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Albemarle

ALB on NYSE. Albemarle sells chemicals to manufacturers and businesses worldwide. Market value $12.3bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

Should I look at this?

Not a fit for our list right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See Materials stocks that passed both tests

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
10.7%very high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $10.70 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
51.2×full

You pay 51.2 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
1.6%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 2 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 53 of 100. Price score: 43 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$106.35 a share, 21% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $88.01 to $221.00.

Dividend: 1.5% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

-0.6
0.6
-0.8
-1.0
0.7
1.3
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $1.3 billion in the past 12 months, $692 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$3.3bn$7.3bn$9.6bn$5.4bn$5.1bn
Operating margin
24.0%33.7%2.6%-33.0%-7.1%
Debt to equity
0.440.410.450.360.35
Shares outstanding
0.12bn0.12bn0.12bn0.12bn0.12bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive2 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)5 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)No
  • Debt0.35× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 10.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $1.7 billion last quarter, up 31% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $480 million, up 1996% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 4 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, after losing 21 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $1.3 billion. A year earlier it spent $187 million more than it brought in.
  • 16% more shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit less of the company.
  • Debt is $350 million more than cash, down from $1.9 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in 3 of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$1.4bn
December 2024$1.2bn
March 2025$1.1bn
June 2025$1.3bn
September 2025$1.3bn
December 2025$1.4bn
March 2026$1.4bn
June 2026$1.7bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024-$1.1bn
December 2024$75m
March 2025$41m
June 2025$23m
September 2025-$161m
December 2025-$414m
March 2026$319m
June 2026$480m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
4 November 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
11 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
4 November 2026

Who owns it

4 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 5 last quarter. 940 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

5 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 4 sold $7m.

  • Masters J Kent
    Chairman & CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    15 May 2026
    Shares
    16,393
    Price
    $183.72
    Value
    $3m
  • Masters J Kent
    Chairman & CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    10 March 2026
    Shares
    11,783
    Price
    $170.81
    Value
    $2m
  • Norris Eric
    Chief Commercial Officer
    Sold
    Date
    20 February 2026
    Shares
    5,692
    Price
    $165.45
    Value
    $941,741
  • Anderson Melissa H.
    Chief Bus..Transformation Off.
    Sold
    Date
    13 February 2026
    Shares
    8,454
    Price
    $163.71
    Value
    $1m
  • Krupa Ander C.
    General Counsel & Sec
    Sold
    Date
    24 October 2025
    Shares
    172
    Price
    $105.00
    Value
    $18,060
  • Krupa Ander C.
    General Counsel & Sec
    Sold
    Date
    9 October 2025
    Shares
    116
    Price
    $95.00
    Value
    $11,020

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 11 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 5 Aug 2026 and 11 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

  • It isn't cheap on profits: 51.2× operating profit.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.