UK Stocks

Last Updated: 8 September 2026

Airtel Africa is a mobile network operator and mobile money business running across fourteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, listed in London and Lagos and roughly 79% owned by India's Bharti Airtel. Financial year 2026, which ended on 31 March 2026, was the year the reported numbers finally caught up with the underlying business: revenue rose 29.5% to $6,415m and profit after tax jumped 147% to $813m, largely because the Nigerian naira stopped falling. The operating story underneath — 183.5m customers, data revenue overtaking voice, and an Airtel Money franchise processing an annualised $245bn of transactions — had been growing at roughly 20% in constant currency throughout the period in which reported revenue appeared to shrink. This report sets out the reported figures, the currency mechanics that distort them, and the scheduled events that will test the position. It contains no analyst opinions, price targets or ratings.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Airtel Africa plc
Listings	London Stock Exchange (AAF) and Nigerian Exchange (AIRTELAFRI)
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Sector	Telecommunications and mobile financial services
Markets served	14 countries across East, Central and West Africa
CEO / Leadership	Sunil Taldar, Chief Executive Officer. Kamal Dua, Chief Financial Officer. Gopal Vittal, Non-Executive Chair from 9 July 2026.
Employees	4,512 permanent (on-roll) employees at 31 March 2026; 26,307 including off-roll personnel
Revenue (FY2026, year ended 31 March 2026)	$6,415m, up 29.5% reported and 24.0% in constant currency
Profit after tax (FY2026)	$813m, up 147.4%
Underlying EBITDA (FY2026)	$3,162m at a 49.3% margin
Customers (30 June 2026)	189.0m total; 87.3m data customers; 56.5m Airtel Money customers
Shares in issue	3,635,772,073 at 31 August 2026; 3,629,635,395 voting rights
Controlling shareholder	Bharti Airtel Limited, approximately 79% following the June 2026 share swap
Reporting currency	US dollars; financial year ends 31 March

Figures are taken from the FY2026 results release of 8 May 2026 and the Q1 FY2027 release of 23 July 2026. Market data is as at 8 September 2026.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Constant-currency growth has been remarkably steady: revenue grew 23.3%, 17.6%, 20.9%, 21.1% and 24.0% in constant currency across FY2022 to FY2026. The reported line swung from plus 20.6% to minus 5.3% and back to plus 29.5% over the same period purely on translation. The operating business has compounded at roughly a fifth a year without interruption.
• Mobile money is scaling faster than the telco: Airtel Money reached 56.5m customers at 30 June 2026, up 23.3%, on annualised transaction value above $245bn, up 51.5%. It generated $1,355m of FY2026 revenue at a 50.8% EBITDA margin. A separate listing of this unit, for which London has been confirmed as the preferred venue, would give it its own quoted price.
• The balance sheet has been repaired and de-dollarised: leverage fell from 2.2x to 1.7x in twelve months, 93% of operating-company debt is now in local currency against 64% in FY2023, and the weighted average interest rate has fallen from 12.9% to 10.1%. Gross borrowings came down from $2,321m to $2,188m while the business grew.
• Data is now the largest revenue line and usage is compounding: data revenue of $2,530m in FY2026 overtook voice at $2,318m, on 35.2% constant-currency growth. Consumption reached 10.6 GB per customer per month against 7.8 GB a year earlier, with smartphone penetration at 51.0% — meaning roughly half the base has not yet upgraded.

Bear Case

• The reported numbers are a currency bet as much as an operating one: naira devaluation alone cut FY2024 reported revenue by $1,042m and EBITDA by $554m. The company's own sensitivity is that a 1% appreciation of the dollar against all operating currencies costs roughly $45m to $47m of revenue and $21m to $22m of EBITDA over twelve months. FY2026's headline growth was flattered by that mechanism running in reverse.
• Net debt is more than double gross borrowings: net debt of $5,739m at 30 June 2026 sits against gross borrowings of only $2,188m at the March year end. The difference is roughly $4.2bn of lease liabilities, a substantial share of them dollar-denominated tower leases, against revenue earned in fourteen soft currencies. Reported leverage of 1.7x becomes 0.5x only on a lease-adjusted basis.
• The Airtel Money put option is a dated contingent cash call: the Rise Fund and Mastercard can require Airtel Africa to buy back their stakes in the mobile money subsidiary if the listing does not happen. The liability stood at $515m at 31 March 2026. The lock-in was extended once and the extended window elapsed on 31 July 2026 with no listing executed, while the timetable has already slipped from the first half of 2026 to the second.
• Margin guidance has turned cautious: both the FY2026 and Q1 FY2027 statements warn that higher energy costs arising from recent geopolitical developments are expected to weigh on EBITDA margins in the near term. Margin has already eased from a record 50.3% in the March quarter to 50.1% in the June quarter, and the chief executive publicly identified power supply and network vandalism as material operating problems on 1 September 2026.

3. Revenue Segments

Airtel Africa reports on two axes: by geography and by service line. Both are set out below for FY2026, the year ended 31 March 2026.

Segment (by service line)	% of revenue	What it is
Data	37.9%	$2,530m gross, up 35.2% in constant currency. Now the largest single line, serving 84.2m data customers at 8.9 GB per month and representing 47.3% of mobile services revenue, up from 43.0%.
Voice	34.7%	$2,318m gross, up 12.8% in constant currency. Legacy prepaid voice across 183.5m customers at 287 minutes each per month and an ARPU of $1.1. Still large, but structurally the declining share.
Mobile money (Airtel Money)	20.3%	$1,355m gross, up 28.4% in constant currency at a 50.8% EBITDA margin. Wallet $648m, payments and transfers $573m, financial services $61m, other $73m. Served through 49,000 exclusive outlets and a rapidly expanding agent network.
Other	7.2%	$480m gross, up 12.0% in constant currency. Enterprise connectivity, Telesonic wholesale fibre, tower and site sharing, Nxtra data centres and handset sales.

Service-line figures are gross and sum to $6,683m before $268m of inter-segment eliminations. By geography, East Africa (Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) contributed $2,192m or 41.0% of the regional total at 13.8% constant-currency growth; Nigeria contributed $1,598m or 29.9% at 47.4% growth and the highest margin in the group at 57.8% EBITDA; and Francophone Africa (Chad, DRC, Gabon, Madagascar, Niger, Republic of Congo and Seychelles) contributed $1,550m or 29.0% at 14.8% growth.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Airtel Africa sells prepaid airtime, mobile data and mobile money services to a base of 189m customers, almost all of whom pay in advance. Roughly 83% of group revenue comes from mobile services and 17% from mobile money after eliminations. Because customers top up before they consume, the business collects cash ahead of delivering service, which is why operating cash flow of $3,195m in FY2026 comfortably exceeded reported profit after tax of $813m.

Where the durability comes from. Three things are hard for a new entrant to replicate. The first is spectrum and towers: Airtel operates licensed spectrum in fourteen countries and had 3,116 operational 5G sites and 81,900 km of fibre at the March 2026 year end, an asset base assembled over two decades. The second is the agent network. Airtel Money runs through 49,000 exclusive outlets plus a non-exclusive agent base that grew 39% in FY2026, and in markets where most transactions are still cash, physical cash-in and cash-out points are the actual product. The third is the two-sided effect between the two businesses: the myAirtel app is a single front end for airtime and money, and app transaction value rose 79% to $8.3bn in FY2026.

Why the moat is narrower than it looks. Airtel is the second or third operator in most of its markets rather than the incumbent, and it has increasingly chosen to share infrastructure with rivals rather than out-build them — tower and fibre sharing agreements with MTN in Uganda and Nigeria in March 2025 and with Vodacom in Tanzania, the DRC and Mozambique in August 2025. Those deals lower cost but also erode network differentiation.

Where the operating leverage sits. Group EBITDA margin reached 49.3% for FY2026 and 50.1% in the June 2026 quarter. Incremental data traffic runs over spectrum and towers that are already paid for, so revenue growth converts to profit at a high rate: Q1 FY2027 revenue rose 31.0% while EBITDA rose 36.6%. The same leverage works in reverse when energy costs rise, which is precisely the near-term risk management has flagged.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Airtel Africa's own results releases and annual reports. The company reports in US dollars with a financial year ending 31 March, so FY2026 covers the twelve months to 31 March 2026.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 31 Mar 2022)	4,714	+20.6%	16.8c	16.0c	5.00c	$2,272m
FY2023 (to 31 Mar 2023)	5,255	+11.5%	17.7c	13.6c	5.45c	$2,178m
FY2024 (to 31 Mar 2024)	4,979	−5.3%	(4.4c)	10.1c	5.95c	$2,373m
FY2025 (to 31 Mar 2025)	4,955	−0.5%	6.0c	8.2c	6.50c	$2,321m
FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	6,415	+29.5%	18.6c	18.6c	7.10c	$2,188m

EPS is in US cents. Adjusted EPS is the company's own "earnings per share before exceptional items" measure. In FY2026 there were no exceptional items, so the two measures are identical at 18.6 US cents — this is not a transcription error. Long-term debt is total borrowings (current plus non-current) at the year end and excludes lease liabilities, which is why it bears little resemblance to net debt; at 31 March 2026 the group also carried roughly $4.2bn of lease obligations, largely tower leases. Dividend per share is the total declared for that financial year.

The revenue column understates the operating performance in the middle years. On a constant-currency basis, growth was 23.3% in FY2022, 17.6% in FY2023, 20.9% in FY2024, 21.1% in FY2025 and 24.0% in FY2026. The gap is almost entirely Nigerian naira devaluation, which moved from 461.4 to 1,303.3 per dollar during FY2024 alone and reduced that year's reported revenue by $1,042m.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q1 FY2027 (to 30 Jun 2026)	$1,853m	5.4c	4.4c
Q4 FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	$1,748m	5.5c	5.5c
Q3 FY2026 (to 31 Dec 2025)	$1,685m	4.9c	4.9c
Q2 FY2026 (to 30 Sep 2025)	$1,567m	4.9c	4.9c
Q1 FY2026 (to 30 Jun 2025)	$1,415m	3.4c	3.4c
FY2026 full year	$6,415m	18.6c	18.6c

The gap between the two EPS measures in the June 2026 quarter is a $37m exceptional finance cost recognised on an in-principle settlement of a commercial dispute in a group subsidiary. It is the only exceptional item in the five quarters shown.

From the most recent release, covering the quarter to 30 June 2026: revenue $1,853m (up 31.0% reported, 21.1% constant currency); EBITDA $928m at a 50.1% margin; operating profit $627m; profit after tax $198m; net cash from operating activities $786m; capital expenditure $389m; net debt $5,739m at 1.7x leverage; and return on capital employed of 24.5%. Capital expenditure guidance for FY2027 is approximately $1.1bn, reaffirmed by the chief executive on 1 September 2026.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Short interest (% of float)	No disclosed position. Airtel Africa does not appear in the FCA aggregated net short positions file (checked 8 September 2026), and the FCA short-selling register shows no individual net short position at or above the 0.5% public disclosure threshold. This means no single holder is short 0.5% or more; it does not mean short interest is zero.
Net debt / EBITDA	1.7x reported at 30 June 2026; 0.5x on a lease-adjusted basis

Readers comparing these figures with charting tools should note that Airtel Africa reports in US dollars while its London shares are quoted in pence, so several data providers publish a price-to-sales ratio that divides a sterling market capitalisation by a dollar revenue figure. The multiples above convert consistently at the 8 September 2026 rate. For live technical levels see our Live Charts page.

7. What Are They Building

Data centres. Nxtra by Airtel, launched in December 2023, has two hyperscale facilities under construction: a 38 MW site in Lagos, Nigeria, begun in March 2024, and a 44 MW site at Tatu City near Nairobi, Kenya, where ground was broken in September 2025. The company expects the Kenyan facility to be the largest data centre in East Africa and to go live in the first quarter of 2027. It is designed at high density in anticipation of hosting the next generation of servers, and data-centre construction is an explicit call on the raised FY2027 capital budget.

Satellite direct-to-cell. Airtel Africa signed an enterprise and rural connectivity agreement with SpaceX in May 2025, extended it to Starlink Direct-to-Cell across all fourteen markets on 16 December 2025, completed data and messaging testing in Kenya in March 2026, and commercially launched Starlink Mobile in the Democratic Republic of Congo in August 2026 — the first commercial direct-to-cell deployment by an operator in Africa. Extension across the remaining markets is subject to regulatory approval.

Network. The group ended FY2026 with 3,116 operational 5G sites across six markets (Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and, added in the final quarter, Malawi), 98.5% of sites 4G-enabled, and 81,900 km of fibre, rising to 82,100 km by 30 June 2026. More than 3,250 new sites were rolled out in FY2026 and over 920 in the June quarter alone, a record first quarter. Data traffic grew 48.5% across FY2026 and 56.3% year on year in the June quarter.

Airtel Money and the planned listing. The mobile money unit is being prepared for a separate listing, with London confirmed as the preferred venue on 23 July 2026. Product build-out spans digital lending, savings, merchant payments, card-linked products and international remittance corridors, with Nigeria served separately through SmartCash Payment Service Bank. Minority investors including The Rise Fund, Qatar Holding and Mastercard hold 22.1% of the subsidiary.

Home broadband and enterprise. The home broadband base grew 86% in FY2026 at an average 195 GB per customer per month, carried by the 5G and fibre build. Airtel Business spans enterprise connectivity, Nxtra data centres, Cisco network-as-a-service and Airtel Ads, and is named in the chief executive's FY2026 statement as a priority for accelerated investment.

8. Competitive Landscape

Airtel Africa competes with much larger continental operators in most of its markets and is typically the second or third network rather than the incumbent. Market capitalisations below were re-checked live on 8 September 2026 and converted at that day's rates.

Peer	Key 2025 metric
MTN Group (MTN.JO)	H1 2026 service revenue R115.3bn, up 17.5% in constant currency, at a record 47.6% EBITDA margin across 317.7m customers in 19 markets. MTN Nigeria alone had 92.2m subscribers at a 55.9% EBITDA margin.
Vodacom Group (VOD.JO)	FY2026, to 31 March 2026: 237.3m customers across 8 markets, up 26.0m; group service revenue R133.6bn, up 10.6%; EBITDA R62.6bn at a 37.4% margin.
Safaricom (SCOM, Nairobi)	FY2026, to 31 March 2026: group service revenue KES414.1bn, up 11.5%; net income KES99.7bn; 71.56m customers, up 25.4%. M-PESA revenue KES182.7bn, up 13.4%, across 43.69m customers — the mobile money benchmark Airtel Money is measured against.
Orange (ORA.PA)	The principal Francophone competitor, operating Orange Money across much of the same West and Central African footprint. No current-period operating metric was located from a primary source during this research; readers should verify at Orange investor relations.
Bharti Airtel (BHARTIARTL.NS)	Controlling shareholder at approximately 79%, not a competitor. Q1 FY2027, to 30 June 2026: revenue INR 58,539 crore, up 18.4%; net profit INR 8,167 crore, up 37.3%; roughly 681m customers across 15 countries.

Two structural points sit behind the table. Airtel Africa is materially smaller than MTN on both revenue and customers, which matters because scale drives spectrum and tower economics. But its FY2026 group EBITDA margin of 49.3% sits above Vodacom's 37.4% and close to MTN's record 47.6%, and its mobile money margin of 50.8% is the closest thing on the continent to Safaricom's M-PESA franchise outside Kenya.

9. Insider Activity

The chief executive is Sunil Taldar, who signed both the FY2026 results of 8 May 2026 and the Q1 FY2027 trading update of 23 July 2026, having succeeded Olusegun Ogunsanya. The chief financial officer is Kamal Dua, appointed at the 2025 annual general meeting, and Gopal Vittal became non-executive chair on 9 July 2026 when Sunil Bharti Mittal retired from that role.

Two persons-discharging-managerial-responsibility announcements were made in 2026. Both are technical pledge releases by Indian Continent Investment Limited, a person closely associated with director Shravin Bharti Mittal, connected to the Bharti Airtel stake increase — not open-market dealing by executives.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Indian Continent Investment Ltd (PCA of Shravin Bharti Mittal)	22 Jun 2026	Release of pledge	595,204,251	Outside a trading venue
Indian Continent Investment Ltd (PCA of Shravin Bharti Mittal)	15 May 2026	Release of pledge	570,204,889	Outside a trading venue
Annika Poutiainen (Non-Executive Director)	30 Oct 2025	Sale	3,000	Open market
Cynthia Gordon (Non-Executive Director)	26 Sep 2025	Purchase	8,722	Open market
Paul Arkwright (Non-Executive Director)	12 Sep 2025	Purchase	10,000	Open market

No open-market purchases or sales by directors were disclosed during 2026. Separately, the company itself has been a persistent buyer, retiring 45m shares under the completed $100m programme and a further 10.2m shares for $46.6m in the June 2026 quarter.

10. Key Risks

• Currency translation: devaluation across the operating footprint has repeatedly overwhelmed operating performance. In FY2024 the naira alone cut reported revenue by $1,042m and EBITDA by $554m, turning 20.9% constant-currency growth into a 5.3% reported decline and producing $1,070m of foreign exchange losses. Management's disclosed sensitivity is roughly $45m to $47m of revenue and $21m to $22m of EBITDA per 1% of dollar appreciation. FY2026's strong reported figures reflect this running favourably, which is not a repeatable source of growth.
• Dollar lease liabilities against local-currency revenue: net debt of $5,739m includes roughly $4.2bn of lease obligations, a large share of them dollar-denominated tower leases arising from the 2024 contract renewals with ATC and IHS. The group has moved 93% of operating-company borrowings into local currency, but that mitigation does not extend to the lease stack, leaving a structural mismatch between where costs are fixed and where revenue is earned.
• Airtel Money listing and the associated put option: the Rise Fund and Mastercard hold a right to require Airtel Africa to repurchase their stakes in the mobile money subsidiary if a listing does not complete. The recorded liability was $515m at 31 March 2026, the lock-in has already been extended once, and the extended window elapsed on 31 July 2026. The listing has slipped from the first half of 2026 to the second half, and UK listing processes typically run six to twelve months.
• Nigeria concentration and regulation: Nigeria supplies 29.9% of regional revenue at the group's highest margin, so earnings are levered to a single regulator. Much of FY2026's Nigerian growth came from tariff adjustments permitted by the Nigerian Communications Commission in the March 2025 quarter, a benefit that lapped during the March 2026 quarter and cut Nigerian constant-currency growth from 47.4% for the year to 29.8% in the June 2026 quarter. The 900MHz spectrum licence had to be renewed for $37m in April 2026.
• Energy costs and physical network security: both the FY2026 and Q1 FY2027 statements warn that higher energy costs arising from recent geopolitical developments are expected to weigh on EBITDA margins in the near term, and the chief executive separately identified power supply and equipment vandalism, particularly in Nigeria, as major operating challenges on 1 September 2026. Diesel-dependent tower sites make this a direct margin exposure.
• Competition and pricing: MTN, Vodacom and Safaricom are all scaling faster in absolute terms. The pressure is visible inside Airtel's own numbers: Francophone Africa voice revenue fell 0.8% in constant currency in FY2026 as 16.3% customer growth was more than offset by ARPU decline driven by interconnect rate reductions.
• Controlling shareholder and free float: Bharti Airtel holds approximately 79% following the June 2026 share swap, the chair is appointed by nomination of the controlling shareholder under the 2019 relationship agreement, and Bharti's chairman has publicly indicated an ambition to move toward 90% if regulators allow. Minority holders face a thin float and limited independent influence over key board appointments.
• Political instability and tax: Francophone Africa, 29.0% of regional revenue, spans Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Gabon and the Republic of Congo. The group's effective tax rate of 40.1% sits well above the roughly 32% weighted-average statutory rate because of profit mix and withholding taxes on subsidiary dividends, a structural cash drag on upstreaming profits to London.

11. Recent Developments

• 01 Sep 2026 — Chief executive sets out a $1.1bn FY2027 investment programme. Sunil Taldar reaffirmed capital expenditure guidance of approximately $1.1bn and identified power supply and equipment vandalism, particularly in Nigeria, as the two major operating challenges, against network data traffic growing more than 50%.
• 31 Aug 2026 — Total voting rights confirmed at 3,629,635,395. Shares in issue stood at 3,635,772,073 with 6,136,678 held in treasury, reflecting the ongoing buyback.
• 16 Aug 2026 — Starlink Mobile launches commercially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Airtel became the first operator in Africa to launch a commercial satellite direct-to-cell service, with extension across the remaining thirteen markets subject to regulatory approval.
• 23 Jul 2026 — Q1 FY2027 results and a listing venue for Airtel Money. Revenue rose 31.0% to $1,853m at a 50.1% EBITDA margin, leverage fell to 1.7x, and London was confirmed as the preferred listing venue for the mobile money business.
• 09 Jul 2026 — Board transition at the annual general meeting. Sunil Bharti Mittal retired as chair, Gopal Vittal was appointed non-executive chair and Shravin Bharti Mittal became deputy chair. V.K. Viswanathan joined as an independent non-executive director on 22 July 2026.
• 22 Jun 2026 — Bharti Airtel lifts its stake to approximately 79%. Indian Continent Investment Limited transferred 595,204,251 shares, or 16.31%, to Bharti Airtel in a share-for-share swap valued at roughly $2.9bn. Both parties are Mittal-controlled, and the transaction was reported as not reducing the London or Lagos free float.
• 22 May 2026 — Third buyback programme launched. Up to 1% of issued share capital, with an initial Barclays tranche of up to $110m running no later than 27 November 2026. All repurchased shares are to be cancelled; $46.6m had been spent on 10.2m shares by 30 June 2026.
• 08 May 2026 — FY2026 results. Revenue of $6,415m, up 29.5% reported and 24.0% in constant currency; profit after tax of $813m, up 147.4%; leverage down to 1.8x; and a total dividend of 7.10 US cents, up 9.2%. The Airtel Money listing was pushed to the second half of 2026 on market conditions.
• 15 Apr 2026 — Nigerian spectrum licence renewed. The Nigerian Communications Commission confirmed renewal of Airtel Nigeria's 900MHz spectrum for $37m, payable in local currency and valid for ten years.
• 24 Mar 2026 — Second buyback programme completed. The final $55m tranche retired 18.7m shares, taking the $100m programme to 45m shares in total.
• 16 Dec 2025 — SpaceX Direct-to-Cell partnership signed. The agreement covers all fourteen markets, making Airtel the first African operator to commit to satellite direct-to-cell at scale. Successful data and messaging testing followed in Kenya in March 2026.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 14 Sep 2026 — ordinary trading resumes ahead of the half-year close on 30 September 2026, the period that will be reported at the end of October
• 30 Oct 2026 — H1 FY2027 results, covering the six months to 30 September 2026, confirmed on the company financial calendar. The interim dividend for FY2027 is expected to be declared alongside these results; the FY2026 interim was 2.84 US cents of a 7.10 cent full-year total
• 27 Nov 2026 — latest termination date for the current Barclays buyback tranche of up to $110m
• Expected Dec 2026 — ex-dividend date for the FY2027 interim dividend, based on the FY2026 timetable
• Expected Dec 2026 — target window for the Airtel Money listing, for which London has been confirmed as the preferred venue. Management has guided to the second half of the 2026 calendar year, subject to market conditions and regulatory approvals
• 29 Jan 2027 — Q3 FY2027 results, confirmed on the company financial calendar
• 13 May 2027 — FY2027 full-year results, covering the year to 31 March 2027, confirmed on the company financial calendar
• Expected Jul 2027 — annual general meeting, at which the appointment of Ernst and Young as auditor from the financial year ending 31 March 2028 is to be tabled. The 2025 and 2026 meetings were both held on 9 July

The put option held by The Rise Fund and Mastercard over their stakes in the mobile money subsidiary is not date-scheduled in the conventional sense: the extended lock-in window elapsed on 31 July 2026, so the $515m liability recorded at 31 March 2026 is now exercisable rather than deferred. No capital markets day has been announced. Readers tracking the macro backdrop against which these results land may find our Economic Calendar useful, and discussion of individual holdings continues in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 14 September 2026

Barclays PLC is a British universal bank with two engines that rarely fire at the same time: a large UK high-street and corporate bank, and a global markets and investment bank run mainly out of London and New York. That mix has historically made the shares volatile and cheap. In 2025 and the first half of 2026 both engines fired together, and the company has since raised its income target and set a fresh three-year plan running to 2028. This report sets out what the filings actually say, with every figure taken from the published results announcements, the 2025 Annual Report and the group's SEC filings. There are no analyst opinions, price targets or ratings anywhere in it.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	BARC.L — London Stock Exchange (ADS: BCS, NYSE)
Sector	Banking — diversified UK retail, corporate and global investment banking
Shares in issue	~13.41bn ordinary shares
Revenue (FY2025 total income)	£29,140m, up 9% on FY2024
Profit before tax (FY2025)	£9,139m, up 13%
Attributable profit (FY2025)	£6,175m, up 16%
Basic EPS (FY2025)	43.8p
Return on tangible equity (H1 2026)	14.8% (FY2025: 11.3%)
CET1 capital ratio (30 June 2026)	14.3%, against a 13–14% target range
Tangible net asset value per share (30 June 2026)	423p (31 December 2025: 409p)
Total assets (30 June 2026)	£1,730.4bn
Dividend per share (FY2025)	—
Employees	93,000 full-time equivalent staff at 31 December 2025 (2025 Annual Report)
CEO / Leadership	C.S. Venkatakrishnan, Group Chief Executive since November 2021; Anna Cross, Group Finance Director; Nigel Higgins, Group Chairman
Headquarters	1 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London

2. The Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Both engines finally firing: H1 2026 total income was £16,501m, up 11% year on year, with profit before tax of £6,066m, up 17%. Every one of the five operating divisions delivered a double-digit return on tangible equity in FY2025 — the first time the group has managed that under the current reporting structure.
• Targets being raised, not missed: management lifted the 2026 group income target by roughly £500m to about £31.5bn at the H1 2026 results on 28 July 2026, and H1 return on tangible equity of 14.8% is already ahead of the "greater than 12%" full-year 2026 target.
• A large, visible capital return: alongside FY2025 results the board set out more than £15bn of capital distributions across 2026 to 2028, having already returned roughly £3.0bn in 2024 and £3.7bn in 2025. On a £66bn market value, that is a material share of the company being bought back or paid out.

Bear Case

• Investment bank concentration: the Investment Bank produced £13,055m of FY2025 income, 44.8% of the group total, and earned the lowest divisional return on tangible equity at 10.6%. Markets income is cyclical, and a quiet year there would take a large bite out of group profit.
• Motor finance redress still open: the provision for UK motor finance commission redress rose to £430m at H1 2026. The Financial Conduct Authority has finalised an industry-wide scheme, but parts of it were suspended by the Upper Tribunal on 2 July 2026, so the final bill and timing are not yet settled.
• Credit is normalising upward: the loan loss rate rose to 62 basis points in H1 2026 from 52 basis points a year earlier, including a £228m single-name charge in the Investment Bank. Impairments have been running below through-the-cycle levels for some time.
• The structural hedge tailwind has an end date: a meaningful slice of recent net interest income growth comes from the rolling structural hedge re-pricing older, low-yielding positions at higher rates. That is a known, time-limited benefit rather than a permanent uplift.

3. Revenue Segments

Barclays reports five operating divisions plus Head Office. The figures below are total income for the year ended 31 December 2025, as published in the FY2025 results announcement.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Barclays Investment Bank (£13,055m)	44.8%	Global markets (fixed income, currencies, commodities and equities), investment banking advisory and capital markets, plus international corporate banking. FY2025 return on tangible equity 10.6%.
Barclays UK (£8,708m)	29.9%	The ring-fenced UK retail bank: current accounts, savings, mortgages, credit cards and small business banking, now including the Tesco Bank book acquired in November 2024. FY2025 return on tangible equity 20.7%.
Barclays US Consumer Bank (£3,681m)	12.6%	US co-branded credit cards, retail deposits and, since May 2026, the Best Egg personal loan platform. FY2025 return on tangible equity 11.0%.
Barclays UK Corporate Bank (£2,064m)	7.1%	Lending, transaction banking, trade and payments for UK mid-market and large corporate clients. FY2025 return on tangible equity 18.9%.
Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management (£1,380m)	4.7%	Discretionary and advisory investment management, lending and banking for high-net-worth clients. FY2025 return on tangible equity 26.3%, the highest in the group.
Head Office (£252m)	0.9%	Treasury, legacy portfolios and central items not allocated to the operating divisions.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Barclays earns income in three broad ways. Net interest income comes from lending at a higher rate than it pays on deposits and wholesale funding, and is the dominant source in Barclays UK, the UK Corporate Bank and the US Consumer Bank. Fee and commission income comes from advisory work, underwriting, payments, card interchange and wealth management. Trading income comes from making markets in bonds, currencies, commodities and equities for institutional clients. FY2025 net interest income was £7,294m on the group's SEC-filed measure of net interest revenue, with the balance of the £29,140m total income coming from fees, commissions and trading.

Unit economics and the structural hedge. A bank's margin is not simply the gap between today's lending and deposit rates. Barclays runs a large rolling hedge programme that spreads the interest earned on non-interest-bearing balances over several years. Positions written at very low rates in 2020 and 2021 are still maturing and being replaced at higher yields, which is why net interest income has kept rising even after the Bank of England began cutting. This is mechanical and disclosed, and it is also finite.

Where the moat actually is. In the UK, the moat is a current-account franchise that is expensive to replicate and slow to move — customers change banks rarely, and those balances fund lending cheaply. Ring-fencing legislation, which forces Barclays to hold Barclays UK as a separately capitalised entity, is a constraint but also a barrier: the regulatory and capital cost of building a comparable UK deposit base from scratch is prohibitive. In the investment bank the moat is narrower and rests on scale in fixed income and equities, balance-sheet capacity and a global client list — real advantages, but ones that competitors with deeper pockets can and do attack.

What the group is buying. Recent acquisitions have deliberately tilted the mix towards consumer lending: Tesco Bank in November 2024 for around £600m, and Best Egg, a US personal loan originator, completed on 1 May 2026 for about £0.6bn. At the same time it exited the American Airlines co-branded card portfolio in April 2026, releasing £3.6bn of risk-weighted assets for a gain of roughly £225m. The direction is towards higher-returning, capital-lighter consumer balances.

5. Financial Health

Barclays reports in pounds sterling. "Total income" is the group's top line and is stated net of interest expense, which is the standard presentation for a bank. All figures below come from the group's published results announcements, the 2025 Annual Report and the XBRL data in its SEC filings.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	21,940	n/a	37.5p	37.5p†	6.0p	£98,867m
FY2022	24,956	+13.7%	30.8p	30.8p†	7.25p	£112,881m
FY2023	25,378	+1.7%	27.7p	27.7p†	8.0p	£96,825m
FY2024	26,788	+5.6%	36.0p	36.0p†	8.4p	£92,402m
FY2025	29,140	+8.8%	43.8p	43.8p†	8.6p	£119,033m

† Barclays does not publish an adjusted or non-GAAP earnings per share figure. The statutory basic earnings per share is repeated in that column so the table stays complete. The long-term debt column is debt securities in issue at amortised cost at each year end, taken from the group's SEC XBRL data (Barclays PLC, CIK 0000312069); it is the closest disclosed equivalent to term debt for a bank, and excludes customer deposits and repurchase agreements, which are operating funding rather than debt.

Total income has compounded at about 7.4% a year across the five years, driven by higher interest rates from 2022 onwards and by a recovery in investment banking activity in 2025 and 2026. Earnings per share has grown faster than income because the share count has fallen materially — from roughly 17.0bn shares in 2021 to about 13.4bn now — as a result of sustained buybacks.

Quarter / Half	Revenue (£m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026	8,338	16.7p†	16.7p
Q1 2026	8,163	14.1p†	14.1p
Q4 2025	7,077	8.6p†	8.6p
Q3 2025	7,167	10.4p†	10.4p
Q2 2025	7,187	11.7p†	11.7p
FY2025 total	29,140	43.8p†	43.8p

Capital and balance sheet position at 30 June 2026: CET1 capital ratio 14.3%, at the top of the 13–14% target range even after buybacks; total assets £1,730.4bn; tangible net asset value 423p per share; net asset value 489p per share. The cost-to-income ratio was 55% in H1 2026, down from 58% a year earlier.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Short interest (% of float)	— not published for this period. The Financial Conduct Authority moved its short-selling register to anonymised aggregate disclosure only from 13 July 2026, so individual net short positions in UK-listed shares are no longer public. Verify at fca.org.uk/publication/data/short-positions-daily-update.xlsx

7. What Are They Building

The 2028 plan. At the FY2025 results on 10 February 2026 Barclays replaced its earlier three-year plan with a new set of targets running to 2028: a group return on tangible equity above 14% in 2028, and cumulative capital distributions of more than £15bn across 2026 to 2028, with a stated preference for buybacks over special dividends. Ordinary dividends are paid twice a year and buybacks are announced quarterly. The earlier plan, set in February 2024, targeted £10bn of returns across 2024 to 2026 and is on track to be exceeded.

Rebuilding the consumer lending book. The Tesco Bank acquisition completed in November 2024 brought a credit card and personal loan book that is now growing under Clubcard branding inside Barclays UK. In the United States, the group sold the American Airlines co-branded card portfolio in April 2026 and bought Best Egg, a direct personal-loan originator, on 1 May 2026. The effect is to swap partner-dependent airline card balances for directly-originated consumer lending where Barclays keeps more of the economics.

Investment bank leadership change. In August 2026 the group named Mike Joo, previously of Bank of America, and Adeel Khan as co-chief executives of the Investment Bank with effect from February 2027. The division has been the focus of the group's efficiency programme, and its cost-to-income ratio and capital allocation are the main levers behind the 2028 return target.

Technology and the cost base. The group cost-to-income ratio fell to 55% in H1 2026 from 58% a year earlier, a reduction management attributes to platform consolidation, automation of servicing and the ongoing simplification of legacy systems. Barclays does not disclose a separate artificial-intelligence investment figure.

8. Competitive Landscape

Barclays competes on two different fields at once. In UK retail and commercial banking its rivals are Lloyds, NatWest and HSBC's UK ring-fenced bank. In global markets and investment banking it competes with the American bulge bracket. Market capitalisations below were checked live on 12 September 2026.

Peer	Key 2025 metric
HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L)	FY2025 profit before tax of US$29.9bn (FY2024: US$32.3bn) and a return on tangible equity of 13.3%, or 17.2% excluding notable items; targeting 17% or better for 2026 to 2028 (HSBC FY2025 annual results media release)
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L)	FY2025 statutory profit before tax of £6,661m, up 12%, with a return on tangible equity of 12.9% (14.8% excluding the motor finance provision) (Lloyds FY2025 results RNS)
NatWest Group (NWG.L)	FY2025 profit before tax of £7.7bn, up 24%, with a return on tangible equity of 19.2% against 17.5% in FY2024; new target of above 18% by 2028 (NatWest FY2025 annual results)
Standard Chartered (STAN.L)	FY2025 record operating income of US$20.9bn and underlying profit before tax of US$7.9bn, with an underlying return on tangible equity of 14.7% — beating its 2024–26 target a year early (Standard Chartered FY2025 press release)

The honest read on those numbers is that Barclays sits mid-table on returns among the UK majors. NatWest and Standard Chartered earned higher returns on tangible equity in FY2025, HSBC is roughly four times larger by market value, and Lloyds is comparable in size but purely domestic. What Barclays has that the others do not is a top-tier global markets business, which is what makes its earnings both more volatile and more geared to a strong capital-markets year.

9. Leadership and Insider Activity

C.S. Venkatakrishnan has been Group Chief Executive since November 2021. Anna Cross is Group Finance Director, and Nigel Higgins has chaired the board since 2019 with his tenure extended through 2028. Note that Sir John Kingman chairs Barclays Bank UK PLC, the ring-fenced subsidiary, which is a separate board from the group. Mike Joo and Adeel Khan were named co-chief executives of the Investment Bank in August 2026, effective February 2027.

The following dealings were disclosed through Director/PDMR Shareholding notifications to the London Stock Exchange and in the group's SEC filings during 2026. A "PDMR" is a person discharging managerial responsibilities — a director or senior manager whose share dealings must be disclosed.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Anna Cross (Group Finance Director)	07 Aug 2026	Sale	461,588	Discretionary sale
C.S. Venkatakrishnan (Group CEO)	17 Aug 2026	Gift	208,814	Charitable donation
C.S. Venkatakrishnan (Group CEO)	04 Sep 2026	Transfer	1,173,990 ordinary shares plus 217,182 ADSs	Transfer to spouse's sole account
Taalib Shaah (Group Chief Risk Officer)	07 May 2026	Purchase	554	Group Share Incentive Plan

Read carefully, only one of those is an economic decision. The two Venkatakrishnan entries are a charitable gift and an intra-family transfer at nil consideration, neither of which reduces the household's exposure to the shares in the second case. The Cross disposal is a genuine sale. Regular small purchases under the Group Share Incentive Plan continue across the wider senior population.

10. Key Risks

• Motor finance redress (Conduct / litigation): the provision for UK motor finance commission redress stood at £430m at 30 June 2026 and has been increased more than once. The Financial Conduct Authority finalised an industry-wide redress scheme in policy statement PS26/3, but the Upper Tribunal suspended parts of it on 2 July 2026, leaving both the final cost and the timetable unresolved.
• Investment bank earnings volatility (Concentration): at 44.8% of FY2025 income, the Investment Bank is the single largest contributor and the least predictable. A weak year for fixed income, currencies and commodities trading, or a closed primary market, would hit group profit disproportionately.
• Credit quality normalisation (Credit): the loan loss rate rose to 62 basis points in H1 2026 from 52 basis points, including a £228m single-name charge. Exposure spans UK mortgages and cards, US consumer credit and investment-bank counterparties, and impairments have been running below long-run averages.
• Structural hedge roll-off (Interest rate): a significant part of recent net interest income growth is the mechanical re-pricing of a large rolling hedge programme. That benefit is disclosed, quantified and finite, and is expected to recede towards the end of the decade as older positions finish maturing.
• Capital and regulatory change (Regulatory): Basel 3.1 and the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book are due to affect risk-weighted assets from 2027. CET1 sits at 14.3%, the top of the 13–14% target range, so changes that inflate risk-weighted assets would directly compete with the buyback programme for capital.
• UK ring-fencing constraints (Structural): Barclays UK must be held as a separately capitalised, separately governed entity. Capital and liquidity are not freely fungible between the ring-fenced bank and the rest of the group, which limits how efficiently the balance sheet can be deployed.
• Integration and succession execution (Operational): the group is simultaneously integrating Tesco Bank and Best Egg while changing the leadership of its largest division in February 2027. Each is manageable alone; together they raise the chance of something slipping.

11. Recent Developments

• 10 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results and a new 2028 plan. Profit before tax of £9,139m, up 13%, with total income of £29,140m. The board set out targets of above 14% return on tangible equity in 2028 and more than £15bn of capital distributions across 2026 to 2028, and announced £2.5bn of buybacks for the year.
• 24 Apr 2026 — American Airlines card portfolio exit. Barclays completed the sale of its American Airlines co-branded credit card portfolio, releasing £3.6bn of risk-weighted assets and booking a gain of roughly £225m.
• 28 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 results. Total income of £8,163m, up 6%, profit before tax of £2,814m and earnings per share of 14.1p against 13.0p a year earlier. A £500m buyback was announced and CET1 was 14.1%.
• 01 May 2026 — Best Egg acquisition completed. The group closed its purchase of the US personal-loan originator for about £0.6bn, having announced the deal in October 2025.
• 07 May 2026 — Annual General Meeting. Held at the QEII Centre, Westminster.
• 28 Jul 2026 — H1 2026 results and a raised income target. Total income of £16,501m, up 11%, profit before tax of £6,066m, up 17%, and a return on tangible equity of 14.8%. The 2026 group income target was raised by around £500m to about £31.5bn, an interim dividend of 5.9p was declared and a £1bn buyback announced.
• 07 Aug 2026 — CFO share disposal disclosed. Group Finance Director Anna Cross reported the sale of 461,588 shares for £2.4m.
• 15 Sep 2026 — Interim dividend paid. The 5.9p half-year dividend, with an ex-dividend date of 6 August and a record date of 7 August 2026, reaches shareholders.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 15 Sep 2026 — payment date for the 5.9p interim dividend (ex-dividend 6 August, record date 7 August 2026)
• 22 Oct 2026 — Q3 2026 results announcement, the next scheduled earnings event; watch the buyback announcement that normally accompanies it
• Expected Feb 2027 — FY2026 results, expected to confirm whether the raised group income target of about £31.5bn was met and to set the next buyback tranche (Barclays has not yet published the exact date)
• Expected Feb 2027 — ex-dividend and record dates for the FY2026 final dividend, normally set within two weeks of the full-year results
• Expected 2027 — implementation of Basel 3.1 and the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book in the UK, affecting risk-weighted assets and therefore capital headroom
• TBC — resolution of the Upper Tribunal proceedings that suspended parts of the Financial Conduct Authority's motor finance redress scheme; this determines the final size of the £430m provision

Scheduled macro events that move UK bank share prices — Bank of England rate decisions, UK inflation prints and labour market data — are listed on the ChartsView Economic Calendar. Discussion of UK bank earnings is in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 14 September 2026

British American Tobacco sells cigarettes in about 175 markets and is trying, publicly and expensively, to replace that business with vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches before regulation and falling volumes do the job for it. The financial picture is a slow-shrinking top line, very high margins, heavy debt and a dividend the company has raised for more than two decades. This report works through what the 2025 Annual Report, the half-year announcement of 30 July 2026 and the group's SEC filings actually say. Every balance-sheet and cash-flow figure here has been re-derived from British American Tobacco's own XBRL data filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. There are no analyst opinions, price targets or ratings in it.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	BATS.L — London Stock Exchange (ADS: BTI, NYSE; also listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange)
Sector	Consumer staples — tobacco and nicotine products
Shares in issue	—
Revenue (FY2025)	£25,610m, down 1.0% as reported and up 2.1% at constant currency
Reported profit from operations (FY2025)	£9,997m
Adjusted profit from operations (FY2025)	£11,572m, a 44.0% adjusted operating margin
Reported diluted EPS (FY2025)	349.1p
Adjusted diluted EPS (FY2025)	352.1p
Dividend per share (FY2025)	245.04p, up 2.0%, paid in four equal quarterly instalments of 61.26p
Adjusted net debt (31 December 2025)	£30,416m; adjusted net debt to adjusted EBITDA 2.48x
Smokeless share of revenue (FY2025)	18.2%, rising to 19.8% at H1 2026; ambition is 50% or more by 2035
Employees	47,797 at 31 December 2025
CEO / Leadership	Tadeu Marroco, Chief Executive; Dragos Constantinescu, Chief Financial Officer since 1 September 2026; Luc Jobin, Chairman
Headquarters	Globe House, 4 Temple Place, London

2. The Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Cash generation is the whole point: FY2025 net cash from operating activities was £6,342m even after a £2,560m Canadian litigation settlement payment, and H1 2026 operating cash flow rose 47.3% to £3,402m with cash conversion of 79.7%. The company expects roughly £50bn of cumulative free cash flow before dividends across 2024 to 2030, of which £14.2bn had been generated by the H1 2026 stage.
• New Categories are turning profitable: New Categories revenue reached £3,621m in FY2025 and grew 18.0% at constant currency in H1 2026 to £1,928m, with the category contribution margin improving by 3.3 percentage points to 13.8%. The loss-making phase of the transition is largely behind it.
• Dividend and buyback both funded: the FY2025 dividend of 245.04p was the latest step in a run of increases stretching back more than two decades, and a £1.3bn buyback for 2026 was confirmed as on track at the half year, following £1.1bn in 2025. Leverage is guided to land inside the 2.0–2.5x target range by year end.
• Guidance moved up, not down: at the H1 2026 results on 30 July 2026 management raised the adjusted diluted earnings-per-share growth guidance to the middle of its 5–8% range, while holding revenue and adjusted operating profit at the lower end of the medium-term algorithm.

Bear Case

• The top line is going backwards: revenue was £25,684m in FY2021 and £25,610m in FY2025 — effectively flat in nominal terms across four years, and well down in real terms. Global cigarette volumes fell about 4.6% in H1 2026.
• Illicit trade is eating the transition: unregulated disposable vapes and smuggled cigarettes take share from the legal products the company is investing in. In Australia, illicit product now accounts for roughly 80% of combustible volume, a market effectively lost to legal operators.
• Regulatory risk is existential, not incidental: proposed US menthol and nicotine-level rules, premarket tobacco product application approvals, flavour bans and excise increases all sit outside the company's control and can remove entire revenue lines. The business exists at the sufferance of regulators in every market it serves.
• Litigation keeps arriving: the Canadian settlement is being paid down, but a third UK High Court shareholder claim over historical North Korea sanctions disclosure was filed in September 2026, following two in February 2026. Legal exposure has been a recurring drag on reported profit.

3. Revenue Segments

British American Tobacco reports geographically but also discloses revenue by product category. The category split matters more for understanding the investment case, so it is shown first. Figures are for the year ended 31 December 2025.

Segment / category	% of revenue	What it is
Combustibles (£20,201m)	78.9%	Traditional cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco, including Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, Rothmans, Newport and Camel in the United States. Declining in volume, defended through price.
New Categories (£3,621m)	14.1%	Vapour (Vuse), heated products (glo) and modern oral nicotine pouches (Velo). Revenue grew 7.0% at constant currency in FY2025 and category contribution rose 77.1% to £427m.
Traditional Oral (£1,043m)	4.1%	Moist snuff and snus, largely in the United States and Scandinavia. Combined with New Categories this is the "smokeless" total of 18.2% of FY2025 revenue.
Other (£745m)	2.9%	Cigars, contract manufacturing, wellbeing products such as Ryde functional shots, and other non-core revenue.

The group also reports three geographic regions. For FY2025 these were the United States at £11,534m, or 45.0% of revenue; Americas and Europe at £9,309m, or 36.3%; and Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa at £4,767m, or 18.6%. At H1 2026 the United States had grown to 47.5% of the total at constant currency. The United States is therefore both the largest revenue pool and the source of the greatest single regulatory risk.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. The economics are simple and unusually favourable. Tobacco is cheap to grow and process, brands command loyalty that verges on the absolute, and advertising is banned in most markets — which means incumbents cannot be outspent by new entrants. The result is an adjusted operating margin of 44.0% in FY2025 on revenue of £25,610m. Volume declines of a few per cent a year are routinely offset by price increases, so revenue holds roughly flat while profit per unit rises.

Unit economics of the transition. New Categories were loss-making for years because devices are sold at thin margin to seed consumable sales — pods, sticks and pouches. That model is now working: category contribution reached £427m in FY2025, up 77.1%, and the contribution margin improved to 13.8% at H1 2026. The consumer base reached 34.1 million at the end of FY2025 and 35.0 million at H1 2026, against a target of 50 million by 2030.

Where the moat is. Regulation is, paradoxically, the moat. Marketing restrictions, plain packaging, retail licensing and excise systems all raise the cost of building a new nicotine brand far above what a start-up can bear, which protects the incumbents' shelf space. The same regulation is also the primary threat, because a single rule change can delete a product line. The moat and the risk are the same thing viewed from opposite sides.

What breaks the model. Illicit trade sits outside all of that. Unregulated disposable vapes and smuggled cigarettes pay no excise, follow no marketing rules and face no age checks, so they undercut legal products on price and availability at the same time. Where enforcement fails — Australia being the clearest example, with illicit product at roughly 80% of combustible volume — the legal market simply collapses regardless of brand strength.

5. Financial Health

British American Tobacco reports in pounds sterling. Revenue is stated net of duty, excise and other taxes. The figures below come from the group's preliminary results announcements and have been cross-checked against its SEC XBRL filings (CIK 0001303523).

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	25,684	n/a	295.6p	329.0p	217.80p	£39,658m
FY2022	27,655	+7.7%	291.9p	371.4p	230.90p	£43,139m
FY2023	27,283	−1.3%	(646.6)p	375.6p	235.52p	£39,730m
FY2024	25,867	−5.2%	136.0p	362.5p	240.24p	£36,950m
FY2025	25,610	−1.0%	349.1p	352.1p	245.04p	£35,070m

Notes on the table above. The long-term debt column is total borrowings including lease liabilities at each year end, taken directly from the group's SEC XBRL data. Adjusted net debt, the company's own preferred measure, was £30,416m at 31 December 2025. Adjusted earnings per share for FY2021 to FY2024 are the constant-currency figures disclosed in the relevant announcements; FY2023 reported earnings per share was a loss because of a £27.6bn non-cash impairment of US combustible brands, and FY2024 reported profit absorbed a £6.2bn charge for the Canadian litigation settlement.

The pattern is clear enough. Reported earnings per share is close to useless as a trend indicator because it has been dominated by two enormous one-off items in three years. Adjusted earnings per share has drifted from 329.0p to 352.1p across five years — low single-digit growth — while the dividend rose from 217.80p to 245.04p and borrowings fell from £39,658m to £35,070m. The company has been paying down debt and paying out cash, not growing.

Quarter / Half	Revenue (£m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 2026	12,235	171.6p	145.3p
H2 2025 (derived)	13,541	196.6p	145.5p
H1 2025	12,069	155.5p	203.6p
FY2025 total	25,610	352.1p	349.1p

British American Tobacco reports half-yearly rather than quarterly, so there are no quarterly figures to show. The H2 2025 row is derived by subtracting the disclosed H1 2025 figures from the disclosed FY2025 totals; it is arithmetic on published numbers, not a separately reported period.

Cash flow and balance sheet, all re-derived from SEC XBRL for the year ended 31 December 2025: net cash from operating activities £6,342m; purchases of property, plant and equipment £551m; depreciation, amortisation and impairment £2,547m, of which amortisation of intangibles other than goodwill was £1,724m and depreciation of property, plant and equipment including right-of-use assets was £521m; total borrowings £35,070m, of which short-term borrowings £3,362m; cash and cash equivalents £3,827m; total equity attributable to owners £46,033m. At 30 June 2026 borrowings were £35,063m and adjusted net debt £31,969m.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Short interest (% of float)	— not published for this period. The Financial Conduct Authority moved its short-selling register to anonymised aggregate disclosure only from 13 July 2026, so individual net short positions in UK-listed shares are no longer public. Verify at fca.org.uk/publication/data/short-positions-daily-update.xlsx

7. What Are They Building

Vapour. Vuse remains the largest part of New Categories. Vuse Ultra, a premium connected device, has rolled out in Canada, Germany and France with further markets planned for the second half of 2026. The competitive problem is not another branded rival but unregulated disposables, which is why the company spends heavily on enforcement advocacy alongside product development.

Heated products. glo Hilo and Hilo Plus, along with Hyper Pro+, use a dual-heating design and have launched in Japan, Poland and Italy. Japan is the decisive market for heated tobacco globally and is where the category's share gains are most visible.

Modern oral. Velo Plus reached the number two position in the US modern oral category within a year of launch, and a national rollout of Velo Max was planned for the second half of 2026. Nicotine pouches are the fastest-growing smokeless format and carry combustible-like margins without combustion, which is why the company treats this as the most valuable of the three New Categories.

Cost and capital discipline. The Fit2Win programme targets roughly £700m of annualised savings by 2028 at a one-off cost of about £950m. Capital expenditure guidance for FY2026 is around £750m, with operating cash conversion guided above 95%.

Beyond nicotine. Btomorrow Ventures, the group's corporate venture capital arm, holds more than 30 investments. British American Tobacco also holds a 48.7% economic stake in Organigram, with voting capped at 30%, following Organigram's acquisition of Sanity Group in February 2026. Ryde functional wellness shots are on sale in the United States, Australia and Canada. The Omni platform is the company's published evidence base on tobacco harm reduction, aimed at regulators and investors rather than consumers.

8. Competitive Landscape

The global tobacco industry is an oligopoly of four listed players plus China National Tobacco, which is state-owned and does not compete internationally. Market capitalisations below were checked live on 12 September 2026.

Peer	Key 2025 metric
Philip Morris International (PM)	Q2 2026 net revenue of US$11.2bn, up 10.4%, with smoke-free revenue up 14.2% to US$3.88bn. The clear leader in the transition, driven by IQOS and Zyn (Philip Morris Q2 2026 results)
Altria Group (MO)	Q2 2026 revenue of US$6.11bn, with full-year adjusted earnings-per-share guidance raised to US$5.61–5.72. Almost entirely a US business (Altria Q2 2026 results)
Japan Tobacco (2914.T)	FY2025 revenue of ¥3,467.7bn, up 13.4%, with adjusted operating profit up 24.9% to ¥927.5bn — the strongest top-line growth of the four (Japan Tobacco FY2025 results)
Imperial Brands (IMB.L)	FY2025 next-generation product net revenue up 13.7%. The smallest of the four and the most explicitly focused on cash return rather than transition (Imperial Brands FY2025 results)

The comparison that matters is with Philip Morris. Both companies are trying to move to smokeless, but Philip Morris is markedly further along and is growing revenue at double digits while British American Tobacco's is flat. Investors are paying a large premium for a transition that is visibly working versus one that is still in progress.

9. Leadership and Insider Activity

Tadeu Marroco has been Chief Executive since 2023. Dragos Constantinescu joined as Chief Financial Officer and an Executive Director on 1 September 2026, having previously been chief executive of Asahi Europe and International; Javed Iqbal had served as interim Chief Financial Officer before him. Luc Jobin has chaired the board since 2021. Karen Guerra became Senior Independent Director at the conclusion of the 2026 Annual General Meeting, replacing Holly Keller Koeppel.

The dealings below were disclosed through Director/PDMR Shareholding notifications during 2026. "PDMR" means a person discharging managerial responsibilities — a director or senior manager whose share dealings must be reported.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Tadeu Marroco (Chief Executive)	25 Aug 2026	Purchase	250	Dividend reinvestment
Person closely associated with T. Marroco	25 Aug 2026	Purchase	250	Dividend reinvestment
Tadeu Marroco (Chief Executive)	17 Aug 2026	Acquisition	377	Share plan award
Tadeu Marroco (Chief Executive)	01 Jul 2026	Purchase	Data not available	Partnership Share Scheme

These are routine plan purchases rather than conviction buying, and they are small in absolute terms. No large discretionary director disposals were disclosed in the period reviewed. A complete audit would require a full pull of the company's Regulatory News Service archive; the rows above are those that could be verified individually.

10. Key Risks

• Regulation (Existential): proposed US menthol bans and nicotine-level caps, premarket tobacco product application outcomes, flavour restrictions and generational sales bans can each remove whole revenue lines. This is the dominant risk and it is not within the company's control in any market.
• Illicit trade (Commercial): unregulated disposable vapes and smuggled cigarettes pay no duty and follow no rules, so they undercut legal products on both price and availability. Australia, where illicit product is roughly 80% of combustible volume, shows how completely a legal market can be displaced.
• Structural volume decline (Operational): global cigarette volumes fell about 4.6% in H1 2026. Price increases have offset volume so far, but every year of decline narrows the base over which those increases can be taken.
• Material litigation (Legal): the Canadian settlement under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act is being paid down from Canadian net income, and three UK High Court shareholder claims over historical North Korea sanctions disclosure were filed between February and September 2026. Legal outcomes have repeatedly overwhelmed reported profit.
• Leverage (Financial): total borrowings were £35,070m at the end of FY2025 against equity of £46,033m, with adjusted net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 2.48x. The 2.0–2.5x target leaves limited room, and refinancing costs rise if credit ratings move.
• Currency translation (Financial): the group reports in sterling but earns most of its money elsewhere. Reported and constant-currency figures have diverged materially and unfavourably, and dividends are declared out of reported sterling earnings.
• Geopolitical exposure (Operational): the Pryluky manufacturing facility in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine was damaged in a Russian strike in early September 2026. The group operates in a number of politically unstable markets where assets and supply chains are at physical risk.
• Index and mandate exclusion (Capital markets): environmental, social and governance screens exclude tobacco from a growing pool of funds, structurally narrowing the buyer base regardless of the financial results.

11. Recent Developments

• 12 Feb 2026 — FY2025 preliminary results. Revenue of £25,610m, reported profit from operations of £9,997m, adjusted diluted earnings per share of 352.1p and a dividend of 245.04p, up 2.0%. A £1.3bn buyback for 2026 was confirmed and leverage fell to 2.48x.
• 28 Feb 2026 — Cuban joint venture exit completed. The sale of the group's 50% stake in Brascuba to Tabagest completed and the business was deconsolidated.
• 15 Apr 2026 — Annual General Meeting. Karen Guerra was appointed Senior Independent Director at the close of the meeting, replacing Holly Keller Koeppel.
• 11 May 2026 — US sanctions proceedings dismissed. The US Department of Justice moved to dismiss with prejudice the North Korea sanctions proceedings, confirming compliance with the 2023 deferred prosecution agreement.
• 30 Jul 2026 — H1 2026 results. Revenue of £12,235m, up 2.9% at constant currency, adjusted profit from operations of £5,426m and operating cash flow up 47.3% to £3,402m. Adjusted earnings-per-share growth guidance was raised to the middle of the 5–8% range and smokeless products reached 19.8% of revenue.
• 14 Aug 2026 — Second quarterly dividend paid. The second of four instalments of 61.26p per share reached shareholders.
• 01 Sep 2026 — New Chief Financial Officer took office. Dragos Constantinescu joined as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director, ending the interim arrangement under Javed Iqbal.
• 07 Sep 2026 — Ukraine facility damaged. The Pryluky manufacturing plant in the Chernihiv region was damaged in a Russian strike; no injuries were reported.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 06 Nov 2026 — payment date for the third quarterly dividend instalment on the London and Johannesburg registers; the American Depositary Share payment date is 12 November 2026
• Expected Dec 2026 — pre-close trading update, the next opportunity for management to revise FY2026 guidance
• 24 Dec 2026 — shares commence trading ex-dividend on the London Stock Exchange for the fourth quarterly instalment (record date 29 December 2026)
• 03 Feb 2027 — payment date for the fourth quarterly dividend instalment
• 11 Feb 2027 — FY2026 preliminary results, the next full earnings event; expect the FY2027 dividend declaration and the 2027 buyback decision alongside it
• Expected Apr 2027 — Annual General Meeting; the exact date has not yet been published

Scheduled macro and earnings events are listed on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and discussion of consumer staples and dividend shares is in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 22 September 2026

Convatec Group Plc is a large UK-listed medical products company that sells single-use consumables into four chronic conditions — wounds that will not heal, stomas, continence and infusion. It manufactured and sold more than a billion products in 2025, almost all of them paid for by a third-party payer rather than the patient, which makes reimbursement policy the single largest swing factor in the business. FY2025 revenue was $2,439m and adjusted operating margin reached 22.3%. The last twelve months have been defined by two opposing forces: a US Medicare rate cut that destroyed the company's skin-substitute product line almost overnight, and a run of new chronic-care launches that are taking share in the core categories. This report sets out the figures from the company's own filings, with no analyst opinions and no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Legal name	Convatec Group Plc (England & Wales, company number 10361298)
Headquarters	7th Floor, 20 Eastbourne Terrace, London W2 6LG, United Kingdom
Exchange / ticker	London Stock Exchange, CTEC (CTEC.L). ISIN GB00BD3VFW73.
Sector	Health Care — medical equipment and chronic-care consumables
CEO / Leadership	Jonny Mason, Chief Executive Officer (confirmed permanently 6 Nov 2025). CFO Fiona Ryder, standing down once a successor is appointed. Chair Dr John McAdam CBE
Employees	More than 10,000 colleagues in 2025, across 7 manufacturing sites and 12 key markets; products sold in around 90 countries
Revenue (FY2025)	$2,439m, up 6.5% reported
Net income proxy (FY2025)	Reported diluted EPS 8.6 cents; adjusted diluted EPS 17.6 cents
Reported operating profit (FY2025)	$316m; adjusted operating profit $544m (22.3% margin)
Shares outstanding	1,922,849,606 voting shares ex-treasury at 21 September 2026; 2,049,789,559 issued in total; 126,939,953 held in treasury
Reporting currency / year end	US dollars; 31 December. Half-yearly reporting, no quarterly results

Two structural points sit behind the snapshot. First, the share count is falling week by week under a live $200m buyback, but no shares have been cancelled — every repurchased share sits in treasury, and treasury holdings crossed 5% of voting rights in August 2026. Second, Convatec reports in US dollars while its shares trade in sterling, so the headline market capitalisation and the operating numbers move on different currencies.

2. Bull Case and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Genuinely recurring demand: chronic conditions do not resolve. Ostomy, continence and wound patients buy consumables repeatedly for years, and in the US many of them buy through Convatec's own home-delivery arm, which makes the revenue base unusually repeatable for a medtech business.
• Margin expansion is real and sustained: adjusted operating margin rose 460 basis points between 2021 and 2025 to 22.3%, through a period that included severe input-cost inflation. Management guides to at least 23.0% for FY2026 and 24–26% by 2027.
• New products are taking share, not just launching: Esteem Body reached roughly $60m annualised revenue and about 15% segment share by H1 2026; GentleCath Air for Women more than doubled and holds over 10% of the US compact catheter segment. Six more chronic-care launches are due in 2026.
• The damage is now ring-fenced: InnovaMatrix has been written down to nothing across FY2025 and H1 2026, and FY2026 guidance assumes only $5–10m of revenue from it. Whatever happens next in US skin substitutes, there is no carrying value left to impair.
• Capital returns are running alongside investment: $500m of buybacks across 2025 and 2026, a dividend up 13% in FY2025 at a 40% payout, and record capex of $185m in FY2025 rising to a guided $200–230m — all funded while holding net debt at roughly 2x adjusted EBITDA with investment-grade ratings from all three agencies.

Bear Case

• Reimbursement can remove a business line in one ruling: CMS cut the skin-substitute payment rate by over 85% effective 1 January 2026. InnovaMatrix revenue fell more than 90% in H1 2026 and $141m of intangibles were impaired. The same mechanism applies to every other product Convatec sells.
• The core business faces its own reimbursement test: CMS's DMEPOS competitive bidding programme is targeting 8–10 product categories with implementation indicated for 2028. That reaches ostomy and catheters — half of group revenue — not a small biologics line.
• Reported earnings keep diverging from adjusted: FY2025 reported diluted EPS was 8.6 cents against 17.6 cents adjusted; in H1 2026 the gap widened to 2.7 cents against 8.5 cents. Impairments and acquired-intangible amortisation have been a recurring, not exceptional, feature.

3. Revenue Segments

Convatec reports four product categories. The figures below are FY2025, from the company's own annual report key-facts panel and the segment note in the FY2025 results.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Advanced Wound Care — $753m	31%	Dressings for chronic, acute, surgical and burn wounds: Aquacel Hydrofiber antimicrobial dressings, ConvaFoam foam dressings and the InnovaMatrix skin substitute. FY2025 organic revenue was down 0.4%, but up 4.1% excluding InnovaMatrix
Ostomy Care — $676m	28%	Pouching systems, skin barriers and accessories for people with a stoma, plus Flexi-Seal faecal management. Brands include Esteem Body with Leak Defense, Natura, Durahesive and Esenta. FY2025 organic growth 4.5%
Continence Care — $537m	22%	Intermittent catheters sold largely through Convatec's own US direct-to-patient Home Services Group, including 180 Medical. Brands include GentleCath, GentleCath Air for Women and Cure Medical. FY2025 organic growth 6.6%
Infusion Care — $473m	19%	Business-to-business manufacture of infusion sets for insulin pumps and subcutaneous drug delivery, through Unomedical. Partners disclosed include Medtronic, Tandem, Beta Bionics, Ypsomed, AbbVie, Supernus and Mitsubishi Tanabe. FY2025 organic growth 12.5%

By geography in FY2025: North America 56% ($1,358m), Europe 30% ($723m), rest of world 14% ($358m). North American weighting is why US reimbursement policy matters more to Convatec than to a European-weighted peer.

4. Business Model & Moat

How it makes money. Convatec sells high-volume single-use consumables, not capital equipment. More than a billion products were manufactured and sold in 2025. There is no installed-base cycle to manage and no large-ticket order book — revenue arrives as a stream of small repeat purchases from patients who will keep needing the product. Cash generated is recycled into R&D of $103m a year and capex of $185m, which funds launches, which generate the next round of cash. Management's stated objective is double-digit compound growth in both adjusted EPS and free cash flow to equity.

Who actually pays. Almost none of this revenue comes from the patient's own pocket. Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurers pay in the US; national health systems pay in Europe. That is the model's strength and its weakness in the same breath: demand is insensitive to consumer income, but a single payer decision can reprice an entire category. Convatec runs a Global Strategic Pricing Centre of Excellence and a Global Market Access and Reimbursement Centre of Excellence as formal mitigations; the pricing function contributed about 30 basis points of price improvement year on year in H1 2026.

Four routes to market. Direct-to-patient home delivery in the US through the Home Services Group; hospital and acute supply via US group purchasing organisation contracts, where Convatec won its first GPO contract in over five years during FY2025 and another after the year end; third-party distributors and national tenders internationally; and long-term OEM supply contracts in Infusion Care, where Convatec manufactures under the pump makers' own brands.

What makes it defensible. Convatec states it holds market-leading positions in categories contributing over 60% of group revenue. Switching friction is high: a patient fitted and trained on an ostomy or continence product tends to stay on it, and in the US is tied into a delivery relationship as well. Hydrofiber Technology, made at the Rhymney site in South Wales at over 350 tonnes a year, is proprietary — almost 1.5 billion Aquacel dressings have been sold using it over three decades. In Infusion Care the moat is contractual: Convatec significantly extended its neria Guard supply agreement with AbbVie in FY2025 and signed its first hybrid patch pump agreement in H1 2026.

Where the model is weakest. Scale in manufacturing cuts both ways. Seven manufacturing locations and increasing automation give operating leverage, but they also concentrate risk — the company's own top-ranked principal risk is operational resilience, and it names single-source and sole-supply raw materials as a key driver.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Convatec's own results announcements and annual reports. Revenue is reported in US dollars; EPS and dividends in US cents.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	2,038.3	+7.6%	5.8c	13.0c	5.871c	$1,199.8m
FY2022	2,072.5	+1.7%	3.1c	12.6c	6.047c	$1,211.9m
FY2023	2,142.4	+3.4%	6.3c	13.4c	6.229c	$1,226.9m
FY2024	2,289.0	+6.9%	9.3c	15.2c	6.416c	$1,122.8m
FY2025	2,439.0	+6.5%	8.6c	17.6c	7.244c	$1,398.0m

EPS figures are diluted. Long-term debt is non-current borrowings from the balance sheet and excludes lease liabilities, which were $94m non-current at 31 December 2025. Current borrowings were nil at each of FY2022 to FY2025 year ends.

Convatec reports half-yearly rather than quarterly. The table below is most recent period first, with the FY2025 total in bold at the foot.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	$1,232m	8.5c	2.7c
H2 2025 (derived)†	$1,259m	9.6c	3.5c
H1 2025 (to 30 Jun 2025)	$1,180m	8.0c	5.1c
FY2025 total	$2,439m	17.6c	8.6c

† Convatec does not report a standalone second half. The H2 2025 row is derived by subtracting the reported H1 2025 figures from the reported FY2025 figures, and is shown for shape only.

Cash flow and balance sheet, FY2025. Net cash generated from operating activities was $470m, up from $397m. Capital expenditure totalled $185m — $135m on property, plant and equipment and $50m on intangibles — split by management into $121m of growth capex and $64m of operational capex. Depreciation and amortisation in the cash flow statement totalled $224m: $43m depreciation of property, plant and equipment, $26m on right-of-use assets and $155m amortisation of intangibles, alongside a separate $72m impairment. The narrower figure Convatec adds back to reach adjusted EBITDA is $91m, because $134m of acquired-intangible amortisation has already been stripped out as an adjusting item. Adjusted EBITDA was $661m.

Debt. Non-current borrowings were $1,398m at 31 December 2025 with no current borrowings; lease liabilities added $120m. Cash and cash equivalents were $68m. Reported net debt excluding leases was $1,330m, or 2.0x adjusted EBITDA, against a covenant maximum of 3.50x and actual interest cover of 9.4x against a 3.5x covenant. The debt is $500m of senior unsecured notes maturing October 2029 and $500m maturing October 2035, plus a $950m revolving facility maturing 2028 of which $539m was undrawn. Net debt rose to $1,534m, or 2.3x, at 30 June 2026, guided back towards 2.0x by the year end.

FY2026 guidance, as narrowed at the H1 results on 4 August 2026. Organic revenue growth excluding InnovaMatrix of 5.5–6.5%, tightened from 5–7%, with 6–8% implied for the second half. InnovaMatrix revenue of about $5–10m, cut from about $20m, a headwind of roughly 2.5% to group revenue. Adjusted operating margin at or above 23.0%. Double-digit adjusted EPS growth. Equity cash conversion of about 100%. Capex of $200–230m including $135–165m of growth capex. Medium-term Accelerate targets, reaffirmed: 6–8% organic revenue growth from 2027 and a 24–26% adjusted operating margin by 2027.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Short interest (% of float)	4.63% of issued share capital at position date 14 September 2026, per the FCA aggregated net short positions register. Roughly double the 2.77% recorded on 4 August 2026. The FCA reports against issued share capital rather than free float; on Convatec's share base the two are effectively the same
Net debt / adjusted EBITDA	2.0x at 31 December 2025; 2.3x at 30 June 2026

7. What Are They Building

Eight new chronic-care products are due to launch across 2026 and 2027, six of them in 2026. The pipeline is concentrated in the three categories that are growing, and deliberately not in skin substitutes.

Advanced Wound Care. ConvaNiox, a nitric-oxide-powered dressing built on the anti-infective platform Convatec bought from 30 Technology in 2023 for up to £176m, achieved EU and UK approval in FY2025 and went on limited European launch in H1 2026, with a US clinical trial running and revenue expected from 2027. ConvaVAC, a single-use negative pressure therapy, received initial US clearance in July 2026 with full launch expected in 2027. ConvaFiber, an enhanced Hydrofiber dressing, launches in Germany in H2 2026. ConvaFoam continues to take segment share. InnovaMatrix, by contrast, has been fully impaired and is guided to $5–10m of FY2026 revenue.

Ostomy Care. Esteem Body with Leak Defense reached roughly $60m annualised revenue and about 15% segment share by H1 2026. Natura Body is on track for a 2027 launch, completing the soft-convex portfolio.

Continence Care. GentleCath Air for Women more than doubled revenue in H1 2026, adding over a percentage point to category growth and taking more than 10% of the US compact catheter segment including switches from competitors. A male GentleCath Air Pocket and Set launches in Europe later in 2026.

Infusion Care. Convatec supports MiniMed's new wearable pump, MiniMed Flex, and announced its first hybrid patch pump supply agreement in 2026. The neria Guard contract with AbbVie for Parkinson's therapy was significantly extended in FY2025, with further Parkinson's programmes supporting Supernus and Mitsubishi Tanabe.

Manufacturing and R&D. Capex is at record levels: $185m in FY2025 rising to a guided $200–230m in FY2026, with $128m spent in H1 2026 alone. A multi-year expansion of over £24m at Rhymney in South Wales completed on 3 July 2026, adding a Hydrofiber production line and securing 100 skilled jobs; it sits inside a £500m UK R&D commitment over the next decade that also includes a new R&D hub in Manchester. Secondary packaging automation completed at Deeside in H1 2026, and Rhymney automation added Hydrofiber capacity with no headcount growth.

8. Peer Comparison

Peer	Key 2025 metric
Convatec Group (CTEC.L)	FY2025 revenue $2,439m, +6.5% reported, +6.4% organic excluding InnovaMatrix; adjusted operating margin 22.3%
Smith+Nephew (SN..L)	FY2025 revenue $6,164m, +6.1% reported and +5.3% underlying, with all three global business units growing over 5% (reported 2 March 2026)
Coloplast (COLO-B.CO)	9M 2025/26 organic growth 6% with EBIT before special items of DKK 5,599m and a 26% EBIT margin; FY guidance 5–6% organic (reported 18 August 2026)
Essity (ESSITY-B.ST)	FY2025 net sales SEK 138bn with organic sales growth of 0.9% and the highest margin in five years at 14.1% (reported 22 January 2026)
Becton Dickinson (BDX)	FY2025 revenue $21.8bn to 30 September 2025, +8.2% reported and +2.9% organic; adjusted diluted EPS $14.40, +9.6% (reported 6 November 2025)

Mölnlycke, Convatec's closest competitor in advanced wound care, has no market capitalisation because it is wholly owned by Patricia Industries within Investor AB; its 2025 net sales were EUR 2,104m, up 4%. Essity is shown in its place as the nearest listed comparator.

9. Insider Activity

CEO Jonny Mason, CFO Fiona Ryder and the board have all dealt through the period. The great majority of the traffic is nil-cost long-term incentive grants, vestings and the associated sell-to-cover-tax transactions rather than discretionary trading. The table below covers the notable dealings disclosed by RNS across 2025 and 2026.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Tobias Hestler	06 Aug 2026	Buy	50,000	Open-market purchase
Fiona Ryder	26 May 2026	Buy	24,993	Open-market purchase
Jonny Mason	26 May 2026	Buy	50,000	Open-market purchase
Jonny Mason	16 Mar 2026	Vest + tax sale	617,606 vested; 291,149 sold	LTIP PSA and DBP RSU granted 2023
Fiona Ryder	16 Mar 2026	Vest + tax sale	58,749 vested; 27,696 sold	LTIP PSA and RSU granted 2023
Jonny Mason	11 Mar 2026	Award	2,359,556	Omnibus Incentive Plan 2025 — PSA, DBA and RSA
Fiona Ryder	11 Mar 2026	Award	756,665	Omnibus Incentive Plan 2025 — PSA, DBA and RSA
Sharon O'Keefe	03 Oct 2025	Gift	3,200	Charitable donation to The Chicago Community Trust
Fiona Ryder	28 Aug 2025	Buy	21,263	Open-market purchase
Jonny Mason	28 Aug 2025	Buy	50,000	Open-market purchase
Karim Bitar	07 Aug 2025	Sell	1,250,000	Market sale of existing holding

The pattern is worth reading carefully. The only substantial open-market sale was former CEO Karim Bitar's £2.83m disposal in August 2025, which the company stated was for personal reasons following the announcement of his medical leave; Bitar died in service, announced on 27 October 2025. No PDMR dealings were announced between 7 August and 22 September 2026.

10. Key Risks

• US reimbursement policy: the clearest and most proven risk in the business. CMS cut skin-substitute payment rates by over 85% effective 1 January 2026, collapsing InnovaMatrix revenue by more than 90% and forcing $141m of impairments across FY2025 and H1 2026. Convatec ranks customer and markets risk as having increased in 2025.
• DMEPOS competitive bidding: CMS's final rule of 28 November 2025 seeks 8–10 product categories with implementation indicated for 2028. Unlike the skin-substitute cut, this reaches the core ostomy and catheter business that generates half of group revenue. Convatec states it is well placed, but the outcome is not in its control.
• Operational resilience and supply chain: Convatec's own top-ranked principal risk, and one whose profile it increased in 2025. Key drivers named include single-source or sole-supply raw materials and services. Seven manufacturing sites supply around 90 countries, so a single plant or logistics failure carries disproportionate consequences.
• Regulatory and quality: Unomedical Devices in Reynosa, Mexico received an FDA warning letter announced 3 February 2026, concerning reporting procedures and protocols within its quality management system. Convatec states it raises no product-safety concerns and imposes no restriction on manufacturing or distribution, but the site makes the insulin infusion sets sold under MiniMed brands and the matter remains open.
• Leadership continuity: the company lost its chief executive to illness and then death in service across 2025, and its chief financial officer announced on 15 July 2026 that she will stand down once a successor is appointed. No successor had been named as at 22 September 2026. Four other senior appointments were made in 2026, so much of the executive team is new in post.
• Tariffs and the political environment: incremental tariffs cost about $6m year on year in FY2025, and FY2026 margin guidance was originally struck inclusive of about 20 basis points of incremental tariff cost. Convatec classifies its appetite for political and economic risk as "accept", meaning it does not attempt to mitigate it.
• Leverage and currency: net debt rose to $1,534m, or 2.3x adjusted EBITDA, at 30 June 2026 from 2.0x at the year end, above the stated 2x target pending an H2 recovery. FY2025 also recorded a $32m net foreign exchange gain on intercompany balances alongside a $41m loss on forward contracts, so reported finance lines carry real currency noise.

11. Recent Developments

• 21 Sep 2026 — Buyback continues under the $200m programme. Treasury holdings reached 126,939,953 shares and voting rights fell to 1,922,849,606.
• 27 Aug 2026 — Dr Jens Viebke appointed Non-Executive Director. Effective immediately and joining the Remuneration Committee, with more than three decades at Getinge, GE Healthcare Life Sciences and Amersham Biosciences.
• 21 Aug 2026 — Treasury holding crosses 5%. Convatec disclosed under DTR 5.5.1 that it held 102,469,942 shares in treasury at 17 August 2026, equal to 5.26% of voting rights.
• 14 Aug 2026 — Dave Ubachs appointed Chief Digital & Information Officer. Effective 1 September 2026, joining from Edenred where he was Group CIO and Chief Data Officer.
• 04 Aug 2026 — H1 2026 results and a new $200m buyback. Revenue $1,232m, up 4.4% reported and 5.0% organic excluding InnovaMatrix. Adjusted operating profit $262m at a 21.2% margin; adjusted diluted EPS 8.5 cents, up 6.3%. Reported operating profit fell 36.1% to $115m and reported diluted EPS to 2.7 cents, after a $69m InnovaMatrix impairment and $48m of BMS intangible amortisation. Interim dividend 2.166 cents, up 15.4%, corrected by a further RNS the same day. FY2026 organic growth guidance narrowed to 5.5–6.5% and InnovaMatrix revenue guidance cut to $5–10m.
• 15 Jul 2026 — CFO succession announced and Tobias Hestler joins the board. Fiona Ryder will stand down once a successor is appointed, continuing as CFO and a director pending an orderly transition. Hestler, formerly Group CFO of Haleon, joined the Audit and Risk Committee with immediate effect and is intended to chair it.
• 03 Jul 2026 — Rhymney manufacturing expansion completed. A multi-year investment of over £24m added a new Hydrofiber production line at the South Wales site, securing 100 skilled jobs.
• 21 May 2026 — AGM trading update for the four months to 30 April 2026. Year-to-date organic growth of 4.8% excluding InnovaMatrix, 1.6% including it, with reported growth of 5.5%.
• 21 Apr 2026 — Peter Jarvis appointed Chief Operations Officer. Effective 1 June 2026, previously Senior Vice President, Supply Chain at Vantive.
• 09 Apr 2026 — Capital Markets Day launches the Accelerate strategy. Successor to FISBE, with medium-term targets of 6–8% organic revenue growth from 2027, a 24–26% adjusted operating margin by 2027, and double-digit adjusted EPS and free-cash-flow growth.
• 24 Feb 2026 — FY2025 annual results. Revenue $2,439m, up 6.5%. Adjusted operating profit $544m, up 12.1%, at a 22.3% margin. Adjusted diluted EPS 17.6 cents, up 16.0%. Dividend up 13% to 7.244 cents. The medium-term organic growth target was upgraded from 5–7% to 6–8%, and a $72m impairment was taken against the InnovaMatrix intangible.
• 03 Feb 2026 — FDA warning letter to Unomedical. The Reynosa, Mexico infusion-set subsidiary received a warning letter on quality-management-system reporting procedures. Convatec stated there were no product-safety concerns and no restrictions on manufacturing or distribution.

For the macro backdrop against which these results land, see the ChartsView Economic Calendar.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 30 Sep 2026 — payment date for the H1 2026 interim dividend of 2.166 cents per share; ex-dividend and record dates of 20 and 21 August 2026 have passed
• 18 Nov 2026 — trading update for the ten months ending 31 October 2026, the next scheduled company event and the next read on whether the guided second-half acceleration to 6–8% organic growth has arrived
• 31 Dec 2026 — latest completion date for the $200m share buyback programme announced on 4 August 2026
• 23 Feb 2027 — FY2026 preliminary results, at which the FY2026 final dividend would be proposed and the first year of Accelerate targets assessed
• 20 May 2027 — trading update for the four months ending 30 April 2027, per the published financial calendar
• Expected May 2027 — Annual General Meeting. No 2027 date has been published; recent AGMs were held on 21 May 2026, 22 May 2025 and 16 May 2024, and Convatec has released its four-month trading update on the morning of the AGM in recent years
• Expected 2028 — indicated implementation of the CMS DMEPOS competitive bidding programme across 8–10 product categories, the single largest scheduled regulatory event facing the core ostomy and continence business

Dates for a CFO appointment, the FY2026 final dividend and any further capital markets day had not been published as at 22 September 2026. Discuss this research with other investors in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 22 September 2026

DCC plc no longer exists under that name, and on current expectations it will not exist as a listed company for much longer. The Dublin-headquartered distributor renamed itself DCC Energy plc on 17 July 2026, and ten days later recommended a cash takeover by funds advised by Energy Capital Partners and KKR. Shareholders approved the scheme of arrangement on 18 September 2026 and completion is expected in the first quarter of 2027. Behind that headline sits a business that spent two years dismantling itself — Healthcare sold, the Info Tech arm sold, £700m returned to shareholders — in order to become a focused multi-energy distributor. It is not quite there: the residual technology business, rebranded Nexora, is still owned, still unsold, and still inside continuing operations. This report covers the company as it stands, with no analyst opinions and no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Legal name	DCC Energy Public Limited Company, formerly DCC plc (Irish CRO number 54858, incorporated 9 April 1976). Name change registered 17 July 2026, trading under it from 20 July 2026
Headquarters	DCC House, Leopardstown Road, Foxrock, Dublin 18, D18 PK00, Ireland
Exchange / ticker	London Stock Exchange Main Market, DCC (DCC.L). ISIN IE0002424939. EUR0.25 ordinary shares traded in sterling as CDIs. TIDM, ISIN and SEDOL unchanged by the renaming
Sector	Industrial Services — downstream multi-energy sales, marketing and distribution
CEO / Leadership	Donal Murphy, Chief Executive since July 2017 and on the board since November 2008. CFO Conor Murphy, appointed 10 July 2025. COO Kevin Lucey. Chair Mark Breuer
Employees	11,700 full-time equivalents at 31 March 2026, down from 16,777, reflecting the Healthcare and Info Tech disposals
Revenue (FY2026)	£15,442m from continuing operations, down 2.9%; £16,920m including discontinued operations
Net income proxy (FY2026)	Continuing statutory basic EPS 288.52p; continuing adjusted basic EPS 438.12p, up 9.9%. Total statutory basic EPS of 14.16p reflects a £320.1m net exceptional charge
Adjusted operating profit (FY2026)	£634.0m from continuing operations, up 3.6%; group return on capital employed 16.8%
Shares outstanding	85,424,135 with voting rights; 87,609,229 in issue including 2,185,094 held in treasury
Corporate status	In an offer period. Recommended cash acquisition by Dragon Bidco Limited (Energy Capital Partners and KKR) approved by shareholders 18 September 2026; completion expected Q1 2027
Reporting currency / year end	Pounds sterling; 31 March. Half-yearly reporting with Q1 and Q3 trading statements

Because DCC is in an offer period under the Irish Takeover Rules, the board is expressly limited in what it can say publicly. No quantified FY2027 guidance has been issued, and the Chair's statement in the 2026 Annual Report says so directly.

2. Bull Case and Bear Case

Bull Case

• A firm, final, approved cash offer: 6,525p base consideration plus the 147.22p final dividend already paid, with up to a further 125p contingent on the Nexora sale. Shareholders approved the scheme on 18 September 2026 with 78.09% of votes cast in favour, and every director holding shares gave an irrevocable undertaking.
• The energy business earns its keep: DCC Energy delivered £554.2m of adjusted operating profit on a 18.8% return on capital employed in FY2026, roughly double the 9.7% earned by the technology business. Energy Products operating profit rose 11.1% even as volumes fell 3.1%, because margin per litre expanded from 3.3p to 3.8p.
• Cash conversion and balance-sheet strength: free cash flow of £689.6m represented 108% conversion of adjusted operating profit. Net debt of £690.5m excluding leases is 0.9 times EBITDA, interest is covered 9.8 times, and both Fitch and S&P reaffirmed BBB.
• A repeatable acquisition machine: DCC bought FLAGA in Austria, AvantiGas cylinders in the UK and UGI's liquid gas platforms in Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia within a year, for roughly £112m of committed spend funded from free cash flow and underwritten to mid-teens returns in year two. Thirty-two years of unbroken dividend growth at a 12.7% compound rate sit behind that record.

Bear Case

• Completion is not certain: the scheme still requires Irish High Court sanction and a long list of merger-control, foreign-subsidy and national-security clearances across the EU, UK, US, Israel, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey and eleven FDI regimes. None had been announced as at 22 September 2026, and the long stop date is 31 July 2027.
• Energy Services has broken down: adjusted operating profit fell 67.5% to £15.7m and the margin collapsed from 14.3% to 4.6%. DCC exited Dutch solar distribution with a £43.2m impairment, and took a £24.4m credit because UK Energy Services earn-outs will not be paid. This was the growth leg of the energy transition story.
• Volumes are structurally declining: group volumes fell 3.2% in FY2026, with Energy Products down 3.1% and Mobility down 3.4%. All the profit growth came from margin per litre, which is a management lever with a finite runway, not market growth.
• Disposals have destroyed value, not just simplified: the Info Tech sale produced a £278.8m loss including a £228.6m impairment. Nexora remains unsold, and up to 125p per share of the offer — roughly £107m — hangs on achieving at least US$800m of net proceeds by 31 July 2027.

3. Revenue Segments

DCC reports two operating segments on a continuing basis for FY2026. Healthcare and the Info Tech business are treated as discontinued; the residual technology business, Nexora, is not.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
DCC Energy — £12,990.4m	84.1%	Multi-energy sales and distribution across Europe and the United States, mainly off-grid solutions led by liquid gas, plus service stations and fleet services. Adjusted operating profit £554.2m, 87.4% of group; return on capital employed 18.8%
DCC Technology (Nexora) — £2,451.5m	15.9%	Intelligent technology solutions across professional AV, professional audio, enterprise infrastructure and consumer technologies, predominantly North America with a smaller European business and around 2,500 staff. Adjusted operating profit £79.8m, 12.6% of group; return on capital employed 9.7%. A sale process is running, with agreement targeted by the end of calendar 2026
Segment / category: Energy Solutions (within DCC Energy)	~76% of DCC Energy profit	Bulk and cylinder liquid gas, heating oil, transport fuels, gas and power supply, plus solar, HVAC and energy-efficiency services. Gross profit £1,563m, adjusted operating profit £419.8m. Energy Products earned 3.8p operating profit per litre against 3.3p the year before; Energy Services revenue was £342.0m with profit down 67.5% to £15.7m
Segment / category: Energy Mobility (within DCC Energy)	~24% of DCC Energy profit	Retail service stations and truck stops in France, Luxembourg, the UK and the Nordics, plus fleet services including fuel cards, telematics and digital truck parking. Adjusted operating profit £134.4m, up 8.6%; gross fuel margin 7.2p per litre against 6.5p; non-fuel gross profit up 17.4% to £122.1m

By geography, continuing revenue splits as United Kingdom £4,332.9m, Rest of World £4,684.7m, France £3,110.8m, United States £1,734.7m and Republic of Ireland £1,578.8m, across 16 countries.

4. Business Model & Moat

How it makes money, and why revenue is the wrong number to watch. DCC states plainly that revenue is not a primary performance measure for DCC Energy, because reported revenue is dominated by the underlying commodity price while the business operates on a unit-margin basis. Management assesses the business on volume and pence of margin per litre. In FY2026 Energy Products sold 10.6 billion litre-equivalents, down 3.1%, yet grew adjusted operating profit 11.1% — the entire gain came from margin per litre rising from 3.3p to 3.8p. Mobility did the same thing deliberately, describing network optimisation that produced "lower, but more profitable, volumes". A distributor that can raise unit margin while shedding unprofitable volume has pricing discipline; one that cannot is simply a commodity pass-through.

Negative working capital is a structural advantage. Absolute group working capital at 31 March 2026 was £23.2m, equivalent to 0.4 days of sales against 5.7 days the prior year, and working capital released £71.4m of cash during the year. DCC is candid that this is partly a function of elevated commodity prices and would reverse if prices normalised. Supply chain financing ceased to be a feature of the group after the Info Tech disposal, having stood at £156.0m a year earlier.

Buy and build in fragmented markets. The repeatable pattern is consolidating national liquid gas markets that no single player dominates. Committed acquisition spend was £112.4m in FY2026 and £115.3m in FY2025: deliberately bolt-on scale, funded from free cash flow rather than from the balance sheet.

Capital discipline is the actual moat. Net capital expenditure of £168.1m sat only £11.5m above the £156.6m depreciation charge, so the asset base is being maintained rather than expanded, and free cash flow converted at 108% of adjusted operating profit. Over 32 years as a public company DCC has compounded adjusted operating profit at 14% a year with unbroken dividend growth. The counterweight is that this discipline is now being applied to a business whose core volumes are in structural decline.

5. Financial Health

The revenue series below has been restated twice as divisions were sold, and the bases are not comparable across all five years. FY2022 to FY2024 are total group figures covering Energy, Healthcare and Technology. FY2025 and FY2026 are continuing operations only, excluding Healthcare, Info Tech and the Dutch technology business. Read the table with that in mind.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 31 Mar 2022)	17,732†	—	316.78p	430.11p	175.78p	—
FY2023 (to 31 Mar 2023)	22,205†	+25.2%	338.40p	456.27p	187.21p	—
FY2024 (to 31 Mar 2024)	19,859†	-10.6%	330.24p	455.01p	196.57p	£1,574.8m
FY2025 (to 31 Mar 2025)	15,904‡	-19.9%‡	295.87p	398.50p	206.40p	£1,849.2m
FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	15,442‡	-2.9%	288.52p	438.12p	216.72p	£1,653.7m

† Total group as originally reported, including Healthcare and all of Technology. ‡ Continuing operations as restated in the FY2026 accounts, excluding Healthcare, Info Tech and the Dutch technology business; the FY2025 year-on-year figure of -19.9% is therefore a basis effect rather than a trading decline, and on a like-for-like continuing basis FY2025 revenue fell about 4.5%. EPS figures for FY2025 and FY2026 are continuing operations, basic. Total FY2026 statutory basic EPS including discontinued operations was 14.16p, after a £320.1m net exceptional charge dominated by the £278.8m loss on the Info Tech disposal. Long-term debt is non-current borrowings from the balance sheet, excluding lease liabilities of £311.6m non-current at 31 March 2026; FY2022 and FY2023 non-current borrowings were not disclosed in the retrieved filings, and net debt excluding lease creditors for those years was £419.9m and £767.3m respectively.

DCC reports half-yearly. The table below is most recent period first, with the FY2026 total in bold at the foot. All figures are continuing operations.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H2 FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026, derived)†	£8,061.2m	317.28p	292.55p
H1 FY2026 (to 30 Sep 2025)	£7,380.7m	120.84p	-4.03p
H1 FY2025 (to 30 Sep 2024, restated)	£7,944.6m	126.13p	77.05p
FY2026 total (continuing)	£15,441.9m	438.12p	288.52p

† DCC does not report a standalone second half. The H2 FY2026 row is derived by subtracting the reported H1 FY2026 figures from the reported FY2026 figures, and is shown for shape only. The negative H1 FY2026 statutory EPS reflects exceptional disposal charges taken in that half.

Cash flow and balance sheet, FY2026. Net cash generated from operating activities was £672.5m, up from £582.0m. The cash flow statement shows £209.5m of gross purchases of property, plant and equipment; management's net capital expenditure measure, after £40.5m of disposal proceeds and £0.8m of grants, was £168.1m. Depreciation excluding right-of-use assets was £156.6m, right-of-use depreciation £85.4m, and amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles £101.0m — about £343.0m of depreciation and amortisation in total, alongside a separate £43.2m impairment on the Dutch solar exit. Statutory continuing operating profit was £461.0m and adjusted continuing operating profit £634.0m; continuing profit before tax was £374.1m.

Debt and capital returns. Non-current borrowings were £1,653.7m and current borrowings £231.7m at 31 March 2026, against cash and cash equivalents of £1,085.6m and lease liabilities of £389.8m. Reported net debt was £690.5m excluding lease creditors and £1,080.3m including them — 0.9 times EBITDA, with interest covered 9.8 times, roughly 75% of gross debt at fixed rates and average term-debt maturity of four years. Total equity fell from £3,168.3m to £2,363.6m, almost entirely because of the £700m returned to shareholders during the year: a £100m on-market buyback completed 12 September 2025 at an average £47.19, and a £600m tender offer completed 19 December 2025 at a £51.70 strike. Together those cancelled 13.9% of the share capital. A residual £100m is deferred until the unconditional Healthcare consideration arrives, anticipated Autumn 2027.

FY2027 guidance. None has been quantified, because the company is in an offer period. The only forward read is the AGM trading statement of 16 July 2026, which said first-quarter continuing group operating profit was in line with expectations and ahead of the prior year, with both DCC Energy and DCC Technology ahead. The 2030 ambition to double DCC Energy operating profit to £830m from the FY2022 base remains stated but is expressly not a profit forecast, and its fate passes to the new owners on completion.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Short interest (% of float)	Below the 0.2% FCA publication threshold as at 21 September 2026, so no aggregate figure is published. Under the anonymised regime introduced on 13 July 2026 the aggregate peaked at 0.99% on 21 July 2026, around the improved bid, and fell to 0.28% by 28 July 2026 before dropping off the list. The FCA reports against issued share capital rather than free float. Verify at the FCA net short positions register
Offer terms	6,525.00p base cash consideration, plus the 147.22p final dividend already paid on 23 July 2026, plus up to 125.00p contingent on Nexora net proceeds of at least US$800m by 31 July 2027. Maximum 6,797.22p.
Net debt / EBITDA	0.9x at 31 March 2026, with interest covered 9.8 times. BBB from Fitch and S&P

7. What Are They Building

The strategy announced on 12 November 2024 was to simplify the group and concentrate on DCC Energy as the largest and highest-returning division. The execution sequence has been mechanical: Healthcare out in September 2025, Info Tech out in November 2025, £700m returned to shareholders during FY2026, the name changed to DCC Energy plc in July 2026, and Nexora to follow once a buyer is agreed. The destination is a focused multi-energy business in which DCC Energy already accounts for 87% of adjusted operating profit.

Liquid gas is the declared spearhead. Every material acquisition of the past two years has been liquid petroleum gas: FLAGA in Austria, AvantiGas cylinders in the UK, and the four-country UGI platform in Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia that completed in late May 2026, ahead of its original timetable. The medium-term ambition is to double DCC Energy operating profit to £830m by 2030 from the FY2022 base, which requires roughly £276m of incremental profit over four years from the £554.2m delivered in FY2026. It is labelled an ambition, not a forecast.

Renewable fuels are advancing; renewable services are not. The biogenic content of energy products sold rose to 7.5% of gigajoules from 7.1%. Certa Ireland is fuelling Tesco's lower-carbon delivery fleet, Flogas Sweden ran a world-first industrial use of renewable DME in forging, and Flogas Britain is supporting ammonia-based industrial heat. Against that, the Energy Services arm — solar, HVAC, energy efficiency — saw adjusted operating profit fall 67.5% to £15.7m and DCC exited Dutch solar distribution entirely with a £43.2m impairment, citing a continued deterioration in the medium-term outlook. Management attributes the weakness to customers having temporarily stepped back from discretionary sustainability spend in favour of cost and short-term energy security.

Mobility is being reinvested rather than harvested. Capital went into electric vehicle fast charging, enhanced forecourt services, convenience retail and car washes, with non-fuel gross profit up 17.4% to £122.1m — the fastest-growing line in the group and the one least exposed to fuel volume decline.

Decarbonisation targets. Scope 3 emissions down 35% by 2030 against an FY2022 baseline, with 4.0% achieved in FY2026 and 14.2% cumulatively; Scope 1 and 2 down 50% by 2030 against 2019, with 7.4% achieved in FY2026 and 44.7% cumulatively. DCC holds a CDP A rating and MSCI AAA.

The obvious caveat on all of this: on completion of the scheme, strategy passes to Energy Capital Partners and KKR. Whether the 2030 ambition, the capital allocation framework or the dividend policy survive in their present form cannot be determined from public disclosure.

8. Peer Comparison

Peer	Key 2025 metric
DCC Energy (DCC.L)	FY2026 continuing revenue £15,442m, -2.9%; adjusted operating profit £634.0m, +3.6%; return on capital employed 16.8%; free cash flow £689.6m at 108% conversion
Bunzl (BNZL.L)	FY2025 revenue £11,845.4m, +0.6% reported and +3.0% at constant currency; adjusted operating profit £910.3m, -4.3% constant currency; adjusted EPS 179.3p (reported 2 March 2026)
Sunoco LP (SUN)	FY2025 adjusted EBITDA attributable to SUN of US$2.047bn against US$1.457bn in 2024, on revenues of US$25,201m, following the Parkland acquisition completed 31 October 2025 (reported 17 February 2026)
UGI Corporation (UGI)	FY2025 adjusted diluted EPS US$3.32 against US$3.06, on revenues of US$7,287m and segment EBIT of US$1,176m, for the year to 30 September 2025 (reported 20 November 2025). UGI is also the counterparty that sold DCC its FLAGA, AvantiGas and Central European liquid gas businesses
Rubis (RUI.PA)	—
World Kinect (WKC)	FY2025 revenue US$36,917m, down 12%, with gross profit of US$948m and adjusted EBITDA of US$336m; a GAAP net loss of US$614m after Land-segment impairments against adjusted net income of US$107m (reported 19 February 2026)

9. Insider Activity

Chief Executive Donal Murphy, who has run DCC since July 2017, holds 186,721 shares, up from 174,075 a year earlier. The striking feature of the record is what is absent: across the complete RNS index from 1 January 2026 to 21 September 2026 there were no insider transactions by any director or person discharging managerial responsibility. The FY2026 Annual Report independently confirms no change in directors' and secretary's interests between 31 March and 18 May 2026, and no PDMR notification accompanied the December 2025 tender offer — directors' holdings rose year on year, indicating none of them tendered. The table below therefore covers calendar 2025.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Donal Murphy	13 Nov 2025	Award	46,625 options	LTIP 2021, three-year ROCE, EPS and TSR conditions
Kevin Lucey	13 Nov 2025	Award	26,045 options	LTIP 2021, three-year ROCE, EPS and TSR conditions
Conor Murphy	13 Nov 2025	Award	19,141 options	LTIP 2021, three-year ROCE, EPS and TSR conditions
Donal Murphy	29 May 2025	Transfer	3,894	Deferred bonus 2022 allotment, nominee transfer
Kevin Lucey	29 May 2025	Transfer	1,754	Deferred bonus allotment, nominee transfer
Donal Murphy	22 May 2025	Sell	8,150	Sale to fund tax on LTIP 2009 option exercise
Donal Murphy	22 May 2025	Vest / exercise	15,441	LTIP 2009 option exercise
Donal Murphy	22 May 2025	Award	5,355	Deferred bonus, transfer out of treasury
Kevin Lucey	22 May 2025	Sell	1,850	Sale to fund tax on LTIP 2009 option exercise
Kevin Lucey	22 May 2025	Vest / exercise	3,458	LTIP 2009 option exercise
Kevin Lucey	22 May 2025	Award	3,149	Deferred bonus, transfer out of treasury

All directors holding shares have given irrevocable undertakings to accept the offer, covering 239,744 shares in aggregate, about 0.28% of issued capital, binding even against a competing bid. On the institutional side the register has turned over sharply: FMR cut its holding from 7.73% to 4.48% in early August 2026, while J.P. Morgan Chase, Societe Generale and Citadel all crossed 5% in the weeks after the firm offer, substantially through cash-settled swaps — the classic merger-arbitrage build.

10. Key Risks

• Deal completion: the scheme requires Irish High Court sanction plus merger-control clearances in the EU, UK, US, Israel, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey, EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation notifications for both bidders, and foreign investment or national-security approvals in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK. None had been announced as at 22 September 2026, and the long stop date is 31 July 2027. A lapse would remove the bid premium entirely.
• Disposal execution: Nexora is unsold with no buyer, price or signed agreement disclosed, against a stated intention to reach agreement by the end of calendar 2026. Up to 125p per share of the offer — roughly £107m — requires net proceeds of at least US$800m by 31 July 2027. DCC's £278.8m loss on the Info Tech disposal, including a £228.6m impairment, is direct evidence that its technology assets have been realising below carrying value.
• Structural volume decline: group volumes fell 3.2% in FY2026 and continuing revenue 2.9%. Energy Products volumes were down 3.1% and Mobility down 3.4%. All profit growth came from margin per litre, a management lever rather than a market tailwind, and DCC's own principal risk register records commodity prices and customer demand as both increased and still increasing.
• Energy transition demand: the sharpest risk visible in the numbers. Energy Services adjusted operating profit fell 67.5% to £15.7m with margin down from 14.3% to 4.6%, DCC exited Dutch solar with a £43.2m impairment, and a £24.4m contingent-consideration credit was taken because UK Energy Services acquisitions have traded below expectations. The transition business was meant to offset declining fossil volumes.
• Weather and seasonality: DCC explicitly attributes part of the Energy Products volume decline to milder weather, particularly in France. A warm winter is a direct hit to a business selling heating fuel.
• Working capital reversal: the £71.4m working capital inflow and the £23.2m absolute working capital position both depend on elevated commodity prices. DCC states that if prices normalised the benefit would reverse, which would be a real cash outflow.
• Acquisition integration and new-market process safety: restructuring and integration costs more than doubled to £45.7m. Three of the four recent acquisitions came from a single counterparty into four countries where DCC had never operated, and the annual report names entry into new markets and the scaling of liquefied gas activities as elevating process safety and environmental risk. Lost-time injury frequency rose to 1.00 per 200,000 hours from 0.90.
• Currency and geography: roughly 90% of continuing revenue is earned outside the UK domestic market. Foreign exchange was a 0.8% tailwind at group level in FY2026 but a 4.9% headwind within DCC Technology, and the equity base is materially thinner after the £700m return, with total equity down from £3,168.3m to £2,363.6m.

11. Recent Developments

• 18 Sep 2026 — Scheme approved by shareholders. At the court-ordered scheme meeting, 43,920,116 shares voted in favour, representing 78.09% of shares voted and 51.41% of all scheme shares, against 12,321,123 opposed; turnout was 65.84% and the 75% value threshold was met. All five EGM resolutions passed with 77.33% to 77.47% in favour. Completion is still expected in Q1 2027.
• 02 Sep 2026 — No-increase statement under Rule 32.2. Dragon Bidco confirmed the consideration is final and will not be increased, closing off any prospect of a raised bid.
• 24 Aug 2026 — Scheme document published and posted to shareholders, alongside a separate announcement of Rule 15 proposals to holders of outstanding share plan awards and options.
• 21 Aug 2026 — Scheme meeting convened. The High Court of Ireland ordered on 20 August 2026 that the scheme meeting be held at 2.00pm on 18 September 2026.
• 27 Jul 2026 — Rule 2.7 firm offer announced. Recommended cash acquisition of DCC Energy plc by Dragon Bidco Limited, owned by funds advised by Energy Capital Partners and KKR, at up to 6,797.22p per share: 6,525.00p base cash, the 147.22p permitted final dividend, and up to 125.00p contingent on the Nexora disposal.
• 23 Jul 2026 — FY2026 final dividend of 147.22p paid, expressly carved out in the offer terms as a permitted dividend with no reduction in the cash consideration.
• 17 Jul 2026 — Change of name to DCC Energy plc registered at the Irish Companies Registration Office, trading under the new name from 20 July 2026, with TIDM, ISIN and SEDOL unchanged.
• 16 Jul 2026 — AGM, trading statement and an improved proposal. First-quarter FY2027 continuing group operating profit was in line with expectations and ahead of the prior year, with both divisions ahead. The UGI Central and Eastern European acquisition was confirmed as completed in late May 2026, ahead of schedule. All AGM resolutions passed, including the special resolution authorising the name change.
• 10 Jun 2026 — Revised proposal and board support. The bidders raised their proposal to 6,672.22p per share, about 15% above the first approach, and the board stated it was minded to recommend.
• 19 May 2026 — FY2026 preliminary results. Continuing revenue £15,442m, down 2.9%; adjusted operating profit £634.0m, up 3.6%; continuing adjusted EPS 438.1p, up 9.9%; return on capital employed 16.8%; free cash flow £689.6m at 108% conversion; net debt excluding leases £690.5m; final dividend up 5.0% to 147.22p. The name change to DCC Energy plc was proposed.
• 30 Apr 2026 — First approach rejected.
• 29 Apr 2026 — Statement re possible offer. DCC confirmed receipt of an indicative cash proposal from Energy Capital Partners and KKR, with an undisturbed date of 28 April 2026.
• 15 Jan 2026 — Four new markets via liquid gas acquisition.

For the macro and commodity backdrop against which these results land, see the ChartsView Economic Calendar.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 10 Nov 2026 — interim results for the six months to 30 September 2026, published on the company financial calendar and confirmed in the July AGM statement. Note that any FY2027 interim dividend declared on this date would, on the published offer terms, be deductible from the 6,525p base consideration, since no permitted-dividend carve-out was disclosed for it
• 27 Nov 2026 — Goodbody Equity Conference, London, the only other investor event on the published calendar
• Expected Q1 2027 — Irish High Court sanction hearing for the scheme of arrangement. The last day of dealings in DCC Energy shares is expected one business day after sanction, the scheme effective date two business days after, and cancellation of the listing three business days after. No exact dates have been published
• Expected Autumn 2027 — anticipated receipt of the unconditional deferred Healthcare consideration and the residual £100m capital return, contingent on the company still being listed at that point
• TBC — ex-dividend and payment dates for any FY2027 interim dividend; none has been declared or dated. Historically the interim has been paid in December and the final in July

No 2027 AGM date and no capital markets day had been published as at 22 September 2026, and on the expected timetable the scheme would complete before an AGM would fall due. Discuss this research with other investors in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

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
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
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

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

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
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.
Shares outstanding	—

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. 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	Key 2026 metric
Givaudan (SWX:GIVN)	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)	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)	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)	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. No large discretionary insider selling was found.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Stephen Oxley (CFO)	10 Sep 2026	Buy	4	Share Incentive Plan / dividend reinvestment; holding after 6,465 shares
Stephen Oxley (CFO)	10 Aug 2026	Buy	5	Share Incentive Plan
Steve Foots (Group CEO)	10 Aug 2026	Buy	5	Share Incentive Plan; holding after 524,913 shares
Tom Brophy (General Counsel & Company Secretary)	10 Aug 2026	Buy	5	Share Incentive Plan; holding after 23,918 shares
Stephen Oxley (CFO)	03 Aug 2026	Sell	1,339	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	Nil-cost conditional award granted 17 Mar 2023; sale to cover tax
Danuta Gray (Chair)	06 Mar 2026	Buy	750	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.

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.
• 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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Last Updated: 21 September 2026

Compass Group plc is the world's largest contract caterer, feeding millions of people every day across offices, hospitals, schools, stadiums, defence bases and remote mining camps. It is also one of the most misunderstood large UK-listed businesses, because two structural changes have made its reported numbers hard to compare with history: the Group switched its reporting currency from sterling to US dollars with effect from 1 October 2023, and since 1 April 2026 its ordinary shares have traded on the London Stock Exchange in US dollars rather than pence. This report restates that picture from primary filings only — the FY2025 results announcement of 25 November 2025, the H1 FY2026 statement of 11 May 2026 and the Q3 FY2026 trading update of 21 July 2026. No analyst opinions, ratings or price targets appear anywhere in it.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CPG (London Stock Exchange, Main Market); ADR CMPGY (OTCQX)
Sector	Consumer discretionary — contract catering and support services
Headquarters	Chertsey, Surrey, United Kingdom
Incorporation	England and Wales, company number 4083914
Reporting currency	US dollars, with effect from 1 October 2023 (previously sterling)
Share trading currency	US dollars on the LSE since 1 April 2026 (previously GBp)
Employees	Over 590,000 worldwide (as at FY2025)
CEO / Leadership	Dominic Blakemore, Group Chief Executive since January 2018; Petros Parras, Group CFO since December 2023; Ian Meakins, Chairman since December 2020
Revenue (FY2025, year to 30 Sep 2025)	US$46,070m statutory; US$46,127m underlying
Operating profit (FY2025)	US$2,964m statutory (6.4% margin); US$3,335m underlying (7.2% margin)
Net income (FY2025)	US$1,880m profit for the year; US$1,868m attributable to shareholders
Dividend per share (FY2025)	65.9 US cents (interim 22.6c + final 43.3c), up 10.2%
Net debt / underlying EBITDA	1.7x at 31 Mar 2026 (1.4x at 30 Sep 2025); company target range 1.0–1.5x
Financial year end	30 September

2. The Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• A market that is still three-quarters unoutsourced: management sizes the addressable market at more than US$360bn with Compass holding under 15% of it, and states that nearly three-quarters of the market is still self-operated or served by regional players. In the twelve months to June 2026, 50% of new business wins came from first-time outsourcing, up from 45% at H1 FY2025.
• Net new business has stepped up and stayed up: net new business growth was 4.5% in FY2025, the fourth consecutive year inside the 4–5% target range, against a pre-pandemic rate management describes as around 3%. The Q3 FY2026 update confirmed net new growth had accelerated back into the range and was on track for a fifth consecutive year.
• Margin is compounding, not just holding: underlying operating margin went from 7.1% in FY2024 to 7.2% in FY2025 and to 7.4% in H1 FY2026, a 20 basis point improvement, with North America at 8.4% and International at 6.1%. Management attributes this to overhead leverage and acquisition synergies rather than price.
• Guidance was raised mid-year and then reiterated: FY2026 underlying operating profit growth guidance moved from "around 10%" at the November 2025 results to "above 11% in constant currency" in May 2026, and was reconfirmed on 21 July 2026 on the back of around 7% organic revenue growth and around 2% profit growth from M&A.
• Cash generation and credit standing: FY2025 underlying free cash flow was US$1,975m at 87.8% conversion, and liquidity at 30 September 2025 was US$5,475m including a fully undrawn US$3,200m revolving credit facility. Credit ratings are S&P A/A-1 and Moody's A2/P-1, both on stable outlook, with USPP covenant leverage of 1.2x against a 3.5x limit.

Bear Case

• Leverage has broken out of the target range: net debt rose from US$6,418m at 30 September 2025 to US$8,632m at 31 March 2026, taking net debt to underlying EBITDA to 1.7x against a stated 1.0–1.5x target. Management expects leverage to remain above the range through FY2026 after peaking at the half year.
• Statutory profitability is drifting away from the underlying story: FY2025 statutory operating margin was 6.4% against 7.2% underlying, and in H1 FY2026 the statutory margin actually fell 10 basis points to 6.4% while the underlying margin rose. Non-underlying charges climbed to US$234m in H1 FY2026 from US$151m a year earlier, of which US$223m was acquisition-related.
• Acquisitions are diluting returns on capital: ROCE fell 80 basis points to 18.2% in FY2025 from 19.0%, which the company explicitly attributes to the impact of acquisitions on capital employed. Net M&A spend was US$2.4bn in the nine months to June 2026.
• Organic growth is decelerating as pricing normalises: organic revenue growth has stepped down from 8.7% in FY2025 to 7.2% in H1 FY2026 and 7.1% in Q3 FY2026. Within H1 FY2026 pricing contributed only 2.7% and like-for-like volume just 0.7%; International like-for-like moderated further in Q3.
• Capital intensity and weaker interim cash conversion: FY2025 capital expenditure was US$1,514m, or 3.3% of underlying revenue, and is trending around 3.5% of sales in FY2026 with management expecting it to be slightly elevated at the full year. Underlying operating cash conversion in H1 FY2026 was only 72.0%.

3. Revenue Breakdown by Segment

From 1 October 2024 Compass merged its former Rest of World region into Europe to create a single International segment. It now reports two geographic segments plus central activities. The figures below are FY2025 underlying revenue as disclosed in the FY2025 results announcement.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
North America	68.1% (US$31,417m)	United States and Canada across all five client sectors. Organic revenue grew 9.1% in FY2025 at roughly 97% client retention, with an underlying operating margin of 8.2%. Acquisition activity here centres on Canteen, the vending and unattended retail business.
International	31.9% (US$14,710m)	Europe plus the former Rest of World region covering Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Turkey. Organic revenue grew 7.7% in FY2025 at 95% client retention, with an underlying operating margin of 6.1%. Compass exited Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Kazakhstan during the year.
Central activities	n/m (US$(151)m underlying operating cost)	Unallocated group overheads, carried as a cost rather than a revenue-generating segment.

Compass also discloses a sector view of the same FY2025 underlying revenue, which is arguably the more useful lens on cyclicality:

Client sector	FY2025 underlying revenue	% of group
Business & Industry	US$17,946m	38.9%
Healthcare & Senior Living	US$10,745m	23.3%
Education	US$8,333m	18.1%
Sports & Leisure	US$6,521m	14.1%
Defence, Offshore & Remote	US$2,582m	5.6%

By service type, the H1 FY2026 investor factsheet splits the group 86% food services and 14% support services.

4. Business Model & Moat

How it makes money. Compass runs catering and support services under contract on client premises. The H1 FY2026 investor factsheet splits the contract base into three roughly equal thirds: cost-plus contracts, profit-and-loss (concession) contracts, and fixed-price contracts. Under P&L contracts Compass is not liable for rent, rates or utilities and may receive client subsidies. The split matters because it determines how quickly cost inflation is recovered: cost-plus and P&L contracts reprice dynamically, while the fixed-price third relies on indexation clauses for food and labour and on an increased repricing cadence.

What actually holds clients in place. Client retention was 96.3% at the group level in FY2025 and 96% at both H1 and Q3 FY2026, with North America running around 97%. That retention rate, applied to a US$46bn revenue base, is what makes 4–5% net new business translate into high single-digit organic growth. New business wins reached US$4.3bn on a last-twelve-months basis at Q3 FY2026, up 16% year on year.

Where the scale advantage comes from. Compass describes its edge as combining the bespoke offer and decentralised client relationships of a local operator with the procurement, technology, labour and overhead leverage of a global one. The procurement layer is the clearest expression of this: Foodbuy is the flagship group purchasing organisation, and after acquiring Pro Care Management in Germany in February 2026 Compass now operates GPOs in five of its top ten markets.

Operating leverage is the stated margin mechanism. The FY2025 margin gain of 10 basis points was attributed to operating leverage on higher revenue, and the 20 basis point gain in H1 FY2026 to overhead leverage and M&A synergies. The group's own growth algorithm is mid-to-high single-digit organic revenue growth plus margin progression plus bolt-on M&A, equalling high single-digit operating profit growth.

5. Financial Health

Two currency notes are essential to reading the table below. First, Compass changed its reporting currency from sterling to US dollars with effect from 1 October 2023, restating FY2023 into dollars; FY2021 and FY2022 have never been restated and are shown as originally reported in sterling. Second, all per-share figures follow the same split — pence for FY2021 and FY2022, US cents from FY2023.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	£17,908m†	−10.2%†	20.0p†	30.9p†	14.0p†	£3,819m†
FY2022	£25,512m†	+42.5%†	62.6p†	63.0p†	31.5p†	£3,990m†
FY2023	$37,907m	+21.6%‡	92.2c	105.2c	52.6c	$3,703m
FY2024	$42,002m	+10.8%	82.3c	119.5c	59.8c	$4,816m
FY2025	$46,070m	+9.7%	110.1c	131.9c	65.9c	$5,611m

† FY2021 and FY2022 are sterling figures as originally reported; the group had not yet adopted US dollar reporting and these years were never restated. FY2021 revenue growth is measured against FY2020 statutory revenue of £19,940m. Long-term debt is non-current borrowings plus non-current lease liabilities in every year. ‡ The FY2023 growth rate of +21.6% is measured on the sterling basis on which both FY2022 and FY2023 were originally reported (£31,028m against £25,512m); the US$37,907m shown is the restated dollar figure published in the FY2024 announcement, and no company-reported dollar figure exists for FY2022 against which to measure it.

Compass publishes a full profit and loss account, balance sheet and cash flow statement only at the half year and full year. The Q1 and Q3 trading updates disclose organic revenue growth and commentary, but no revenue in dollars and no earnings. The table below therefore reports half-years, most recent first, with H2 periods derived as the full year less the disclosed first half.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	$24,983m	72.8c	62.9c
H2 FY2025 (derived)	$23,502m	67.4c	55.9c
H1 FY2025 (to 31 Mar 2025)	$22,568m	64.5c	54.2c
H2 FY2024 (derived)	$21,258m	61.2c	31.9c
FY2025 full year	$46,070m	131.9c	110.1c

H2 figures are not disclosed by Compass and are derived as full year less first half. The H2 FY2024 adjusted EPS of 61.2c is approximate, because the H1 FY2024 comparator of 58.3c was published on a constant-currency basis.

Cash flow and balance sheet, FY2025. Net cash from operating activities was US$3,366m and capital expenditure US$1,514m, giving simple free cash flow of US$1,852m; the company's own underlying free cash flow measure was US$1,975m at 87.8% conversion. Underlying EBITDA was US$4,645m against underlying operating profit of US$3,335m, implying total underlying depreciation and amortisation of US$1,310m. At 30 September 2025 current borrowings were US$1,043m and non-current borrowings US$4,383m, with current and non-current lease liabilities of US$338m and US$1,228m, against cash of US$575m. Company-disclosed net debt was US$6,418m at 1.4x underlying EBITDA.

Cash flow and balance sheet, H1 FY2026. Net cash from operating activities was US$1,588m and underlying free cash flow US$825m, up 11.0%, but underlying operating cash conversion was only 72.0%. Net M&A expenditure of US$2.3bn in the half — Vermaat at US$1.7bn in December 2025 and Pro Care Management at US$270m in February 2026 — pushed current borrowings to US$1,815m and non-current borrowings to US$5,675m, with lease liabilities of US$364m current and US$1,277m non-current, against cash of US$523m. Net debt reached US$8,632m at 1.7x underlying EBITDA.

FY2026 guidance as stated by management. The Q3 update of 21 July 2026 guided to underlying operating profit growth of above 11% in constant currency, driven by around 7% organic revenue growth, around 2% profit growth from M&A, and ongoing margin progression. Underlying finance costs are guided at approximately US$350m and the underlying effective tax rate at approximately 25.5%. On spot rates at 15 July 2026, currency translation would add US$438m to revenue and US$23m to operating profit.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Short interest (% of float)	0.00% of public float on the CMPGY ADR line as at 31 Aug 2026 (15,708 shares short, per MarketBeat). No aggregate short interest is published for the LSE line; UK disclosure captures only individual net short positions of 0.5% or more on the FCA register, and none is currently disclosed against Compass.
Shares outstanding	~1,700m (FY2025 weighted average used for EPS: 1,697m)

7. What Are They Building

Compass is not building products; it is building distribution, procurement density and, increasingly, a technology layer on top of a very physical business.

• A European platform assembled through M&A. Vermaat Groep, a Netherlands premium food services business with around €700m of 2025 revenue and a growing presence in Germany, Belgium and France, completed on 16 December 2025 for US$1.7bn. It follows Dupont Restauration in France in October 2024 and 4Service in Norway in January 2025, which together cost US$701m including repayment of acquired borrowings. Management reported at H1 FY2026 that Vermaat integration was progressing well.
• Procurement density. The February 2026 acquisition of Pro Care Management, a German food group purchasing organisation, for US$270m took Compass to GPOs in five of its top ten markets. Procurement scale is the single most transferable advantage across the acquired European businesses.
• Serving the data-centre build-out as a named sub-sector. The Q3 FY2026 update stated that Compass continues to support leading AI hyperscalers across the data centre ecosystem, providing food and support services across both construction and operational phases. Business & Industry generated more than US$2bn of new business over the period and delivered double-digit organic growth.
• Data, technology and AI in operations. At H1 FY2026 Blakemore described deploying data, technology and AI to operate more effectively and consistently at scale. The group separately flags technology and AI-driven innovation as a growth enabler supporting new service opportunities and more personalised client solutions.
• Canteen and unattended retail in North America. The stated North American acquisition focus is Canteen, the vending and unattended market business, with US$438m of net M&A spend in the region in FY2025.
• Portfolio reshaping, now declared complete. Compass exited Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Kazakhstan in FY2025 following five country exits in FY2024, booking a net loss on sale and closure of US$31m and disposal proceeds net of exit costs of US$166m.
• Proof points on the contract side. In May 2026 the University of Kentucky selected Compass as its preferred Enterprise Services Partner for integrated campus and healthcare services, described in the Q3 update as the group's largest Education win to date.

Capital allocation is unchanged: a strong investment-grade rating with net debt to EBITDA of 1.0–1.5x, capex around 3.5% of revenue, M&A required to return above cost of capital by the end of year two, an ordinary dividend at around 50% of underlying earnings, and surplus capital returned to shareholders thereafter. The US$500m buyback announced in November 2023 completed in December 2024 and no new programme has been announced; H1 FY2026 showed nil buyback spend.

8. Competitive Landscape

Compass is roughly three and a half times the size of Aramark and around six times the size of Sodexo by market value, and it is growing organically faster than both Sodexo and ISS while running behind Aramark's current reported pace.

Peer	Key 2026 metric
Sodexo (EPA:SW)	FY2026 organic revenue growth guidance raised to 1.2%–1.5% from 0.5%–1.0% after Q3 organic growth of +2.0%; FY2025 revenue €24.07bn. A 2030 growth acceleration plan launched 16 Jul 2026 targets organic growth above 5% and operating margin above 5% by 2030.
Aramark (NYSE:ARMK)	FY2026 organic revenue growth guidance raised to 9–10%; fiscal Q3 2026 revenue US$5.1bn, up 9% year on year with organic growth of 9%; adjusted EPS growth guided at 20–25% for FY2026.
ISS A/S (CPH:ISS)	Q2 2026 organic growth of 8.9% after 7.4% in Q1; full-year guidance reaffirmed at above 5% organic growth; a DKK 2.5bn buyback is running, with the second DKK 1.85bn tranche started in August 2026.
Elior Group (EPA:ELIOR)	H1 FY2026, reported 21 May 2026, delivered positive organic growth but guidance was cut for lower near-term growth after delayed contract ramp-ups and an Italian tariff dispute, against prior FY2026 guidance of 3%–4% organic growth. FY2025 adjusted EBITDA exceeded €200m.

9. Leadership & Insider Activity

Dominic Blakemore has been Group Chief Executive since January 2018, having joined the board and executive committee in February 2012. Petros Parras became Group Chief Financial Officer in December 2023, moving up from Regional Finance Director for Europe and the Middle East, and Ian Meakins has chaired the board since December 2020. In May 2026 Shelley Roberts, previously Group Chief Commercial Officer, was appointed Chief Executive of the International segment.

Insider activity in calendar 2026 has been light and one-directional: both disclosed dealings are purchases by the CFO, and no director sales have been announced. The larger movements were the December 2025 vesting of 2018 Long Term Incentive Plan awards.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Petros Parras (Group CFO)	09 Jan 2026	Buy	14,800	Open-market purchase; holding after 54,585 shares
Petros Parras (Group CFO)	02 Mar 2026	Buy	764	Dividend reinvestment
Dominic Blakemore (Group CEO)	01 Dec 2025	Vest	636,739	Long Term Incentive Plan 2018; some shares sold at £23.4146 to cover tax
Palmer Brown (Group COO, North America)	01 Dec 2025	Vest	259,401	Long Term Incentive Plan 2018
Petros Parras (Group CFO)	01 Dec 2025	Vest	39,785	Long Term Incentive Plan 2018

10. Key Risks

• Leverage and integration (Financial): net debt rose US$2.2bn in six months to US$8,632m at 31 March 2026 and leverage sits at 1.7x against a 1.0–1.5x target, with management expecting it to stay above the range through FY2026. Slower synergy delivery on Vermaat or Pro Care would extend the deleveraging path.
• Widening statutory-to-underlying gap (Financial): non-underlying charges rose to US$234m in H1 FY2026 from US$151m, of which US$223m was acquisition-related, pushing the statutory operating margin down 10 basis points even as the underlying margin rose. FY2025 non-underlying pre-tax charges were US$436m.
• Returns dilution (Financial): ROCE fell 80 basis points to 18.2% in FY2025, attributed by the company to the impact of acquisitions on capital employed. Continued M&A at this pace keeps downward pressure on the measure.
• Food safety and allergens (Operational): a principal risk in the FY2025 announcement. Compass feeds millions of consumers daily and states that safety breaches could cause serious business interruption, criminal or civil prosecution, increased costs and reputational damage. Mitigation runs through Global Safety and Supply Chain Integrity Standards and a Global Allergen Management Plan.
• Occupational safety and talent (Operational): with over 590,000 employees, failure to comply with workplace safety standards can cause injuries, operational disruption and legal consequences. The group separately flags that changing economic conditions may increase attrition at all levels.
• Client-base cyclicality (Macro): Business & Industry is the largest sector at close to 40% of revenue and is the most exposed to white-collar employment. The FY2025 announcement notes that certain sectors could be susceptible to negative shifts in the economy and employment rates, and that recent global market instability has increased the potential risks.
• Pricing normalisation (Macro): the pricing contribution has fallen from around 3% in FY2025 to 2.7% in H1 FY2026 while like-for-like volume is just 0.7%. One third of contracts are fixed-price, where cost recovery depends on indexation clauses and repricing cadence.
• Cyber-security and generative AI (Regulatory and operational): the group cites technology failures, loss of confidential data, data privacy breaches and an increased threat of cyber attacks, and separately identifies generative AI as an emerging risk covering data confidentiality, data privacy and intellectual property.
• Currency translation (Macro): with reporting now in dollars but a large non-dollar earnings base, translation is material. At 15 July 2026 spot rates, FX would add US$438m to revenue and US$23m to operating profit; in FY2025 adverse FX translation on net debt cost US$171m, mainly on euro-denominated debt.
• Pension obligations (Financial): the deficit in non-UK defined benefit schemes rose to US$1,395m at 30 September 2025 from US$1,274m, while the UK Plan surplus fell to US$327m from US$542m, although roughly 98% of its US$1.8bn of liabilities are now buy-in insured.

11. Recent Developments

• 21 Jul 2026 — Q3 FY2026 trading update, guidance reiterated. Organic revenue grew 7.1% in the quarter, with North America up 7.5% and International up 6.4%. Client retention held at 96% and last-twelve-month new business wins reached US$4.3bn, up 16%, half of it from first-time outsourcing. Year-to-date net M&A spend was US$2.4bn and FY2026 guidance of above 11% underlying operating profit growth in constant currency was reconfirmed.
• 11 May 2026 — H1 FY2026 results and a guidance upgrade. Revenue of US$25.0bn was up 9% in constant currency with organic growth of 7.2%; underlying operating profit rose 12% in constant currency to US$1,839m at a 7.4% margin; underlying EPS was 72.8c, up 12%, and the interim dividend rose 13% to 25.5c. FY2026 underlying operating profit growth guidance was raised from around 10% to above 11%. Leverage of 1.7x sat outside the target range.
• 14 May 2026 — University of Kentucky names Compass preferred Enterprise Services Partner. The contract covers integrated campus and healthcare services and was later described in the Q3 update as the group's largest Education sector win to date.
• 01 Apr 2026 — LSE trading currency changed from GBp to US dollars. The ordinary shares now quote in dollars, aligning the trading currency with the reporting currency. Compass confirmed the change does not affect the LSE listing, and dividends continue to be paid in sterling by default with a dollar election available.
• 05 Feb 2026 — Q1 FY2026 trading update and AGM. Organic revenue grew 7.3%, net new business stayed within the 4–5% range and client retention remained above 96%, with Business & Industry delivering double-digit organic growth in North America. All AGM resolutions passed.
• 16 Dec 2025 — Vermaat Groep acquisition completed for US$1.7bn. The Netherlands premium food services business, with around €700m of 2025 revenue and operations in Germany, Belgium and France, continues to operate on a standalone basis. Pro Care Management in Germany followed in February 2026 for US$270m.
• 25 Nov 2025 — FY2025 results. Revenue of US$46.1bn with organic growth of 8.7%, underlying operating profit up 11.7% in constant currency to US$3,335m, net new business of 4.5% for a fourth consecutive year in range, client retention of 96.3%, underlying EPS of 131.9c and a full-year dividend of 65.9c, up 10.2%. Leverage closed at 1.4x and the country exit programme was declared complete.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 24 Nov 2026 — FY2026 full-year results, confirmed in both the company financial calendar and the H1 FY2026 statement. This is the report that will show whether the above-11% constant-currency underlying operating profit growth guidance was met and where leverage finished the year.
• Expected Jan 2027 — ex-dividend date for the FY2026 final dividend. Not yet published; the FY2025 cycle had an ex-dividend date of 15 January 2026.
• Expected Feb 2027 — Annual General Meeting and Q1 FY2027 trading update. Not yet published; Compass has held both together in early February for the last three years, most recently on 5 February 2026.
• Expected Feb 2027 — FY2026 final dividend payment date. Not yet published; the FY2025 final dividend of 43.3c was paid on 26 February 2026.
• Expected May 2027 — H1 FY2027 results. Not yet published; the FY2026 half-year statement was released on 11 May 2026.

No capital markets day has been announced. The most recent investor deep dive was the Procurement Deep Dive held on 12 September 2024. Macro release dates that bear on the Business & Industry and Sports & Leisure sectors are tracked on our Economic Calendar, and you can discuss this research with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 19 September 2026

Centrica plc is the UK-listed integrated energy company behind British Gas, Bord Gáis Energy, a substantial commodity trading and optimisation arm, and a fast-growing portfolio of energy infrastructure that now includes a 15% stake in Sizewell C, half of the Isle of Grain LNG terminal, a 20% interest in the UK's operating nuclear fleet and the Rough gas storage facility. The company restructured its reporting in February 2026 into three segments — Retail, Optimisation and Infrastructure — and is midway through a deliberate pivot from volatile supply and trading earnings towards contracted and regulated returns. This report is built on Centrica's own audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025, its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2026, and live market data on the date stated. No analyst ratings or price targets are used anywhere in this report.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Legal name	Centrica plc, registered in England and Wales number 03033654
Ticker / exchange	CNA, London Stock Exchange Main Market
Sector	Gas, water and multi-utilities — integrated energy supply, optimisation and infrastructure
Head office	Millstream, Maidenhead Road, Windsor, Berkshire, UK
Fiscal year end	31 December
Shares in issue	5,064,902,964 ordinary shares issued at 30 June 2026, of which 445,467,706 held in treasury
Revenue (FY2025, statutory)	£19,492m total Group revenue (FY2024: £19,913m). On Centrica's own business performance basis, which grosses up certain commodity contracts, the figure was £22,365m.
Result attributable to shareholders (FY2025)	Loss of £72m, against a £1,332m profit in FY2024
Adjusted operating profit (FY2025)	£814m, against £1,552m in FY2024; adjusted EBITDA £1,417m
Adjusted net cash	£1,487m at 31 December 2025 (FY2024: £2,858m); £709m at 30 June 2026
Employees	Approximately 22,000 worldwide, including more than 7,000 field service engineers, per the 2026 Corporate Factsheet
CEO / Leadership	Chris O'Shea, Group Chief Executive since 2020, having joined as Chief Financial Officer in 2018; Russell O'Brien, Group Chief Financial Officer since March 2023; Kevin O'Byrne, Chair since December 2024

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• A genuine pivot to contracted earnings: Sizewell C at a 10.8% allowed real return on equity fixed through construction, a 50% share of the Isle of Grain LNG terminal contracted to 2045 on over half its capacity, and a meter asset provider business with more than 1.6m meters together build a long-duration earnings base that did not exist three years ago.
• Clearer medium-term targets: Management has replaced range-based operating profit guidance with adjusted EBITDA targets of £1.7bn by the end of 2028 and £2.0bn by 2030, alongside a stated ambition to double earnings per share by 2030.
• Nuclear life extensions add volume at low marginal cost: Extensions agreed for Heysham 1 and Hartlepool to March 2028, and Heysham 2 and Torness to March 2030, are expected to add roughly 12TWh of generation across 2026 to 2030 from an already-built asset base.

Bear Case

• FY2025 swung to a statutory loss: A £72m attributable loss and statutory earnings per share of negative 1.5p compares with a £1,332m profit and 25.7p a year earlier, and adjusted earnings per share also fell sharply from 19.0p to 11.2p.
• The buyback was paused the moment it finished: With the £2bn programme complete in January 2026, the board chose to redirect capital to Sizewell C and Grain LNG rather than start a new tranche, removing the most visible support for the shares.
• British Gas has lost the number one position: Octopus Energy is now the UK's largest domestic energy supplier, and Centrica's UK home energy accounts slipped from 7.50m at the end of 2025 to 7.45m by mid-2026.
• Trading profits are normalising downwards: Optimisation adjusted EBITDA fell from £381m in FY2024 to £196m in FY2025, and the first-half 2026 result missed market expectations on both profit and revenue, with the shares falling on the day.
• Customer bad debt is rising fast: The UK residential bad debt charge reached £216m in the first half of 2026, up 36% year on year, with outstanding billed and unbilled customer debt reaching around £2bn ahead of a winter in which the price cap has risen.

3. Revenue Segments

Centrica restated its segmental reporting with the FY2025 results announced on 19 February 2026, replacing the previous British Gas Energy, British Gas Services and Solutions, Bord Gáis Energy, Centrica Business Solutions, Centrica Energy and Infrastructure structure with three segments. The percentages below are calculated against statutory total Group revenue of £19,492m for FY2025, as disclosed in note 4 of the annual report.

Segment	% of revenue (FY2025)	What it is
Retail	82.4% (£16,060m)	Supply of gas and electricity to residential and business customers in the UK and Republic of Ireland under the British Gas and Bord Gáis Energy brands, plus installation, repair and maintenance of heating systems, smart meters, fixed-fee service and insurance contracts, and energy solutions for large organisations. Adjusted operating profit of £424m.
Optimisation	16.7% (£3,264m)	Procurement, trading and optimisation of energy across the UK and Europe, plus global LNG procurement and sale. Adjusted operating profit of £155m, down from £339m. Much of this segment's economic income arrives through derivative re-measurement rather than the statutory revenue line.
Infrastructure	0.9% (£168m)	Gas and liquids production through Spirit Energy, the 20% interest in the UK nuclear fleet, Sizewell C, the Isle of Grain LNG terminal, Rough gas storage and the UK meter asset provider business. Adjusted operating profit of £314m on a very small statutory revenue base, because most of the value arrives as equity-accounted joint venture results rather than third-party revenue.

The revenue split is heavily skewed towards Retail, but profit is not. On an adjusted EBITDA basis, Retail contributed £574m, Infrastructure £728m and Optimisation £196m of the £1,417m Group total, with a £81m deduction for colleague profit share and a meter asset provider consolidation adjustment. Infrastructure is therefore the largest profit pool despite generating under one percent of statutory revenue.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Centrica earns from three distinct engines. Retail buys wholesale gas and power, hedges it, and sells it to roughly 7.45m UK home energy accounts and a large business customer base at prices constrained by the Ofgem default tariff cap, earning a thin regulated margin plus service and insurance income. Optimisation makes money from the spread between physical assets, storage, LNG cargoes and forward market positions. Infrastructure earns returns on owned and equity-accounted assets, increasingly under regulated or long-term contracted frameworks.

Where the moat sits. The durable advantages are scale in UK retail, an installed base of more than 7,000 field service engineers that no pure-play digital supplier replicates, and privileged access to hard-to-build energy assets. The 20% nuclear stake, the Rough storage facility and now Sizewell C and Grain LNG are positions that cannot be recreated by a new entrant at any price, because the assets are either unique or effectively unconsentable today.

Why the earnings mix is changing. The exceptional profits of 2022 and 2023 came from commodity dislocation, and management has been explicit that those conditions are normalising. The response has been to redeploy that windfall into assets whose returns are set by contract or regulation rather than by the gas curve. Sizewell C carries a 10.8% allowed real return on equity fixed through construction, capped at £1.3bn of Centrica funding to the end of 2028, with an expected regulated asset base of £8bn at commercial operations. Grain LNG is fully contracted to 2029 and more than half contracted to 2045.

What constrains it. Retail margin is capped by regulation, not competition, and the cap moves quarterly. That places a hard ceiling on the segment's upside regardless of how well it executes, and explains why management guides Retail adjusted EBITDA to a £500m to £800m range rather than a growth trajectory.

5. Financial Health

The revenue figures below are statutory total Group revenue as reported in the Group Income Statement, consistently across all years shown. Centrica also publishes a higher business performance revenue measure — £22,365m for FY2025 against the statutory £19,492m — which grosses up revenue on contracts falling within the scope of IFRS 9. FY2021 is excluded because a comparable statutory revenue figure on the current presentation basis was not obtainable from primary sources; the company's own five-year summary publishes only the business performance measure for that year.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 31 Dec 2022)	23,741	n/a †	-13.3p	34.9p	3.0p	£3,008m
FY2023 (to 31 Dec 2023)	26,458	+11.4%	70.6p	33.4p	4.0p	£3,101m
FY2024 (to 31 Dec 2024)	19,913	-24.7%	25.7p	19.0p	4.5p	£2,658m
FY2025 (to 31 Dec 2025)	19,492	-2.1%	-1.5p	11.2p	5.5p	£2,624m

† A year-on-year growth rate for FY2022 is not shown because the FY2021 statutory revenue comparative on the current presentation basis was not obtainable from a primary source. Long-term debt is the non-current bank loans and other borrowings line from each year's Group Balance Sheet: £3,008m and £3,101m from the 2023 Annual Report and Accounts for FY2022 and FY2023 respectively, and £2,658m and £2,624m from the 2025 Annual Report and Accounts for FY2024 and FY2025. Current bank overdrafts, loans and other borrowings were a further £232m at 31 December 2025, of which £35m were overdrafts. Adjusted earnings per share is Centrica's own adjusted basic earnings per ordinary share as published in its five-year summary.

Centrica reports half-yearly. The table below is presented most recent first; the second-half 2025 line is derived by deducting the reported first half from the reported full year rather than separately published.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 2026 (6m to 30 Jun 2026)	£10,181m	6.8p	11.7p
H2 2025 (6m to 31 Dec 2025) ‡	£9,368m	4.2p	3.6p
H1 2025 (6m to 30 Jun 2025)	£10,124m	7.0p	-5.1p
FY2025 total (12m to 31 Dec 2025)	£19,492m	11.2p	-1.5p

‡ Derived by subtraction from the reported full year and first half; not separately published by the company. The swing in statutory earnings per share between halves illustrates how heavily the reported figure is driven by derivative re-measurement rather than trading performance: the first half of 2026 carried a net pre-tax profit of £142m from re-measurements and £71m of exceptional income within statutory operating profit.

Turning to cash and the balance sheet at 31 December 2025, all taken directly from the Group Cash Flow Statement and Group Balance Sheet in the 2025 Annual Report and Accounts. Net cash flow from operating activities was £695m against £1,149m in FY2024. Purchases of property, plant and equipment and intangible assets were £554m. Depreciation and amortisation added back in the cash flow statement was £428m against £473m. Group operating profit was £106m on a statutory basis and £814m adjusted, the £708m gap being exceptional items and certain re-measurements including roughly £0.5bn of impairments across late-life gas fields and the nuclear investment. Cash and cash equivalents stood at £4,307m with securities of £105m non-current and £2m current, against total borrowings of £2,856m. Net assets were £3,496m including £411m of non-controlling interests, and the IAS 19 pension position was a £295m deficit against a £21m deficit a year earlier. Note that Centrica's own headline capital investment figure of £1.2bn for FY2025 is larger than the £554m cash flow statement capital expenditure line because it includes equity investments in joint ventures and associates such as Sizewell C and Grain LNG.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric

Value

Short interest (% of float)

n/a — not published for this period. Under the FCA's Short Selling Regulations 2025, which took effect on 13 July 2026, the regulator stopped publishing individual net short positions by holder and now publishes only anonymised aggregate positions by issuer, with a second phase due on 30 November 2026. No current aggregate figure for Centrica was obtainable from either the FCA register or shortselling.uk. Verify on the FCA short position disclosure register.

7. What Are They Building

Sizewell C. Centrica completed its 15% equity investment in November 2025 with an initial £376m outlay, funding the pre-financial-close regulated asset base value plus some 2026 construction costs. Total funding is capped at £1.3bn through to the end of 2028, with cumulative investment expected to reach £500m to £600m by that date. The allowed real return on equity is 10.8%, fixed through construction, which the company says supports an internal rate of return above 12%, against an expected regulated asset base of £8bn at commercial operations.

Isle of Grain LNG. Centrica's equity contribution was approximately £200m, with £1.1bn of new non-recourse project debt. The terminal is fully contracted to 2029, more than 70% contracted to 2038 and more than 50% to 2045.

Nuclear. Beyond the existing 20% interest in the operating fleet, Centrica and EDF agreed further life extensions in September 2025 taking Heysham 1 and Hartlepool to March 2028 and Heysham 2 and Torness to March 2030, backed by £1.2bn of joint investment across 2026 to 2028. Roughly 12TWh of incremental generation is expected across 2026 to 2030. In June 2026 reports emerged of a near-agreement with government to extend Sizewell B's life by twenty years. On 15 September 2026 Centrica and X-energy confirmed that UK regulators will begin a design review of the Xe-100 advanced modular reactor.

Rough. Centrica halted gas injections at the Rough storage facility in July 2025, citing projected operating losses of £50m to £100m. It has offered a £2bn redevelopment to take capacity to roughly 120 billion cubic feet and convert the site to hydrogen storage in the early 2030s, but states it cannot proceed without a government-backed regulatory model. Talks with ministers continue, and the facility is guided to be around break-even in 2026.

Meter assets and renewables. The meter asset provider business now manages more than 1.6m meters and is described by management as the fastest growing in the UK. Centrica Energy continues to contract battery storage, including a partial tolling agreement signed on 10 September 2026 for the 125MW and 300MWh Karppio project in Finland.

Targets and capital plan. Group adjusted EBITDA is targeted at £1.7bn by the end of 2028 and £2.0bn by 2030, with the 2030 figure explicitly conditioned on nuclear life extensions that have not yet been approved. Capital investment guidance for 2026 is at least £0.7bn, with £698m already spent in the first half. A transformation programme spanning customer service, supply chain and workforce is running ahead of schedule and weighing on near-term earnings.

8. Competitive Landscape

Centrica competes on two fronts that barely overlap: UK household energy supply, where the competitor set is retail-only and increasingly digital, and energy infrastructure, where the peer set is capital-intensive European utilities. Market capitalisations below were checked in mid-September 2026.

Peer	Key 2025 metric
National Grid plc (NG.L)	—
SSE plc (SSE.L)	—
E.ON SE	The largest European energy retailer and distribution network operator by customer numbers, and Centrica's principal continental-scale comparator in combined retail and networks
Drax Group plc (DRX.L)	—
Octopus Energy (private, no listing)	Now the UK's largest domestic energy supplier, serving more than 8m UK customers as at April 2026 and roughly a quarter of British households, having overtaken British Gas (Octopus Energy press releases)

The competitive fact that matters most is the last row. Octopus overtaking British Gas as the UK's largest domestic supplier ends a position British Gas had held since retail market liberalisation, and it happened while Centrica's accounts slipped from 7.50m to 7.45m. Centrica's answer is not to fight for share at any price but to move profit towards Infrastructure, which is why that segment now produces the largest adjusted EBITDA contribution despite generating under one percent of statutory revenue.

9. Insider Activity

Insider dealing at Centrica during 2026 has been almost entirely routine. Every transaction identified in regulatory director and person-discharging-managerial-responsibility notifications was a small acquisition under the company's Share Incentive Plan or a share purchase agreement, executed by Equiniti Share Plan Trustees rather than as discretionary open-market dealing, and no disclosed director sale of any size was identified. Group Chief Executive Chris O'Shea participates in the plan on the same terms as other employees, acquiring 110 shares in July 2026 at a cost of under £200, and made no discretionary purchase or disposal.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Directors, aggregated notification	10 Sep 2026	Buy	121	Share Incentive Plan, routine periodic acquisition
Chris O'Shea, Group Chief Executive	13 Jul 2026	Buy	110	Share Incentive Plan via Equiniti Share Plan Trustees
Russell O'Brien, Group Chief Financial Officer	13 Jul 2026	Buy	109	Share Incentive Plan via Equiniti Share Plan Trustees
Mastiaux, non-executive director	21 Feb 2026	Buy	1,244	Share purchase agreement
Whalley, non-executive director	21 Feb 2026	Buy	490	Share purchase agreement referencing an agreement dated 8 September 2025

The absence of discretionary buying is as notable as the absence of selling.

10. Key Risks

• Regulated margin compression in Retail: Ofgem set the default tariff cap at £1,723 for a typical dual-fuel direct debit household for 1 October to 31 December 2026. Retail earnings before interest and tax margin fell to 3.1% in the first half of 2026 from an elevated 4.6% a year earlier, and the cap places a hard ceiling on the segment regardless of execution.
• Trading earnings normalisation: Optimisation adjusted EBITDA fell from £381m in FY2024 to £196m in FY2025, and management has guided the segment to a £300m to £400m range. The exceptional 2022 and 2023 commodity profits are not repeatable, and the segment's contribution is inherently volatile year to year.
• Rising customer bad debt: The UK residential bad debt charge was £216m in the first half of 2026, up 36%, with outstanding billed and unbilled customer debt reaching around £2bn. FY2025 credit losses on UK residential billed trade receivables were £1,038m against £799m a year earlier, and the October 2026 cap increase raises the risk of further deterioration.
• Rough policy and economics unresolved: Rough has been running at a projected £50m to £100m annual operating loss with gas injections halted since July 2025. The proposed £2bn hydrogen redevelopment is entirely contingent on government establishing a regulatory support model, and no decision has been made.
• Sizewell C construction and capital risk: A £1.3bn capped equity commitment to a first-of-a-kind nuclear new build carries construction, schedule and cost-overrun exposure over a multi-decade horizon, even with a regulated allowed return.
• Company-disclosed contingency on the 2030 target: Management states explicitly that the £2.0bn adjusted EBITDA target for 2030 depends on nuclear life extensions that are yet to be approved, making a headline target conditional on a third-party regulatory decision.
• Structural share loss in UK retail: Octopus Energy has overtaken British Gas as the UK's largest domestic supplier and Centrica's home energy accounts are declining, which erodes the customer base that underpins both supply margin and the services and insurance cross-sell.
• Political and fiscal intervention: UK energy companies remain exposed to windfall taxation, price cap methodology changes and social tariff proposals, all of which are set politically rather than commercially. The government's temporary removal of VAT on domestic electricity from 1 October 2026 is an example of how quickly the fiscal framework around household energy can be rewritten.

11. Recent Developments

• 17 Sep 2026 — Centrica publishes report on grid connection delays. The company released research arguing that time-to-power constraints on grid connections are holding back UK economic growth, part of a continuing effort to shape energy infrastructure policy.
• 15 Sep 2026 — UK regulators to begin design review of the Xe-100 reactor. Centrica's partnership with X-energy to explore deploying advanced modular reactors in the UK moved into the formal regulatory design review stage.
• 10 Sep 2026 — Battery storage tolling agreement signed in Finland. Centrica Energy and Delta Capacity agreed a partial tolling arrangement for the 125MW and 300MWh Karppio battery project.
• 26 Aug 2026 — Ofgem confirmed the October price cap. The default tariff cap was set at £1,723 for a typical dual-fuel direct debit household for the period 1 October to 31 December 2026.
• 23 Jul 2026 — First-half 2026 results published. Adjusted EBITDA of £737m against £900m a year earlier, statutory revenue of £10,181m, adjusted earnings per share of 6.8p, statutory earnings per share of 11.7p and an interim dividend raised 9% to 2.0p. Both profit and revenue came in below market expectations and the shares fell on the release.
• 19 Feb 2026 — FY2025 preliminary results and strategic reset. A statutory attributable loss of £72m and statutory earnings per share of negative 1.5p, adjusted earnings per share of 11.2p, a full-year dividend up 22% to 5.5p, the completion and pausing of the buyback, new adjusted EBITDA targets of £1.7bn by 2028 and £2.0bn by 2030, and re-segmentation into Retail, Optimisation and Infrastructure.
• 28 Nov 2025 — Grain LNG acquisition completed.
• 02 Sep 2025 — Further nuclear life extensions agreed. Heysham 1 and Hartlepool were extended to March 2028, with Heysham 2 and Torness reconfirmed to March 2030, expected to add roughly 12TWh of generation across 2026 to 2030.
• 31 Jul 2025 — Gas injections halted at Rough. Centrica stopped injecting gas into the Rough storage facility citing projected 2025 operating losses of £50m to £100m, with operational consent extended only to 30 April 2026 pending a government decision on long-term support.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 22 Sep 2026 — payment date for the 2.0p 2026 interim dividend, which went ex-dividend on 20 August 2026 with a record date of 21 August 2026
• 28 Oct 2026 — UK Autumn Budget, alongside an Office for Budget Responsibility forecast; energy taxation, the Energy Profits Levy and household energy support measures are recurring variables for Centrica
• 05 Nov 2026 — Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee decision, published with a Monetary Policy Report
• 25 Nov 2026 — latest date by which Ofgem must announce the default tariff cap for January to March 2027, the single most important scheduled input to Retail margin
• 17 Dec 2026 — Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee decision
• Expected Feb 2027 — FY2026 preliminary results; Centrica has not published a confirmed date and its financial calendar page did not render a 2027 entry at the time of writing, with the FY2025 equivalent released on 19 February 2026
• Expected May 2027 — Annual General Meeting and accompanying trading statement, based on the company's established cadence
• TBC — UK government decision on a regulatory support model for the proposed £2bn Rough redevelopment and hydrogen conversion, on which the facility's long-term future depends

Ofgem cap announcements, Bank of England decisions and UK macroeconomic releases are tracked on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and readers can discuss the UK utilities sector on the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 20 September 2026

Coca-Cola HBC AG is the Coca-Cola system's bottler for 29 countries stretching from Ireland to Nigeria, and it is one of the few large UK-listed companies where roughly half of profit comes from genuinely emerging markets. FY2025 was the company's fifth consecutive year of double-digit comparable earnings growth: net sales revenue of €11,604.5m, comparable EBIT of €1,356.2m and comparable EPS of €2.724. The story going into 2027 is dominated by one transaction — the US$2.6bn purchase of 75% of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa — and by one unusually concentrated risk, Russia. This report sets out what the filings say, without opinions on whether the shares are cheap.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Legal name	Coca-Cola HBC AG
Listing	London Stock Exchange Main Market (LSE:CCH, CDIs over CHF 6.70 registered shares, ISIN CH0198251305); secondary listing Athens Exchange (ATHEX:EEE)
Domicile / HQ	Incorporated in Switzerland; registered office Turmstrasse 26, Steinhausen, Canton of Zug
Sector	Consumer staples — non-alcoholic beverage bottling
CEO / Leadership	Zoran Bogdanovic (Chief Executive Officer); Anastasios Stamoulis (Chief Financial Officer, since 1 May 2024); Anastassis G. David (Chairman, re-elected 8 May 2026)
Employees	More than 33,000 (disclosed with FY2025 results, 10 Feb 2026)
Footprint	29 countries; approximately 760 million consumers served
Reporting currency	Euro (€), IFRS; financial year ends 31 December
Revenue (FY2025, net sales revenue)	€11,604.5m (reported +7.9%; organic +8.1%)
Net profit attributable (FY2025)	€940.4m (+14.6%)
Major shareholders	Kar-Tess Holding (Leventis family) approximately 23%; The Coca-Cola Company approximately 21%; free float approximately 56%

2. Bull Case and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Emerging-market mix is doing the heavy lifting: Emerging markets delivered 47% of FY2025 net sales revenue and 54% of comparable EBIT, on organic revenue growth of 13.2% and organic EBIT growth of 23.2% — a growth profile most Western European staples businesses cannot match.
• Margin and returns are compounding, not just revenue: Comparable EBIT margin has moved from 10.1% in FY2022 to 11.7% in FY2025, and return on invested capital from 14.1% to 19.4% over the same period, so the earnings growth is not simply volume plus price.
• Balance sheet has unusual headroom: Net debt of €1,232.9m at FY2025 year-end equated to 0.7x comparable adjusted EBITDA against a stated mid-term target range of 1.5x to 2.0x, which is what allowed a US$2.6bn acquisition to be funded largely with debt.
• CCBA materially changes the addressable market: On completion, management expects the enlarged group to represent roughly two-thirds of Africa's total Coca-Cola system volume and to cover more than half the continent's population, making CCH the world's second-largest Coca-Cola bottler.
• Guidance was raised, not trimmed, at the half: With H1 2026 results on 5 August 2026 management moved FY2026 organic revenue growth to the top end of the 6% to 7% range and organic EBIT growth to 8% to 10%, from a prior 7% to 10%.

Bear Case

• Russia is a concentrated, unhedgeable exposure: CCH continues to operate a self-sufficient local-brand business in Russia, where FY2025 volume grew 2.6%. Sell-side work published in August 2026 estimated Russia could account for 30% to 40% of FY2026 group EBIT and EPS — a sanctions and expropriation risk with no obvious mitigation.
• Established markets are barely growing: The Established segment, 31% of revenue, delivered organic revenue growth of just 2.3% in FY2025 and organic EBIT that went backwards by 2.8%, so the group average conceals a stagnant developed-market core.
• Emerging-market currencies cut both ways: The same Nigerian naira, Egyptian pound and Russian rouble exposures that flattered organic growth are identified by the company itself as its first-listed principal risk, mitigated only by rolling 12-month hedges covering 25% to 80% of exposure.
• CCBA integration is a genuinely new kind of execution risk: Management has added CCBA integration as a new principal risk and is standing up a dedicated Integration Management Office; the deal roughly doubles the African footprint of a company whose track record is in Europe.
• Leverage is about to normalise: The €2.1bn of bonds issued in March 2026 had already pushed non-current borrowings to €4,506.3m by the H1 2026 balance sheet date, so the 0.7x leverage that looks like a strength today is a transitional figure.

3. Revenue Segments

Coca-Cola HBC reports three geographic segments. The FY2025 split below reconciles exactly to reported net sales revenue of €11,604.5m and to comparable EBIT of €1,356.2m.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Emerging	47.0% (€5,453.0m)	Nigeria, Egypt, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, North Macedonia and Kosovo. 63% of group volume (1,879.4m unit cases) and 54% of comparable EBIT (€735.4m), at a 13.5% EBIT margin. Organic revenue +13.2%, organic EBIT +23.2%.
Established	31.0% (€3,599.7m)	Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and Northern Ireland. 21% of volume (631.6m unit cases) and 28% of comparable EBIT (€378.6m), at a 10.5% EBIT margin. Organic revenue +2.3%, organic EBIT -2.8%.
Developing	22.0% (€2,551.8m)	Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 16% of volume (486.4m unit cases) and 18% of comparable EBIT (€242.2m), at a 9.5% EBIT margin. Organic revenue +6.1%, organic EBIT +5.6%.

By beverage category, sparkling soft drinks remain the core of the business at approximately 70% of FY2025 volume, with Energy, Water, Juice, Coffee, Ready-to-drink Tea, Adult Sparkling and Premium Spirits making up the balance. Energy recorded a tenth consecutive year of double-digit growth in FY2025.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Coca-Cola HBC buys concentrate and beverage base from The Coca-Cola Company, then manufactures, packages, merchandises, sells and distributes the finished product inside exclusive, long-dated territory franchise agreements. Revenue is volume multiplied by revenue per unit case; the profit lever management pulls hardest is revenue per unit case, which grew 5.1% organically in FY2025 against organic volume growth of 2.8%. That mix — price and pack architecture ahead of raw volume — is what produced the 60 basis points of reported comparable EBIT margin expansion.

Where the moat sits. Three places. First, the franchise itself: the territory agreements are exclusive and long-dated, and no competitor can sell Coca-Cola in CCH's markets. Second, physical route-to-market — direct store delivery into a fragmented base of small outlets across Nigeria, Egypt and South East Europe is extremely capital- and relationship-intensive to replicate, and the cold-drink equipment estate that sits inside those outlets is both a barrier to entry and a switching cost. Third, alignment: The Coca-Cola Company owns roughly 21% of CCH's equity, so the franchisor is also a large shareholder rather than a pure counterparty.

What the portfolio covers. Licensed brands include Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Fanta, Sprite, Schweppes, Kinley, FuzeTea, Powerade, Cappy and Monster Energy. Owned and partner brands include Costa Coffee and Caffè Vergnano in coffee, Finlandia Vodka in spirits, and distribution agreements with Brown-Forman, Bacardi and Edrington that extend the shelf into the evening occasion.

The structural weakness in the model. Bottlers do not own the brands they sell and do not set concentrate pricing. CCH must buy its entire concentrate requirement from a single supplier, and the economics of that relationship are negotiated rather than contractually capped. That is the permanent trade-off for the exclusivity.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Coca-Cola HBC's own full-year results announcements and the FY2025 factsheet. Net sales revenue is stated in euro millions.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (€m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	7,168.4	n/d†	€1.499	€1.584	€0.71	Not disclosed in FY2021 release
FY2022	9,198.4	+28.3%	€1.134	€1.706	€0.78	€3,082.9m
FY2023	10,184.0	+10.7%	€1.730	€2.078	€0.93	€2,476.4m
FY2024	10,754.4	+5.6%	€2.253	€2.275	€1.03	€3,091.9m
FY2025	11,604.5	+7.9%	€2.589	€2.724	€1.20	€3,107.4m

† The FY2021 year-on-year movement is not shown because the FY2020 comparative base sits outside this table. Adjusted EPS is the company's own "comparable EPS" measure, which strips restructuring, acquisition costs and certain non-cash items. The FY2022 gap between GAAP EPS of €1.134 and comparable EPS of €1.706 reflects a large non-cash charge on the Russian business in that year.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 2026 (26 weeks to 3 Jul 2026)	€6,229.4m	€1.507	€1.441
H2 2025 (derived)‡	€5,984.2m	€1.416	€1.292
H1 2025 (26 weeks to 27 Jun 2025)	€5,620.3m	€1.308	€1.297
FY2025 total	€11,604.5m	€2.724	€2.589

‡ Coca-Cola HBC reports on a half-yearly basis and issues volume-and-revenue trading updates at Q1 and Q3 without an earnings figure, so half-years are the shortest period for which EPS exists. The H2 2025 row is derived as the FY2025 total less the reported H1 2025 figures and is not a company-reported line item.

Balance sheet at 31 December 2025. Current borrowings €805.6m and non-current borrowings €3,107.4m gave total borrowings of €3,913.0m. Against that sat cash and cash equivalents of €2,541.7m plus other financial assets (time deposits and money-market funds) of €115.2m, and an interest-rate swap fair value of negative €23.2m, producing company-reported net debt of €1,232.9m, or 0.7x comparable adjusted EBITDA of €1,807.5m. That is well inside the stated 1.5x to 2.0x mid-term target. The picture has since changed: following the €2.1bn three-tranche euro bond issue in March 2026 raised to fund CCBA, the H1 2026 balance sheet showed current borrowings of €1,662.5m and non-current borrowings of €4,506.3m, with net debt of €1,413.6m.

Cash generation in FY2025. Net cash from operating activities excluding acquisition costs paid was €1,527.6m, against capital expenditure of €827.6m (of which €764.1m was payments for property, plant and equipment), giving company-reported free cash flow of exactly €700.0m. Capex at 7.1% of revenue sat inside the company's 6.5% to 7.5% target band. Depreciation and impairment of property, plant and equipment including right-of-use assets was €430.7m, and amortisation and impairment of intangibles €1.5m, for a total D&A add-back of €432.2m against reported operating profit of €1,305.6m.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

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

Metric	Value
Net debt / EBITDA	0.7x at 31 Dec 2025 (company-stated, on comparable adjusted EBITDA), against a 1.5x to 2.0x mid-term target
Short interest (% of float)	n/a — no disclosable net short position in LSE:CCH was found for September 2026. UK disclosure only bites at 0.5% of issued share capital and the long-running public aggregator ShortTracker ceased operating in 2026; verify against the FCA's daily short-positions data file. The thinly traded US OTC ADR line (CCHGY) showed 4,600 shares short at the 15 Sep 2026 settlement, effectively 0.0%, but that is a different instrument.

7. What Are They Building

Capital expenditure of €827.6m in FY2025 went into three places: production and packaging capacity in the emerging markets, supply-chain automation and digital infrastructure, and energy-efficient cold-drink equipment. H1 2026 capex was already 35.9% higher year on year at €378.9m, which is the clearest signal of where management thinks the growth is.

On the digital side, the company has been extending revenue growth management analytics and AI-driven segmented execution — the "Ignite Naija" consumer and customer data programme run jointly with The Coca-Cola Company in Nigeria is the flagship example — and opened a Digital Hub in Egypt during H1 2026 to support group-wide transformation.

Three category bets are running in parallel. Coffee was restructured from the start of 2025 to focus Costa Coffee and Caffè Vergnano on the out-of-home channel; out-of-home coffee volumes grew 26.5% in FY2025 and 24.5% in H1 2026, even as total coffee volumes fell because the at-home business was deliberately deprioritised. Energy delivered a tenth consecutive year of double-digit growth, with Monster in the Established and Developing segments and the company's own Predator and Fury brands in Africa. Premium spirits is the newest leg, built on Finlandia Vodka plus distribution partnerships with Brown-Forman, Bacardi and Edrington.

On sustainability, the "Mission 2025" target set has largely been met and the company is working to a "NetZeroby40" transition plan. Deposit return schemes were extended to Austria and Poland during 2025, taking CCH to ten DRS markets, with return rates above 80% in Romania, Hungary and Austria.

The single biggest project, though, is CCBA. An Integration Management Office is being stood up ahead of completion, and management has signalled an intention to pursue a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to reflect the enlarged African footprint.

8. Competitive Landscape

Coca-Cola bottlers do not compete with each other for territory — the franchise agreements are exclusive — so the peer set below is a comparison of scale and growth rather than of direct rivalry. Anheuser-Busch InBev is included as the relevant large-cap comparator for emerging-market beverage distribution economics.

Peer	Key 2025 metric
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (LSE:CCEP)	FY2025 revenue €20,901m, reported growth +2.3%; reported operating profit €2,793m; reported diluted EPS €4.26 (per CCEP's FY2025 preliminary results and SEC Form 20-F XBRL data)
The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO)	The franchisor rather than a bottler; sells concentrate to CCH and owns roughly 21% of its equity. Trailing twelve-month revenue of approximately US$49.3bn as at September 2026.
Coca-Cola Consolidated (NASDAQ:COKE)	FY2025 net sales US$7,228.1m and operating income US$950.7m — the highest revenue, gross profit and operating income in the company's history (per its FY2025 Form 10-K)
Coca-Cola İçecek (BIST:CCOLA)	FY2025 net sales revenue of TRY 187bn, up 3.9%, on volume growth of 8% to 1.6bn unit cases — the closest structural comparator to CCH, being a Turkey-anchored bottler with Central Asian emerging-market exposure
Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD)	Included for scale reference in emerging-market beverage distribution; a company-specific FY2025 metric could not be verified from a primary filing during this research pass and is therefore not stated

The comparison that matters most is the first row. The two businesses are the same model pointed at different halves of the world.

9. Insider Activity

Coca-Cola HBC files PDMR share-dealing notifications with unusual frequency — more than fifty entries in the 2026 RNS feed alone — but almost all of them are mechanical. The pattern is a roughly monthly Employee Share Purchase Plan cycle in which executives make a fixed contribution and the company adds a match. Chief Executive Zoran Bogdanovic participates in every cycle, as do the Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Operating Officer, and the sums involved are in the low thousands of pounds rather than the hundreds of thousands. The table below shows the most recent filing in full.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Zoran Bogdanovic (Chief Executive Officer)	17 Sep 2026	Buy	126.682 contribution + 48.472 match	Employee Share Purchase Plan
Anastasios Stamoulis (Chief Financial Officer)	17 Sep 2026	Buy	28.157 contribution + 23.043 match	Employee Share Purchase Plan
Panagiota Kalogeraki (Chief Operating Officer)	17 Sep 2026	Buy	95.410 contribution + 36.333 match	Employee Share Purchase Plan
Jan Gustavsson (General Counsel and Company Secretary)	17 Sep 2026	Buy	65.530 contribution + 25.119 match	Employee Share Purchase Plan
Zoran Bogdanovic (Chief Executive Officer)	18 Aug 2026	Buy	120	Employee Share Purchase Plan

Across the RNS entries reviewed for the period February to September 2026, no large discretionary open-market director sale was found. A dense cluster of filings in mid-to-late February 2026, immediately following the FY2025 results, is consistent with long-term incentive plan vesting rather than opportunistic dealing. Note that this review covered the most recent pages of the RNS feed rather than the full multi-year history.

10. Key Risks

• Russia concentration: CCH continues to run a self-sufficient, local-brand business in Russia. Independent sell-side estimates published in August 2026 put Russia at 30% to 40% of FY2026 group EBIT and EPS. Any tightening of sanctions, forced divestment or asset seizure would remove a disproportionate share of group profit with no ready replacement.
• Emerging-market currency volatility: The company's own first-listed principal risk is volatility in the Nigerian naira, Egyptian pound and Russian rouble, compounded by consumer purchasing-power risk in those markets. Mitigation is limited to rolling twelve-month hedges covering 25% to 80% of exposure, which defers rather than removes the impact.
• CCBA integration execution: Newly added as a principal risk. The transaction roughly doubles African exposure and brings in a business with different systems, governance and culture. Underdelivery on synergies, IT incompatibility or talent attrition are the specific failure modes management has named.
• Franchise dependence on a single supplier: CCH must purchase its entire concentrate requirement from The Coca-Cola Company. The territory agreements are exclusive and long-dated, but concentrate pricing is negotiated rather than capped, and a strategic change at the franchisor flows straight through to CCH's economics.
• Sugar and health taxation: The company flags rising government use of discriminatory sugar and health-related taxation, particularly across the EU, with the residual risk trend marked as increasing. Each new levy is a margin event that must be recovered through price or mix.
• Input cost and packaging regulation: PET, aluminium and recycled PET price volatility, EU packaging-waste regulation, and hard-currency liquidity constraints on procurement in emerging markets all bear directly on cost of goods.
• Geopolitical and security environment: The company marks this risk trend as increasing, covering employee safety and business interruption arising from the Russia-Ukraine war, Middle East conflict and trade-route disruption.

11. Recent Developments

• 18 Sep 2026 — Shares fall 7.9% in a single session. Contemporaneous trade coverage did not identify a specific company announcement as the catalyst.
• 09 Sep 2026 — Chief Executive presents at the Barclays Global Consumer Conference. Zoran Bogdanovic took part in a fireside chat at the nineteenth annual conference in Boston.
• 05 Aug 2026 — H1 2026 results and a guidance upgrade. Net sales revenue of €6,229.4m, organic revenue growth of 9.6% and organic comparable EBIT growth of 15.2%. FY2026 organic revenue growth was moved to the top end of the 6% to 7% range and organic EBIT growth to 8% to 10%, from 7% to 10%. Net finance cost guidance improved to €40m to €50m and FX flipped from a headwind to a modest tailwind.
• 07 Jul 2026 — Egypt investor event held in Cairo. A "Bitesize Investor" session on the Egyptian business, which had grown FY2025 volumes 13.2%.
• 08 May 2026 — AGM approves the board and the dividend. Chairman Anastassis G. David was re-elected; Bruno Pietracci and Lara Salame Boro joined as non-executive directors while Henrique Braun and Charlotte J. Boyle retired. The FY2025 dividend of €1.20 per share was declared, with a record date of 15 May 2026 and payment on 9 Jun 2026.
• 26 Mar 2026 — €2.1bn of euro bonds priced in three tranches. €700m due 2028 at 3.375%, €600m due 2030 at 3.625% and €800m due 2033 at 4.000%, raised to refinance the CCBA bridge facility.
• 10 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results. Organic revenue growth of 8.1% to €11,604.5m, organic comparable EBIT growth of 11.5% to €1,356.2m, comparable EPS up 19.7% to €2.724 and a proposed dividend of €1.20, up 17%. Initial FY2026 guidance of 6% to 7% organic revenue growth and 7% to 10% organic EBIT growth.
• 21 Oct 2025 — Agreement to acquire 75% of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. A combined US$2.6bn purchase from The Coca-Cola Company and Gutsche Family Investments, implying a 100% equity value of US$3.4bn, with GFI also receiving CCH shares equal to approximately 5.47% of the enlarged share capital. Announced alongside the Q3 2025 trading update.

On the CCBA timetable specifically: management confirmed at the half year that four of six required antitrust clearances had been obtained, and that in July 2026 the South African Competition Commission recommended the Competition Tribunal approve the transaction subject to conditions. Completion remains guided to the second half of 2026.

12. Key Dates

• 24 Sep 2026 — Bernstein Second Annual Consumer Conference, London
• 04 Nov 2026 — 2026 third quarter trading update (marked provisional on the company's investor calendar)
• Expected Dec 2026 — Completion of the Coca-Cola Beverages Africa acquisition, guided by management to the second half of 2026; no precise completion date has been published
• Expected Feb 2027 — FY2026 full-year results; not yet confirmed on the investor calendar, but the FY2023, FY2024 and FY2025 results were released on 14 Feb 2024, 11 Feb 2025 and 10 Feb 2026 respectively
• Expected May 2027 — 2027 Annual General Meeting and declaration of the FY2026 dividend; the 2026 AGM was held on 8 May 2026
• TBC — Secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which management has said it intends to pursue after CCBA completes

Coca-Cola HBC pays a single annual dividend rather than an interim and a final, so the next ex-dividend and payment dates will follow the 2027 AGM. There is no Capital Markets Day currently scheduled; the most recent was held in May 2023. Scheduled macro events that move consumer staples are tracked on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and you can discuss this report with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

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