EQUATE reports highest earnings in its history

Total revenues hit $1.26 bln in second quarter

KUWAIT CITY, Aug 8, (KUNA): The EQUATE Group announced record-breaking sales in the second quarter of 2018 with 56 percent hike in half year profit.

EQUATE, the world’s second largest producer of Ethylene Glycol (EG), said in an online release that its net income for the second quarter of 2018 reached $427 million, up 75 percent compared to the same period in 2017.

EQUATE group total revenue was $1.26 billion for Q2 of 2018, up 37.5 per cent compared to Q2, 2017.

The group’s EBITDA, which is a metric used to evaluate a company’s operating performance, reached $570 million in Q2 of 2018, compared to $383 million in second quarter of 2017 with an increase of 48.7 percent, it said.

For the first half of the year, the EQUATE Group realized a record breaking EBITDA of $1.15 billion, an increase of 34 percent over the same period last year’s first half-net income which reached $862 million, up 56 percent from H1 of 2017.

President and CEO of EQUATE Ramesh Ramachandran said the group’s higher earnings in second quarter of 2018 were primarily driven by high prices in ethylene glycol (EG) across the globe and a very good pricing environment in the polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) businesses.

“Operational reliability in the second quarter continued to be excellent which enabled us to capitalize on the high prices,” Ramachandran added.

Good cost control and growth synergies from the ME Global merger have also enabled EQUATERs to deliver an outstanding quarter, he noted.

In 2015 EQUATE got acquisition of 100 percent MEGlobal shares for $3.2 billion after approval from The Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) and the Dow Chemical Company (Dow). MEGlobal is a fully integrated supplier of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and diethylene glycol (DEG), collectively known as ethylene glycol (EG).

The EQUATE Group is a global producer of petrochemicals and the world’s second largest producer of Ethylene Glycol (EG).

The Group has industrial complexes in Kuwait, North America and Europe that annually produce over 5 million tons of Ethylene, EG, Polyethylene (PE) and Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), marketed throughout Asia, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The EQUATE Group’s shareholders include Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), Boubyan Petrochemical Company (BPC) and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Company (QPIC).