Hanwha Chemical Co., a unit of South Korea's Hanwha Group, will sell its stake in its wholly owned pharmaceutical unit Dreampharma Corp., company and industry sources said Wednesday.

Hanwha Chemical picked Citigroup Global Markets Korea Securities Ltd. as a manager of the deal, the sources said.

"We are pushing ahead with the sale of Dreampharam, but there is no progress as it is in an early stage," said an official at Hanwha Chemical, declining to give his name.

Hanwha Chemical is going ahead with the plan to sell the construction material division of its unit Hanwha L&C Corp. and buy the petrochemical business that Dow Chemical Co., a U.S. chemical company, plans to sell.

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. (Yonhap)