Frankfurt — German chemicals group BASF continued to benefit from strong prices of basic petrochemicals as capacity expansion projects in the sector lag behind global demand growth, posting higher than expected quarterly operating profit on Tuesday. BASF’s third-quarter earnings before interest and tax (ebit), adjusted for one-off items, rose 16% to €1.8bn, slightly ahead of the €1.76bn expected on average by analysts polled by Reuters. The group said it still expected sales, ebit before special items and ebit to increase considerably in 2017. Ebit after cost of capital would also increase considerably, where it at had previously anticipated only a slight increase. Industry-wide investments in new output capacity for basic chemicals — the building blocks for more advanced products such as insulation foams or engineering plastics — have not kept up with solid growth in demand so far this year. Prices were inflated further by a series of unplanned shutdowns and technical delays to inv...
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