Dow Chemical had to rush out its third quarter results and restructuring plans on Tuesday afternoon after ‘inadvertently’ sending a draft press release about factory closures and job cuts to a reporter at Bloomberg News.
The NYSE-listed chemicals maker had planned to release its Q3 earnings, along with the restructuring announcement, on Thursday. Given the early release, Dow has brought forward its earnings conference call to today.
‘The Dow Chemical Company today announced that due to the inadvertent and premature release of a restructuring announcement, the company has now decided to hold its third quarter 2012 earnings conference call with securities analysts on Wednesday,’ Dow says in a statement.
In a news report yesterday, Bloomberg said it had been emailed a draft copy of Dow’s restructuring statement ‘inadvertently’ earlier in the day. Reuters also reported that the news had been sent out ‘accidentally’, citing an anonymous source on Dow’s board.
Dow’s restructuring plans include closing 20 manufacturing plants and eliminating 2,400 jobs, roughly equivalent to 5 percent of its workforce, in response to slowing global demand for its products.
‘The reality is we are operating in a slow-growth environment in the near-term and, while these actions are difficult, they demonstrate our resolve to tightly manage operations – particularly in Europe – and mitigate the impact of current market dynamics,’ says Andrew Liveris, Dow’s chairman and CEO, in a statement.
The third quarter results, meanwhile, reveal a 39 percent fall in quarterly profits to $497 mn, or 42 cents per share. Dow beat analysts’ expectations on earnings but missed slightly on revenues.
The news comes less than a week after Google suffered its own bizarre news leak: the search giant saw its stock halted on NASDAQ after financial printer RR Donnelley accidentally filed a copy of Google’s Q3 results to the SEC three and a half hours early.
