Tuesday April 24, 11:11 am Eastern Time DuPont Profits Fall, Hurt by High Energy WILMINGTON (Reuters) - DuPont Co. (NYSE:DD - news), the No. 1 U.S. chemical company, said Tuesday its first-quarter earnings dropped sharply because of a slowing economy and high raw material costs.

DuPont said it earnings before special items fell to $567 million, or 54 cents a share, compared with $898 million, or 85 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Consolidated sales fell to $6.9 billion from $7.6 billion.

Wall Street had expected earnings of 45 cents to 56 cents a share, with a mean estimate of 51 cents a share, according to tracking firm Thomson Financial/First Call.

Along with other chemical companies, DuPont has been hit by the economic slowdown, and is also suffering from high prices for crude oil and natural gas, making feedstock for the chemicals and plastics it produces more expensive.

Shares in DuPont, which cut 4 percent of its global workforce April 2, closed at $44.13 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock, which has ranged from $38.1875 to $56.8125 over the past year, underperformed the broader stock market in the first quarter, falling about 15.76 percent in the quarter compared with a drop of about 12 percent in the S&P-500.

Personal Note: Imagine how this same scenario is being played in CA, OR, WA, MT, ID and NV where electricity was just raised 45%. Higher energy prices means more layoffs, less capital investment, less profits, more defensive moves like less spending, more inflation as energy costs are passed on to consumers.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@altavista.com), April 24, 2001