PSP Agricultural Solutions sales decreased 1% in Q2 2017

Platform Specialty Products’ Agricultural Solutions business (Arysta LifeScience) posted a decrease of 1% in net sales to $479 million in the second quarter 2017 year-over-year; Organic sales decreased 2%. Adjusted EBITDA in this quarter was $103 million, an increase of 8%.  On a constant currency basis, adjusted EBITDA increased 9%.

Chief Executive Officer Rakesh Sachdev said, "The combined Platform businesses demonstrated another solid quarter of growth in organic sales and adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter of 2017.  Driven by strong global demand for our industrial chemistries and an acceleration in sales of our electronics assembly solutions, particularly in Europe and Asia, we achieved strong organic sales growth in our Performance Solutions business.  In our Ag business, we saw modest growth in most regions with the exception of EMEA where a weak growing season in parts of Eastern Europe and a change in our selling strategy in West Africa weighed on otherwise solid growth in Central and Southern Europe.  Despite muted sales growth, our Ag business demonstrated meaningful adjusted EBITDA growth as we continued to emphasize sales of higher margin products, expand to new markets, and successfully execute on our continuous improvement cost savings plan.  As expected, Q2 also marked the inflection point in our cash flow cycle as working capital release in our Ag business is expected to increase free cash flow from now through the end of the year."

Sachdev continued, "As we look out to the rest of 2017, we are encouraged by many of the operational improvements we are seeing in our businesses.  We are continuing to invest in new organic opportunities in both segments and are seeing many of our customers grow as well.  At the same time, some of our end markets, including U.S. automotive and global electronics, are starting to level out or come up against difficult comparisons from 2016.  It is in this context that we are raising the low-end of our full year 2017 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $810 million for an adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $810 million to $830 million."