The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) today reinforced its commitment to its market-driven, integrated strategy, announcing several key actions the Company is taking to create additional value for its shareholders.

In a keynote address to investors, Andrew N. Liveris, Dow’s chairman and chief executive officer, outlined a number of specific actions the Company is taking aligned to its long-term strategy, including streamlining its joint venture portfolio, realigning external reporting segments, and ongoing activities to extract further value from operations. Liveris also provided enhanced transparency regarding the economics for key growth investments, including USGC investments and ENLIST™. In addition, the Company today announced an increase to its quarterly dividend and an expansion of its share repurchase program.

“We are proactively and consistently executing against our strategy and the results of our decisions and actions are evident,” said Liveris. “For the previous eight quarters we have built a solid foundation of increasing earnings performance, clearly demonstrating our resolve and focus on creating and delivering value to our shareholders. We have delivered, and going forward, we remain resolute in this focus, evaluating every decision and action with a best owner mindset.”

During the event, Liveris presented several key growth drivers and actions aligned to the consistent execution of the Company’s strategy:

  • Increasing Shareholder Remuneration – Dow has delivered $1.3 billion in declared dividends and $3.1 billion share repurchases year to date, and with a fortified balance sheet supported by net debt levels at near-historic lows and cash at near-historic highs, the Company is ramping up shareholder remuneration. Dow announced today a 14 percent increase in the Company’s dividend, bringing the Company’s annualized dividend to $1.68 per share. Since 2009, Dow’s dividend has increased by 19 percent on a compound basis. The Company also announced a new $5 billion tranche to its share repurchase program, bringing the total program to $9.5 billion.
  • Ongoing Strategic Portfolio Management – Dow continues to assess opportunities to enhance the value created through its major joint ventures, including rationalizing its position in joint ventures that – while valuable – no longer align with Dow’s integration strategy. As a result, Dow plans to reduce its equity position in all of its Kuwait joint ventures, which will release capital for other strategic purposes, including shareholder remuneration. The Company is also announcing today the signing of definitive agreements for the divestiture of its ANGUS Chemical business totaling $1.215 billion in net proceeds. On track to complete its $4.5 billion to $6 billion divestiture target by year-end 2015, and with additional portfolio management underway, Dow is increasing its divestiture target to $7 billion to $8.5 billion to be complete by mid-2016.
  • Enhancing Transparency – Dow is announcing today that it is changing its external reporting segments, providing increased visibility regarding value drivers and aligning businesses within their key, integrated chemical envelopes enabling more transparent modeling and peer comparison capabilities. Aligned to the recently announced leadership changes, the new operating segment structure reflects Dow’s integration benefits – either through molecular and value chain alignment or the benefits derived from a shared, innovation-driven market focus.
  • Constant Financial and Operational Discipline – As part of its ongoing and consistent drive to lower costs while increasing output, Dow will continue to narrow its focus and streamline investments to deliver $1 billion in additional savings over the next three years, enabling the release of additional value across the organization.

“These actions and growth levers demonstrate the confidence we have in our strategy to deliver in both the near and long term,” said Liveris. “We have delivered consistent EPS growth for the last many quarters, and will continue to deliver based on the structural advantages we have created – advantages that will enable ongoing growth each and every quarter, while positioning us to deliver long-term shareholder value.”

2014 Investor Forum

Dow’s 2014 Investor Forum, a two-day event beginning on November 12, was attended in-person by more than 80 investors in Lake Jackson and Houston, Texas. Presentations from both days are available for viewing at www.dow.com.

About Dow

Dow (NYSE: DOW) combines the power of science and technology to passionately innovate what is essential to human progress. The Company is driving innovations that extract value from the intersection of chemical, physical and biological sciences to help address many of the world's most challenging problems such as the need for clean water, clean energy generation and conservation, and increasing agricultural productivity. Dow's integrated, market-driven, industry-leading portfolio of specialty chemical, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 180 countries and in high growth sectors such as packaging, electronics, water, coatings and agriculture. In 2013, Dow had annual sales of more than $57 billion and employed approximately 53,000 people worldwide. The Company's more than 6,000 products are manufactured at 201 sites in 36 countries across the globe. References to "Dow" or the "Company" mean The Dow Chemical Company and its consolidated subsidiaries unless otherwise expressly noted. More information about Dow can be found at www.dow.com.

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