Axiall restarts Lake Charles facility hit by fire in Dec

On February 19, the company described its expectation that the first quarter would be impacted by three significant headwinds: the PHH incident, severe winter weather and a sequential increase to normal maintenance spending.

“The severe weather in the first quarter caused a spike in natural gas prices in line with our expectations, but the unfavorable impact of severe weather on operating rates and sales exceeded our initial estimates,” President and CEO Paul Carrico said.

“During this period of lower production and sales, we increased maintenance spending by an additional approximately $10 million compared to what we described February 19th to prepare our plants to run at high operating rates for the remainder of the year.”

Based on these factors, the company expects to report $65-70 million of Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2014.

“Long-term, we remain confident that our integrated chemicals and building products business will continue to benefit from low-cost natural gas in North America and growing global demand for our broadened product portfolio,” Carrico said.

Axiall