As you might expect, Wall Street minions are spending lots of their time these days trying to fathom what lies ahead for 2010. But there's still something to be gained from a 2009 look-back from the perspective of some of the more active companies during that time.
I'm hard-pressed to conjure up a company that turned in a more wild and wooly -- and ultimately successful -- year than did Dow Chemical (NYSE:DOW). As you no doubt recall, Dow announced in 2008 that it would pay more than $15 billion for specialty chemicals maker Rohm and Haas. But when Kuwait pulled out of a joint petrochemical venture that would have netted about two-thirds of the funds needed for the Rohm purchase, the company was left without the necessary funding for the deal.
Consideration was given to a variety of alternatives, including the sale of DowAgroSciences, its highly successful agricultural unit. Possible buyers mentioned included Swiss crop sciences company Syngenta (NYSE:SYT), along with DuPont (NYSE:DD) and Monsanto (NYSE:MON).
In the end, Dow's bank lines and $7 billion in new preferred stock pushed the deal through. Since then, Dow has been humming along nicely. Equity offerings, along with non-core asset sales, have cleaned up the balance sheet somewhat, although with upward of $23 billion in postpurchase debt still lingering, there remains lots of work to be done.
When all is said and done, Dow appears likely to be one of the major chemicals beneficiaries of a strengthening economy, along with the likes of smaller Ashland (NYSE:ASH), Eastman (NYSE:EMN), and Cytec (NYSE:CYT), all of which are expected to register big year-over-year quarterly advances in the coming earnings season.
But while it's obvious that Dow is into chemicals, what does the company actually do?
The answer is that it's involved in an unimaginable array of goods, including technology that makes undrinkable water drinkable, along with strong and light carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics used in everything from aircraft to wind energy to sporting goods. And just last week it inked a deal with Syngenta granting Dow the license to a number of genetically modified cotton varieties.
To all this you'll need to add a solid management team that successfully navigated the Rohm and Haas financing adventure. Beyond that it's chopped costs materially and has involved the company in facilities worldwide, including a refinery in China and potentially a massive petrochemical project with Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia. Beyond that, its new structure, new products, and lower costs should benefit it nicely in 2010.
The result is a Dow Chemical that should capture Fools' investing attention for years to come.
Dow Chemical has been granted a four-star rating by Motley Fool CAPS players. Why not head for the company's CAPS page and let your voice be heard?
