One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$8.62 our estimate vs market $51.32
Wall Street consensus: $68.29 (691.9% higher than our fair-value estimate)
495% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
H.B. Fuller Company
FUL · NYQ · Basic Materials · Specialty Chemicals
Current price
$51.32
52-week range
$46.70 - $68.63
Market cap
$2.76B
Balance sheet
Stretched
2.83x Stretched
Net debt $2.09B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
2 Risks
3 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
- Reward Trades at 14.3x P/E vs peer median 18.4x (22.5% cheaper).
- Risk Net debt grew 14.5% over 3 years.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 0.3% (peer median: 1.3%).
What this company does
H.B. Fuller Company
H.B. Fuller makes the specialty glues, sealants, and coatings that are essential, "invisible" components in countless products, from the packaging on your food to the parts in your car. The company makes money by selling these adhesives to a wide range of global industries, including construction, electronics, hygiene, and transportation. This matters because having such a broad customer base means the company isn't overly dependent on any single part of the economy for its sales.
How the company got here
H.B. Fuller started in 1887 when Harvey Benjamin Fuller began making and selling his own wallpaper paste in St. Paul, Minnesota. The company grew steadily, first by creating new types of glues for everything from attaching labels to making shoes, and later by expanding across the country. A major turning point came in 1941 when Elmer Andersen bought the company and pushed for rapid growth, eventually expanding into international markets. Over the years, H.B. Fuller has continued to grow by acquiring other companies, including the largest purchase in its history, Royal Adhesives & Sealants, which made it a global leader in its field.
What it actually does
H.B. Fuller makes specialty chemical products, but you can think of them mainly as a company that creates high-tech glues, sealants, and coatings for thousands of different uses. While you won't find their brand name on many items in a store, their products are the invisible force holding many everyday things together. For example, their adhesives are used in food packaging to keep it sealed, in diapers to hold them together, and in electronics to protect sensitive components. They also make products for construction, like sealants for roofing and windows, and for manufacturing, like the glues used to assemble cars and furniture.
Hygiene, Health and Consumable Adhesives
This is the company's largest business segment, making up a little less than half of its sales. It creates specialized adhesives for products people use every day, which is why it's called 'consumable'. This includes the adhesives that hold together diapers, feminine hygiene products, and medical supplies. It also makes the glues used in packaging for food and other goods, as well as for tapes and labels. The customers are other large manufacturing companies that make these consumer products.
Engineering Adhesives
This segment, which accounts for a large portion of the company's revenue, focuses on high-performance adhesives for putting together durable goods. Think of this as the industrial-strength side of the business, creating powerful bonding solutions for major industries. Their products are used in assembling vehicles, airplanes, electronics, appliances, and even in clean energy products like solar panels. These customers need adhesives that can withstand extreme conditions and last for a long time, so performance is critical.
Building Adhesive Solutions
This is the smallest of the three segments, representing a smaller slice of the company's total revenue. It provides adhesives and sealants specifically for the construction industry. Their products are used in commercial roofing, for heating and air conditioning systems (HVAC), and to create seals for windows and building exteriors to make them weatherproof. This segment sells to both professional trade workers and directly to consumers through retailers for home improvement projects.
What management is betting on now
The company's strategy is to focus on creating highly specialized adhesive solutions where the performance of the glue is critical and failure would be very costly for their customers. They are concentrating on high-value areas like medical adhesives, electronics, and clean energy, where innovation can command a higher price. Sustainability is another key focus; H.B. Fuller is developing products that help their customers meet their own environmental goals, such as enabling recyclable packaging or more energy-efficient manufacturing. Finally, the company continues to make strategic acquisitions to enter new markets and gain new technologies, such as its recent expansion into the medical adhesives market.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2025 Q2
$-85.89M
FY2025 Q3
$68.93M
FY2025 Q4
$59.05M
FY2026 Q1
$-61.67M
FY2026 Q2
$74.46M
FY2026 Q3
$28.19M
Revenue
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Net income
$79.18M
Diluted EPS
1.44
Operating cash flow
$65.46M
Free cash flow
$28.19M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$67.81M
Diluted EPS
1.23
Operating cash flow
$121.14M
Free cash flow
$74.46M
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Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$21.05M
Diluted EPS
0.38
Operating cash flow
$-3.97M
Free cash flow
$-61.67M
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Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$29.73M
Diluted EPS
0.53
Operating cash flow
$106.74M
Free cash flow
$59.05M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$67.16M
Diluted EPS
1.22
Operating cash flow
$98.99M
Free cash flow
$68.93M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
—
Net income
$13.25M
Diluted EPS
0.24
Operating cash flow
$-52.91M
Free cash flow
$-85.89M
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Sources
Revenue
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Net income
$-82.99M
Diluted EPS
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Operating cash flow
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Free cash flow
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Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $8.62 vs current price $51.32
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $68.29 (691.9% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $8.62 a share — about 83.2% below today's price of $51.32, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Stretched
Net debt $2.1B. Interest coverage 2.8x.
Net debt
$2.09B
Interest coverage
2.83x
H.B. Fuller Company's profit covers its interest bill about 2.8 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here.
Stretched
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
FUL
BASELINE
H.B. Fuller Company
Total debt $2.19B Interest coverage 2.83x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $2.74B Interest coverage 8.66x +206% vs FUL Carries about 3.1x more debt cushion than FUL.
What you should know
The case for and against FUL
3 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
-
Trades at 14.3x P/E vs peer median 18.4x (22.5% cheaper).
-
Dividend yield is 1.9% with 40-year payout history.
Risks
-
Net debt grew 14.5% over 3 years.
-
Insider ownership is only 0.3% (peer median: 1.3%).
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)
14.30x
Forward P/E
9.91x
P/B
1.27x
P/S
0.78x
EV/EBITDA
7.95x
PEG ratio
2.20x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
32.7%
Operating margin
13.2%
Net margin
5.6%
ROE
9.6%
ROA
5.0%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
1.01x
Current ratio
1.82x
Quick ratio
0.91x
Total debt
$2.19B
Total cash
$97.23M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$2.90B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
8.6%
EPS TTM
3.59
EPS 5Y CAGR
-5.5%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$289.37M
Free CF TTM
$121.22M
FCF margin
4.2%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
1.9%
Payout ratio
26.7%
Last ex-div date
2026-10-15