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Makes flavors, fragrances, and functional/food ingredients used by food, beverage and consumer-product companies.
Makes flavors, fragrances, and functional/food ingredients used by food, beverage and consumer-product companies.
Sells flavours and fragrances as custom formulas developed with each customer, who buys them as ingredients in finished products, rather than as off-the-shelf goods. The 2021 merger with DuPont's Nutrition and Biosciences added enzymes and texturants (food-thickening ingredients), and it has since sold its pharma-ingredients unit to Roquette.
Moat: narrow (IP / patents, switching costs, scale). Proprietary flavor/fragrance formulas are qualified into customers' recipes, creating reformulation switching costs.
Headquarters: New York, New York, US · Founded: 1833 · Employees: 21,500
Size International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) is a United States Materials company (Food: Specialty/Candy) with a market value of $20.7B, the 486th largest of 3,117 United States companies the cockpit tracks. Shares closed at $82.62 on 6 Nov 2026.
Performance Over six months the shares gained 2.5%, against +6.7% for the median peer and -1.1% for the United States market (cap-weighted) — 9th lowest of 21 in its peer set.
Growth Revenue fell 16.7% over the last twelve months (peer median +9.9%); the operating margin is 11.0% (peer median 13.2%).
Valuation It trades at 23.4× forward earnings against a peer median of 15.3× (2nd most expensive of 20).
Price implies For today's price to make sense, revenue must grow about 18% a year for seven years (Req g). Recent delivered growth is +16%, so the hurdle is +1 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 4.3 points below its cost of capital (8.3% WACC).
Credit International Flavors & Fragrances has 4 bonds outstanding ($2.71B), rated BBB by the agencies and trading like BBB+ at a weighted spread of 85 bp.
Short interest Short interest is 6.5% of the free float (15 Oct 2026).
Next results Next results expected around 10 Feb 2027 (exchange calendar; dates can move).
| TTM | FY2025 | FY2024 | FY2023 | FY2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $9.23B | $10.9B | $11.5B | $11.5B | $12.4B |
| Revenue growth | — | -5% | 0% | -8% | — |
| Gross profit | $3.15B | $3.37B | $3.52B | $3.00B | $3.42B |
| EBITDA | $1.81B | $2.08B | $2.20B | $1.97B | $2.44B |
| Net income | $182M | -$361M | $263M | -$2.56B | -$1.87B |
| Free cash flow | $501M | $254M | $602M | $936M | -$107M |
| Capital expenditure | $637M | $596M | $468M | $503M | $506M |
| Total debt | $6.79B | $6.65B | $9.64B | $10.8B | $11.7B |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| International Flavors & Fragrances IFF | $20.7B | +2% | -17% | 11% | 23.4× | 17.9% |
| Givaudan GIVN.SW | $45.8B | +47% | -2% | 18% | 34.0× | 10.6% |
| Symrise SY1.DE | $15.1B | +30% | -1% | 12% | 24.8× | 8.1% |
| Sensient Technologies SXT | $5.07B | +1% | +10% | 15% | 25.0× | n/a |
Peer set: Sector in the same market, nearest in size. This is the same default set the interactive Competitor Analysis opens with.
| Measure | IFF | Peer median | Rank in peer set |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-month return | -2.4% | +8.4% | 5th lowest of 21 |
| 6-month return | +2.5% | +6.7% | 9th lowest of 21 |
| Distance from 52-week high | -13.3% | -15.5% | 10th highest of 21 |
| Revenue growth (TTM) | -16.7% | +9.9% | 2nd lowest of 21 |
| Operating margin | 11.0% | 13.2% | 7th lowest of 21 |
| Forward P/E | 23.4× | 15.3× | 2nd most expensive of 20 |
| Growth the price implies (Req g, 7 yrs) | 17.9% | 6.7% | 4th most demanding of 21 |
| Growth delivered (Del g) | +16.5% | +7.6% | 4th highest of 21 |
| Hurdle (Req g minus delivered) | +1.4 pp | -1.5 pp | 8th most demanding of 21 |
| ROIC minus cost of capital | -4.3 pp | +2.5 pp | 3rd lowest of 21 |
| EV / EBITDA | 15.1× | 10.2× | 4th most expensive of 21 |
| Net debt / EBITDA | 3.6× | 1.9× | 2nd most indebted of 21 |
| Bond spread | 85 bp | 103 bp | 7th tightest of 18 |
| Company | Market | Market cap | 6M return | Revenue growth | Op. margin | Forward P/E | Req g | Delivered g |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| International Flavors & Fragrances IFF | United States | $20.7B | +2% | -17% | 11% | 23.4× | 17.9% | +16.5% |
| Amcor AMCR | United States | $20.7B | +14% | +57% | 9% | n/a | 5.8% | +12.8% |
| Reliance RS | United States | $21.2B | +13% | +25% | 9% | 14.9× | 9.1% | +10.2% |
| LyondellBasell LYB | United States | $19.6B | -15% | -2% | 10% | 9.5× | -10.3% | +1.7% |
| DuPont DD | United States | $19.4B | -1% | -43% | 14% | 18.3× | 14.7% | -13.7% |
| Packaging Corporation of America PKG | United States | $22.2B | +12% | +12% | 13% | 17.8× | 4.3% | +6.2% |
| Royal Gold RGLD | United States | $22.5B | +11% | +94% | 63% | 20.9× | 10.9% | +15.6% |
| Dow DOW | United States | $22.7B | -14% | +4% | 5% | 14.8× | 4.3% | +0.7% |
| Amrize AMRZ | United States | $22.9B | -21% | +4% | 16% | 17.2× | -0.1% | +3.3% |
| Smurfit Westrock SW | United States | $23.1B | +7% | +1% | 5% | 15.1× | 13.5% | +26.2% |
| International Paper IP | United States | $18.3B | +6% | +3% | 3% | 15.8× | 26.4% | +6.1% |
| CF Industries CF | United States | $18.1B | +4% | +20% | 41% | 9.8× | -11.8% | +11.4% |
| ATI ATI | United States | $23.9B | +11% | +9% | 18% | 28.0× | 20.6% | +9.0% |
| Ball BALL | United States | $17.2B | +13% | +21% | 11% | 15.3× | 6.4% | +2.3% |
| Cemex SAB de CV Sponsored ADR CX | United States | $16.6B | -18% | +10% | 13% | 11.2× | 4.4% | +4.7% |
| James Hardie Industries JHX | United States | $16.2B | +33% | +43% | 14% | 21.0× | 26.1% | +10.7% |
| Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. Sponsored ADR Pfd Series B SQM | United States | $16.0B | -37% | +59% | 39% | 7.3× | -4.8% | +20.1% |
| Coeur Mining CDE | United States | $15.9B | -17% | +117% | 35% | 12.1× | 10.9% | +21.6% |
| PPG Industries PPG | United States | $27.0B | +12% | +6% | 13% | 14.6× | 7.1% | +2.8% |
| Avery Dennison AVY | United States | $14.1B | +14% | +7% | 13% | 17.4× | 1.9% | +4.9% |
| Carpenter Technology CRS | United States | $13.8B | -35% | +10% | 23% | 20.0× | 17.4% | +16.2% |
International Flavors & Fragrances has 4 bonds outstanding with $2.71B face value. The agencies rate it BBB; its bonds trade like BBB+. Weighted yield 5.70%, a spread of 85 bp over government bonds.