Air Products and Chemicals Inc. announced good and bad news last week. Profits are up for the fourth fiscal quarter, but another round of layoffs is planned, resulting in the loss of another 500 jobs.

That brings the total number of employees laid off in 2015 to 2,000.Company officials declined to say how those layoffs would affect employees at its Hometown and Lehigh Valley facilities. Worldwide, Air Products employs 20,000 people.Fourth-quarter profits were posted as $344.5 million, translating to $1.60 a share. The rise was due, in part, to an increase in net income from the Fortune 500 company's Materials Technologies Division, which includes the Hometown plant. That's the division the company will spin off by the end of September 2016.That spinoff will directly affect the Lehigh Valley and Hometown facilities next year.The tax-free spinoff into two separate companies was approved by ACPI's board of directors in September. The move was announced as part of the company's five-point plan and strategy developed when Seifi Ghasemi took over as president and chief executive officer in July 2014. When the companies split, Ghasemi will keep his current roles as chairman, president and CEO of Air Products. The new, as yet to be named, company will be overseen by Guillermo Novo, who is ACPI's current executive vice president of Materials Technology.The Materials Technologies division offers specialty gases, specialty chemicals, services and equipment to the electronics industry. It also offers performance chemical solutions for a number of industries including coatings, inks, adhesives, personal care, institutional and industrial cleaning, and mining. The spinoff is seen, by corporate officials, as the opportunity to allow the company to put its entire focus on specialty materials and stand, or fail, on its own.In addition to a name, the soon-to-be spun-off company will need a global headquarters. Officials are keeping mum about where that will be located, but Hometown and Trexlertown are two possibilities.Employees in the Material Technologies Division are unsure of their future.Anyone 55 or older at the time of the spinoff, which could happen as early as February 2016, will lose their benefits if not offered an early retirement plan.For younger employees, the questions are all about whether or not they will have a job and, if they are able to keep their jobs, will they have to relocate? Air Products officials aren't sharing information with the workforce, adding to the uncertainty, fostering rumors and whispered conversations.The possible closure of the Hometown facility is on every local employee's mind. Answers to those questions won't come for months.