Chemicals Winners 2024-2025: Another year of uncertainty

By Robert Henske, Alexander Baumgartner and Everett Johnson

Far from the post-COVID recovery once expected, 2024 revealed a sector struggling with slower global demand, persistent inflationary pressures, and intensifying global competition—especially from China. Chemicals Winners 2024–25 provides a data-driven analysis of how companies are performing under these conditions and which players are emerging as long-term value creators.

A new era of uncertainty

Following years of post-pandemic instability, the chemicals sector entered 2024 facing new challenges, including overcapacity and aggressive exports from China, inflation, interest rate pressures, weak demand in Europe, and regulatory uncertainties alongside trade shifts in North America. These forces have transformed industry economics — total shareholder returns lag behind broader indices, revenues declined by 6.4%, and only 30% of companies earned their cost of capital.

Beyond these figures are structural changes. Demand remains soft in key sectors like construction and manufacturing. Input prices have moderated but remain volatile. Additionally, debt levels have risen back to pandemic-era highs, reaching an average Debt/EBITDA ratio of 3.2x.

The Winners’ Framework: A better way to measure value

Rather than relying on traditional financial indicators, Roland Berger uses a proprietary "Winners" methodology to identify long-term value creators.

Two core metrics define this approach:

• Growth in Invested Capital – capturing real, sustainable business expansion
• Risk-adjusted Profitability – measured as Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) minus Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)

This framework reflects how sophisticated investors assess performance, focusing on capital productivity and economic value—not just revenue or EBITDA.

Key insights from the 2024–25 study

The study examines financial performance across 130 publicly listed chemicals companies in North America , Europe , and Asia.

The findings are sobering. In 2024, only 30% of companies earned more than their cost of capital, a sharp drop from 43% in 2023. Overall revenue in the sector declined by 6.4%, and the industry’s ROIC-WACC spread turned negative. At the same time, debt levels returned to pandemic-era highs, while margins continued to decrease. The CEX Chemicals Index in North America underperformed the broader S&P 500 significantly, and Europe’s chemical producers faced even greater pressure amid high energy costs and slowing industrial demand.

Yet amid this challenging environment, clear signals reveal what differentiates the leaders from the others. Roland Berger’s analysis shows that companies in sectors such as industrial gases, specialty chemicals, and distribution have managed to deliver strong, risk-adjusted returns from 2020 to 2024. These segments demonstrated both capital discipline and operational resilience—often supported by better alignment between product portfolios and evolving customer needs.

Why this matters for 2025 and beyond

2025 presents a key opportunity for leaders to rethink their approach to growth—and to shift from a focus solely on revenue to one based on return on capital. This involves reassessing portfolios, refining geographic exposure, and prioritizing segments where performance metrics support long-term value creation.

As value creation in the industry becomes more difficult to capture and more unevenly distributed, the insights in Chemicals Winners 2024–25 serve as a crucial guide for management teams, boards, and investors. The most successful companies will be those that actively face today’s uncertainty and leverage it to make bolder, smarter strategic decisions.

Register now to access the full study and explore the traits of high-performing companies in the chemicals sector.