. FTSE 100 It may be close to records, but not all actions participate. Indeed, one of its ingredients now has the 11-year-old level, and in 2025 it crashed by 25%.

Blues after a visit

The recovered wrestling is a producer of specialist chemicals Codium (LSE: CRDA). His critical components of the mission are found in dozens of products in the beauty, pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.

During the pandemic peak, when pharmaceutical companies produced huge amounts of vaccines, Lipid Croda sales were prejudiced. The next fall of this market was the most essential reason why the actions lost three quarters of its value.

Maneuverability

The company may not be the name of the household, but don’t let you deceive you. This year it meant a century.

At the beginning of this year, he developed a five -point plan to improve earnings and returns. It was a combination of growth initiatives and cost savings.

One of the areas with which the company really struggled is the return on investment from many acquisitions. The acquisition of Solus in 2023 is one such example.

Solus produces a portfolio of energetic ingredients from biotechnology for the care of beauty and pharmaceuticals, the most noticeably ceramides. It is a highly developing, high -performance business.

Ceramides have become one of the most common cosmetic products about energetic ingredients. The form of lipids keep moisturized, malleable and difficult skin.

However, the company has not used the possibility of commercialization from the takeover so far. To terminate this, he left all existing distribution agreements, and instead his sales network sells ceramides anywhere around the world.

In the results of H1 in July it stated that ceramide sales increased by 50%. This is encouraging, but it starts with a very low base.

Local and regional clients

Many markets on which a chemical specialist operates evolve. One of the latest trends, which plays the strengths very well, was the appearance of more local and regional competitors in the field of beauty and pharmaceuticals. These companies absorb market share from recognized brands.

Such a trend has been particularly clear in Asia and emerging markets. In Beauty, this includes companies such as Boticario and Qualia in Brazil, ARMA in Egypt, Kolmar in Korea and Milbon in Japan.

Innovation is the name of the game in the cosmetics industry. Being a smaller player is provided by a clear competitive advantage, because he tries to expand the global trail among such a growing group.

Dividend

The falling price of shares increased the dividend profitability to evaluate 4.4%. It is also above its long -term medium and medium FTSE 100. But can it support it?

Its purpose is to return 40-50% of earnings in the shareholders cycle. But in order to escalate the dividend, this number was pushed to 66% of earnings in H1 2025, eroding free cash flows. Of course, if the earnings do not start to show a positive momentum, it is not balanced.

Nevertheless, when I look at a larger picture, I think there are reasons to be optimists. I definitely see it as actions worth further research by investors.