Chemical Week’s Billion-Dollar Club: Ranking the world's top chemical producers

The following is an excerpt from Chemical Week by S&P Global's Billion-Dollar Club, an annual ranking of the top chemical companies in the world by revenue. For the complete list, click here.

Sales for the chemical industry’s top companies grew strongly for the second straight year in 2022, but persistent inflation meant that results were more mixed than top-line figures suggest. The top of the industry’s leaderboard was relatively stable.

BASF SE topped Chemical Week’s Billion-Dollar Club ranking of the chemical industry’s top companies by sales for the seventh time in the past 10 years in 2022. BASF has only been knocked off its perch by the short-lived combination of Dow Inc. and DuPont de Nemours, Inc. in 2017 and 2018 and by China Petrochemical Corp. (Sinopec) in 2014.

The industry’s leaderboard was relatively static from 2021 to 2022. China National Chemical Corp. moved up to third place as the Chinese economy reopened in fits and starts. Sinopec, Formosa Plastics Corp., Dow, LyondellBasell Industries NV, Saudi Basic Industries Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and INEOS Group Ltd. all reappeared in the top 10. Nutrien Ltd. moved into the number 10 spot, reflecting a year in which fertilizer prices soared in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rebounding demand in agriculture.

The ranking was relatively stable beyond the top 10, as well. Linde PLC, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., Hengli Petrochemical Co., Ltd., L’Air Liquide SA, Rongsheng Petrochemical (S) Pte. Ltd., Bayer AG, Wanhua Chemical Group Co., Ltd., LG Chem, Ltd. and The Sherwin-Williams Company all ranked in the top 20 companies by sales in both 2021 and 2022.

Some firms continued to slide. DuPont, for example, was the 39th-largest chemical maker by revenues in 2022, down from number 29 in 2021 and number 13 in 2019. The company, which has shed notable assets such as its mobility and materials business in recent years, was routinely at or near the top in the 1990s and last held the top spot in 2000.

Industry revenues rose strongly again in 2022. Among the 109 companies in CW’s Billion-Dollar Club for 2022, the median year-over-year revenue increase was 17%. While this is a solid figure, it represents a decline from 2021, when the median revenue increase for Billion-Dollar Club companies was 30% -- although that number reflects the very strong bounceback from the COVID-19 recession.

Profit numbers for companies in CW’s Billion-Dollar Club show how inflation started catching up with the industry in 2022 after a period in which pricing power preserved margins. Median operating income for companies included in the ranking declined by 2% year over year, despite the double-digit rise in median revenue. Results for the industry generally weakened as the year progressed, with many firms flagging a weak operating environment by the fourth quarter.

Overall, the bumpy path trod by chemical makers in 2022 has continued in 2023, and it does not appear to be getting much smoother. The most recent set of quarterly earnings reports were mixed to negative, with most companies seeing continued soft, albeit not deteriorating, demand.

Global GDP growth is expected to fall to 2.5% this year after totaling 3.1% in 2022, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Industrial production, a key indicator of chemicals demand, is forecast to grow globally by just 0.9% in 2023 after increasing 2.8% in 2021. Most of the developed world, including the US, the eurozone, the UK and Japan, is forecast to see negative industrial production growth this year. China’s economy is widely seen to be faltering as well.

Sotirios Frantzanas, Jameson Croteau, Jane Zhou and Rob Westervelt also contributed to this article