(RTTNews) - Organic and inorganic chemical products manufacturer Huntsman Corp. (HUN: News ) reported Wednesday a wider adjusted net loss for the third quarter, reflecting principally lower average selling prices, volumes and high adjusted effective tax rate. The company also said that it currently foresees the fourth quarter earnings to improve over the past year.

For the third quarter, net loss attributable to Huntsman widened to $68 million or $0.29 per share from $20 million or $0.09 per share in the previous year. The company noted that pre-tax restructuring, impairment and plant closing costs surged to $62 million from $3 million, while terminated merger and related litigation declined sharply to $2 million from $26 million in the year-ago period. The results of the latest quarter also included loss on early extinguishment of debt of $21 million and acquisition related expenses $8 million.

Excluding items, net loss widened to $55 million or $0.24 per share from $2 million or $0.01 per share, hurt by an unusually high adjusted effective tax rate, due to tax valuation allowances. On average, five analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report loss of $0.08 per share in the third quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Operating income for the three-month period plunged to $25 million from $93 million in fiscal 2008.

Revenues for the period declined 23% to $2.11 billion from $2.73 billion, mainly because of lower average selling prices across all segments and decline in sales volumes in Advanced Materials, Textile Effects and Performance Products segments. Analysts were looking for revenue of $1.95 billion for the third quarter.
Segment-wise, Polyurethanes generated revenues of $869 million, down from $1.09 billion in the past year, revenues from Advanced Materials dipped to $273 million from $385 million, and from Textile Effects decreased to $173 million from $229 million. Revenues from Performance Products slid to $540 million from $741 million, and from Pigments segment declined to $262 million from $280 million.

Peter Huntsman, Huntsman's chief executive, said, "We continue to see the positive results of our decisions during the past three years to expand our Asian operations and to focus on more differentiated chemistry while divesting of our commodity chemicals and plastics businesses. This geographic expansion and optimized product portfolio has allowed us to take advantage of markets less affected by the ongoing global recession."

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