BASF shares fell after the German chemical company left its cash-flow guidance unchanged, a move some analysts said would disappoint investors.
Shares in BASF were 4.5% lower at 47.21 euros in European afternoon trade Wednesday, reducing the stock's year-to-date gains to 6.25%.
The conglomerate, however, raised its profit outlook, saying that it now expects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization before special items for 2026 in a range between 6.9 billion and 7.7 billion euros ($7.88 billion-$8.79 billion). BASF had previously targeted adjusted Ebitda of 6.2 billion euros to 7.0 billion euros, compared with the 6.6 billion euros it achieved in the prior year.
According to Vara Research, the consensus estimate already sits within the new range, at 7.28 billion euros.
BASF backed its outlook for free cash flow in a range between 1.5 billion euros and 2.3 billion euros. Analysts expected the company's free cash flow at 2.27 billion euros, according to the same consensus.
The unchanged cash-flow guidance is slightly disappointing and implies that raw-material costs are offsetting profitability upgrades, Bernstein analysts James Hooper and Sebastien Afoy said in a note to clients.
BASF said higher raw-material prices would likely lead it to bleed about 200 million euros in cash for the second quarter.
The company's cash flow was affected by a delay in passing higher costs on to customers in some businesses and a lag in the turnaround plan for its Ludwigshafen complex in Germany, but the gap between earnings and cash generation should reduce over time, the analysts said.
BASF said preliminary figures for the second quarter showed adjusted Ebitda came in at 2.4 billion euros, beating analysts' estimates of 2.1 billion euros, and ahead of the 1.6 billion euros it posted in the second quarter of 2025. Earnings rose in all segments apart from surface technologies, it added.
Net profit jumped to 4.1 billion euros from 79 million euros, beating analysts' expectations of 2.4 billion euros. The company attributed the rise to a 3.9 billion-euro gain from the sale of its coatings division to Carlyle.
Higher prices and volumes lifted the company's quarterly sales to 17.2 billion euros, up 16% on year and ahead of consensus forecasts of 16.5 billion euros.
The company said its revised outlook was based on more cautious assumptions about global economic growth, but that the prospects for regional chemical markets in the second half of 2026 were still highly uncertain and depended to a large extent on the outcome of U.S.-Iran negotiations.
Write to Nina Kienle at nina.kienle@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 15, 2026 09:15 ET (13:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments