Westlake Chemical Corp. Reports Operating Results (10-K)

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Feb 24, 2011
Westlake Chemical Corp. (WLK, Financial) filed Annual Report for the period ended 2010-12-31.

Westlake Chemical Corp. has a market cap of $3.2 billion; its shares were traded at around $48.29 with a P/E ratio of 21.3 and P/S ratio of 1.4. The dividend yield of Westlake Chemical Corp. stocks is 0.5%.Hedge Fund Gurus that owns WLK: Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Capital, Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC, Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates, Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors. Mutual Fund and Other Gurus that owns WLK: Third Avenue Management, Chuck Royce of Royce& Associates.

Highlight of Business Operations:

The aggregate market value of the registrants voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant on June 30, 2010, the end of the registrants most recently completed second fiscal quarter, based on a closing price on June 30, 2010 of $18.57 on the New York Stock Exchange was approximately $358 million.

In 2003, litigation arose among us, Goodrich and PolyOne with respect to the allocation of the cost of remediating contamination at the site. The parties settled this litigation in December 2007 and the case was dismissed. In the settlement the parties agreed that, among other things: (1) PolyOne would pay 100% of the costs (with specified exceptions), net of recoveries or credits from third parties, incurred with respect to environmental issues at the Calvert City site from August 1, 2007 forward; (2) either we or PolyOne might, from time to time in the future (but not more than once every five years), institute an arbitration proceeding to adjust that percentage; and (3) we and PolyOne would negotiate a new environmental remediation utilities and services agreement to cover our provision to or on behalf of PolyOne of certain environmental remediation services at the site. The current environmental remediation activities at the Calvert City complex do not have a specified termination date but are expected to last for the foreseeable future. The costs incurred by PolyOne to provide the environmental remediation services were $3.0 million and $2.7 million in 2010 and 2009, respectively. On March 17, 2010, we received notice of PolyOnes intention to commence an arbitration proceeding under the settlement agreement. In this proceeding, PolyOne seeks to readjust the percentage allocation of costs and to recover approximately $1.4 million from us in reimbursement of previously paid remediation costs. At this time, since the proceeding is in an early stage, we are not able to estimate the loss, if any, that the arbitration proceeding could have on our financial statements in 2011 and later years.

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