DuPont to sell $4B auto paint business?

Jonathon Ramsey — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:01:00 EST

Filed under: Plants/Manufacturing, Earnings/Financials

Even though DuPont's automotive paints, or "performance coating," division brought in 12.1 percent of the firm's 2010 revenue, the pretax operating-profit margin was only seven percent, said to be about "half the corporate average." With the highly diversified firm making plays in more lucrative "megatrend" areas, Automotive News reports that DuPont has retained Credit Suisse to find a buyer for its two coatings divisions valued at $3-4 billion.

An analyst has said selling the units will improve the portfolio, but the question is what other company will have the will (and the financial wherewithal) to take them. DuPont says it wants to up the division's profit margins to ten percent in 2012, but with automakers still hammering supplier prices, it will take some healthy productivity engineering to make that happen. Credit Suisse hasn't begun the sale process yet, but a buyer could be sought among the other three large auto-coatings companies, PPG, BASF and Arko Nobel.

DuPont to sell $4B auto paint business? originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DuPont reports most popular color on earth

Jonathon Ramsey — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:28:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Lifestyle

For seven long years, silver has reigned as the overall number one choice worldwide for car color. DuPont reports that those days are over, and the new color of choice is -- gasp -- white/white metallic. That means more people prefer white cars than silver or black cars, with white taking a decisive lead in countries like Mexico and Japan. A study done earlier this year found that 62-percent of cars sold over six months were white. Hmmm.

In North America, white/white pearl covered 19-percent of the overall vehicle market, 26-percent of the truck/SUV market, and tied with black for the luxury market. We don't know where the "luxury" segment begins, but we've never seen a white A8, and we already know who orders the tiny number of white XJ's, so who's ordering all the white S-Classes and 7-Series'? Come on. Show yourselves.

It's spun a number of different ways: white is an "agent of change" that will open the doors to new colors; white is the new trendy color following fashion and furniture trends; and white provides a nice palette for customization. Sure, this is about as subjective as you can get, and we're not totally against white cars -- Aston Martin gave us a pearl metallic Vantage to roll around in, and we didn't mind. But we wouldn't buy a pearl metallic Vantage. And our first request when renting a car is "Don't give us a white one." Ah well. Hit the jump for the full press release, and follow the link for the color charts to see what flake flavor your country is.

[Source: DuPont]

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DuPont reports most popular color on earth originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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