitable for crop rotation systems. Sorghum is increasingly grown as a source of feedstock for industrial value chains.
DuPont's research and development expertise combined with NexSteppe’s domain knowledge, experienced team and singular focus will be able to rapidly improve the crop to produce feedstocks tailored to the needs of the biofuels, biopower and biobased products industries.
In October 2011, DuPont released its third-quarter results reporting a net income of $452 million or 69 cents per share in the third quarter of 2011 from $367 million or 40 cents per share in the same quarter of 2010. The profit exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 56 cents per share.
The improvement in profit was attributable to higher selling prices, increased sales volume and currency benefit, partly offset by higher raw material, energy, and freight costs.
Sales in the quarter grew 32% to $9.2 billion, up from the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $8.9 billion. The increase in sales reflected a rise of 1% in sales volume, a surge of 15% in local price, 4% currency benefit and 12% net increase from portfolio changes. Sales in the developing markets rose 38%.
DuPont upgraded its full-year 2011 earnings outlook to $3.97–$4.05 per share from its previous forecast of $3.90–$4.05 per share. This revision was attributed to the company’s impressive earnings results.
Expectations for the fourth quarter include slowing global growth, some destocking, and shifting of a portion of Agriculture sales in Latin America to the third quarter at the start of the planting season.
DuPont is a global chemical and life sciences company, employing more than 60,000 people worldwide with a diverse array of product offerings. With over 21,000 patents and 15,000 patent applications worldwide, DuPont sells its products in diverse markets, such as transportation, construction, apparel, agriculture, nutrition and health, packaging and electronics markets.
DuPont faces stiff competition from BASF SE (BASFY) and The Dow Chemical Company (DOW).
The company currently retains a Zacks #3 Rank, which translates into a short-term Hold rating. In addition, we reiterate our long-term Neutral recommendation on the stock.
Zacks Investment Research
More From Zacks.com
No comments:
Post a Comment