LyondellBasell Industries has announced net income for the third quarter 2021 at $1.8 billion, or $5.25 per share. Third quarter 2021 EBITDA was $2.7 billion.   

 

"Our third quarter results reflect robust demand for LyondellBasell products and tight market conditions, which supported strong margins across most of our businesses," said Bob Patel, LyondellBasell CEO.

 

"In North America, solid demand supported continued strength in benchmark integrated polyethylene margins and drove polypropylene spreads to historic highs. In contrast, higher naphtha and natural gas liquids feedstock prices in Europe led to margin compression for both olefins and polyolefins in our Olefins and Polyolefins EAI segment. Our Intermediates and Derivatives segment was impacted by rising costs that reduced margins across most of its businesses. We also lost volume and incurred higher costs in connection with downtime in our acetyls business. Increasing mobility has improved demand and margins for transportation fuels produced by our Refining segment."

 

"Strong market conditions and cash generation from our growth investments resulted in record cash from operating activities during the third quarter. We redeemed $500 million in bonds to bring our year-to-date debt reduction to $2.4 billion and repurchased 1 million shares during the quarter."

 

"In September, we reaffirmed our commitment to address the global challenge of climate change by increasing our goals for reducing scope 1 and scope 2 CO2 emissions at least 30 percent by 2030 relative to a 2020 baseline and achieving net zero from our global operations by 2050," said Patel.

 

"We expect strong demand for LyondellBasell's products to continue as the roll out of vaccines drives further improvement in economic activity around the world. Over the next several quarters, we expect unmet consumer demand will extend strength in automotive, construction and other durable goods markets. While margins are likely to moderate due to increasing feedstock prices, energy costs and winter seasonality, we anticipate ongoing benefits from strong markets and tight industry supply." 

 

"At LyondellBasell, our goal is to deliver results that meet both our financial and sustainability objectives. We have emerged stronger from last year's downturn by investing in growth and leveraging our culture of operational excellence and financial discipline over a larger asset base. LyondellBasell's step change in earnings power and cash generation is increasingly visible. With an additional $650 million of bonds redeemed during October, we continued to strengthen our investment grade balance sheet and remain on track to reduce debt by up to $4 billion in 2021. We expect cash generation will continue to provide flexibility for opportunistic share repurchases. At the same time, we are helping to address the global challenges of climate change by setting ambitious goals to reduce our CO2 emissions and achieve carbon neutrality for our company by the middle of the century. Altogether, LyondellBasell's growth strategy is creating momentum to deliver sustainable value over the coming years," Patel said.