Chemours Co (CC): what the price requires

At today's price, Chemours Co (CC) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~6.9 years. boothcheck doesn't publish a fair value or a price target; it shows what the price assumes, so you can judge whether that bar is too high.

Generated: 2026-07-19 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CC

Headline

FieldValue
TickerCC
CompanyChemours Co
Current price$17.96/sh
CompositionOpteon refrigerants 22% / Freon refrigerants 7% / Foam, propellants, and other 6% / Titanium dioxide 40% / Minerals & Other 2% / Advanced materials 13% / Performance solutions 9% / Performance chemicals and intermediates 1%

What The Price Requires (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Operating margin (mid-cycle)2.7%
Trailing margin (depressed year)-5.1%
Must persist for6.9y
Multiple paid40x mid-cycle operating income

Solve inputs: computed at a 8.6% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~2 years.

How unusual the bet is: high

ReferenceValue
vs own history+2.27σ
sustained it ~6.9 years at this level23%
implied end-window share0%

Valuation X-Ray

The price is justified by relative-multiple; asset-based/growth-DCF land below the price.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset13.30x2expensive
Earnings—0—
Relative0.31x2justifies
Growth1.58x3expensive

Families that justify the price: Relative Families that call it expensive: Asset, Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 4.3%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=7)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$3.914.59xyesFCF base $0.2B, growth 1% (input: historical growth), terminal g 0.8%, WACC 4.3%, 5yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$16.311.10xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 17.7x / 19.7x / 21.7x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr
Relative ValuationRelative$57.900.31xyesP/S fallback (negative EPS): Sector P/S 1.5x × TTM revenue — excluded from consensus
Simple DDMGrowth——no—
Two-Stage DDMGrowth——no—
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$1.4312.56xyesReference only (book value floor): BV/sh $1.43, ROE negative
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$1.2814.03xyesReference only (book value with convergence): BV/sh $1.43, ROE converges to ke
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$11.351.58xyesRev $5.8B, growth 1% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 0.4x / 0.5x / 0.5x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$0.00—noNegative/zero EPS — earnings-based value floored at $0
Margin TrajectoryGrowth——no—
Earnings Power ValueEarnings——no—
Residual IncomeAsset——no—
Graham NumberAsset——no—
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative$0.011796.00xyesEBITDA $0.33B × sector EV/EBITDA 8.0x (excluded from median)
FCF YieldEarnings$0.011796.00xyesFCF $154.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity (excluded from median)
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings$0.011796.00xyesSBC-adj FCF $0.13B (FCF $0.15B − SBC $0.02B) capitalized at Kₑ (excluded from median)
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings——no—
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset——no—
P/Sales SectorRelative$57.900.31xyesRevenue $5.82B × sector P/S 1.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelative——no—
Earnings YieldEarnings——no—
Funds From Operations MultipleRelative——no—
Clinical Phase NPVGrowth——no—
MertonAsset——no—
V5 Mechanical———no—

Solvency

FieldValue
Net debt$3.6b
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)28.91x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)22.84x
Interest coverage0.6x
Share count CAGR (buyback)-2.0%
Burning cashno

Leverage and coverage are computed on normalized mid-cycle operating income (mid-cycle margin 2.7%); the trailing year was depressed.

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

Read Chemours as a cyclical at a cyclical low, with one segment that is not cyclical at all, and the setup becomes clearer than the loss-making trailing year suggests. The standout is refrigerants. The Thermal and Specialized Solutions segment, home to the Opteon line of low-global-warming refrigerants, delivered record first-quarter results, with net sales up 22% to $568 million and a 33% adjusted EBITDA margin. This is not a commodity-price story; it is a regulatory one. The 10-K notes the company is "well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities that may arise from increased market demand for and/or legislation mandating or incentivizing the use of products and technologies necessary to achieve a low-carbon economy." As older high-warming refrigerants are phased down by law, demand shifts to exactly the products Chemours leads, giving it a structural grower inside a cyclical portfolio.

The cyclical segments are depressed, not broken, which is the distinction that matters for how the numbers should be read. Titanium dioxide, the white pigment used in paint and coatings, is at a trough on weak global volumes, but the business exceeded earnings expectations in the quarter through disciplined pricing and cost management. Trough earnings make trailing multiples look absurd; the right frame for a cyclical is mid-cycle earning power, and on that basis the company generates real cash. The advanced-materials segment took a one-time hit from a plant outage that management describes as stabilized, a transitory drag rather than a structural one.

The capital priority is the right one for a levered cyclical: reduce debt and wait for the cycle. Chemours accelerated balance-sheet de-risking in the quarter, completing an asset sale ahead of schedule and refinancing near-term maturities, and it has been shrinking its share count modestly. Management reaffirmed full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $800 million to $900 million, a level that, if achieved, transforms how the debt load looks. The relative-multiple lens, which prices the revenue base rather than the trough earnings, supports the current price; the bet is that refrigerants keep growing and the cyclical lines mean-revert.

Bear Case

The variable with the most leverage over Chemours is not the chemical cycle; it is the legal and regulatory exposure that sits outside the income statement entirely. The company carries PFAS-related litigation and environmental remediation obligations whose ultimate scale is genuinely uncertain, and the FY2025 10-K flags the "estimated cost to perform the planned remedial response" and the "time period over which the remediation" runs as an especially challenging estimate. PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, have drawn a widening front of regulation and litigation across jurisdictions, and a single adverse development, a larger settlement, a new regulatory standard, a court ruling, can impose a liability that dwarfs a year of operating profit. The current price reflects the operating business; it does not appear to fully discount a tail outcome that the company itself cannot bound.

The balance sheet turns that legal risk into an equity risk. Chemours carries net debt of about $3.6 billion against earnings that, on a trailing basis, are negative, and even on the company's own mid-cycle margins the leverage is heavy. The 10-K is explicit about the consequences of that debt, warning it risks "restricting us from capitalizing on business opportunities" and "placing us at a competitive disadvantage compared to our competitors that have less debt," and it spells out that a covenant breach would let lenders "declare all loans immediately due and payable and to institute foreclosure proceedings against their collateral." A litigation hit landing on a balance sheet this levered, in a cyclical trough, is the scenario where the equity has the least room to absorb the blow.

The cyclicality compounds it. Titanium dioxide is a global commodity priced on supply and demand the company does not control, and the recovery is dependent on an industrial cycle that has been slow to turn, with non-Western volumes still weak. The price the market pays embeds operating profit growing at a demanding pace for years, well above what the company has actually delivered, and only a fraction of comparable cyclical names have sustained that kind of pace. The refrigerants growth is real, but it is one segment carrying a portfolio that also includes a litigation overhang, heavy debt, and two cyclically depressed businesses. The bear case is that any one of those three, the cycle, the leverage, or the litigation, can dominate the outcome regardless of how well refrigerants perform.

Valuation

The honest place to start is that Chemours is loss-making on a trailing basis, so a trailing multiple is meaningless and the valuation has to be read through mid-cycle earnings. On the company's own through-the-cycle margins, the price works out to roughly 44 times normalized operating income, which inverts to a requirement that operating profit grow near its self-funding ceiling for about nine years. That is a demanding bet, well above what the company has historically delivered, and it tells you the market is pricing a recovery plus the refrigerant growth, not the trough the trailing numbers show.

The methods are sparse and divided because the trough distorts most of them. The asset-value lenses are effectively meaningless here: book value per share is around $1.43, gutted by the debt and liabilities, so any method anchored to it reads the stock as wildly expensive, which is an artifact of the balance sheet rather than a business judgment. With trailing earnings negative, the earnings-power methods cannot produce a usable figure. That leaves the relative-multiple lens, which prices the revenue base, and it sits below the current price, suggesting the market is paying up for the recovery. The pattern is a low-quality X-ray: few methods apply, the asset lens is distorted, and the price rests on a normalized-earnings recovery the static frames cannot confirm.

Solvency is not a footnote here; it is the heart of the analysis. Net debt of about $3.6 billion against trailing operating income that is negative, and against mid-cycle operating income that still leaves leverage above 20 times, is a heavily geared balance sheet, and interest coverage on trailing earnings is below 1, covered only when normalized margins return. Liquid assets of roughly $563 million provide some cushion, and management's debt-reduction actions, the asset sale and refinancing, are the right moves, but they underline that this is an equity sitting behind a large, partly secured debt load and an unbounded litigation liability. The buyer at today's price is underwriting a cyclical recovery and the refrigerant growth, on a balance sheet with little margin for a litigation surprise. That combination is why the price can look cheap on revenue and expensive on everything else at the same time.

Catalysts

The first quarter was a tale of one strong segment carrying two weak ones. Net sales rose 1% to $1.381 billion, just short of estimates, and the company posted a net loss of $29 million while reporting adjusted EBITDA of $169 million. The driver was refrigerants: the Thermal and Specialized Solutions segment delivered record first-quarter results, with net sales up 22% to $568 million and a 33% margin on double-digit Opteon growth. Titanium Technologies beat expectations on pricing discipline despite weak non-Western volumes, while Advanced Performance Materials absorbed a roughly $25 million EBITDA headwind from a plant outage management now describes as stabilized.

The forward signals are operational and structural. The company reaffirmed full-year guidance of 3% to 5% net-sales growth and adjusted EBITDA of $800 million to $900 million, citing continued refrigerant strength from regulatory tailwinds and demand, and it accelerated balance-sheet de-risking through an ahead-of-schedule asset sale and a refinancing of near-term debt. The watch items rank clearly: any development in PFAS litigation or environmental liability, because that variable can swamp the rest; the pace of debt reduction; whether titanium dioxide volumes recover; and whether refrigerant growth holds as the regulatory phase-down proceeds.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Thermal & Specialized Solutions (reported)

Titanium Technologies (reported)

Advanced Performance Materials (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

Q1 2026 earnings release

View the full interactive CC report on boothcheck