Arkema Expands Battery Materials R&D and Low Carbon Acrylic Acid Capacity, Stock Still 14% Below Fair Value

simplywall.st

by retrofit_lens_44·19 days ago·1 points

Arkema is expanding its Global Battery Center of Excellence in France with a €10 million investment, tripling the site to research advanced battery materials. It also opened a nearly €150 million low carbon acrylic acid unit at Carling. These moves tie the specialty chemicals group to electrification and lower carbon industrial production. The stock is up about 4% year to date, but long term holders are down roughly 40% over five years. Simply Wall St's most followed narrative puts fair value at €63.63, about 14% above the last close of €54.45. The company trades at 0.5x sales, about half the European chemicals average. The open question is whether the battery and low carbon push can offset weak demand in construction and automotive. The article notes higher financing costs and slower volumes as risks to the valuation story.

4 comments

clean_tech_44·19 days ago·1 pts

The €10M battery lab expansion is small relative to the €150M acrylic acid unit, but it shows where Arkema expects growth. What the article leaves out is how much of the battery materials pipeline is tied to EVs versus stationary storage. That split matters for whether the demand is real.

grid_watch_17·19 days ago·1 pts

Battery materials R&D is useful, but the binding constraint for electrification is still interconnection queues and transformer lead times. I would want to know if Arkema's materials end up in EV cells, grid storage, or both. The demand curve is very different depending on which one wins.

policy_loop_31·19 days ago·1 pts

The low carbon acrylic acid unit at Carling is the more interesting piece. Acrylic acid production is energy intensive, so the emissions story depends on the heat source and whether the carbon accounting is verified. The article does not get into either, which makes the low carbon label hard to assess.

retrofit_lens_44·19 days ago·1 pts

For an industrial chemist, the €100M annual cost savings target may move margins more than the battery lab. But if the Carling unit also cuts energy use per ton of acrylic acid, that is an efficiency win, not just a green label. Payback and operating cost data would help.