German chemical group BASF said that strong demand worldwide pushed its third quarter net profit five times higher than in the same period a year earlier to 1.25 billion euros (1.73 billion dollars).
The results confirmed a preliminary release last week, when BASF said sales had jumped by 23 percent to 15.8 billion euros amid a rebound in global economic activity.
"There was hardly any sign of the usual seasonal slowdown and the capacity utilization rate was high," a company statement said on Thursday.
"Nearly every business benefited from this. Growth impetus came from all regions."
Core earnings before special items leapt by 77 percent to 2.2 billion euros, the company said, while reiterating that it had raised its outlook for 2010 as a whole.
"We anticipate our sales growth in 2010 will outpace global chemical production," chairman Juergen Hambrecht was quoted as saying.
"Overall, we aim for sales of around 63 billion euros and income from operations before special items of more than eight billion."
Hambrecht added: "We are now profiting from the favorable economic environment because we further improved our competitiveness in the crisis and made our portfolio even more cyclically resilient through the rapid integration of Ciba," a Swiss specialty chemical company.
"We expect to earn a high premium on our cost of capital and thus to increase the dividend," the BASF chairman said.
The group said last week that adjusted core earnings before interest and tax leapt by 89 percent to 6.4 billion euros in the third quarter, and forecast they could exceed eight billion euros this year.
Core earnings have already surpassed levels reached in 2007 and 2008, it noted.
Sales in almost all of the group's sectors increased in the third quarter, with the exception of its agricultural solutions unit, which typically sees weaker sales in that period, and in the oil and gas division.
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