Business
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May 15, 2006 - Volume 84, Number 20
- p. 27
METHODOLOGY
Compiling The Top 50
C&EN ranks chemical producers by sales, defined as sales of chemicals and allied products, except pharmaceuticals. Ranking the companies by chemical sales is the only way that privately held companies and some diversified producers can be included. If, for example, C&EN used market capitalization, the ranking couldn't include General Electric or ExxonMobil.
Because chemical sales are derived from company annual reports, nonchemical products often creep in. For instance, DuPont includes sales of seeds along with agrochemicals in its agricultural and nutrition segment.
C&EN does not normally restate prior-year results but may do so when a company changes accounting procedures. Neither does C&EN routinely restate prior-year rankings.
In the list of foreign-owned companies, C&EN uses sales administered by the U.S. headquarters of the companies. These figures are as close to the U.S. sales as possible, but companies don't post regional sales consistently. For Shell Oil, U.S. sales are listed, but for BASF, North American sales are given. A comparison of total global operations of chemical producers is scheduled to appear in the July 24 issue of C&EN.
To compile the information for the lists, C&EN uses, for the most part, official company documents such as annual reports and 10-K filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission. In the case of privately held and some foreign-owned companies, company interviews are used.
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