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International Flavors & Fragrances

IFF on NYSE. International Flavors & Fragrances sells flavors, ingredients, and scents to food, drink, and personal care makers. Market value $21.2bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

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

A big one-off write-off makes recent profit look smaller than the business earns, so we leave price to profit out.

Recent profit includes a big one-time charge, so we price the company excluding that charge.

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
2.5%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $2.54 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
annual report to December 2025
n/a

The filings do not give us enough to work this out.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
-1.5%five-year median

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

Quality score: 56 of 100. Price score: 44 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$83.26 a share, 41% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $59.14 to $89.32.

Dividend: 1.9% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

1.0
-0.1
1.0
0.6
0.3
0.5
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $540 million in the past 12 months, $256 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$11.7bn$12.4bn$11.5bn$11.5bn$10.9bn
Operating margin
5.0%-10.7%-18.4%6.7%-3.5%
Debt to equity
0.540.620.690.650.45
Shares outstanding
0.25bn0.26bn0.26bn0.26bn0.26bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive4 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)6 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.45× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 16.5% 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: $2 billion last quarter, up 2% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $50 million, down 92% on a year ago.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $540 million, down from $565 million.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $5.2 billion more than cash, down from $5.4 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in 1 of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$2.9bn
December 2024$2.8bn
March 2025$2.8bn
June 2025$1.9bn
September 2025$2.7bn
December 2025$2.6bn
March 2026$2.7bn
June 2026$2.0bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$58m
December 2024Not reported
March 2025-$1.0bn
June 2025$599m
September 2025$40m
December 2025$31m
March 2026$169m
June 2026$50m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

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

Who owns it

13 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 13 last quarter. 751 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

4 investors own more than 5%.

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

What insiders did

In the last 12 months, 3 insiders bought $32m of shares on the open market. 4 sold $1m.

  • Teles de Mendonca Ana Paula
    President, Scent
    Sold
    Date
    17 August 2026
    Shares
    5,718
    Price
    $83.19
    Value
    $475,692
  • Birenkrant Marc
    Controller & CAO
    Sold
    Date
    7 August 2026
    Shares
    1,000
    Price
    $85.00
    Value
    $85,000
  • DeVeau Michael
    EVP, CFO
    Sold
    Date
    6 August 2026
    Shares
    8,825
    Price
    $85.55
    Value
    $754,970
  • FRIBOURG PAUL J
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    1 June 2026
    Shares
    273,500
    Price
    $74.29
    Value
    $20m
  • Fyrwald J Erik
    Chief Executive Officer, Director
    Bought
    Date
    13 March 2026
    Shares
    13,360
    Price
    $69.85
    Value
    $933,196
  • FRIBOURG PAUL J
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    12 March 2026
    Shares
    156,200
    Price
    $70.12
    Value
    $11m
  • Fyrwald J Erik
    Chief Executive Officer, Director
    Bought
    Date
    12 March 2026
    Shares
    900
    Price
    $68.87
    Value
    $61,983
  • FRIBOURG PAUL J
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    6 March 2026
    Shares
    3
    Price
    $73.93
    Value
    $222
  • FRIBOURG PAUL J
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    9 February 2026
    Shares
    146
    Price
    $74.63
    Value
    $10,896
  • FRIBOURG PAUL J
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    15 December 2025
    Shares
    3
    Price
    $63.35
    Value
    $190

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 27 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 4 Aug 2026 and 6 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

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

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.