One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$16.04 our estimate vs market $22.58
Wall Street consensus: $27.00 (68.3% higher than our fair-value estimate)
41% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Akzo Nobel N.V.
AKZOY · OQX · Basic Materials · Specialty Chemicals
Current price
$22.58
52-week range
$18.04 - $25.99
Market cap
$11.61B
Balance sheet
Watch
5.52x Adequate
Net debt $3.63B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
1 Risk
3 rewards · 1 risks
- Reward Returns 14.1% on equity, ahead of 16% of its peers.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 3/10 years.
- Reward Trades at 15.7x P/E vs peer median 21.0x (25.2% cheaper).
- Risk Insider ownership is only 0.0% (peer median: 0.4%).
What this company does
Akzo Nobel N.V.
Akzo Nobel is a global paint company that earns money from two main areas: decorative paints for homes, including brands like Dulux, and specialized performance coatings. These industrial coatings are essential for protecting large, expensive assets like ships, cars, and buildings from things like rust, fire, and scratches. This means the company sells its products to both everyday consumers doing home projects and large industrial businesses, giving it a very broad customer base.
How the company got here
Akzo Nobel's roots trace back centuries, but the modern company was formed in 1994 through a merger between Akzo from the Netherlands and Nobel Industries from Sweden. This brought together a long history of chemical and paint manufacturing, including companies once owned by Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel Prize. A key turning point was the 2008 acquisition of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), which added the well-known Dulux paint brand to its portfolio. More recently, the company sharpened its focus by selling its specialty chemicals division in 2018 to become a pure-play paints and coatings company.
What it actually does
Akzo Nobel is a global company that makes paints and coatings for a huge variety of uses. You might recognize their products from the paint aisle under brand names like Dulux, Sikkens, and Hammerite. Their products provide color and protection for everything from the walls in your home to massive structures like ships, airplanes, cars, and even the aluminum cans for your beverages.
Decorative Paints
This is the part of the business most people are familiar with, making paints, lacquers, and varnishes for homes and buildings. Its customers are both professional decorators and regular people doing their own home improvement projects (often called the DIY market). People buy these products to color and protect everything from interior walls to exterior wood and metal surfaces. This segment is a major part of the company and owns many household brand names.
Performance Coatings
This segment creates highly specialized coatings designed to withstand tough conditions and provide specific functions, like protection from corrosion (rust) or fire. The customers are other large businesses in industries like aerospace, automotive, energy, and shipbuilding. For example, an airline pays for special coatings to protect its planes from the elements, and a shipping company buys marine coatings to protect its vessels from saltwater. This business is a large, critical part of the company, providing essential products for industrial manufacturing and infrastructure.
What management is betting on now
The company's main focus is on growing profitably by investing in areas where it has a strong advantage, such as coatings for airplanes and durable powder coatings (a type of paint applied as a dry powder). They are also running an "industrial excellence" program to make their operations more efficient, which includes upgrading key factories with more automation. A major priority is sustainability, with a goal to cut carbon emissions in half across its entire value chain (the complete process from sourcing materials to the customer's use of the product) by 2030.
Price history
How the share price has moved
—
Loading price history…
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $16.04 vs current price $22.58
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $27.00 (68.3% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $16.04 a share — about 29.0% below today's price of $22.58, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Watch
Net debt $3.6B. Interest coverage 5.5x.
Net debt
$3.63B
Interest coverage
5.52x
Akzo Nobel N.V.'s profit covers its interest bill about 5.5 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here.
Watch
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
AKZOY
BASELINE
Akzo Nobel N.V.
Total debt $7.65B Interest coverage 5.52x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $7.47B Interest coverage 9.00x +63% vs AKZOY Carries about 1.6x more debt cushion than AKZOY.
Total debt $15.03B Interest coverage 8.16x +48% vs AKZOY Carries about 1.5x more debt cushion than AKZOY.
Total debt $2.95B Interest coverage 8.66x +57% vs AKZOY Carries about 1.6x more debt cushion than AKZOY.
Total debt $3.07B Interest coverage 4.18x -24% vs AKZOY Carries about 1.3x less debt cushion than AKZOY.
What you should know
The case for and against AKZOY
3 Rewards
1 Risk
Rewards
-
Returns 14.1% on equity, ahead of 16% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 3/10 years.
-
Trades at 15.7x P/E vs peer median 21.0x (25.2% cheaper).
Risks
-
Insider ownership is only 0.0% (peer median: 0.4%).
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
15.68x
Forward P/E
12.84x
P/B
2.06x
P/S
1.17x
EV/EBITDA
14.00x
PEG ratio
2.24x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
40.3%
Operating margin
10.8%
Net margin
6.4%
ROE
14.1%
ROA
3.3%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
1.31x
Current ratio
1.88x
Quick ratio
1.48x
Total debt
$7.65B
Total cash
$4.02B
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$11.48B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
-2.2%
EPS TTM
1.44
EPS 5Y CAGR
22.4%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$1.06B
Free CF TTM
$703.10M
FCF margin
6.1%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
3.5%
Payout ratio
53.5%
Last ex-div date
2026-04-28