Thursday, June 18, 2015

Seeking Alpha: BASF Continues To Execute A Proven Plan

BASF (OTCQX:BASFY) remains what it has long been - a very large, very diversified, and very well-run chemical conglomerate. A year ago I thought the shares didn't look all that promising on a risk/return basis and the ADRs have since underperformed (down about 21%) as have the local shares (BAS.XE) (down about 4%). DuPont (NYSE:DD), Dow (NYSE:DOW), Bayer (OTCPK:BAYRY), and Clariant (OTCPK:CLZNY) all would have given you a better capital returns performance, though all but DuPont have performed pretty well on a year-to-date basis.

For all of the fine attributes I see in BASF, I still can't get that excited about the shares today as a new money investment. Monsanto's (NYSE:MON) aggressive pursuit of Syngenta (NYSE:SYT) could very much work in BASF's favor, but against that upside are risks and concerns tied to growing global capacity in may of BASF's product categories and efforts by rivals in Asia to move further along the value curve. There are worse things than owning fairly-valued shares of a very good company, which I believe BASF is, but I'm not so excited about the valuation that I want to rush out and buy the shares.

Read the full article here:
BASF Continues To Execute A Proven Plan

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