(Reuters) -DuPont de Nemours on Tuesday raised its 2025 profit forecast and beat quarterly earnings estimates on strong demand for electronics, sending shares of the industrial materials maker up 5% in premarket trading.
A rapidly growing market for semiconductors used in artificial intelligence-based technology is benefiting DuPont, which supports advanced chip manufacturing, packaging and assembly processes.
DuPont’s electronics and industrial unit, the biggest in terms of turnover, reported a 10.6% jump in fourth-quarter net sales.
Meanwhile, its water and protection segment, which had been on a decline due to weak China demand, posted a 6.4% increase in sales, largely helped by higher volumes for medical packaging products in healthcare markets.
Earlier this year, the company said it had plans to split into three publicly traded companies to pursue focused growth, but has now decided against selling its water and protection unit, which manufactures water purification technologies and provides medical packaging, among other services.
DuPont now plans to spin off only its electronics business and expects to complete the transaction by November 1.
It said on Tuesday it would announce executive leadership and board members for the future electronics company, and expects to begin reporting under the new segment structure in the first quarter of 2025.
DuPont forecast full-year adjusted earnings between $4.30 and $4.40 per share for the whole company, higher than its forecast of $3.70 to $3.80 for 2024.
Analysts expect it to post adjusted earnings of $4.33 per share for 2025.
The company forecast sales of $12.8 billion to $12.9 billion, also above its last year’s range.
For the fourth quarter, Dupont reported an adjusted profit of $1.13 per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 98 cents.
(Reporting by Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
