Shares of Dow were barely higher at midday, up 6 cents to $35.91, after gaining nearly three percent earlier in the session.
The shares started to fall after the company announced on a conference call it had sold its polypropylene business for $340 million — a business that had double-digit sales gains during the second quarter.
Dow declined to provide the buyer’s name or say when additional details would be released.
The polypropylene business is “not a strategic fit for our company moving forward,” Dow spokeswoman Rebecca Bentley said. “When we have more information to share, we’ll share it.”
The Midland, Michigan-based company has been selling assets for the past two years, focusing on joint ventures and more-profitable chemical products to cut risk and cost.
In the past week alone, Dow has announced partnerships with Japan’s Mitsui and Saudi Aramco.
So far, results show that customers are willing to pay more for Dow’s diverse product line, especially basic plastics, lubricants, pesticides and seeds, and electronic parts.
“Price momentum is something that Dow knows how to do, and we will continue to do it,” Chief Executive Andrew Liveris said.
The company raised prices 19 percent across the board, roughly $2.4 billion, to offset the $1.5 billion increase in raw material costs.
Even with the higher prices, volumes rose 9 percent.
“It’s always an interesting balance between volumes and price,” said Alembic Global Advisers analyst Hassan Ahmed.
“The fact that these guys kind of kept pace with raw materials, while still maintaining a near double-digit volume growth, is obviously a sign that the balance has been maintained.”
The largest US-based chemical maker posted net income of $982 million, or 84 cents per share, compared with $566 million, or 50 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding a debt repayment charge, Dow earned 85 cents per share. By that measure, analysts expected 81 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Revenue rose 18 percent to $16.05 billion. Analysts expected $14.74 billion.
Sales jumped in all business units and around the world, and Dow’s plastics, chemical and specialty lubricants and solvents saw some of the highest demand.
The agricultural unit saw an 18 percent jump in sales due in part to strong demand for cotton seeds in the US and corn seed in Latin America, Dow said.
Sales in the construction and coatings business remained soft due to lackluster North American demand, Dow said.
The company got bigger checks from its lucrative joint ventures with Corning, Kuwait and others. It collected $291 million from its JV partners, up 19 percent from a year earlier.