“The business result of OCI Materials, the world-class specialty gas manufacturer of Korea showed a significant fallback in terms of profit for the third quarter closing December 2012, with the operating income down 38.8% amounting to 45.5 billion won, ordinary income down 45.1% to 35.6 billion won and the net income of current period down 46.2% to 27.5 billion won. The sales amount also fell to 201.7 billion won which is a decrease by 10.0%.

Under the influence of the stagnated business notably shown in semiconductor, liquid crystal and thin-film solar cell during the latter half of 2011, a declination seems to have occurred in the sales volume of specialty gases like nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) and silane (SiH4) which is the company’s main line of business.

When it comes to the production capacity of NF3 and SiH4, the company is the world-largest manufacturer having the total annual capacity of 7,500 tons including the new NF3 plant of 1,000 tons/year capacity in Jiangsu, China established in September of this year and also the SiH4 plant of 2,400 tons a year capacity in Yeongju for external sales.

Quite apart from this large-scale production power, however, specialty gases are facing a serious situation in the demand environment. Regarding SiH4 above all, its price has substantially dropped down from the peak of demand due to the excessive supply over the world. An earnings recovery is an important issue for all manufacturers and there seems to be a trend of readjustment of their business.

For information, in the full year account settlement of OCI Materials in 2011, the company marked the record-high business result in which sales amounted to 296.4 billion won, up 25.9%, operating income to 97.8 billion won up 24.3%, ordinary income to 85.9 billion won up 17.2% and net income for the period to 67.1 won up 12.0% from the previous year respectively.”