$8.88
$18.52
bear $8.88
base $14.06
bull $18.52
margin of safety $6.50
market price* $12.88
Corteva is now a pure-play crop protection company. On October 1, 2026 it spun off its seed business (the Pioneer and Brevant brands) as a separate company, Vylor, and shareholders received one Vylor share for each Corteva share. Our earlier valuation, made when Corteva still owned the seed business, covered a different company and its figures are not comparable to these. This is a fresh valuation of what Corteva owns today: herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and biologicals sold in about 110 countries, about $7.6 billion of 2025 sales on the company's pro forma basis (after commercial agreements with Vylor that lower 2025 sales by about $248 million). Latin America, especially Brazil, is where prices and volumes swing most; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (including Turkey), North America and Asia Pacific make up the rest. Research of about $480 million a year is charged against earnings. Crop protection segment operating EBITDA was $1.00 billion in 2020, $1.20 billion in 2021, a peak of $1.68 billion in 2022, then $1.37 billion, $1.27 billion and $1.35 billion in 2023 through 2025. How we measured earnings. Corteva has not published stand-alone cash flow statements for the new company, only pro forma income statements (2025 and the first half of 2026) and a pro forma balance sheet at June 30, 2026. We therefore rebuilt owner earnings from earnings: 2025 pro forma operating EBITDA of $1,298 million, less depreciation and amortization, restructuring, interest and taxes at the pro forma 24.8 percent rate, adding back depreciation and amortization, and subtracting maintenance capital spending (about $209 million of the $214 million spent in 2025; growth spending is excluded). Working-capital swings do not enter this method, and stock compensation is already a cost inside EBITDA. For 2020 through 2024 we applied 2025's ratio of stand-alone to reported segment EBITDA (96 percent) to the segment history, so those years are estimates. Interest earned on the company's cash is left out of earnings because the surplus cash is valued separately below. Owner earnings per share (on the share counts of each year) were $0.53, $0.65, $1.11, $0.92, $0.89 and $1.03 for 2020 through 2025. Because the company now holds more cash than debt, we value the business before its lenders: that cash flow before interest was about $599 million, $921 million, $772 million, $735 million and $815 million for 2021 through 2025. The anchor is $772 million, the median of 2021 through 2025, or about $1.16 per share on the roughly 667 million shares expected after the spin. That window holds the 2022 farm boom and the 2023 and 2024 pullback, so it spans a full cycle; 2020 is left out because it was a pandemic year and growth spending cannot be separated for it. Growth check: business cash flow rose about 11 percent in 2025 ($815 million versus $735 million), and the base case assumes no growth in year one, below that. First-half 2026 segment operating EBITDA grew 9 percent, but second-quarter growth slowed to 2 percent as prices fell 4 percent, mostly in Brazil, and organic sales fell 6 percent, so we do not extrapolate the first half. Intangible amortization (about $155 million a year) is non-cash and is added back; the aging of acquired product value is carried in the flat-then-fading paths below rather than by lowering the earnings level. Base case: $14.06 per share. Business cash flow stays at $772 million for 15 years, then fades in a straight line to zero over the next 15. The evidence behind a long flat stretch is a research engine that has kept earnings in a $0.6 to $0.9 billion band, funded from its own cash, through a boom and a downturn. We credit no growth. Left out: management's 2029 targets (sales of $8.4 to $8.7 billion, EBITDA of $1.45 to $1.65 billion), the $11 billion new-product pipeline, margin gains and share gains, because none has happened yet. The business is worth about $9.2 billion ($13.76 per share). The company owes about $1.0 billion (a new $700 million 6.000% note due 2036 plus the small remainder of older notes due 2030, 2032 and 2033, most of which were exchanged into Vylor's notes) and holds $3.06 billion of cash (pro forma, June 30); we treat $1.5 billion as needed to run a business with $4.5 billion of receivables, leaving about $0.55 billion, or $0.82 per share, of surplus. We subtract $0.52 per share for Corteva's share of the PFAS cost-sharing agreement with Chemours and DuPont (about $600 million, spread over its 20-year term). $13.76 plus $0.82 less $0.52 is $14.06. Bear case: $8.88 per share. We take a full crop protection downturn of the kind seen from 2022 to 2024, when segment EBITDA fell 24 percent as Latin American prices fell (down 5 percent in 2024) and customers cut inventories. Applied to 2025, business cash flow falls to $580 million for three years and then recovers only to $600 million, about the 2021 level before the boom, holds through year 12 and fades to zero over 10 years. PFAS costs to Corteva double to $1.2 billion, because claims already settled, such as New Jersey's $875 million, have used part of the $4 billion the agreement was meant to cover. The business is worth about $6.1 billion ($9.10 per share), plus $0.82 of surplus cash, less $1.03 for PFAS. The company can carry its debt in this case. Bull case: $18.52 per share. Business cash flow is $900 million, close to 2022's $921 million: 2025's $815 million plus the 9 percent first-half 2026 EBITDA gain carried through. It holds for 20 years and fades over 20, with no price windfall and no new products beyond those already selling. The business is worth about $12.2 billion ($18.22 per share), plus $0.82 of surplus cash, less $0.52 for PFAS. Litigation. On October 1, 2026, fifteen states and Guam sued Corteva, EIDP and Vylor in Indiana state court, alleging the spin-off was a fraudulent transfer: that Vylor received roughly $40 billion of value without taking on PFAS liabilities, which remain with EIDP, now a Corteva subsidiary. They seek to freeze assets, stop buybacks and dividends, and unwind the transaction. A federal judge had declined to block the separation days earlier; we do not know the outcome of the state-court restraining order hearing. Corteva calls the claims speculative and says it never made or sold PFAS products. Under existing agreements DuPont bears 71 percent and Corteva 29 percent of most legacy liabilities, and Chemours bears half of PFAS costs up to $4 billion. The cases do not model an unwinding or the 'tens of billions' the states describe, because no filing supports a number. The company's own annual report warns that a court could void a separation as a fraudulent transfer. This is the largest thing that could make our figures wrong. What we could not reconcile. Stand-alone earlier years are rebuilt estimates. The company guided to about $350 million of one-time separation costs; how much is still unpaid and who bears it is not disclosed, so it is not in the cases. We used the full $600 million PFAS share without netting amounts already paid, which is conservative. Combined-company cash taxes ran above book taxes in 2022 through 2024 (deferred tax benefits of $286 million, $438 million and $365 million) and only slightly above in 2025 ($41 million); we used the book rate, and if cash taxes stayed elevated earnings would be roughly $0.15 per share lower. Margin-of-safety price: $6.50 per share. We are moderately sure of the earnings level: six years of segment results are reported, but stand-alone earnings are reconstructed, and each $100 million a year of business cash flow is worth about $1.80 per share in the base case. The worst plausible business outcome is a farm downturn plus a Brazilian price war, which the bear case describes; the business itself would survive that, with little debt and surplus cash. The worst outcome no case models is the PFAS litigation: if EIDP's obligations were found to exceed what Corteva can pay, the equity could be worth little, and each additional $1 billion of PFAS cost removes about $0.86 per share. The price assumes about a five-year holding period. In that time the base case generates roughly $5.80 per share of cash from operations and leaves a business still worth about $12, and the bear case about $7 plus $4.40 of cash. From $6.50 the base case implies about 22 percent a year and the bear case about 11 percent; the price is deliberately below the bear value because a loss in the litigation cannot be sized. The estimate would be revisited if the Indiana court dismisses the states' claims or they are settled for a stated amount.