Sika Shares Rise as Strong Sales Prompt Guidance Hike

By Anthony O. Goriainoff

Shares in Sika rose after the company said first-half sales beat estimates and raised sales guidance for the year.

Shares in early European trade were up 5.95% at 170.85 Swiss francs, and up 5.1% in the year to date.

The Swiss chemicals and construction materials company said sales were down to 5.59 billion Swiss francs ($6.82 billion) due to a negative foreign currency exchange effect, but came in above 5.44 billion francs in a FactSet estimate of analysts. Sika reported sales of 5.68 billion francs for the first half of 2025.

Net income was 552.1 million francs, compared with 554.4 million francs last year. The company said this was due to a negative foreign exchange effect on sales, as well as higher operating and logistics expenses due to the Middle East conflict.

The company said that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization margin rose to 19.0% in the period from 18.9% the year before.

The board raised its sales growth expectations for the year to between 3% and 6% in local currencies from a prior guidance of 1% to 4%.

Still, the board said it expected the global market to remain muted and lowered its Ebitda margin to 19% to 19.5% for the year from prior guidance of 19.5% to 20%.

Analysts at Vontobel said the company's raising local currency sales growth guidance was a "positive surprise."

"The trimmed margin target, now in line with consensus, likely reflects rising input costs such as energy and caps earnings upgrades, which we nonetheless see in the low single digits," Vontobel said.

Consensus for the metric stands at 19.3%.

Write to Anthony O. Goriainoff at anthony.orunagoriainoff@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 28, 2026 04:45 ET (08:45 GMT)