Element Solutions Reports Record Quarterly Results and Increases 2026 Full Year Guidance

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Element Solutions Inc, a global and diversified specialty chemicals technology company, announced its financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2026.

Executive Commentary

Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Gliklich commented, “Element Solutions had an outstanding start to the year. We delivered double-digit organic net sales growth and strong margin expansion while ramping our investments to keep pace with customer innovation. The technical requirements in datacenter hardware and other high-performance electronics keep increasing, and our business is providing ever more critical solutions to challenges in thermal management, power density and advanced packaging applications. Along with the pace of innovation, the pace of activity in the electronics supply chain accelerated in Q1 to support AI infrastructure build-out. Customer orders and their go-forward forecasts increased materially, and our Electronics portfolio's net sales grew 15% organically. We are investing to keep up with the supply chain demands, whether that is inventory to support customer volumes, additional capacity in certain product lines or innovation to remain on the leading edge. Across all of these vectors, our investment is customer-led and supporting durable growth trends. Our largest recent investments - the EFC and Micromax acquisitions - closed this quarter, and their results are tracking favorably to our original plans. More importantly, their teams are settling well into our organization and energized by the opportunities our platform will provide them to better serve their customers.”

Mr. Gliklich continued, “Our organic acceleration in the first quarter gives us confidence in a strong year, despite a more complex macro environment than anticipated. We already see inflationary pressure driven by current geopolitical events and expect increased variance in quarterly earnings driven by swings in metals prices, although those benefitted us in Q1. We have a flexible operating model and a demonstrated track-record of agility, whether that relates to sourcing, pricing or cost management. We are already taking action to preserve our profitability and our ability to service customers. At the same time, the underlying demand in the high-end electronics market remains quite strong. Given the strong positions we have established in the fastest-growing, highest-value niches of these markets and our expectation that we can continue to nimbly manage through current supply chain disruptions, we are raising our adjusted EBITDA guidance for the full year.”

First Quarter 2026 Highlights (compared with first quarter 2025)

- Net sales on a reported basis for the first quarter of 2026 were $840 million, an increase of 41% over the first quarter of 2025. Organic net sales increased 10%.

• Electronics: Net sales increased 61% to $634 million, of which 16% resulted from acquisitions. Organic net sales increased 15%.
• Specialties: Net sales increased 4% to $207 million, which were negatively impacted by 3% from divestitures net of acquisitions. Organic net sales increased 1%.

- First quarter of 2026 earnings per share (EPS) performance:

• GAAP diluted EPS was $0.23, as compared to $0.40 for the same period last year.
• Adjusted EPS was $0.41, as compared to $0.34 for the same period last year.

- Reported net income for the first quarter of 2026 was $56 million, as compared to $98 million for the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of 43%.

• Net income margin decreased by 980 basis points to 6.7%.

- Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2026 was $162 million, as compared to $128 million for the first quarter of 2025. On a constant currency basis, adjusted EBITDA increased 21%.

• Adjusted EBITDA would have been $170 million if the Micromax acquisition had closed on January 1, 2026.
• Electronics: Adjusted EBITDA was $119 million, an increase of 34%. On a constant currency basis, adjusted EBITDA increased 29%. The Micromax business had a positive impact of 11% on constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth.
• Specialties: Adjusted EBITDA was $43 million, an increase of 9%. On a constant currency basis, adjusted EBITDA increased 3%. The EFC Gases & Advanced Materials business had a positive impact of 9% on constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth. The MacDermid Graphics Solutions business had a negative impact of 13% on constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth.
• Adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 170 basis points to 27.8%.

Updated 2026 Guidance

The Company now expects full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $665 million to $685 million, inclusive of expected contributions from the Micromax and EFC acquisitions on a full-year basis and assuming current exchange rates and metal prices, and adjusted EPS growth rate in the high teens. In addition, the Company expects second quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA to be between $155 million and $170 million.