The Dow Chemical Company (DOW)

**greencat** · #1 10-06-2009, 12:13 PM

The Dow Chemical Company
2030 Dow Center
Midland, MI 48674
United States - Map
Phone: 989-636-1000
Fax: 989-636-4033
Web Site: The Dow Chemical Company

DETAILS
Index Membership: S&P 100
S&P 500
Sector: Basic Materials
Industry: Chemicals - Major Diversified
Full Time Employees: 57,903

BUSINESS SUMMARY
The Dow Chemical Company engages in the manufacture and sale of chemicals, plastic materials, agricultural, and other specialized products and services worldwide. The company operates in six segments: Performance Plastics, Performance Chemicals, Agricultural Sciences, Basic Plastics, Basic Chemicals, and Hydrocarbons and Energy. The Performance Plastics segment provides automotive products, building solutions, epoxy resins, intermediates and specialty resins, polyurethanes and polyurethane systems, specialty plastics and elastomers, and technology licensing and catalyst products. The Performance Chemicals segment offers polymers, latex, and specialty chemicals. The Agricultural Sciences segment provides pest management, agricultural, and crop biotechnology products and solutions. The Basic Plastics segment offers polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene resins. The Basic Chemicals segment provides chemicals, such as acids, alcohols, caustic soda, chlorine, chloroform, and other chemicals; and ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol chemicals. The Hydrocarbons and Energy segment procures fuels, natural gas liquids, and crude oil-based raw materials, as well as supplies monomers, power, and steam. Its products include benzene; butadiene; butylene; cumene; ethylene; propylene; styrene; power, steam, and other utilities. The company also involves in the property and casualty insurance and reinsurance business through its Liana Limited subsidiaries. It serves various industries, including appliance; automotive; agricultural; building and construction; chemical processing; electronics; furniture; house wares; oil and gas; packaging; paints, coatings, and adhesives; personal care; pharmaceutical; processed foods; pulp and paper; textile and carpet; utilities; and water treatment industries. The Dow Chemical Company was founded in 1897 and is based in Midland, Michigan.

DOW: Profile for DOW CHEMICAL - Yahoo! Finance

**greencat** · #2 10-06-2009, 12:13 PM

Dow Chemical Co., the largest American chemical maker, said sales of new roofing shingles that incorporate solar panels may reach $5 billion by 2015 as the product expands the market for photovoltaic building materials.

Sales of the Powerhouse Solar Shingle may reach as much as $11 billion in 2020, Jane Palmieri, managing director of Dow solar solutions, said in a telephone interview. Revenue projections probably will be adjusted after the shingle is tested in limited distribution next year, she said.

Thin-film photovoltaic materials are embedded in the water-tight plastic shingles, which can be installed in one-third the time of traditional solar cells, Dave Parrillo, a Dow research director, said in the interview. The global solar market last year was worth as much as $44 billion, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association.

"This isn't taking part of an existing solar market in the U.S. -- it is creating a whole new addressable market," Palmieri said. "It's explosive demand."

Dow rose $1.25, or 5.2 percent, to $24.87 as of 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have gained 65 percent this year.

Dow's Powerhouse shingles can be installed by a roofer using a nail gun with no special training, Parrillo said. No electrician is needed on the roof, because there is no complicated wiring, he said.

The shingles initially will be available in the United States on new homes built by Pulte Homes Inc., Lennar Corp. and other partners in a Department of Energy program aimed at developing new solar products, Palmieri said. Solar shingles look like traditional roofing so they won't face the community objections sometimes raised about the aesthetics of other solar arrays, she said.

The cost per watt is 10 percent less than installed rooftop solar panels and 40 percent less than high-end solar shingles made to fit with slate or clay roofing materials, she said.

Roofing an average house in Tempe, Ariz., with Powerhouse shingles would cost $27,000 and generate 2 kilowatts to 4 kilowatts of power in full sun, Palmieri said. After federal, state and local rebates, the cost would be about $7,400, compared with $9,300 for conventional solar panels, she said.

The solar shingles are rugged and can be walked upon like a conventional roof, Parrillo said.

The shingles capture the sun's energy for electricity by incorporating thin-film copper-indium-gallium-selenide, or CIGS, technology, Dow said. Dow will buy CIGS from commercial suppliers, including from Global Solar Energy Inc. for the 2010 test, Palmieri said.

Dow plans to use the technologies the company developed for solar shingles to create other electricity-generating building products, including siding, Parrillo said

Outlook bright for solar shingles - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

**greencat** · #3 10-12-2009, 12:45 PM

BASF and Dow Announce Support for New Patent Asset Index

-- Patent-based indicator provides better measurement of Innovation Strength
-- Dow leads in Competitive Impact(TM)
-- BASF leads overall Patent Asset Index(TM)

Press Release
Source: The Dow Chemical Company
On 8:30 am EDT, Monday October 12, 2009

LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany and MIDLAND, Mich., Oct. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BASF SE (Deutsche Borse: BAS) and The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: Dow - News), the world's two largest chemical companies, today jointly announced their support for the Patent Asset Index, a new methodology that measures research and development (R&D) effectiveness, innovation strength and how these factors lead to sustained competitive advantage. Findings based on 2008 results rank BASF first in the overall Patent Asset Index. Dow ranks first in a critical measurement of the Patent Asset Index - Competitive Impact(TM). These results show that BASF and Dow are among the most innovative companies in the global chemical industry.

The new Patent Asset Index created by Professor Holger Ernst of the WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management (Universität Studium - BWL & Management für Bachelor & Master - Uni WHU: Startseite) is a science-based metric that overcomes the key limitations of current patent analytics by offering a global perspective, more transparency and a more robust quality measurement for the assessment of patent portfolios. In comparison to other methodologies, the Patent Asset Index takes into account the total global patent portfolio of a company and is not restricted to a just a single country or a limited period of time.

"We now have an important indicator for the sustainability of innovative strength, especially with regard to technology and R&D oriented companies on a global level," said Ernst.

Ernst, Chair of Technology and Innovation Management at WHU and renowned expert in the area of measuring innovation, has initially applied his new methodology to rank the innovation strength of large, global chemical companies and plans to rank companies in other industries in the future.

The Patent Asset Index is comprised of several sub-components and measures the overall strength of a company's patent portfolio. It is based on two factors: (1) "Portfolio Size" (the number of worldwide active patent families) and (2) "Competitive Impact," which is the combination of Technology Relevance and Market Coverage. "Technology Relevance" measures the number of citations a patent receives in other patents, and "Market Coverage(TM)" measures the extent of patent protection in global markets. Thus, the Patent Asset Index offers a more detailed, accurate and robust perspective than current methodologies used to measure innovation strength.

According to the 2008 results, Dow's patents are the most cited in other patents, placing Dow first in the Technology Relevance measurement and thus also in the related Competitive Impact metric. BASF clearly leads the overall Patent Asset Index showing the company's global innovation strength.

"The nature of R&D has changed significantly in the past decade, however the methods for analyzing the performance of R&D organizations have not changed," said Dr. William F. Banholzer, Dow's Executive Vice President and Chief Technology officer. "We are in complete support of this new method, which takes into account the quality and quantity of innovation and provides a result that not only allows a company to benchmark itself against its peers, but also provides an accurate, overall view of the impact and efficiency of an enterprise's investment in innovation."

Comparing companies on the strength of their patent portfolio is an important measure of innovation, especially in the chemical industry where competition occurs at a global level.

"The essential role that patents play in the chemical industry is often ignored, and we are happy that we now have a better method to compare the patent portfolios of global companies even more accurately," said Dr. Andreas Kreimeyer, member of the Board of Executive Directors and Research Executive Director of BASF SE. "The method is valuable not only to demonstrate the importance of our patent portfolio to investors, but also to internally evaluate our patent strategy over time."

For further information about method and results of the patent benchmarking based on the Patent Asset Index, please visit: Universität Studium - BWL & Management für Bachelor & Master - Uni WHU: Patent Asset Index measures the technology strength of companies

About Dow

More information about Dow is available on the Internet at The Dow Chemical Company

About BASF

Further information on BASF is available on the Internet at BASF Global - BASF - The Chemical Company - Corporate Website

BASF and Dow Announce Support for New Patent Asset Index - Yahoo! Finance

**greencat** · #4 10-23-2009, 12:00 AM

Dow Chemical's quarterly profit surges on asset sales

MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Dow Chemical Co. reported Thursday a 66% jump in third-quarter profit, with asset sales and steep cost-cuts shoring up the bottom line in the face of lower sales.

Shares of Dow /quotes/comstock/13*!dow/quotes/nls/dow (DOW 26.50, +0.04, +0.15%) rebounded from a lower start to finish the session with a 96-cent, or 3.8%, gain at $26.46.

Midland, Mich.-based Dow, the biggest U.S. chemical company, posted a profit of $711 million, or 63 cents a share, up from $428 million, or 46 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30 fell 22% to $12.05 billion as product prices slumped from the 2008 third quarter.

Sales rose 6% from the previous quarter, however. Sales volume overall fell 9% from a year ago and were unchanged from the previous quarter.

Dow's costs for energy and raw materials rose $618 million from the second quarter, though they were down $3.5 billion from the year-ago third quarter.

Excluding gains from asset sales and other one-time items, Dow Chemical's quarterly profit would have fallen to 24 cents a share compared with 59 cents a year earlier. Among key one-time items in the latest quarter was Dow's sale of its stake in a refinery in Holland and of Morton Salt.

/quotes/comstock/13*!dow/quotes/nls/dow
DOW 26.50, +0.04, +0.15%

302010009MMJSAnalysts polled by FactSet Research had expected, on average, that the company would earn 5 cents a share on $12.43 billion in revenue.

After a rough year, the company said it appears the global economy is stabilizing, led by strong growth in Asia, especially China, and in other emerging markets. But the improvements are not enough to foster a broad recovery overall.

"The global economy is now on firmer footing," said Chairman and Chief Executive Andrew Leveris, adding that Dow management believes the U.S. economy's "beginning a slow and tenuous recovery."

However, Dow's operating plans for 2009 and 2010 "do not count on material improvements in market conditions," he said in a statement accompanying the earnings report.

The company said that it cut $380 million in structural costs during the latest quarter and that it's surpassed its cost synergy goal from the Rohm & Haas acquisition six months ahead of target. Dow, making a major push into the specialty chemicals, acquired Rohm & Haas earlier this year for $16.5 billion.

Dow's sales fell to a low of $9.09 billion in the first quarter as industries worldwide throttled back on production in the face of the worst economic recession in a generation. But the latest sales show a second straight quarter-to-quarter improvement as the economy struggles back to its feet and companies replace depleted inventories.

Dow Chemical has seen its share price advance 75% since the start of the year, recovering from a 52-week low of $5.89 on March 10
Dow Chemical's profit surges on asset sales - MarketWatch