Hanwha Chemical will be selling its stake in its pharmaceutical unit Dreampharma Group in a bid to cut costs, the company said Wednesday.

Citigroup Global Markets Korea Securities will serve as the deal manager.

“We are pushing ahead with the sale of Dreampharam, but there is no progress yet,” said a Hanwha Chemical executive.

Further, Hanwha Chemical is going ahead with the plan to sell the construction material division of its unit Hanwha L&C Corp. and buy a petrochemical business from Dow Chemical.

Hanwha Chemical had 12.8 trillion won ($12 billion) in assets as of the end of 2013, with cash and cashable assets amounting to 920 billion won.

The company narrowed its net loss to 79.5 billion won in 2013, compared with 112 billion won a year ago.

But it swung to the black in the fourth quarter of 2013, recording 14.4 billion won in net profit from a net loss of 92.68 billion won from same period the previous year.

In the three months to December of last year, the company reduced its operating loss in its solar energy business to 17.2 billion won from 149.1 billion won a year earlier.

(jyseo@heraldcorp.com)