According to today’s preliminary figures, Wacker Chemie AG anticipates EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of about €930 million for 2018. That is below recent EBITDA guidance of a mid-single-digit percentage rise versus the previous year’s €1,014.1 million.
The reason for the EBITDA decrease is that 2018 earnings guidance included insurance compensation that is still outstanding for the incident at Charleston, Tennessee. As polysilicon production at Charleston reached full capacity only in early December 2018, there was not enough time to conclude talks with the insurer for 2018.
WACKER continues to expect that insurance compensation will fully cover both the repair work at the site and the business interruption loss. This is expected during 2019.
Due to the aforementioned reason, the Group’s net income and net financial debt for 2018 will differ from recent guidance, too. Net income from continuing operations is now expected to be slightly higher than a year earlier (previous guidance: substantially higher than the year before). Net financial debt is likely to be somewhat above €600 million at year-end 2018 (previous guidance: about €500 million).
WACKER will publish its final figures for 2018 on March 19, 2019.