During fiscal year 2019, Ashland generated sales of $2.5 billion, down 4% compared to the prior year.
Ashland Global Holdings Inc. recently announced preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of its fiscal 2019, ended September 30, 2019. Sales in the fourth quarter were $609 million, down 9% compared to the 2018 fiscal fourth quarter, driven primarily by challenged results at Pharmachem and Personal Care, plus weaker industrial end-market demand within the Specialty Ingredients segment.
“During the quarter and fiscal year, we faced more challenging external conditions than anticipated,” said Bill Wulfsohn, chairman and CEO. “Despite these challenges, during fiscal year 2019 we took action to grow adjusted earnings per share by 14 percent, improve adjusted EBITDA margins by 140 basis points and increase adjusted EBITDA by 3 percent. These gains were primarily driven by the impact of Ashland’s $120 million cost-reduction program. In addition, during the quarter we also completed the sale of the Composites business and Marl BDO facility while reducing debt by $940 million. The sale completes the company’s decade-long journey to become a pure-play specialty ingredients company.