SHECY Shin Etsu Chemical Company Ltd (PK)

The Dow Chemical Company (DOW) has launched the beta version of the Dow Lab Safety Academy website at the Council for Chemical Research 2013 Annual Meeting in Arlington, Va. The beta version creates a digital learning environment that shares Dow’s best-in-class industrial safety culture and practices in a fast and accessible format.

The Dow Lab Safety Academy includes a number of videos demonstrating the guidelines for safety of the lab for a number of real life scenarios and are grouped under four comprehensive lab safety categories. The website of the Dow Safety lab provides the best safety practices like chemical reactivity worksheet and an incident alert template.

The academy provides material that is very relevant to academic researchers, with modules that focus on the types of safety issues that are generally encountered by all. It also offers excellent resources for students and those working in the chemical industry.

Dow has joined premier research universities to improve safety awareness and practices in the departments of chemistry, chemical engineering, engineering and materials as a part of its laboratory safety initiative that it launched in 2012. Dow is working with the students and faculty of U.C. Santa Barbara (UCSB), University of Minnesota, and Pennsylvania State University to identify areas of improvement and help in having a sustainable culture of laboratory safety.

In order to make the website more user-friendly and to improve upon its content, Dow will seek help from its partner universities and other users. Dow also shares safety best practices with its competitors with a view to improving university safety as well as its customers, national labs or anyone conducting materials research.

Dow reported its first-quarter 2013 results last month. The company’s profit soared roughly 33% year over year to $550 million or 46 cents a share on the strength of its agriculture science business, which witnessed record sales of seeds and crop protection products. Excluding one-time items, Dow earned 69 cents a share in the quarter, up from 61 cents a year ago, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 60 cents.

Dow will focus on organically growing its attractive businesses and driving earnings growth, leveraging its feedstock strength. The company will also continue to pursue its cost reduction strategy while reducing debt and maximizing shareholder returns. However, Dow does not see a material improvement in the macroeconomic environment this year.

Dow currently holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Other companies in the chemical industry having favorable Zacks Rank are Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. (SHECY), Celanese Corporation (CE) and Methanex Corporation (MEOH). All of them retain a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
 

 
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