Updating 3M Company, Quaker Chemical Corp. and Buckeye Partners L.P.

Article Excerpt

3M COMPANY $71 earned $1.20 a share in the three months ended June 30, 2009, down 13.7% from $1.39 a year earlier. These figures exclude costs related to 3M’s cost-control plan, including layoffs and early-retirement offers. 3M makes over 50,000 industrial and consumer products, and the recession caused sales to fall by 15.1%, to $5.7 billion from $6.7 billion. Despite this, 3M’s restructuring let it increase its gross profit margin (gross profits as a percentage of sales) to 22.6% from 22.1% a year earlier. Buy. QUAKER CHEMICAL CORP. $23 cut 10% of its workforce earlier this year due to slowing demand for its lubricants. But thanks to these savings, its gross profit margin rose to 35.2% in the second quarter of 2009 from 28.3% a year earlier. Quaker uses oil to make its products, so it also gained from lower oil prices. Because of its lower costs, Quaker should be able to keep paying quarterly dividends of $0.23 a share, for…