Chemours Co (CC) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Chemours makes three groups of chemicals. Thermal & Specialized Solutions (2025 sales $2,066 million, up 13%) sells Opteon low-warming refrigerants. Titanium Technologies ($2,429 million, down 6%) sells titanium dioxide pigment. Advanced Performance Materials ($1,263 million, down 5%) sells fluoropolymers and related materials. Total 2025 net sales were $5,808 million, with a net loss of $386 million. About 46% of sales went to North America, 21% to Asia Pacific, 20% to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 13% to Latin America. How we measure earnings. We start from operating cash flow (after interest), remove swings in working capital, subtract stock compensation, and subtract the part of capital spending needed to keep plants running. Chemours' working capital moved sharply: other current operating liabilities rose $642 million in 2023 and fell $660 million in 2024. We treat those as timing, so legal and environmental costs count in the year they are booked rather than the year they are paid. On this basis owner earnings per share were $3.42 (2017), $4.48 (2018), $0.07 (2019), $1.01 (2020), $3.34 (2021), $3.49 (2022), -$3.02 (2023), $0.09 (2024) and -$0.98 (2025). We use the median of all nine years, $1.01 per share (about $150 million a year), because titanium dioxide is cyclical and only a full cycle describes the business. Roughly 150 million diluted shares are outstanding. Obligations we deduct. Because payments on already-booked liabilities are removed from our earnings measure, we deduct them directly: $618 million of environmental remediation liabilities (part is subject to recovery under a cost-sharing agreement with DuPont and Corteva, but we credit none of that), plus about $306 million of PFAS settlements still to be paid (New Jersey $270 million on a present-value basis, Ohio $10 million, Delaware $13 million and Hoosick Falls $13.5 million). Together that is about $925 million, or roughly $6.15 per share, deducted in all three cases. We do not subtract debt separately because interest is already inside the cash flow. Debt principal was $4,182 million at year-end 2025; the filing shows maturities of $505 million in 2027, $1,282 million in 2028 and $631 million in 2029. Base case: $9.80 per share. Owner earnings of $0.40 in 2026 and $0.70 in 2027, then $1.01 a year, continuing after 2035 because the business has produced this median across nine years. Actual owner earnings fell from $0.09 in 2024 to -$0.98 in 2025, so starting above the trailing figure needs a reason: 2025 included about $41 million of Titanium Technologies disruption costs from a rail interruption and cold-weather downtime, and first-half 2026 operating cash flow was $114 million versus -$19 million a year earlier. We assume only a partial recovery because first-half 2026 gross profit was $498 million versus $514 million, so pigment weakness has not yet reversed. We credit no growth beyond the return to the median. Opteon's 2025 growth is real (volume up 8% and price up 5% as U.S. law moves stationary air conditioning to low-warming refrigerants), but it is already inside the median and we do not extrapolate it. Before the $6.15 deduction the base case is worth about $16.0 per share. Bear case: -$5.0 per share. Titanium Technologies is the stress point: 2025 price fell 6%, and the company's own segment profit measure fell from $301 million to $145 million. The bear case has -$0.30 in 2026, zero in 2027 and 2028 while $1.8 billion of debt is refinanced (the 2033 notes carry an 8.0% coupon and the term loan is priced at SOFR plus 3.50%), then only $0.10 a year, roughly the 2019 and 2024 level. Before obligations that is about $1.1 per share, so after the roughly $6.15 of accrued obligations the company would owe more than it is worth, by about $5 per share. Shareholders could receive nothing rather than a negative number, but the case shows the equity is thin against those obligations. Bull case: $31.8 per share. Owner earnings of $1.00 in 2026, $2.00 in 2027 and $3.00 a year from 2028 through 2035, then $2.00 afterward. The $3.00 level is below what the business earned in 2021 ($3.34) and 2022 ($3.49), and requires pigment pricing to recover and Opteon to keep growing. Before obligations it is worth about $37.9 per share. What could make us wrong. If pigment prices keep falling, the base case is too high. If the cost-sharing agreement recovers more of the remediation costs than we credit, or insurance proceeds are collected (policy limits total $750 million, not credited), the deduction is too large. Second-quarter 2026 showed a net loss of $274 million with income tax expense of $273 million against $131 million a year earlier, and we could not determine the cause from the filings available to us. Quarterly dividends are $0.0875 per share, about $50 million a year.