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Sensient Technologies

SXT on NYSE. Sensient Technologies sells colors, flavors, and fragrances to food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics companies. Market value $5.5bn.

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?

Good business, but not cheap right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See cheaper Materials stocks on the list

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
0.1%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $0.08 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

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

You pay 26.7 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
9.1%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 9 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 80 of 100. Price score: 22 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$132.91 a share, 61% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $82.60 to $138.82.

Dividend: 1.2% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.1
-0.1
0.1
0.1
0.0
0.0
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $4 million in the past 12 months, $38 million in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$1.4bn$1.4bn$1.5bn$1.6bn$1.6bn
Operating margin
12.3%13.7%10.6%12.3%12.8%
Debt to equity
0.550.650.630.600.59
Shares outstanding
0.04bn0.04bn0.04bn0.04bn0.04bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive4 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)5 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.59× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 3.9% 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: $462 million last quarter, up 12% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $51 million, up 37% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 14 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, up from 13 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $4 million, down from $63 million.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $733 million more than cash, up from $680 million a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$393m
December 2024$376m
March 2025$392m
June 2025$414m
September 2025$412m
December 2025$393m
March 2026$436m
June 2026$462m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$33m
December 2024$30m
March 2025$34m
June 2025$38m
September 2025$37m
December 2025$25m
March 2026$44m
June 2026$51m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
13 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
3 November 2026

Who owns it

3 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 3 last quarter. 380 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

3 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, 2 insiders bought $291,167 of shares on the open market. 4 sold $702,853.

  • Ferruzzi Mario
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    5 August 2026
    Shares
    1,200
    Price
    $129.48
    Value
    $155,372
  • Hoang Thierry
    VP, Asia Pacific Group
    Sold
    Date
    18 May 2026
    Shares
    400
    Price
    $115.19
    Value
    $46,076
  • Hoang Thierry
    VP, Asia Pacific Group
    Sold
    Date
    4 May 2026
    Shares
    439
    Price
    $114.15
    Value
    $50,112
  • Morris Steven B
    President, Color Group
    Sold
    Date
    30 April 2026
    Shares
    200
    Price
    $114.58
    Value
    $22,916
  • WHITELAW ESSIE
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    3 December 2025
    Shares
    3,985
    Price
    $95.02
    Value
    $378,655
  • WHITELAW ESSIE
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    20 November 2025
    Shares
    533
    Price
    $93.22
    Value
    $49,723
  • Plautz David J.
    VP and Treasurer
    Bought
    Date
    4 November 2025
    Shares
    2,150
    Price
    $92.98
    Value
    $199,907
  • Carleone Joseph
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    3 November 2025
    Shares
    1,000
    Price
    $91.26
    Value
    $91,260

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: 26.7× 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.