PolyOne Corporation Initiates Quarterly Dividend

CLEVELAND, March 3, 2011 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- PolyOne Corporation (NYSE: POL) a premier provider of specialized polymer materials, services and solutions, today announced the initiation of a regular quarterly dividend. Reinforcing its confidence in PolyOne's financial strength and future growth prospects, the Board of Directors approved a dividend of four cents ($0.04) per share on the common stock outstanding, to be paid on April 7, 2011 to stockholders of record on March 14, 2011.

"I am pleased to announce the initiation of a quarterly dividend for the first time since 2002," said Stephen D. Newlin, chairman, president and chief executive officer.  "The successful transformation of PolyOne over the past five years, including the recent divestiture of our SunBelt investment, has significantly strengthened our financial condition and improved the sustainability of our long-term earnings potential."  

With record earnings or profitability generated by each of its strategic platforms during 2010, PolyOne reported the best mix of earnings in company history, with Specialty platform operating income exceeding 40% of consolidated operating income before corporate charges.  

Newlin continued, "With the disposition of SunBelt, we are formally revising our target portfolio mix, and expect to derive greater than 60% of business unit operating income from the Specialty platform by 2014."

"With an increasingly improving and less cyclical earnings profile, we are confident in and committed to our new dividend policy," added Robert M. Patterson, executive vice president and chief financial officer.  "The quarterly dividends, combined with our existing share repurchase authorization of up to 8.75 million shares, enhance our flexibility to systematically and opportunistically reward shareholders as we continue growing the business.  We expect to fund dividend payments and share buybacks with free cash flow, as we simultaneously seek to improve our credit ratings over time."

About PolyOne

PolyOne Corporation, with 2010 revenues of $2.6 billion, is a premier provider of specialized polymer materials, services and solutions. Headquartered outside of Cleveland, Ohio USA, PolyOne has operations around the world. For additional information on PolyOne, visit our Web site at www.polyone.com.

To access PolyOne's news library online, please visit www.polyone.com/news

Forward-looking Statements

In this press release, statements that are not reported financial results or other historical information are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  Forward-looking statements give current expectations or forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance.  They are based on management's expectations that involve a number of business risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements.  They use words such as "will," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "project," "intend," "plan," "believe," and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with any discussion of future operating or financial condition, performance and/or sales.  Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by these forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: disruptions, uncertainty or volatility in the credit markets that could adversely impact the availability of credit already arranged and the availability and cost of credit in the future; the financial condition of our customers, including the ability of customers (especially those that may be highly leveraged and those with inadequate liquidity) to maintain their credit availability; the speed and extent of an economic recovery, including the recovery of the housing and chlor-alkali markets; our ability to achieve new business gains; the effect on foreign operations of currency fluctuations, tariffs, and other political, economic and regulatory risks; changes in polymer consumption growth rates where we conduct business; changes in global industry capacity or in the rate at which anticipated changes in industry capacity come online; fluctuations in raw material prices, quality and supply and in energy prices and supply; production outages or material costs associated with scheduled or unscheduled maintenance programs; unanticipated developments that could occur with respect to contingencies such as litigation and environmental matters; an inability to achieve or delays in achieving or achievement of less than the anticipated financial benefit from initiatives related to working capital reductions, cost reductions, employee productivity goals and our new global organization structure; an inability to raise or sustain prices for products or services; an inability to maintain appropriate relations with unions and employees; the inability to achieve expected results from our acquisition activities; our ability to pay regular quarterly dividends, including by generating sufficient cash flow, and the amounts and timing of any future cash dividends; the amount and timing of any repurchases of our common shares; and other factors affecting our business beyond our control, including, without limitation, changes in the general economy, changes in interest rates and changes in the rate of inflation.  The above list of factors is not exhaustive.

We undertake no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.  You are advised to consult any further disclosures we make on related subjects in our reports on Form 10-Q, 8-K and 10-K that we provide to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE PolyOne Corporation