Agribusiness · Ag Processing & Trading
Ingredion (INGR)
Ingredion's starches and sweeteners: FY2025 adjusted EBITDA of $1,244M, adjusted ROIC of 15.5%, segment income by region, and no disclosed crush volumes.
Selborne Research · · Equity Research Profile
Educational analysis for professional use. This profile is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and it is not personalised.
Snapshot
- FY2025 Adjusted EBITDA
- $1,244M
- Segment Operating Income, Latin America
- $493M (40.7%)
- Segment Operating Income, Texture & Healthful Solutions
- $405M (33.4%)
- ROIC (on net income)
- 15.0%
- Adjusted ROIC
- 15.5%
- Net Debt / Adjusted EBITDA
- 0.6×
- Cash Absorbed by Working Capital (FY2025)
- $75M
- Tonnes Processed
- Not filed
Business Overview
Ingredion earns on what goes into a customer's recipe, not on grain price gaps, so the merchant map of origination and crush does not fit. It wet-mills corn into starches and sweeteners, downstream of merchants such as ADM and Bunge. FY2025 adjusted EBITDA was $1,244M.
Segment operating income:
- Food & Industrial Ingredients-LATAM (F&II-LATAM), starch and sweetener mills in Latin America: $493M (40.7%)
- Texture & Healthful Solutions (T&HS), its global texturising-ingredients business: $405M (33.4%)
- Food & Industrial Ingredients-U.S./Canada: $315M (26.0%)
The three add to $1,213M. The shares are of $1,211M, which also counts a $2M loss in All Other, Ingredion's smaller businesses such as stevia and pea protein.
It files no tonnes, only percentage volume changes: T&HS volume rose 4% and the two F&II segments' fell 4%. The value chain guide sets Ingredion beside the merchants.
How the Numbers Read
Returns are high and the balance sheet light. Adjusted ROIC was 15.5%, up from 14.8% in 2024, against the company's long-term objective of above 10%. ROIC on net income, the unadjusted version, was 15.0% (12.9% in 2024).
Net debt was $757M, 0.6× adjusted EBITDA (0.7× a year earlier), against a stated long-term target of 2.5× or less. Receivables were $1,185M and inventory $1,227M, far less than a grain merchant ties up.
With no segment EBITDA filed, segment operating income is the consistent measure. Earnings turn on margin and mix across regional mills, so a crush margin does not apply.
How You Would Value a Business Like This
An ingredients maker is valued on EBITDA rebuilt at normal ingredient margins. The valuation guide walks the DCF method on a fictional ingredients processor with a steady margin.
What to Watch in the Financials
Regional mix. F&II-LATAM earned the most in FY2025 even though its volume fell 4%.
Adjusted ROIC against the 10% objective. The trend says more than one year's level.
Net debt to EBITDA. Its debt funds mills, so a rise would come from acquisitions, capital spending or lower earnings.
Volume without tonnes. Percentage changes cannot be set against ADM's or Bunge's tonnes processed.
Key Risks
Latin American exposure. Its largest segment is in Latin America, so currency and local demand move group returns more than they would for a US-only processor.
Corn cost pass-through. A corn price spike that contracts do not pass on cuts segment income.
Ag Processing and Trading Sector Primer
A hypothetical merchant crusher and an ingredients processor valued year by year, with the crush recovering to a long-run level and ROIC set against the cost of capital.
- 15 sections, from how a merchant earns to a ten-year DCF and leverage net of readily marketable inventories
- 40 pages
- a merchant oilseed crusher and an ingredients processor, each on the same ten-year DCF
- 2 company engines
- listed merchants, processors and ingredients companies on filed FY2025 figures
- 5-company screen
The Excel model is the primer's through-cycle valuation live across 11 sheets: a merchant crusher tab, with the board crush reverting from its starting point to mid-cycle and working capital funded each year, and an ingredients tab, each running a ten-year free-cash-flow schedule; a valuation summary setting each DCF beside the through-cycle multiple, with the gap split into what the weak years cost and how much more the multiple pays than the cash flows support; cycle scenarios, a crush-margin and ROIC view, a leverage screen with and without readily marketable inventories and two live sensitivity grids. Change the crush, the throughput or the WACC and the value moves.
See what's in the Ag Processing and Trading Sector Primer →£25 PDF · £59 with the Excel model · £159 for all three Agribusiness industries
Learn the Concepts
Understand the valuation frameworks and metrics used in this analysis.
Origination, Processing and Ingredients
The ag value chain from farm origination through crush and refining to specialty ingredients: ADM and Bunge segment maps, and why INGR, DAR and ANDE need different lenses.
Valuing Ag Processors (EV/EBITDA, ROIC)
Normalising EBITDA on a long-run crush, ROIC against WACC, and filed FY2025 returns on capital at Ingredion, Bunge and ADM, each on its own definition.
ROIC vs Adjusted ROIC in Ag Processing
Why ADM, Bunge and Ingredion each file two returns on capital: which adjustment moves the earnings and which moves the capital, and why returns compare only on one definition.