BASFY BASF SE (QX)

BASF

Explosion Claims Life At German Complex

FRANKFURT -- BASF SE said one person was confirmed dead, at least six were seriously injured and another six were missing after an explosion and resulting fires at its Ludwigshafen plant complex on Monday, prompting the chemical company to power down 14 facilities there.

BASF said the cause of the blast was unknown, but that it took place at 9:20 a.m. GMT during work on a pipeline system at the factory complex in Ludwigshafen, the company's headquarters. Firefighters remain at the scene working to douse the flames, BASF and city officials said at a news briefing.

"There is visible smoke. Residents in the affected areas of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim have been asked to stay indoors and to keep doors and windows shut," BASF said.

"We deeply regret that one employee has died and several others are injured. Our sympathies are with the victims and their families," BASF's Ludwigshafen factory director Uwe Liebelt said.

Earlier, BASF said it was powering down its steamcracker, and at the briefing Mr. Liebelt said 14 production lines were shut down "for safety reasons."

A BASF spokeswoman later said both of the complex's cracker facilities, the starting point for production lines of various products, were shut down. It remains unclear if the cracker operations and productions lines can be restarted on Tuesday, she said.

"We hope that we can finish putting out the fires this evening so that we can resolve the uncertainty regarding the missing employees," Peter Friedrich, Ludwigshafen's fire chief said.

BASF shares close down 1.2% at EUR78.28 ($85.86).

--Monica Houston-Waesch

COMMUNITY HEALTH

Almost Family Set To Buy Stake in Unit

Community Health Systems Inc. said it would sell 80% of its home health and hospice business to Almost Family Inc. as it continues to reduce its size and pay down debt.

Almost Family shares jumped 8.4% to $39.55 as Community Health shares fell 0.5% to $9.97 in morning trading. Community Health shares have tumbled from a high of $52.71 in June 2015.

Almost Family is buying the stake in CHS Home Health for $128 million. The unit provides skilled home health and hospice services and currently operates 74 home health and 15 hospice locations across 22 states.

The deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, is one of several recently announced by Community Health as it works to pay down its multibillion-dollar debt load built up by years of expansion.

Community Health recently came under fire from an investor over a spinoff of a rural hospital chain. Community has been working to salvage its $7.3 billion purchase of Health Management Associates Inc., whose faltering hospitals Community has struggled to turn around.

--Austen Hufford

PEARSON

LONDON -- Shares in Pearson PLC tumbled on Monday after the U.K. educational publisher said weaker-than-expected trading in the higher-education sector in North America weighed down on nine-month sales.

The U.S.-focused educational-products specialist, which has undergone a prolonged bout of restructuring including multibillion-dollar asset sales, said revenue fell 7% in the nine months to the end of September from the same period last year when adjusted for changing exchange rates and mergers and acquisitions.

The decline was just3% when currency factors, notably the dollar's strength against the British pound, were included, the U.K.-based Pearson said.

Weaker sales reflected "expected" declines in revenue from student-testing contracts in the U.S. and U.K., two of its most important markets, Pearson said. The company also recorded declines in North American higher-education courseware, reflecting a further draw down of inventories by retailers in July and August.

Pearson said its Penguin Random House publishing business performed better, partly from movie-tie-in sales for books such as "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkinsin addition to best-selling new work by authors Colson Whitehead and John Le Carré.

"Our markets have been challenging, but we are managing discretionary costs tightly," Pearson said, with no plans to change its earnings outlook for the full year or medium-term targets.

Investors were taken aback by the poor performance of Pearson's North American business. The stock fell as much as 10% in morning trading in London.

At the start of the year, the company launched cost-savings worth half a billion dollars and released plans to ax 4,000 staff, or 10% of its workforce world-wide after acknowledging it had underestimated the impact of trading pressures across its key markets.

Rapid growth in employment and increasing education regulation in the U.S. has roiled higher-education enrollments in the company, which has put pressure on Pearson's business even as it has sought new sources of growth in countries like Brazil and China.

Pearson expects to report adjusted operating profit, before restructuring costs, of between GBP580 million pounds ($706 million) and GBP620 million in 2016, and adjusted earnings a share of share of between 50 pence and 55 pence. If current exchange rates persist until the end of 2016, that would add 4.5 pence to earnings a share, the company said.

Pearson, which used to own the Financial Times newspaper -- once its flagship publishing asset -- and a stake in the publisher of the Economist magazine, expects to report at least GBP800 million in adjusted operating profit by 2018.

News Corp, which owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, competes with Pearson's book publishing units.

--Simon Zekaria and Razak Musah Baba

J.B. HUNT

Weak Demand Weighs on Results

J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. reported a drop in third-quarter earnings as itthe freight trucking company faced lower customer rates and weak demand.

The trucking industry has struggled for months as excess capacity has pressured pricing. Additionally, the Arkansas-based transportation company said bottom-line growth was weighed down by increased driver wages and recruitment costs.

Overall for the quarter ended Sept. 30, J.B. Hunt reported a profit of $109.4 million, or 97 cents a share, down from $115.1 million, or 99 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 6.6% to $1.69 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of $1.02 per share on $1.68 billion in revenue.

J.B. Hunt said intermodal revenue, its largest segment, rose 2% to $970 million. In that segment, the number of total loads grew 7%, though revenue per load slipped 4.2%.

The dedicated contract services unit reported a 6% increase in revenue to $394 million, helped by fewer unseated trucks and more streamlined supply chains. Truck revenue remained flat at $97 million.

In the quarter ended in June, J.B. Hunt cut its sales guidance for the year to 7% growth from a prior range of 9% to 12% growth.

Shares were inactive premarket. Shares have dipped 6.2% over the past three months.

--Imani Moise

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 18, 2016 02:48 ET (06:48 GMT)

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