March 14 (Reuters) - German speciality chemicals maker Lanxess on Thursday forecast its earnings to improve in 2024, but flagged further challenges in the first half of the year after reporting a sharp drop in 2023 profit due to weak demand and high idle costs.

Lanxess expects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) pre-exceptionals to be "moderately higher", compared with a 44.9% drop to 512 million euros ($560.03 million) in 2023. Analysts in a company-provided poll are expecting EBITDA pre-exceptionals to come in at 630.3 million euros in 2024.

"However, earnings will still be significantly below the average level of previous years," Chief Executive Officer Matthias Zachert said in a statement.

The company foresees no improvement in the first quarter of the current year, compared with the last quarter of 2023, and expects EBITDA pre-exceptionals of up to 100 million euros in the period after 189 million in the same quarter of last year.

($1 = 0.9142 euros) (Reporting by Linda Pasquini and Ozan Ergenay; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)