$43.60
$85.00
bear $43.60
base $71.40
bull $85.00
margin of safety $43.60
market price* $130.45
DuPont is now a much smaller company than the one investors knew a year ago. In the fourth quarter of 2025 it spun off its Electronics business, and in the first half of 2026 it sold its Aramids business (Kevlar and Nomex). What remains is two segments with about $6.8 billion of annual sales: Healthcare & Water Technologies (Tyvek medical packaging, Tychem protective garments, medical device components, Filmtec reverse osmosis membranes and Amberlite ion exchange resins) and Diversified Industrials (Building Technologies, including Tyvek house wrap and Styrofoam insulation, and Industrial Technologies). Sales were $6,614 million in 2023, $6,719 million in 2024 and $6,849 million in 2025. All figures below are for this remaining business, and per-share figures reflect the 1-for-3 reverse stock split that took effect on June 24, 2026 (about 136.8 million diluted shares in the second quarter of 2026). What the business earns. We measure owner earnings as operating cash flow, less swings in working capital, less stock compensation, less the part of capital spending needed just to stay in business. On the remaining business, that gives about $693 million in 2023, $370 million in 2024 and $508 million in 2025. Per diluted share, adjusted for the reverse split, that is $4.62, $2.65 and $3.64. We anchor on the middle year, 2025 ($508 million), and we use only these three years because earlier years described a much larger company with the Electronics and Aramids businesses inside it. 2025 includes some one-off cash costs, including the cash paid to end interest rate swaps and fees on a debt exchange, and we did not add these back. Owner earnings rose about 37 percent in 2025 from 2024; our base case assumes no growth in year one, which is below that. What changed for the better. Total debt fell from $7.2 billion at the end of 2024 to $3.2 billion at the end of 2025, largely repaid with the $4.1 billion distribution from the spun-off Electronics business. Interest expense was $313 million in 2025. On the year-end 2025 debt (about $1.35 billion at 4.73 percent, $1.85 billion at 5.49 percent and $60 million of commercial paper at 3.95 percent), we estimate annual interest of roughly $168 million, a saving of about $145 million a year before tax, or about $115 million after tax at the 21 percent U.S. federal rate. This is a fact of the balance sheet today rather than a forecast, so all three cases include it. It is our own estimate; we did not quantify interest income lost on the cash that was used up. Cash from continuing operations was $632 million in the first half of 2026 versus $151 million a year earlier, which is consistent with a stronger level, but we did not move the level further because we could not separate working capital from that figure. The Aramids sale. DuPont agreed in August 2025 to sell Aramids to Arclin for about $1.2 billion of pre-tax cash plus a non-controlling equity stake valued at $325 million, and the sale has since closed. Because that business is no longer in the earnings above, the cash is worth counting separately. We count $1.2 billion less roughly $275 million spent on share repurchases in the first half of 2026, about $6.76 per share, in every case. We could not quantify the tax on the sale, so this is before tax. The equity stake is counted only in the bull case because it is illiquid. Base case: about $71.4 per share. Owner earnings of about $623 million ($508 million plus the interest saving), or about $4.55 per share, held flat for ten years. We credit no growth: sales have grown only about 1 to 2 percent a year, and new product wins and market expansion are not secured. After year ten we let earnings decline 2 percent a year, because the company amortizes about $291 million a year of acquired intangibles from past acquisitions such as Spectrum and Donatelle, which shows that part of what it bought wears out over time. Tyvek, Filmtec and Amberlite are long-established brands, which is why we keep earnings going rather than ending them. This gives about $64.6 per share for the businesses plus $6.76 per share of Aramids cash. Bear case: about $43.6 per share. Owner earnings fall back to the weakest recent year (2024, $370 million) plus the interest saving, about $484 million or $3.54 per share, then shrink 2 percent a year for ten years and 4 percent a year after that, as the wearing out of acquired intangibles is not offset. We also subtract $310 million (about $2.27 per share), the amount the company says environmental liabilities could exceed what it has already set aside, then add the Aramids cash. Diversified Industrials sales volume fell 1 percent in 2025, which supports the weaker path. Bull case: about $85.0 per share. Owner earnings of about $4.55 per share continue at a flat level indefinitely, with no decay, reflecting the staying power of the core brands. We add the Aramids cash ($6.76 per share) and the equity stake in the buyer (about $2.38 per share). What could make this wrong. The main risks are the environmental and PFAS-related obligations shared with Chemours and Corteva, where the company accrued $253 million at the end of 2025 and disclosed possible additional exposure; a weaker construction and industrial market cutting Diversified Industrials; and tax leakage on the Aramids sale that we could not measure. Earnings could also prove higher than our base case if the first-half 2026 cash strength holds. We could not reconcile that cash figure to working capital from the filings available.