Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corp (Sabic), the Gulf's largest listed company and one of the world's top petrochemicals producers, said its net profit skyrocketed in the fourth quarter, thanks to higher prices and sales volumes for most its products. Sabic made SR4.58 billion ($1.22 billion) in net profit the three months to the end of December up from SR311 million the previous year, the firm said in a statement. “The increase in fourth-quarter net profit ... stemmed from an increase in prices and sales volumes of most petrochemical products, plastics and metals,” SABIC said. It did not give details on the performance of these products and Chief Executive Mohamed Al-Mady declined to give details, saying only the firm would hold a press conference on Wednesday. Operating income surged 359 percent to SR7.8 billion in the fourth quarter, it said. It was Sabic's highest quarterly net profit in five quarters, since before the global crisis started to seriously hurt its margins, forcing it to shut some plants and cut costs. The global slowdown could not have come at tougher time for the state-controlled firm, which had been struggling to digest the purchase of the plastic unit of General Electric for a staggering $11.6 billion. Sabic's earnings serve as a yardstick for earnings of other petrochemical majors such as Germany's BASF and Dow Chemical. Earnings per share for all of 2009, however, reached SR3.03, below half their SR7.33 level in 2008. “Sabic succeeded ... to withstand the repercussions of the global economic crisis and preserve its strong credit rating,” Chairman Prince Saud Bin Abdullah Bin Thunayan said.