Tronox Holdings plc (TROX) Stock Forecast

About the Company

Tronox Limited is an American worldwide chemical company involved in the titanium products industry with approximately 6,500 employees. Following its acquisition of the mineral sands business formerly belonging to South Africa's Exxaro Resources, Tronox is the largest fully integrated seller and marketer of titanium dioxide (TiO2) pigment, which provides brightness to applications such as coatings, plastics and paper. Tronox mines titanium-bearing mineral sands and operates upgrading facilities that produce high-grade titanium feedstock materials, pig iron and other minerals, including the rare earth-bearing mineral, monazite. Tronox also sells titanium ore – the main feedstock of titanium dioxide - and zircon directly to customers. Tronox is the third-largest titanium feedstock producer, with approximately 10% of global titanium ore production; and the second-largest producer of zircon, with approximately 20% of global production. The company also has an electrolytic and speciality chemicals business that services the paper and battery industries. Formerly a part of the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation and based in Oklahoma City since it was spun off from its parent in 2005, the company announced in June 2012 that it was moving its headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut. The company was spun off in part to offload its parent company Kerr-McGee's legacy of generations of environmental dumping of toxic waste across 22 states. According to one report, "Kerr-McGee, rather than pay for the environmental mess it created, decided to shift the liabilities between 2002 and 2006 into Tronox. Kerr-McGee, meanwhile, kept its valuable oil and gas assets." Tronox did not reveal the massive hidden liabilities to investors, and after they became known, Tronox dropped to a penny stock in 2009. In response, shareholders sued Anadarko Petroleum (successor to Kerr-McGee) for keeping the scope of the environmental disaster a secret. In addition the US federal government sued Anadarko to pay for the cleanup, and in April 2014 settled on the largest environmental contamination settlement in American history, over $5 billion.

Sector

Industrial Applications and Services

Industry

Industrial Inorganic Chemicals

Employees

3155

Exchange

NYSE