H3PO4

On the 30th floor of Chicago's Board of Trade Building is a door with the legend MR. AUGUST KOCHS. Inside is a large suite whose three main features are Mr. Kochs himself, his secretary for 30 years, stout, clamp-lipped Miss Millie Bott, and a small oil painting of an alchemist by a 19th-Century German named Eickinger. Mr. Kochs considers the painting "appropriate" for he is himself a chemist of long standing and high success as president of Victor Chemical

Works. Victor is small potatoes beside gigantic Du Pont or Allied Chemical & Dye, but in the specialized field of H3PO4 (phosphoric acid) and its derivatives Victor is tops. Its materials are used by the nation's biggest makers of baking powder, Pharmaceuticals, dentifrices, fertilizers, matches and fireworks. Last week Mr. Kochs, though a modest man, was eager to tell the world about all this because Victor was making a public offering of stock for the first time in its 35-year career.

German-born, German-trained Chemist Kochs took over the little Victor plant in Chicago Heights after his father-in-law had acquired it in payment of a debt, incorporated it in 1902. Losing regularly at first, he persuaded Cornelius Vanderbilt, President John R. Hegemen of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. and Banker William A. Read to "take a flyer" with $150,000. They never had cause to regret the move--business picked up in 1907, and with the War Victor left its competitors behind. In 1920 it expanded by building a second plant in West Nashville, near Tennessee's phosphate rock quarries. Until then the standard means of extracting phosphorus consisted of mixing the ore with sulphuric acid. In 1922, however, a better method came into general use-- mixing ore and sand in electric furnaces at high temperatures. This put August Kochs in a pretty fix, for competitors had tied up the southern power supply. Undaunted, Chemist Kochs adapted the blast furnace used by the steel industry, spent $500,000 in experimentation before Victor finally regained its dominance in 1928. Last year Victor paid dividends of $1.25 on 621,000 shares of stock. In the first six months of this year, the company made a profit of $342,500.

A heavyset, silver-haired, pleasant man of 65 whose hobbies are golf and a $100,000 collection of French and Dutch oils, August Kochs, with typical German thrift, has always financed Victor expansion out of earnings. At present he contemplates a $1,000,000 plant with electric furnaces near Mount Pleasant, Tenn., for which the company has signed a $500,000-a-year power contract with TVA. This hefty expansion could be swung by private financing, but August Kochs has lately been pestered by stockholders who want a market valuation for their stock. Therefore last week Victor Chemical Works offered a public sale of 150,000 shares, planned to seek listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Half the stock represents new financing, half was acquired from a group of stockholders. Price: $19 per share.

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