Ecolab Inc. (ECL)
Materials · NYSE · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
Ecolab Inc. trades at $275.71, which is 46% above the $149.08 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure it screens as expensive, which is not the same as saying it will fall.
Our moat model scores it 67 out of 100, which is a moat, but not a deep one. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 37.2 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About Ecolab Inc.
Ecolab Inc. provides water, hygiene, and infection prevention solutions and services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through four segments: Global Water, Global Institutional & Specialty, Global Pest Elimination, and Global Life Sciences. The Global Water segment offers water treatment and process applications, and cleaning and sanitizing solutions to manufacturing, food and beverage processing, transportation, chemical, primary metals and mining, power generation, global refining, petrochemical, pulp and paper industries. The Global Institutional & Specialty segment provides cleaning and sanitizing products to the foodservice, healthcare, hospitality, lodging, government, education and retail industries. The Global Pest Elimination segment provides pest elimination services to detect, prevent, and eliminate pests comprising rodents and insects in full-service and quick-service restaurants, food and beverage processors, hotels, grocery operations, and other commercial segments, including education, life sciences, and healthcare. The Global Life Sciences segment provides cleaning and contamination control solutions to pharmaceutical and personal care manufacturers. It offers its products under the Ecolab, Kay, Purolite, and Bioquell brand names. The company sells its products through field sales and corporate account personnel, distributors, and dealers. Ecolab Inc. was founded in 1923 and is headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
ECL passes 1 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
20 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Bill Gates, GATES FOUNDATION TRUST$1.39B · 4.4% of book
- Capital Research Global, Capital Research Global Investors$817.30M · 0.1% of book
- Arrowstreet Capital, ARROWSTREET CAPITAL, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP$596.90M · 0.3% of book
- Impax Asset Management, Impax Asset Management Group plc$228.59M · 1.6% of book
- Cliff Asness, AQR CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC$222.46M · 0.1% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is Ecolab Inc. (ECL) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $149.08, ECL at $275.71 is 46% above fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own ECL?
20 of the institutions we track reported a position in ECL in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is ECL's P/E ratio?
ECL trades at 37.2 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for ECL, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.