Superior Plus-an Overview

This is the second blog on the same piece of information about Superior Plus, that is, their third quarter report.The other blog was written on January 9 on Blogdaleupsome.It was a more detailed blog as Superior used some accounting concepts that had to be explained.However doing this missed the overview of Superior Plus.                                                                                               SPB takes a healthy restructuring charge from earnings;in the last quarter they took a restructuring charge of $150 million.This is because in 2011 or 2012, SPB had some damage at one of it's plants and took a $300 million impairment charge.Since then Superior Plus has been rebuilding facilities.Consequently it has built new hydrochloric acid facilities in Port Edwards,Wisconsin and chloralkali facilities in Saskatoon.Now it has moved it's  Construction Products division  at a cost of $3 million to Dallas and is expecting increased profit  here.The propane distribution business has had small improvements also.This blog expects that restructuring will likely be smaller  in 2015.But there will likely have to be improvements made to their new Dallas operation.
  Superior Plus made a forecast of earnings(AOCF) in the second quarter of $1.65 to $1.95(AOCF) and now has raised it to $1.75 to $1.95 per share.For 2015 the forecast is for $1.80 to $2.10 per share.Superior Plus expects modest increases for all divisions.This blog thinks this is a little low but recognizes that the newly improved Construction Products division will be the wild card here.Their propane distribution division should have modest increases in sales and margin but the Specialty Chemicals could show a healthy increase with their new facilities in place.
       2015 Improvements
 SPB has just raised it's earnings per share for 2014 and expects an improvement for 2015.But with new facilities coming onstream results could be up more than 5%;depending on the American market results could be up by 15 to 20%.Also SPB has just raised it's dividend so it looks more attractive to investors.Superior Plus was trading at $15.00 per share in August and so could easily hit $13.50 even if the American market does not materialize like expected.