Stepan
SCL on NYSE. Soap, detergents, cleang preparations, perfumes, cosmetics. Market value $1.4bn.
Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.
Recent profit includes a one-time gain, so we price the company excluding that gain.
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 $2.58 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.
You pay 489.3 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.
The filings do not give us enough to work this out.
Quality score: 60 of 100. Price score: 14 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.
$62.39 a share, 49% above its 1-year low
Over the past year the price has ranged from $41.82 to $68.00.
Dividend: 2.5% a year
Paid every year for at least 5 years
Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).
Five years of cash, in billions
Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $37 million in the past 12 months, $25 million in the year to December 2025.
| Revenue | |||||
| Revenue | $2.3bn | $2.8bn | $2.3bn | $2.2bn | $2.3bn |
| Operating margin | |||||
| Operating margin | 7.3% | 7.5% | 2.5% | 3.2% | 3.4% |
| Debt to equity | |||||
| Debt to equity | 0.34 | 0.50 | 0.54 | 0.53 | 0.50 |
| Shares outstanding | |||||
| Shares outstanding | 0.02bn | 0.02bn | 0.02bn | 0.02bn | 0.02bn |
Health checks
- Free cash flow positive2 of 5 years
- Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
- Financial strength (Piotroski)6 of 8 checks we could run
- Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
- Debt0.50× equity
- Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 4.5% 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: $684 million last quarter, up 15% on a year ago.
- Profit: $23 million, up 102% on a year ago.
- It keeps 1 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 3 cents a year earlier.
- Spare cash over the past 12 months: $37 million. A year earlier it spent $12 million more than it brought in.
- About the same number of shares as a year ago.
- Debt is $534 million more than cash, down from $569 million a year ago.
- Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | $547m |
| December 2024 | $526m |
| March 2025 | $593m |
| June 2025 | $595m |
| September 2025 | $590m |
| December 2025 | $554m |
| March 2026 | $605m |
| June 2026 | $684m |
| Quarter to | Amount |
|---|---|
| September 2024 | $24m |
| December 2024 | $3m |
| March 2025 | $20m |
| June 2025 | $11m |
| September 2025 | $11m |
| December 2025 | $5m |
| March 2026 | -$41m |
| June 2026 | $23m |
From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.
Dates
- Next results (estimated)
- n/a
- Last annual report (10-K)
- 26 February 2026
- Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
- 4 November 2026
Who owns it
2 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 3 last quarter. 230 funds in all.
- Gotham Asset ManagementJoel Greenblatt
- Value
- $9m
- Share of fund
- <0.1%
- Barrow HanleyBarrow Hanley team
- Value
- $10,420
- Share of fund
- <0.1%
| Fund | Value | Share of that fund | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gotham Asset ManagementJoel Greenblatt | $9m | <0.1% | |
| Barrow HanleyBarrow Hanley team | $10,420 | <0.1% |
Sold out this quarter
Largest holders overall
- BlackRock$193mAdded
- HighTower Advisors$89m
- Vanguard Portfolio Management$77m
- Dimensional Fund Advisors LP$63m
- Vanguard Capital Management$53m
- American Century Companies$53mAdded
- Deprince Race & Zollo$52m
- State Street$50m
- Geode Capital Management$32mAdded
- Ameriprise Financial$24mAdded
From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.
Big holders and activists
3 investors own more than 5%.
- BlackRock, Inc.Passive investor14.2%Since 31 March 2025
- Vanguard Portfolio ManagementPassive investor6.0%Since 31 March 2026
- Dimensional Fund Advisors LPPassive investor5.0%Since 31 December 2025
- STATE STREET CORPORATIONPassive investorSold down below 5%Since 31 March 2025
- The Vanguard GroupPassive investorSold down below 5%Since 13 March 2026
| Holder | Stake | Since | |
|---|---|---|---|
BlackRock, Inc. Passive investor | 14.2% | 31 March 2025 | |
Vanguard Portfolio Management Passive investor | 6.0% | 31 March 2026 | |
Dimensional Fund Advisors LP Passive investor | 5.0% | 31 December 2025 | |
STATE STREET CORPORATION Passive investor | Sold down below 5% | 31 March 2025 | |
The Vanguard Group Passive investor | Sold down below 5% | 13 March 2026 |
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.
What could go wrong
- It isn't cheap on profits: 489.3× 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
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.