Orion
OEC on NYSE. Orion sells carbon black to makers of tires and rubber products. Market value $331m.
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
See Materials stocks that passed both tests
This is not advice. Check the numbers below.
For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $7.89 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.
The filings do not give us enough to work this out.
Each dollar kept in the business earns 9 cents a year. Above 10 is good.
Quality score: 53 of 100. Price score: 33 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.
$5.72 a share, 32% above its 1-year low
Over the past year the price has ranged from $4.34 to $8.64.
Dividend: 1.4% a year
Paid every year for 4 years
Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).
Five years of cash, in billions
Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $26 million in the past 12 months, $55 million in the year to December 2025.
| Revenue | |||||
| Revenue | $1.5bn | $2.0bn | $1.9bn | $1.9bn | $1.8bn |
| Operating margin | |||||
| Operating margin | 14.8% | 9.7% | 10.8% | 5.5% | 1.5% |
| Debt to equity | |||||
| Debt to equity | 3.12 | 2.72 | 2.17 | 2.62 | 3.53 |
| Shares outstanding | |||||
| Shares outstanding | 0.06bn | 0.06bn | 0.06bn | 0.06bn | 0.06bn |
Health checks
- Free cash flow positive2 of 5 years
- Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
- Financial strength (Piotroski)3 of 9
- Profit backed by cash (accruals)No
- Debt3.53× equity
- Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 9.7% a year
- Buying back its own sharesYes, 7% fewer since 2021
The quarter to June 2026
How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
- Sales: $501 million last quarter, up 7% on a year ago.
- Profit: $2 million, down 80% on a year ago.
- It keeps 0 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 4 cents a year earlier.
- Spare cash over the past 12 months: $26 million. A year earlier it spent $73 million more than it brought in.
- 2% more shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit less of the company.
- Debt is $1.3 billion more than cash, about the same as a year ago.
- Sales grew on a year ago in 1 of the last 4 quarters.
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | $463m |
| December 2024 | $434m |
| March 2025 | $478m |
| June 2025 | $466m |
| September 2025 | $451m |
| December 2025 | $412m |
| March 2026 | $460m |
| June 2026 | $501m |
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | -$20m |
| December 2024 | $17m |
| March 2025 | $9m |
| June 2025 | $9m |
| September 2025 | -$67m |
| December 2025 | -$21m |
| March 2026 | -$10m |
| June 2026 | $2m |
From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.
Dates
- Next results (estimated)
- n/a
- Last annual report (10-K)
- 17 February 2026
- Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
- 4 November 2026
Who owns it
5 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 5 last quarter. 188 funds in all.
- First Pacific Advisors (FPA)Steven Romick
- Value
- $3m
- Share of fund
- <0.1%
- GMOJeremy Grantham
- Value
- $89,107
- Share of fund
- <0.1%
| Fund | Value | Share of that fund | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pzena Investment ManagementRichard Pzena | $32m | <0.1% | Added |
| First Pacific Advisors (FPA)Steven Romick | $3m | <0.1% | |
| LSV Asset ManagementJosef Lakonishok | $608,000 | <0.1% | Cut |
| Tweedy, BrowneTweedy Browne partners | $600,148 | <0.1% | Added |
| GMOJeremy Grantham | $89,107 | <0.1% |
Largest holders overall
- Pzena Investment Management$32mAdded
- BlackRock$28mAdded
- Divisar Capital Management$22mCut
- American Century Companies$21mAdded
- AQR Capital Management$16mAdded
- D. E. Shaw$15mCut
- Dimensional Fund Advisors LP$13mCut
- Invesco$11mCut
- Fuller & Thaler Asset Management$11mAdded
- Geode Capital Management$10mAdded
From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.
Big holders and activists
3 investors own more than 5%.
- Pzena Investment ManagementPassive investor8.1%Since 30 June 2025
- American Century Investment Management, Inc.Passive investorat least 5.7%(filed with 3 related holders)Since 30 June 2026
- Divisar Capital Management LLCPassive investorat least 5.5%(filed with 2 related holders)Since 19 February 2026
- T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc.Passive investorSold down below 5%Since 31 December 2024
- WILLIAM BLAIR INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, LLCPassive investorSold down below 5%Since 30 June 2025
| Holder | Stake | Since | |
|---|---|---|---|
Pzena Investment Management Passive investor | 8.1% | 30 June 2025 | |
American Century Investment Management, Inc. Passive investor | at least 5.7% (filed with 3 related holders) | 30 June 2026 | |
Divisar Capital Management LLC Passive investor | at least 5.5% (filed with 2 related holders) | 19 February 2026 | |
T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc. Passive investor | Sold down below 5% | 31 December 2024 | |
WILLIAM BLAIR INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, LLC Passive investor | Sold down below 5% | 30 June 2025 |
From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.
What insiders did
No insider bought or sold on the open market in the last 12 months.
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 17 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 5 Aug 2026 and 9 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 carries a lot of debt: 3.5× its equity.
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
Your first deep dive is free.
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.