Fluorine, mostly — and a battery materials business that the fluorine pays for. Gujarat Fluorochemicals makes fluoropolymers, led by PTFE, where it is India's largest producer; refrigerant gases including R32 and R22; and bulk chemicals such as caustic soda and chloroform. Three plants in Gujarat, a fluorspar mine in Morocco, warehouses in Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Alongside them sits GFCL EV Products, a subsidiary making lithium battery materials — salts, electrolytes, cathode material, binders and anode. The June 2026 quarter shows how the two halves relate. The chemical segment made ₹1,574 crore of revenue and ₹261 crore of profit. Consolidated profit was ₹219 crore. The ₹42 crore difference is the battery business's loss, and it is widening — a year earlier it lost ₹14 crore on no revenue at all. Is it good at it? At the chemistry, after thirty years, yes: a 25.8% EBITDA margin in FY26 on a genuinely integrated plant. At turning capital into returns, not at the moment — 9.7% on capital employed, the lowest of the six specialty chemicals companies covered here.
On the measures that decide a fluorine business, GFL discloses less than its peers do and claims more. Those measures are how full the plants run, how far the chemistry is integrated, and how much of the mix sits in high-value grades. There is a number for none of them. Instead: R32 is "almost fully utilized", fluoropolymer capacity is close enough to its ceiling that growth comes from debottlenecking "every second quarter", and the mix is moving up — the chief executive's phrase for his own revenue growth is "I would not call it a price. I would call it the value." Integration is the one an outsider can check. Crisil describes a chain running forward into PTFE and backward into hydrogen fluoride, chloroform and chlorine, with newer products like PVDF made from the same fluorspar. That is what a 25.8% EBITDA margin on partly commodity products rests on. For battery materials the measure is qualification, and there management is specific: LiPF6 finished, PVDF close, cathode material late this year, and quarterly revenue above ₹100 crore targeted for the March 2027 quarter. That last one is checkable.
Modest on the ratio, and the ratio is not the part to watch. At March 2026 GFL owed ₹2,290 crore against ₹350 crore of cash — net debt of ₹1,940 crore, against ₹7,866 crore of shareholders' money, for a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29. Crisil reaffirmed Crisil AA+/Stable in March 2026 and expects adjusted gearing below 0.6 times with interest cover above 8. What to watch is where some of the debt came from. Crisil's stated weakness is that GFL "has supported group entities by extending loans, advances, corporate guarantees and lien marking its own liquidity for their loans, leading to increase in its own debt" — the balance sheet lent sideways within the INOXGFL group. Crisil says that support has fallen sharply and should become negligible, and still calls it monitorable. Against it sits ₹6,000 crore of announced spending to FY28.
Flat for the year, and then a quarter that was not flat at all. Revenue for the year to March 2026 was ₹4,996 crore, up 5.5%. Profit was ₹561 crore, up 2.7%. EBITDA margin improved to 25.8% from 23.2%. That is a third year of going nowhere. Revenue peaked at ₹5,685 crore in FY23 and is still 12% below it; profit peaked at ₹1,329 crore in the same year and is 58% below it. Return on capital was 29.6% then and is 9.7% now. The June 2026 quarter broke the pattern. Revenue ₹1,588 crore, up 24%. EBITDA up 39% against the March quarter. Profit ₹219 crore, more than double the March quarter's. Refrigerants did it: that line grew 52%.
Growth of 5.5% at the top line and 2.7% at the bottom — and neither number describes what is actually going on. Year to March 2026: revenue ₹4,996 crore against ₹4,737 crore, profit ₹561 crore against ₹546 crore, earnings per share ₹51.09. Over three years revenue has shrunk 4.2% a year, because FY23 was a peak the company has not regained. Over five it has compounded at 13.5%. Both are true; neither is current. The quarter is current. Revenue up 24% year on year, with fluorochemicals up 52%, fluoropolymers 15% and bulk chemicals 11%. Chemical segment profit rose 33% to ₹261 crore. Consolidated profit rose 20%, to ₹219 crore, because the battery business took ₹42 crore back out.
Its own — and the spending is running a long way ahead of anything it has earned back. No acquisitions. Gross block rose 12.7% to ₹4,831 crore, and a further ₹1,890 crore sits in capital work in progress, none of it earning. Management expects about ₹1,200 crore to still be uncapitalised at the end of FY27. The programme is ₹6,000 crore to FY28, split this year into roughly ₹2,300 crore on battery materials and ₹800 crore on chemicals. The named projects: R32 capacity commissioning this quarter, an R134a plant as a brownfield expansion by March, anhydrous hydrogen fluoride phased in from the December quarter for captive use, and continuous fluoropolymer debottlenecking. One project moved. A US$216 million battery plant in Oman has been put on hold and relocated to India, and the roughly ₹1,200 crore of sovereign-fund financing approved for it does not travel with it. Management says a fundraise is under way and does not see funding as a constraint.
Better over the year, better again in the quarter, and one line inside it pulling the other way. Group EBITDA margin was 25.8% for the year to March 2026 against 23.2%. Crisil, on its own definition, has 27% for the first nine months against 24% in FY25, and expects 25% to 27% to hold. The June quarter is where the split shows. The chemical segment earned 29% at the EBITDA line, against 28% a year earlier and 26% in the March quarter. Consolidated margin was 27%, unchanged year on year — the gap between the two is the battery business, which lost ₹30 crore at that line on ₹14 crore of sales. Net margin says it again from the other end: 17% at the chemical segment, 14% consolidated.
Poorly, and this is the number that argues with the share price. Return on capital employed was 9.7% for the year to March 2026 against 9.9%; return on equity 7.1% against 7.5%. Both fell, and both are the lowest of the six specialty chemicals companies covered here. It was not always so — return on capital was 20.6% in FY22 and 29.6% in FY23. What changed is the denominator: capital employed is ₹10,156 crore, and ₹1,890 crore of it sits in plants not yet running. The company reports 14.05% for FY26 and 16.63% for the June quarter, and its own footnote says why: it excludes capital employed in the last two years' expansions and all work in progress. A fair way to see the operating business, and not a return on the money shareholders have in this company.
Cash, yes. Collections slowly — though that part is improving fast. Operating cash flow over the three years to March 2026 came to ₹2,133 crore against ₹1,542 crore of profit — 1.38 times. FY26 alone brought ₹961 crore, nearly double the prior year's ₹545 crore. Getting paid is slow and holding stock is slower. Debtor days were 93.7 and inventory days 141.2 at March 2026, on ₹1,282 crore of receivables and ₹1,933 crore of inventory — together more than three-fifths of a year's revenue tied up. Management put working capital at 149 days in the June quarter against 192 at March, a 43-day improvement in one quarter. That is on the company's own definition, so it does not line up directly with the figures above.
Gujarat Fluorochemicals has not published its annual report for the year to March 2026, so most of this one waits. Dr. Bir Kapoor is chief executive and deputy managing director. Manoj Agrawal is chief financial officer. Kapil Malhotra runs fluoropolymers, and Rajiv Rao runs battery materials at the subsidiary, GFCL EV Products. The company sits inside the INOXGFL group alongside the listed Inox Wind and Inox Green, and its own promoter is Inox Leasing and Finance Limited. The board's composition, the auditors and their opinion, litigation, contingent liabilities and dealings with companies connected to the owners all come from the annual report, and it is not out. They will be written when it is. What can be answered without it — the ownership and the pledge against it — is below, and this quarter it is the more interesting half anyway.
Three companies in India make fluorine chemicals at scale. This is the one spending its profits on becoming something else. In fluoropolymers GFL is India's largest producer of PTFE and, on Crisil's reckoning, among the leading players globally — a position that grew when 3M left the business. In refrigerants it meets Navin Fluorine and SRF, both covered here, in a market where supply is capped by government quota rather than by capacity. In bulk chemicals it is a price-taker. What separates it is a fourth business that is not chemicals at all. GFCL EV Products makes lithium salts, electrolytes, cathode material, binders and anode material, and the company claims to be the only one globally offering all of them together, covering about 70% of the cost of an LFP battery cell. Whether that is an edge or a distraction is the open question, and the June quarter supports both readings: the chemicals earned ₹261 crore and the battery business lost ₹42 crore.
Third biggest of the six specialty chemicals companies covered here, second dearest, and last on return on capital. Revenue of ₹4,996 crore in FY26 sits behind SRF at ₹15,787 crore and Deepak Nitrite at ₹7,887 crore, and ahead of Navin Fluorine at ₹3,314 crore. On earnings it trades at 92.6 times, against Aether at 100.1, Acutaas at 74.9, Navin at 66.1, Deepak at 44.0 and SRF at 41.7. The return column is where it stands alone: 9.7% on capital employed, against Acutaas at 32.3%, Navin at 21.2%, SRF at 14.1%, Aether at 11.6% and Deepak at 11.4%. Lowest of the six, on the second-highest multiple of the six. Navin Fluorine is the closest comparison, doing similar chemistry at two-thirds the revenue. It grew 41% in FY26 against GFL's 5.5% and earns a 32.6% EBITDA margin against 25.8%. The difference is not the chemistry — both do fluorine well. It is that Navin's capital is working and a large part of GFL's is still in the ground.
Working for it: refrigerant quota, a shrinking list of Western fluoropolymer makers, and Indian battery policy. Against it: the battery business is still a promise, and the group has a history of lending out its own balance sheet. Refrigerants are the immediate driver. R32 revenue grew 52% in the June quarter, existing capacity is fully used, an expansion commissions this quarter and an R134a plant lands by March. Quota is set by formula on past output, which caps what anyone can add — management's reason for entering R134a this late is that "refrigerants towards end of their cycle, it becomes a valuable business proposition." Fluoropolymers gain from Western exits. 3M has left, and the head of that business says GFL absorbed the full benefit over two years and moved into the grades 3M vacated. AGC has now said it will close its UK plant, and qualification with its customers has begun — traction expected "not immediately, but probably a quarter or 2 down the line." Against that: battery materials lost ₹42 crore in the quarter on ₹14 crore of revenue, with the payoff dated FY28; the Oman plant was shelved and its sovereign-fund financing did not follow it to India; Crisil's named weakness is the loans, guarantees and lien-marked liquidity extended to group companies; and the December 2025 quarter showed quota working in reverse, when limits on R-22 constrained the fluorochemicals business.
Two of these businesses move on regulation rather than on demand, which is a different kind of cycle to sit through. Refrigerants are rationed. The phase-down of high-warming gases turns supply into a quota set by formula on past production, so the binding constraint is entitlement, not customers — and it cuts both ways. It gave GFL a 52% quarter in R32, and it took the December 2025 quarter away when R-22 output was capped. Fluoropolymers are the durable part. PTFE and its relatives go into semiconductors, data centres, green hydrogen and battery cells, and nothing else has the same properties. What makes the revenue uneven is not demand but qualification: every high-end grade needs a customer's approval, that takes quarters, and the sales arrive only afterwards. Battery materials is not an industry for this company yet — it is a bet on one. Demand for lithium cells outside China is projected to go from about 500 GWh in 2026 to 1.8 TWh by 2030. Bulk chemicals follows caustic soda prices and nothing else. Four businesses, and only one of them paced by ordinary customer demand.
You are paying a full chemicals multiple for the chemicals, and something extra for a battery business that currently loses money. At ₹4,732.10 on 26 August 2026 the company was worth ₹51,958 crore — 92.6 times the year to March 2026's earnings, 6.6 times book and 10.4 times sales. Of the six specialty chemicals companies covered here only Aether Industries is dearer, and GFL earns the lowest return on capital of the six. The bull case is that FY26 earnings are the wrong denominator. ₹1,890 crore of plant is not yet running, June-quarter profit was more than double the March quarter's, and battery revenue is guided above ₹100 crore a quarter by March 2027. The bear case is that all of it is already in the price, at a level within 0.2% of the highest the shares have traded in a year.
Ninety-three times earnings, on a company whose profit has gone sideways for three years. On 26 August 2026 the share was ₹4,732.10 — 92.6 times earnings of ₹51.09, 6.6 times book and 10.4 times sales. Most Indian companies trade between 20 and 30 times earnings, so this is very expensive on the absolute yardstick, and the earnings yield is 1.1%. Among the six specialty chemicals companies covered here only Aether Industries is dearer, at 100.1 times; Navin Fluorine, doing the closest thing to the same chemistry, is 66.1. No growth-adjusted multiple is shown, and the reason is worth stating rather than leaving blank: revenue has shrunk 4.2% a year over three years, and a five-year profit growth rate cannot be computed at all because FY21 was a loss. The shares closed within 0.2% of their 52-week high of ₹4,737.80, having traded at ₹2,970 inside the same year.
Indian funds have been buying steadily for six quarters. Everyone else has been getting smaller. Institutions held 17.74% at 30 June 2026, up 2.01 points over the year, and 1.85 of those points are domestic. Indian institutions went from 11.48% a year ago to 13.33%, mutual funds alone from 7.23% to 9.10%. Foreign institutions added the remaining 0.16, from 4.25% to 4.41%, and have stayed inside a 4.25% to 4.63% band across all six filings — this has never been a large position for foreign money. The retail public fell from 21.69% to 20.86%, and the number of shareholders dropped 10.7%, from 68,420 to 61,120 — around 7,300 individual holders gone during a year in which the stock rose 38%.
Five holders above 1%, and the only one that has not moved at all is an individual. At 30 June 2026: Akash Bhanshali 4.75%, Mirae Asset Large & Midcap Fund 3.19%, Life Insurance Corporation of India 2.75%, Motilal Oswal Large And Midcap Fund 2.00% and HDFC Mid-Cap 1.43%. Mutual funds together hold 9.10%. Akash Bhanshali held 4.75% in the earliest filing on record here, March 2025, and 4.75% in the latest — unchanged through six quarters and a 38% rise in the share price. He is the largest holder outside the promoter group, ahead of every institution on the register. The funds around him have rotated. DSP Midcap, HDFC Mid-Cap Opportunities and Nippon India Small Cap have all dropped below 1%; Mirae and HDFC Mid-Cap have come above it.
Almost no dividend, no dilution at all, and a fundraise that has been announced but not done. GFL paid ₹3.01 a share for the year to March 2026 — 5.9% of profit, a yield of about 0.06% at ₹4,732.10 on 26 August 2026. There has been no buyback. The share count has been 109,850,000 since FY20: no dilution over one year or five. That is unusual for a company committed to ₹6,000 crore of spending by FY28. So far it has come from operating cash flow of ₹961 crore and from borrowing. The cash flow statement also shows ₹367 crore of equity raised during FY26 against no change in GFL's own share count, which means it was raised somewhere below the parent — the documents held do not say where, and this page will not guess. Management confirmed on the August call that "our fundraise process is on". A shareholder should read that as a question still open.
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