W.R. Grace earnings about double but trouble ahead

W.R Grace & Co., the Columbia-based chemical company, reported Thursday that its earnings nearly doubled in the quarter ended June 30, but recent events will pinch its results for the rest of the year. The company said it earned $76.2 million in the April-to-June period, up from $38.8 million a year earlier. Earnings per share leaped to $1.14 each from 58 cents. The chemical maker’s revenue also swelled to $513.6 million, up 5.7%. But Grace shares took a beating Thursday, falling 6.3% to close at $71.20 each on the New York Stock Exchange, as the company warned about its result for the rest of the year. “Our team delivered a solid quarter of sales and earnings growth,” Grace President and CEO Hudson La Force said in a statement. “I’m disappointed that recent events are impacting our second half earnings, but they do not change the fundamental earnings power of our businesses.” Grace said those events include the explosion of a Philadelphia refinery, which was a large Grace customer, and the subsequent bankruptcy of its owner; an equipment failure that disrupted operations at one of Grace’s silicas manufacturing plants; and the global automotive production slowdown, which prompted another customer to reduce production. Collectively, those events are expected to reduce its expected sales for the year by 2% and its earnings by about $29 million, Grace said. period compared with $1.77 a share in 2018’s second quarter. T. Rowe’s revenue rose 3.7% to nearly $1.4 billion. “Our investment teams continued to deliver solid performance for our clients in Q2 2019,” said William J. Stromberg, T. Rowe’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Healthy returns in global stock and bond markets combined with $2.5 billion of net client inflows drove total assets under management to $1.125 trillion.” That’s was up 7.7% from the assets T. Rowe managed a year earlier. T. Rowe shares, which closed Thursday at $113.92 each, are up 3% since the earnings were announced. earned $2.1 million, or 11 cents per share, in the April-to-June period, it announced Wednesday. A year earlier, it lost nearly $2.3 million, or 12 cents per share, in the wake of its takeover of First Mariner Bancorp. The Baltimore-based bank holding company reported assets of nearly $2.3 billion as of June 30, up from under $2.2 billion a year before. “Howard Bank continues to make significant progress in realizing the benefits associated with our greater scale and unique market positioning,” said Mary Ann Scully, Howard’s chairman and CEO, in a statement. “Loan growth, as anticipated, reflects primarily very solid origination activity that is now significant enough to more than offset continuing challenges in the shifting nature of a very competitive pricing and structuring environment especially in the commercial real estate sector.” Howard’s stock closed up 4 cents Thursday at $14.51 a share.