Croda International plc (CRDA.L) - Company Research

Last Updated: 21 September 2026

Croda International plc sells roughly 6,000 speciality ingredients to more than 16,000 customers from a base in Snaith, East Yorkshire. Its ingredients are the small, high-value fraction of somebody else's formulation: the active that makes a serum work, the excipient that carries a drug, the adjuvant that makes a crop spray stick. That model produced twenty-plus percent operating margins for most of the last decade. It no longer does. Revenue remains around 19% below the 2022 peak, statutory profit before tax fell 56% in FY2025 on £185.2m of adjusting items, and returns on invested capital are currently below the company's own cost of capital. Against that, adjusted profit is now growing faster than sales and a transformation programme is running ahead of plan. This report works only from primary filings — the FY2025 results statement of 24 February 2026, the H1 2026 statement of 28 July 2026, the Q1 2026 sales update and the Annual Report 2025. It contains no analyst opinions, ratings or price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CRDA (London Stock Exchange, Main Market); ISIN GB00BJFFLV09
Sector	Speciality chemicals
Headquarters	Cowick Hall, Snaith, Goole, East Yorkshire DN14 9AA, United Kingdom
Index membership	FTSE 100 (also FTSE 350 and FTSE All-Share); unaffected by the September 2026 FTSE UK Index Series review
Employees	5,954 at 31 December 2025 (2024: 6,027); EMEA 2,970, Asia 1,699, North America 812, Latin America 473
CEO / Leadership	Steve Foots CBE, Group Chief Executive since 1 January 2012; Stephen Oxley, Chief Financial Officer since April 2025; Danuta Gray, Chair since April 2024
Market cap	£4.41bn (checked 21 Sep 2026, on the 18 Sep 2026 close)
Share price	3,163.00p (18 Sep 2026 close, down 45.00p or 1.40% on the day)
Revenue (FY2025, year to 31 Dec 2025)	£1,699.4m, up 4.4% reported and 6.6% at constant currency
Adjusted operating profit (FY2025)	£295.3m at a 17.4% margin (2024: £279.7m at 17.2%)
Statutory operating profit (FY2025)	£110.1m, down 51.6%, after £185.2m of adjusting items
Statutory profit before tax (FY2025)	£91.0m, down 56.2% (2024: £207.8m)
Profit attributable to owners (FY2025)	£62.0m (2024: £158.5m); adjusted profit after tax £206.7m
Dividend per share (FY2025)	111.0p (interim 48.0p + final 63.0p), a 76% payout of adjusted earnings against a stated 40–50% policy
Net debt / EBITDA	1.3x at 31 Dec 2025; 1.4x at 30 Jun 2026, within the 1–2x target range
Financial year end	31 December

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2. The Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Profit is now growing faster than sales: FY2025 adjusted operating profit rose 7.9% at constant currency on 6.6% sales growth, and in H1 2026 adjusted operating profit rose 6.7% organically to £155.8m on 4.6% organic sales growth, lifting the adjusted operating margin 50 basis points to 17.7%. Management expects further expansion in the second half.
• The transformation programme is ahead of plan with hard numbers attached: £28m of gross benefits were realised in 2025 against a £25m target, and a further £18m of incremental savings landed in H1 2026, taking the cumulative total to roughly £46m against a target of around £100m of annualised benefits by FY2028. A separate programme targets a structural working capital reduction of about £50m.
• Beauty Actives has reaccelerated sharply: organic sales in Beauty Actives grew 19% in H1 2026, driving Consumer Care up 8% organically, with ceramide sales up 44%. Group organic sales growth accelerated to 9% in Q2 2026, and price/mix turned positive at +3.4% with volumes up 1.2%, reversing the −3.0% price/mix of FY2025.
• The heavy investment phase is over and cash is being freed: net capital expenditure fell from £137.9m in FY2024 to £108.2m in FY2025 and to £42.8m in H1 2026, or 4.9% of sales against £59.5m a year earlier. Free cash flow rose 36.8% to £38.3m in H1 2026 and management states the period of heightened investment has come to an end.
• The balance sheet gives time for the plan to work: net debt was £523.8m at 31 December 2025 on 1.3x leverage, down from 1.5x at 30 June 2025, with £1,066.6m of committed funding including £400.9m of undrawn long-term committed facilities. At 30 June 2026 leverage of 1.4x sat comfortably inside the 1–2x target range.

Bear Case

• Statutory earnings collapsed in 2025: IFRS profit before tax fell 56.2% to £91.0m and statutory basic EPS fell 60.9% to 44.4p, driven by £185.2m of adjusting items including £107.3m of impairments and a £15.9m onerous contract provision. Statutory EPS was less than half the 111p dividend.
• The lipids capacity bet has been written down: a £44.6m impairment was taken on placing the Lamar, Pennsylvania lipids scale-up facility on standby, out of a programme costing Croda roughly £150m over five years of which around £140m had been spent by end-2025. Management concluded that large-scale production capacity outstrips current needs, and Pharma Solutions sales fell 17% in H1 2026 on project phasing.
• The dividend is well outside its own policy: the FY2025 payout ratio was 76% of adjusted earnings against a stated 40–50% policy, and FY2025 dividends of £154.9m consumed almost all of the £161.6m of free cash flow. The 2026 interim was held flat at 48.0p explicitly to restore earnings cover.
• Revenue is still far below the 2022 peak: FY2025 turnover of £1,699.4m compares with £2,089.3m in FY2022, and adjusted EPS of 146.2p compares with 272.0p. On an endpoint basis the five-year revenue trend from FY2021 to FY2025 is a compound decline of roughly 2.6% a year.
• Returns sit below the cost of capital: FY2025 return on invested capital was 8.2% against a post-tax cost of capital of 8.5%, producing negative economic value added of £(8.2)m after £(5.5)m in 2024. The target of more than 10% ROIC is not due until FY2028.

3. Revenue Breakdown by Segment

Croda reports three segments. The figures below are FY2025 sales and adjusted operating profit as disclosed in the FY2025 results statement.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Consumer Care	57.2% (£972.7m)	Ingredients giving functionality to beauty, home care, fragrance and flavour formulations. Four business units: Beauty Actives, Beauty Care, Fragrances & Flavours (trading as Iberchem, Parfex and Scentium) and Home Care. FY2025 adjusted operating profit £169.8m at a 17.5% margin; sales up 7.9% at constant currency.
Life Sciences	31.3% (£532.2m)	Delivery systems for pharmaceutical and agricultural actives: excipients, vaccine adjuvants and lipids, plus crop adjuvants and seed coatings. Three business units: Pharma, Crop Protection and Seed Enhancement (trading as Incotec). FY2025 adjusted operating profit £116.5m at a 21.9% margin, up 15.6% at constant currency — the group's highest-margin segment.
Industrial Specialties	11.4% (£194.5m)	The retained industrial portfolio including by-product and co-stream sales. Not a priority for capital allocation, but retained because it helps fill the shared manufacturing base. FY2025 adjusted operating profit fell 41.9% to £9.0m and the segment posted a statutory operating loss of £(1.7)m.

Within Life Sciences, Pharma splits into Pharma Ingredients at roughly 70% of Pharma sales and Pharma Solutions — the lipid technologies and vaccine adjuvants business — at just under one third. Croda does not disclose a standalone lipid revenue figure. H1 2026 organic growth by business unit was Beauty Actives +19%, Home Care +9%, Fragrances & Flavours +8%, Beauty Care +4%, Seed +4%, Pharma +1% (Pharma Ingredients +7%, Pharma Solutions −17%) and Crop −2%.

4. Business Model & Moat

How it makes money. Croda buys mainly natural raw materials — 58% of inputs are bio-based — and applies proprietary derivatisation, refinement and purification chemistry to produce small batches of high-value-density ingredients. It sells direct through its own sales force, which works alongside R&D to co-create formulations with the customer. The economics are those of a formulation partner rather than a volume chemical producer: 44 principal manufacturing sites including 11 larger multi-purpose plants, with shared manufacturing accounting for around 60% of sales and 70% of volumes.

Where the pricing power sits. New and Protected Product sales, Croda's measure of patented and recently launched ingredients, grew 5% in FY2025 with patented sales up 9%, and 6.9% organically in H1 2026 — faster than total sales in both periods. NPP now represents 82% of Consumer Care sales, up from 73% in 2019, and 56% of Crop Protection sales. That mix is why H1 2026 price/mix turned positive at +3.4% after a −3.0% year in FY2025 when the group deliberately filled shared plants with lower-margin targeted ingredient sales.

What keeps customers in place. More than 90% of customers are retained over five years. The customer Net Promoter Score rose to +43 in 2025 from +32, with Life Sciences at +49, and the average pipeline value of customer co-creation projects rose 12% during the year. Research and development expense was £60.2m in FY2025, around 3.5% of sales, supporting roughly 1,700 patents across 50 innovation sites.

Regulatory barriers as a moat. Croda sells into pharma, crop protection and cosmetics, all heavily regulated. Pharma-grade lipids require cGMP-certified facilities and Croda operates four GMP lipid-capable sites globally — two in the United States, one in the UK and one in South Korea. Pharma holds roughly a 15% share of a US$2bn advanced excipients, adjuvants and delivery systems market and is a top-three supplier in niches growing at at least 5% a year.

5. Financial Health

The five-year record below shows the central problem and the central hope in one table: revenue and adjusted EPS peaked in FY2022 and have not recovered, while the dividend has been raised every year regardless. FY2022 statutory EPS of 465.8p is inflated by the gain on the disposal of the Performance Technologies and Industrial Chemicals business to Cargill, which completed on 1 July 2022.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	£1,889.6m	+35.9%	230.0p	250.0p	100.0p	£794.6m
FY2022	£2,089.3m	+10.6%	465.8p	272.0p	108.0p	£401.8m
FY2023	£1,694.5m	−18.9%	122.5p	167.6p	109.0p	£588.4m
FY2024	£1,628.1m	−3.9%	113.5p	142.6p	110.0p	£580.2m
FY2025	£1,699.4m	+4.4%	44.4p	146.2p	111.0p	£470.3m

Long-term debt is non-current borrowings and other financial liabilities as disclosed on the group balance sheet in each year, excluding lease liabilities. Adjusted operating profit over the same period ran £468.6m, £515.1m, £320.0m, £279.7m and £295.3m, with return on sales falling from 24.8% in FY2021 to 17.4% in FY2025.

Croda reports profit and earnings only for the half year and the full year, supplemented by sales-only trading updates at the April AGM and in the autumn. The table below therefore shows halves rather than quarters, most recent first, with H2 periods derived as the full year less the disclosed first half.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	£880.5m	78.6p	56.5p
H2 2025 (derived)	£843.6m	74.0p	0.6p
H1 2025 (to 30 Jun 2025)	£855.8m	72.2p	43.8p
H2 2024 (derived)	£812.2m	73.8p	56.3p
FY2025 full year	£1,699.4m	146.2p	44.4p

The derived H2 2025 statutory EPS of 0.6p is not an error: essentially all of the £107.3m of FY2025 impairments and the £15.9m onerous contract provision were booked in the second half, wiping out statutory earnings for that period while adjusted EPS of 74.0p was broadly flat.

Croda does disclose quarterly sales. On that basis the recent run reads Q1 2025 £442.3m, Q2 2025 £413.5m, Q3 2025 £424.7m, Q4 2025 £418.9m, then Q1 2026 £431m against a demanding comparator, with Q2 2026 organic sales up 9%.

Cash flow and balance sheet, FY2025. Net cash generated from operating activities was £286.5m against £319.4m in 2024, with purchases of property, plant and equipment of £117.7m and other intangibles of £2.2m. The company's own free cash flow measure, which deducts exceptional items, net capital expenditure and lease payments, was £161.6m at 9.5% of sales. Depreciation and amortisation is disclosed on two bases: £101.3m in the adjusted EBITDA build, which excludes amortisation of acquired intangibles, and £137.0m as the IFRS cash flow add-back. Adjusted EBITDA was £396.6m at a 23.3% margin. Current borrowings were £148.1m and non-current borrowings £470.3m, with lease liabilities of £14.5m current and £63.7m non-current, against cash of £172.8m. Company-disclosed net debt was £523.8m at 1.3x.

Cash flow and balance sheet, H1 2026. Net cash from operating activities was £90.3m, held back by a working capital outflow of £67.8m, with net capital expenditure of £42.8m and free cash flow of £38.3m. Adjusted EBITDA was £207.9m at a 23.6% margin. At 30 June 2026 current borrowings were £54.8m and non-current borrowings £649.0m, with lease liabilities of £14.4m current and £65.0m non-current, against cash of £205.3m, giving disclosed net debt of £577.9m at 1.4x. Ahead of the June 2026 maturity of the 2016 euro and sterling notes, Croda issued £50m and €100m of new fixed-rate notes in the US private placement market.

Guidance as stated by management. The 28 July 2026 half-year statement said: "There is no change to our outlook for full year 2026 despite the ongoing geopolitical and macro-economic uncertainty. We continue to expect: Group organic sales growth within our 3-6% range; A further increase in Group adjusted operating margin driven by improving profitability in Consumer Care and Life Sciences and the benefits of our transformation programme. Our expectations for Group full year 2026 adjusted operating profit are unchanged." The three-year financial framework announced on 24 February 2026 targets, for FY2028 at constant currency, a 3–6% organic sales growth CAGR, a group adjusted operating margin above 20% against 17.4% in 2025, a free cash flow to sales ratio above 12% against 9.5%, and ROIC above 10% against 8.2%.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, September 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	£4.41bn (checked 21 Sep 2026, on the 18 Sep 2026 close of 3,163.00p)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~55.4x (3,163.00p / TTM statutory EPS of 57.1p, being H1 2026 56.5p + derived H2 2025 0.6p). On FY2025 statutory EPS of 44.4p the multiple is ~71.2x. On TTM adjusted EPS of 152.6p it is ~20.7x — the gap is the £107.3m of FY2025 impairments running through statutory earnings.
P/E (forward)	n/m — Croda does not guide to an EPS figure; FY2026 guidance is limited to 3–6% organic sales growth, a further increase in adjusted operating margin, and adjusted operating profit expectations described as unchanged.
P/S (TTM)	~2.56x (market cap ~£4.41bn / TTM revenue ~£1,724.1m, being H1 2026 £880.5m + derived H2 2025 £843.6m). On FY2025 revenue of £1,699.4m it is ~2.60x.
Enterprise value	~£4.99bn (market cap ~£4.41bn + total debt ~£783m − cash ~£205m, per the 30 Jun 2026 balance sheet; total debt is borrowings of £54.8m current and £649.0m non-current plus lease liabilities of £14.4m current and £65.0m non-current). Cross-checks against company-disclosed net debt of £577.9m.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~12.3x (EV ~£4.99bn / TTM adjusted EBITDA of ~£406.0m, being H1 2026 £207.9m + derived H2 2025 £198.1m). On a statutory basis the multiple is far higher — FY2025 statutory operating profit of £110.1m plus the £137.0m IFRS D&A add-back gives EBITDA of £247.1m and a multiple of ~20.2x — because statutory EBITDA is distorted by the £107.3m of impairments booked in FY2025.
P/FCF	~26.5x (market cap ~£4.41bn / FCF ~£166.6m; FCF = operating cash flow £286.5m − capex £119.9m, being property, plant and equipment £117.7m plus other intangibles £2.2m per the FY2025 cash flow statement). On Croda's own trailing free cash flow measure of £171.9m the multiple is ~25.7x.
52-week high	3,520.00p, set 26 Aug 2026
52-week low	2,489.00p, set 19 Mar 2026
Short interest (% of float)	0.79% of issued share capital, the only position currently disclosed on the FCA net short position register (AQR Capital Management LLC, last changed 17 Jun 2026, down from 0.89% on 29 May 2026). That equates to roughly 1.10m shares. The UK regime discloses only individual positions of 0.5% or more, so this is a floor rather than a total, and it is measured against issued capital rather than free float.
Days to cover	Not published for the LSE line — no reliable current average daily volume figure is available from a primary source. For scale, volume on 18 Sep 2026 was 955,818 shares against roughly 1.10m shares disclosed short; verify at the FCA short positions register or the LSE short positions page.
Dividend yield (trailing)	~3.51% (FY2025 dividend of 111.0p against 3,163.00p)
Shares outstanding	139.35m in issue per the LSE (142,536,884 ordinary shares of 10.609756p were in issue at the date of the Annual Report 2025, the difference being principally treasury and own shares)

7. What Are They Building

The three-year plan set out on 24 February 2026 rests on four pillars: driving consistent sales growth, delivering the transformation programme, maximising returns from recent investments, and capital allocation discipline. In practice that translates into two named workstreams and a steady programme of capacity and laboratory investment across Asia and the UK.

• Reinvigorating Beauty. Internationalising Beauty Actives capabilities, extending benefits to masstige brands, and refocusing innovation in Beauty Care. The early evidence is there: Beauty Actives organic sales grew 19% in H1 2026 and ceramide sales 44%. New launches include Malvallin, a patent-pending botanical active for skin firmness and hydration launched 17 June 2026, and a commercial relaunch of the heritage active Volufiline highlighted on 7 August 2026.
• Rebalancing Pharma. A renewed focus on Pharma Ingredients, which is around 70% of Pharma sales and grew 7% organically in H1 2026, while Pharma Solutions — lipids and adjuvants — is right-sized. Croda retains four GMP lipid-capable facilities and more than 2,000 lipids for drug research, and states it has ample capacity for future production after placing Lamar on standby in February 2026, restartable within three months.
• The transformation programme. Around £100m of total annualised gross benefits targeted for FY2028, with roughly £46m delivered cumulatively by the H1 2026 stage. Exceptional restructuring and transformation costs were £26.3m in FY2025 against £6.5m in 2024, with cash costs of £24.9m in FY2025 and £17.5m in H1 2026.
• New capacity and laboratories. Biotechnology R&D laboratories opened at Sci-Tech Daresbury in the Liverpool City Region on 17 September 2026, significantly increasing the UK biotechnology footprint. Incotec completed the upgrade of its Tianjin facility in China on 15 September 2026, and the Guangzhou Hub was commissioned on 26 June 2026. Two new production sites opened in India and China during H1 2026.
• Capital allocation with more rigour than before. Organic investment first; an ordinary dividend of 40–50% of adjusted earnings through the cycle, at least maintained while cover is restored; small selective technology acquisitions only from the medium term; and leverage held in the 1–2x EBITDA range, with the possibility of returning excess capital thereafter. No buyback programme exists. Future capex is guided at around 6% of sales, with depreciation rising by roughly £10m in 2026 as final investments come on stream.
• Sustainability commitments. Climate Positive, Nature Positive and People Positive by the end of 2030, including a 42% reduction in absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions and a 50% reduction in water-use impact in high water risk areas. Climate goals were updated in 2025 and validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

8. Competitive Landscape

Croda sits between Ashland and Evonik by market value and is roughly one eighth the size of Givaudan. The comparison worth watching is margin trajectory rather than size: Croda's 17.4% adjusted operating margin and stated path to above 20% by FY2028 is the variable that decides whether it is re-rated toward the ingredients peers or toward the broader chemicals group.

Peer	Market cap (Sep 2026)	Key 2026 metric
Givaudan (SWX:GIVN)	US$36.46bn	H1 2026 group sales of CHF 3,799m, up 3.6% like-for-like but down 1.7% in Swiss francs; adjusted EBITDA CHF 923m at a 24.3% margin against 25.2% a year earlier. Fragrance & Beauty sales grew 6.5% like-for-like, Taste & Wellbeing 0.5%.
International Flavors & Fragrances (NYSE:IFF)	US$21.16bn	Q2 2026 net sales of US$1.95bn, up 2% reported and 6% on a comparable currency-neutral basis, with adjusted operating EBITDA of US$408m. FY2026 guidance on continuing operations is 2–4% comparable currency-neutral sales growth and 4–8% EBITDA growth.
Evonik Industries (ETR:EVK)	US$9.26bn	Q2 2026 adjusted EBITDA rose 24% to €630m on 11% revenue growth and 7% volume growth; FY2026 guidance was raised to adjusted EBITDA of €2.0bn–€2.2bn from €1.7bn–€2.0bn, against roughly €1.9bn in 2025.
Ashland (NYSE:ASH)	US$3.16bn	Fiscal Q3 2026 sales of US$497m, up 7% year on year with volumes up 6% across all business units; adjusted EBITDA US$109m, down 4%. FY2026 guidance reaffirmed at sales of US$1,835m–US$1,870m and adjusted EBITDA of US$385m–US$400m.

9. Leadership & Insider Activity

Steve Foots CBE has been Group Chief Executive since 1 January 2012, having joined Croda as a graduate trainee in 1990 and the board in July 2010. Stephen Oxley joined as Chief Financial Officer in April 2025 from Johnson Matthey, and Danuta Gray has chaired the board since April 2024.

Insider activity in 2026 is dominated by trivially sized routine Share Incentive Plan and dividend reinvestment purchases of a handful of shares at a time. Only two transactions are of any substance: the Chair's open-market purchase in March 2026, made close to what became the 52-week low, and the CFO's sale in August 2026, which the announcement attributes to covering tax on a nil-cost award. No large discretionary insider selling was found.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Stephen Oxley (CFO)	10 Sep 2026	Buy	4	3,218.00p	£129	Share Incentive Plan / dividend reinvestment; holding after 6,465 shares
Stephen Oxley (CFO)	10 Aug 2026	Buy	5	3,292.00p	£165	Share Incentive Plan
Steve Foots (Group CEO)	10 Aug 2026	Buy	5	3,292.00p	£165	Share Incentive Plan; holding after 524,913 shares
Tom Brophy (General Counsel & Company Secretary)	10 Aug 2026	Buy	5	3,292.00p	£165	Share Incentive Plan; holding after 23,918 shares
Stephen Oxley (CFO)	03 Aug 2026	Sell	1,339	3,214.00p	£43,035	Buy-Out Share Plan 2025; sale to cover tax on a nil-cost exercise of 2,837 shares
Michelle Lydon (Executive Committee)	17 Mar 2026	Vest and part-sell	365 vested, 173 sold	2,605.70p	£4,508 (sale)	Nil-cost conditional award granted 17 Mar 2023; sale to cover tax
Danuta Gray (Chair)	06 Mar 2026	Buy	750	2,788.00p	£20,910	Open-market purchase by a Non-Executive Director

10. Key Risks

• Lipids and pharma overcapacity (Operational): Croda spent roughly £140m of a £150m programme on large-scale cGMP lipid capacity and then concluded that capacity outstrips current needs, placing Lamar on standby with a £44.6m impairment and a £15.9m onerous contract provision. Pharma Solutions sales fell 17% in H1 2026, and management notes that drug development timescales have reverted to pre-pandemic norms with clinical programmes taking longer to commercialise.
• Returns below the cost of capital (Financial): FY2025 ROIC of 8.2% against a post-tax cost of capital of 8.5% produced negative economic value added of £(8.2)m, worse than the £(5.5)m of 2024. The target of more than 10% is a FY2028 objective, so the gap persists for at least two more reporting years.
• Dividend cover strain (Financial): a 76% payout of adjusted earnings against a 40–50% policy, with FY2025 dividends of £154.9m consuming nearly all of £161.6m of free cash flow. The interim was held flat at 48.0p to restore cover, which caps dividend growth until earnings recover.
• Crop Protection comparator risk (Operational): FY2025 Crop Protection sales grew 14% at constant currency largely on customer inventory rebuild after an extended destocking period, and Croda explicitly warned that 2026 demand is not expected to benefit from the same effect. Crop sales were already down 2% organically in H1 2026.
• Industrial Specialties decline and utilisation dependence (Operational): segment sales fell 4.6% reported in FY2025 to £194.5m with adjusted operating profit down 41.9% to £9.0m and a statutory operating loss, and Q4 2025 sales were down 18.6%. The segment's own FY2026–28 target is a compound sales change of −3% to +3%, yet it still helps fill the shared plants that carry around 70% of group volumes.
• Working capital and cash conversion (Financial): an H1 2026 working capital outflow of £67.8m held free cash flow to £38.3m despite £155.8m of adjusted operating profit, and net debt rose to £577.9m from £523.8m at the year end. The roughly £50m structural working capital improvement is a FY2028 target, not a delivered one.
• Geopolitical and tariff exposure (Macro): Middle East sales were around 5% of group sales in 2025, mostly in Fragrances & Flavours, and Croda reports actively managing the impact of the conflict by raising prices to recover input cost inflation. Asian sales lagged in FY2025 as pharma and industrial exporters were adversely affected by US trade tariffs.
• Currency translation (Macro): US dollar and euro exposures together represent around 65% of translation exposure, with roughly £1m of adjusted operating profit at stake per US cent and per euro cent of annual movement. FX cut adjusted operating profit by £1.0m in H1 2026, and management guided to a further roughly £4m negative impact on reported FY2026 operating profit if June 2026 closing rates persist.
• Safety and product quality (Regulatory): the Total Recordable Injury Rate deteriorated to 0.61 in 2025 from 0.47 in 2024. Croda sells into several highly regulated markets and flags product quality as a principal risk, with a 2030 target of 99.5% right first time; US regulatory uncertainty specifically affected 2025 vaccine adjuvant sales.
• Index inclusion at the margin (Macro): at a £4.41bn market capitalisation Croda sits toward the lower end of the FTSE 100. It was unaffected by the September 2026 quarterly review, but relegation risk is live at future reviews, the next of which falls in December 2026, and would force selling by index-tracking funds.

11. Recent Developments

• 17 Sep 2026 — Croda opens a new global centre for biotechnology at Sci-Tech Daresbury. The company officially opened biotechnology R&D laboratories in the Liverpool City Region, relocating biotechnology Research & Technology specialists from the Ditton manufacturing site in Widnes into the campus's Techspace One building and significantly increasing its UK biotechnology laboratory footprint.
• 15 Sep 2026 — Incotec completes the Tianjin facility upgrade in China. Croda's Seed Enhancement business increased capacity, improved product quality and shortened lead times, co-locating China and Asia-Pacific R&D, production, sales and marketing teams to serve corn, soya, sunflower and cotton seed markets.
• 07 Aug 2026 — Croda sets out the commercial reinvention of Volufiline. The company detailed how it is generating new commercial opportunity from an established beauty active decades after launch, as evidence that value can be created by reinventing heritage technologies alongside new breakthrough innovation.
• 28 Jul 2026 — H1 2026 results with outlook unchanged. Sales of £880.5m were up 4.6% organically and 2.9% reported; adjusted operating profit rose 6.7% organically to £155.8m at a 17.7% margin; statutory operating profit rose 22.4% to £115.5m; adjusted EPS was 78.6p, up 8.9%, and statutory EPS 56.5p, up 29.0%. Free cash flow rose 36.8% to £38.3m and the interim dividend was held flat at 48.0p. Consumer Care grew 8% organically, Life Sciences was flat and Industrial Specialties fell 2%.
• 26 Jun 2026 — Guangzhou Hub commissioned in China. The site brings fragrance and beauty actives expertise together to support customer collaboration and innovation across Asia.
• 17 Jun 2026 — Malvallin launched. A patent-pending botanical active supporting skin firmness, hydration and resilience, aimed at growing demand for preventative premium skincare.
• 22 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 sales update at the AGM. Group sales of £431m were up 1% at constant currency and in line with guidance against a strong prior-year comparator, with Consumer Care up 4%, Life Sciences down 3% and Industrial Specialties down 2% at constant currency. Expectations for FY2026 were unchanged and the Middle East conflict had no material effect in the quarter.
• 06 Mar 2026 — Chair Danuta Gray buys 750 shares at 2,788.00p. The £20,910 open-market purchase was the only discretionary director buy found in 2026, and came less than two weeks before the shares set a 52-week low of 2,489p on 19 March 2026.
• 24 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results and a new three-year financial framework. Sales of £1,699.4m grew 6.6% at constant currency and adjusted operating profit reached £295.3m at a 17.4% margin, but IFRS profit before tax fell 56.2% to £91.0m after £185.2m of adjusting items including £107.3m of impairments, of which £44.6m came from placing the Lamar lipids facility on standby. The full-year dividend rose 1p to 111p and new FY2028 targets were set for margin, cash and returns.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 06 Oct 2026 — 2026 interim dividend of 48.0p per share paid, totalling £67.0m, to shareholders on the register at 28 August 2026. The ex-dividend date of 27 August 2026 has already passed.
• 05 Nov 2026 — Q3 2026 sales update, delivered as a virtual live event and confirmed in both the H1 2026 statement and the company financial calendar. This is the next read on whether the Q2 acceleration to 9% organic growth has carried into the second half.
• 16 Nov 2026 — investor site visit in Yorkshire, per the company financial calendar.
• 31 Dec 2026 — 2026 preference dividend payment date.
• 23 Feb 2027 — FY2026 full-year results, confirmed in the Annual Report 2025 shareholder information. This is the report that will show whether FY2026 landed inside the 3–6% organic growth range and whether the adjusted operating margin rose again toward the FY2028 target of above 20%.
• Expected Apr 2027 — Annual General Meeting with the Q1 2027 sales update. Not yet published; the 2026 AGM was held on 22 April 2026 and carried the Q1 update.
• Expected May 2027 — 2026 final dividend payment. Not yet declared; the 2025 final dividend of 63p had a record date of 10 April 2026 and was paid on 27 May 2026.

Other scheduled investor events listed on the company financial calendar include a Zurich roadshow on 12 October 2026, the UBS European Conference in London on 10 November 2026, the JP Morgan UK Leaders Conference on 18 November 2026 and a Bank of America EMEA Consumer Conference with a Sederma visit in Paris on 19 and 20 November 2026. Macro release dates are tracked on our Economic Calendar, and you can discuss this research with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

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