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Provides water treatment, cleaning and infection-prevention products and services to industrial, food-service and healthcare customers globally.
Provides water treatment, cleaning and infection-prevention products and services to industrial, food-service and healthcare customers globally.
Sells cleaning and water-treatment chemicals together with on-site service and dosing equipment it installs, so customers sit on recurring contracts that are hard to switch. Its present shape comes from the 2011 merger with Nalco, and in 2020 it spun off its upstream oil-and-gas chemicals business, which became ChampionX.
Moat: wide (switching costs, scale, installed base). On-site service/technician relationships and embedded dosing equipment across millions of customer sites create high switching costs.
Headquarters: Saint Paul, Minnesota, US · Founded: 1923 · Employees: 48,000
Size Ecolab (ECL) is a United States Materials company (Chemicals: Specialty) with a market value of $84.3B, the 162nd largest of 3,117 United States companies the cockpit tracks. Shares closed at $300.68 on 6 Nov 2026.
Performance Over six months the shares gained 18.6%, against +3.8% for the median peer and -1.1% for the United States market (cap-weighted) — 3rd highest of 10 in its peer set.
Growth Revenue grew 9.3% over the last twelve months (peer median +4.5%); the operating margin is 18.3% (peer median 24.3%).
Valuation It trades at 33.6× forward earnings against a peer median of 21.2× (2nd most expensive of 10).
Price implies For today's price to make sense, revenue must grow about 20% a year for seven years (Req g). Recent delivered growth is +6%, so the hurdle is +13 pp: the price needs faster growth than the company has been delivering — of companies that just grew 25–50% a year, 93.8% slowed down over the next four years.
Capital Return on invested capital runs 2.0 points above its cost of capital (8.6% WACC).
Backlog Backlog (remaining performance obligations) was $201M at 31 Mar 2026, up 82% on a year earlier — 0.0 years of trailing revenue. Backlog detail →
Credit Ecolab has 17 bonds outstanding ($12.4B), rated A- by the agencies and trading like AA- at a weighted spread of 59 bp.
Short interest Short interest is 1.7% of the free float (15 Oct 2026).
Next results Next results expected around 16 Feb 2027 (exchange calendar; dates can move).
| TTM | FY2025 | FY2024 | FY2023 | FY2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $17.4B | $16.1B | $15.7B | $15.3B | $14.2B |
| Revenue growth | — | +2% | +3% | +8% | — |
| Gross profit | $7.66B | $7.15B | $6.84B | $6.18B | $5.42B |
| EBITDA | $4.25B | $3.87B | $3.55B | $3.08B | $2.55B |
| Net income | $2.08B | $2.08B | $2.11B | $1.37B | $1.09B |
| Free cash flow | $1.80B | $1.90B | $1.82B | $1.64B | $1.08B |
| Capital expenditure | $1.23B | $1.05B | $994M | $775M | $713M |
| Total debt | $13.9B | $9.00B | $8.28B | $8.73B | $9.03B |
The default views of Competitor Analysis ▸ Charts, drawn from the same data. Open them in the cockpit to change the axes, pin companies and read every value.
| Company | Market cap | 6M return | Revenue growth | Op. margin | Forward P/E | Req g |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ecolab ECL | $84.3B | +19% | +9% | 18% | 33.6× | 19.7% |
| Veralto VLTO | $28.5B | +35% | +6% | 22% | 24.6× | 8.3% |
| Kurita Water Industries 6370.T | $3.47B | -39% | +1% | 14% | 11.3× | 5.6% |
| Kemira KEMIRA.HE | $2.55B | -8% | -3% | 8% | 16.0× | 3.9% |
| Veolia Environnement VIE.PA | $27.7B | -3% | 0% | 8% | 14.1× | 8.3% |
Peer set: Industry: the same industry and sector in any market, nearest in size. This is the same default set the interactive Competitor Analysis opens with.
| Measure | ECL | Peer median | Rank in peer set |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-month return | +6.7% | +7.0% | 5th lowest of 10 |
| 6-month return | +18.6% | +3.8% | 3rd highest of 10 |
| Distance from 52-week high | -5.7% | -5.9% | 4th highest of 10 |
| Revenue growth (TTM) | +9.3% | +4.5% | 2nd highest of 10 |
| Operating margin | 18.3% | 24.3% | 3rd lowest of 10 |
| Forward P/E | 33.6× | 21.2× | 2nd most expensive of 10 |
| Growth the price implies (Req g, 7 yrs) | 19.7% | 8.7% | most demanding of 9 |
| Growth delivered (Del g) | +6.4% | +5.1% | 4th highest of 9 |
| Hurdle (Req g minus delivered) | +13.3 pp | +4.6 pp | most demanding of 9 |
| ROIC minus cost of capital | +2.0 pp | +1.0 pp | 5th highest of 10 |
| EV / EBITDA | 23.0× | 17.7× | 2nd most expensive of 9 |
| Net debt / EBITDA | 3.1× | 1.8× | 2nd most indebted of 9 |
| Bond spread | 59 bp | 70 bp | tightest of 7 |
| Company | Market | Market cap | 6M return | Revenue growth | Op. margin | Forward P/E | Req g | Delivered g |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ecolab ECL | United States | $84.3B | +19% | +9% | 18% | 33.6× | 19.7% | +6.4% |
| Air Products APD | United States | $67.9B | +4% | +5% | 24% | 21.2× | n/a | n/a |
| Shin-etsu Chemical 4063.T | Japan | $66.5B | -27% | +5% | 25% | 17.2× | 8.9% | +11.4% |
| Air Liquide AI.PA | France | $134B | +15% | -1% | 21% | 29.0× | 18.1% | +5.6% |
| Basf BAS.DE | Germany | $52.6B | +2% | -4% | 7% | 16.8× | 5.7% | +0.2% |
| Novonesis A/S NSIS-B.CO | Denmark | $32.1B | +22% | +5% | 21% | 30.0× | 13.2% | +17.2% |
| Linde LIN | United States | $237B | +5% | +8% | 27% | 27.0× | 14.4% | +4.5% |
| Ems-chemie EMSN.SW | Switzerland | $24.3B | +28% | -3% | 30% | 39.4× | 8.6% | +1.6% |
| Ningxia Baofeng Energy 600989.SS | China | $23.4B | -31% | +35% | 35% | 8.4× | -7.8% | +24.8% |
| Dow DOW | United States | $22.7B | -14% | +4% | 5% | 14.8× | 4.3% | +0.7% |
Ecolab has 17 bonds outstanding with $12.4B face value. The agencies rate it A-; its bonds trade like AA-. Weighted yield 5.36%, a spread of 59 bp over government bonds.
Ecolab reported $201M of remaining performance obligations at 31 Mar 2026, up 82% from a year earlier and up 16% from the previous quarter. That is 0.0 years of trailing revenue already under contract. Book-to-bill last quarter: 1.01.