CANADA - Canadian board maker Norbord stands out among its peers again by recording the best performance figures for the first half of 2017.

The evaluation is carried out among the eight leading international wood panel manufacturers that publish comparable results: Arauco, Duratex , Egger, Eucatex, Masisa, Norbord, Pfleiderer and Sonae.

Compared to the first half of 2016 Norbord stood out in terms of sales growth (+20.7%) and EBITDA (+72.9%), as well as EBITDA margin improvement (+8.1 percentage points).

In sales growth Norbord was followed by Chilean Arauco and Germany's Pfleiderer with 6.8% and 3.4% respectively. Brazilian Duratex recorded the biggest drop in sales in the first half of 2017 (-2.4%), followed by Chilean Masisa (-0.9%).

In the first half of 2017, German Pfleiderer was second in terms of EBITDA growth (+ 27.6%), above Duratex (+ 17.4%), Arauco (+ 16.8%), Sonae (+ 10.6%) and Eucatex of Brazil (+ 6.9%). Masisa (-9.2%) had the largest drop in EBITDA compared to the same period in 2016.

As for the EBITDA margin, after the notable improvement of Norbord (8.1 percentage points) in the first half of 2017 compared to 2016, Duratex was second with an improvement of 2.9 points, followed by Pfleiderer with 2.5 percentage points improvement. Masisa was the only company whose EBITDA margin fell in the first six months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016.

Sales

EBITDA

EBITDA Margin