It makes things with fluorine in them, and it is one of three companies in India that can. Navin Fluorine turns hydrofluoric acid into three different kinds of product, and the split matters more than the total. In the June 2026 quarter, high-performance products — refrigerant gases, mainly R32 — brought in ₹540 crore. Specialty chemicals, largely intermediates for agrochemical and pharmaceutical innovators, brought in ₹325 crore. Contract manufacturing for pharma companies brought in ₹180 crore. Together, ₹1,045 crore, up 44% on the same quarter a year earlier. Is it good at it? The margin says yes. Operating EBITDA margin was 34.2% in the quarter, up 5.7 points year on year, and the full year to March 2026 came in at 32.6% against 22.7% the year before. Return on capital employed nearly doubled, from 11.7% to 21.2%. What sits underneath that is a chemistry most people cannot do. Fluorine is the most reactive element there is, and handling it at industrial scale is a licence to charge for difficulty. Navin has been doing it since 1967.
On the two that decide this industry, yes — and on a third, it has just stopped being a question. For a fluorochemicals maker, the measures are cost position in the commodity business, and how deep you sit in a customer's supply chain in the specialty and contract businesses. On cost: management's claim is that Navin is the lowest-cost producer of R32 in India, on the back of an integrated hydrofluoric acid chain and, from this year, a captive renewable project expected to cover more than 60% of its power. Capacity goes from 9,000–10,000 tonnes to roughly 25,000 with the expansion due in Q3 FY27, so the fixed cost per tonne falls sharply whatever the price does. On depth: the CDMO business has moved to what the chief financial officer called "API minus one" for its European partner — one step from the finished active ingredient, which is the hardest position to be replaced from. Three more molecules are due FDA readouts in the next eight to twelve months. The third measure is utilisation, and Navin does not disclose it.
It has none, as of two months ago. Navin became net debt free during the June 2026 quarter, on the chief financial officer's own statement. At the March 2026 year end it was not quite there: borrowings of ₹1,272 crore against ₹97 crore of cash, so net debt of ₹1,175 crore and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. Borrowings had already fallen from ₹1,466 crore a year earlier. What closed the gap was cash, not refinancing. Operating cash flow for the year was ₹894 crore against ₹571 crore the year before, and ₹173 crore came in during the June quarter alone. The figure on this page is 0.32, because that is what the March 2026 balance sheet says and the balance sheet is what gets audited. The company crossed to net cash after it.
Growing fast, and profit is growing nearly twice as fast. Revenue for the year to March 2026 was ₹3,314 crore, up 41%. Profit after tax was ₹664 crore, up 130%. EBITDA margin went from 22.7% to 32.6%; net margin from 12.3% to 20.0%. Margins expanding ten points in a year is not normal, and the reason is operating leverage rather than pricing. Capacity commissioned in earlier years — the anhydrous hydrofluoric acid plant, the first phase of the cGMP4 block — began running through a cost base that was already paid for. The June 2026 quarter carried the same shape: 34.2% margin against 28.5% a year earlier, so this is continuing rather than a one-year artefact. The five-year picture is calmer than the last twelve months suggest: revenue has compounded at 23% and profit at 21%. FY25 was the weak year in that run, which is part of why FY26 looks as dramatic as it does.
Sales up 41%, profit up 130%, and the gap is the whole story. Year to March 2026: revenue ₹3,314 crore against ₹2,349 crore. Profit after tax ₹664 crore against ₹289 crore. Earnings per share of ₹129. The three-year revenue compound rate is 17% and the five-year 23%, so FY26 ran well ahead of trend. It follows FY25, when revenue grew 14% and profit fell — the comparison base is soft, and a reader should hold both numbers at once. June quarter 2026: revenue ₹1,045 crore, up 44%; profit ₹243 crore, up 108%. All three businesses grew — refrigerants 33%, specialty chemicals 48%, contract manufacturing 82%.
Entirely on its own, and expensively. No acquisitions in the year. Gross block went from ₹2,736 crore to ₹3,324 crore, up 21%, with ₹143 crore still in capital work in progress and ₹1,235 crore of cash going out through investing activities. The projects are named and dated. A ₹288 crore cGMP4 block for the contract manufacturing business, approved in February 2024, with phase one running since the December 2025 quarter and phase two — ₹125 crore — initiated in August 2026 for completion by March 2027. Additional HFC capacity equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of R32, due in the December 2026 quarter. Debottlenecking at the Dahej multi-purpose plant on the same timetable. A ₹90 crore adoption plant for advanced materials. A ₹15.7 crore captive renewable project. All of it funded from internal accruals. The company did raise ₹344 crore of equity during the year, which lifted the share count from 4.96 crore to 5.13 crore — but the plants are being paid for out of cash flow.
Improving, and by a distance that should make you ask why. EBITDA margin: 22.7% in FY25, 32.6% in FY26. Nearly ten points. Net margin: 12.3% to 20.0%. Gross margin moved much less — 56.3% to 58.8% — which locates the gain below the raw material line, in fixed costs spread over more volume. The June 2026 quarter says the same: 34.2% against 28.5%. There is one wrinkle management was asked about directly. Margin in the subsidiary that houses the new hydrofluoric acid plant looks weaker, because the acid now moves from that subsidiary to the parent at arm's length rather than as a finished product. The value shows up in a different entity. At group level, which is what this page reports, it nets out.
Yes, and it has just climbed back out of a hole. Return on capital employed was 21.2% for the year to March 2026, against 11.7% the year before. Return on equity, 16.7% against 11.0%. Both had been falling for three years — return on capital was 20.9% in FY23, then 12.1%, then 11.7% — as money went into plants that were not yet earning. Capital employed is now ₹5,246 crore against a net worth of ₹3,975 crore, and the FY26 recovery is what those earlier years were buying. Whether it holds is the open question. There is another ₹500 crore or so of capital expenditure in flight, and every rupee of it enters the denominator before it earns anything.
Comfortably, on both. Operating cash flow over the last three years came to ₹2,214 crore against ₹1,223 crore of reported profit — 1.81 times. Cash is not lagging the profit and loss account; it is running ahead of it. For the year alone, ₹894 crore of operating cash flow against ₹664 crore of profit. Debtor days fell from 90 to 83, inventory sits at 49 days, and the chief financial officer put net working capital at 81 days of sales in the June quarter. Receivables did rise to ₹752 crore from ₹582 crore — but revenue rose 41%, so collection improved even as the absolute number grew.
A fourth-generation industrial family, holding a quarter of the company and running it with hired professionals. Vishad Mafatlal is executive chairman. Nitin Kulkarni is managing director and Anish Ganatra chief financial officer; neither is family. The two roles that matter most day to day are held by people who were recruited, not born into it. The board runs to eleven, of whom six are independent — Atul Srivastava, Ashok Sinha, Sujal Shah, Apurva Purohit, Abhijit Joshi and Kartikeya Dube, who joined in December 2025. Sunil Lalbhai and Sudhir Deo are non-executive but not independent. Eight board meetings were held during the year. The auditor is Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants LLP, in a second five-year term running to the 29th annual general meeting, and it signed FY26 without qualification. Where the trust question actually bites is small and worth naming: a relative of the chairman, Devavrata Mafatlal, joined the payroll in August 2025.
Nothing of any size, and one honest footnote. Total contingent liabilities at March 2026 came to ₹8.21 crore — income tax ₹4.34 crore, excise ₹1.19 crore, sales tax ₹0.88 crore, employee matters ₹0.82 crore, goods and services tax ₹0.83 crore, guarantees ₹0.15 crore. Against profit of ₹664 crore, that is noise. The excise figure actually fell, from ₹4.23 crore. Price Waterhouse recorded no qualification, reservation, adverse remark or disclaimer on either the standalone or the consolidated accounts. The one thing worth reporting rather than burying: the auditors noted that while the accounting software's audit trail was enabled throughout the year, the log does not capture changes made by certain privileged users. That is a control observation found across a great many Indian companies since the requirement came in, not a finding about Navin's numbers — but it is in the report, so it belongs here.
Two other companies do fluorine at this scale in India. Navin is the only one that does nothing else. SRF is four times the size and chemicals is under half of it — the rest is packaging films and technical textiles. Gujarat Fluorochemicals makes fluoropolymers and is pouring money into battery materials. Both are fluorine companies attached to something else. Navin is fluorine and only fluorine, split three ways so that no single business is more than 52% of a quarter's revenue. When agrochemical demand fell away in FY24 and FY25, the refrigerant business carried it. This year all three are running at once. The difference that matters commercially is the contract manufacturing arm, which puts Navin in a different competitive set entirely — against Divi's Laboratories and Laurus Labs, both covered here, rather than against other fluorochemicals makers.
Three companies do fluorine chemistry at scale in India, and Navin is the smallest of them. SRF and Gujarat Fluorochemicals are the other two. In the June 2026 quarter SRF's chemicals business turned over ₹2,315 crore, up 26%, at an operating margin near 28%. Gujarat Fluorochemicals did ₹1,588 crore across its chemicals segments, up 24%, at 27%. Navin did ₹1,045 crore — under half of SRF's — but grew 44% and earned 34.2%. Smallest of the three, fastest-growing of the three, most profitable per rupee of sales. The businesses are not the same shape. Gujarat Fluorochemicals makes fluoropolymers and is spending heavily on battery materials, neither of which Navin touches. SRF is a conglomerate where chemicals is under half the company. Navin's contract manufacturing arm grew 82% year on year and competes not with SRF but with Divi's Laboratories and Laurus Labs — both covered on this site — for molecules from the same global innovators. Where all three overlap is refrigerants, and there the tailwind is shared. Gujarat Fluorochemicals' refrigerant line grew 52% in the June quarter; Navin's grew 33%. Nobody in this industry is currently being tested by a hard market.
Helping: a refrigerant shortage the world has legislated into existence. Hurting: agrochemical prices that have not recovered. R32 demand is expected to roughly double over a decade while quota-driven supply halves, under the global phase-down of high-warming refrigerants. Navin is adding 15,000 tonnes to an existing 9,000–10,000, and management's argument is that operating leverage on that expansion protects earnings "in any pricing environment". Whether that survives contact with an oversupplied Indian market — management concedes India will be oversupplied for five years and expects to export — is the thing to watch. Hurting: the specialty chemicals business sells into agrochemicals, where volumes are recovering but prices are not. Management named Latin America specifically as well supplied. Growth there is coming from adding molecules — thirteen or fourteen new ones last year, four or five campaign orders visible this year — rather than from a better market. And one that is neither yet: advanced materials for data centres, semiconductors and defence, including a partnership with the Defence Research and Development Organisation and a Chemours liquid-cooling project due this quarter. Management wants it to be as big as the contract manufacturing business is today by the end of the decade. It is currently a ₹90 crore plant and a pipeline.
Both, in different rooms of the same building. Refrigerants are a regulated shortage with a decade to run — that is close to legislated growth. Specialty fluorochemicals for agrochemicals are as cyclical as farming and as exposed to Chinese overcapacity as anything else in Indian chemicals; the last two years proved it. Pharmaceutical contract manufacturing grows with drug pipelines and lurches when a single molecule fails a readout. Fluorine itself is the durable part. It goes into the things the world is building more of — refrigerants, batteries, semiconductors, modern crop chemistry, roughly a fifth of new drugs. The chemistry is hard enough that the list of people who can do it does not lengthen quickly.
Only if you think the last twelve months are the new normal rather than a good year. At ₹8,151 on 17 August 2026 the company is worth ₹41,815 crore — 63 times the year to March 2026's earnings, 10.5 times book, 12.6 times sales. Against 41% revenue growth and 130% profit growth, a price-earnings-to-growth ratio of 3.0. The bull case is arithmetic: capacity commissioned, capacity coming, and operating leverage that has already shown what it does to margins. The bear case is the same arithmetic read backwards. FY26 doubled profit off a weak FY25. Repeat the multiple on a normal year and the price implies a great deal.
Expensive, and it was expensive before this year's earnings arrived. On 17 August 2026 the share was ₹8,151. That is 63.0 times earnings of ₹129 per share, 10.5 times a book value of ₹775, and 12.6 times sales. The earnings yield is 1.6%; the dividend adds 0.1%. Sixty-three times is high in absolute terms but lower than it has been, because earnings caught up: profit doubled while the share rose 62%. A year ago the same company on the same price basis was dearer. The stock trades 5.8% below its 52-week high of ₹8,650 and 79% above the low of ₹4,552.
Buying, slowly, and they now own more of it than everyone else combined. Institutions held 52.19% at 30 June 2026, against 50.26% a year earlier — up 1.93 points over four quarters, and rising in five of the six quarters filed. Foreign institutions went from 21.55% to 23.73%. Domestic institutions were roughly flat at 28.46%, with mutual funds at 21.02%. The seller was the retail public, down from 21.73% to 20.73%, even as the number of shareholders barely moved — 138,594 against 138,398. Individuals are not leaving in numbers; the ones who stayed simply own a smaller slice of a bigger company.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the Life Insurance Corporation, and most of India's large fund houses. Above 1% at 30 June 2026: SBI Mutual Fund, Government Pension Fund Global — the Norwegian sovereign fund — Life Insurance Corporation of India, Axis Mutual Fund, Aditya Birla Sun Life, Nippon Life India, HSBC Mutual Fund, Baroda BNP Paribas ELSS Fund, and Vanguard's Total International Stock Index Fund. Two things follow. The register is institutional rather than promoter-led, which is consistent with a family holding 27%. And the presence of two global index funds — Vanguard's and Norway's — means a slice of the shareholding is there because of index construction rather than a view on fluorine chemistry. One named individual clears 1%: Ajay Upadhyaya.
All three questions have an answer, and the dividend is the smallest of them. Dividends for the year to March 2026 came to ₹8.59 per share — an interim of ₹6.50 paid during the year and a final of ₹8.60 recommended for approval. That is a payout of 6.6% of profit and a yield of about 0.1% at the current price. This company returns almost nothing to shareholders in cash, and says so plainly by where the money goes instead: ₹1,235 crore out through investing activities in one year. It raised ₹344 crore of equity during the year, taking the share count from 4.96 crore to 5.13 crore — dilution of 3.4%. Employee options account for a further 0.22%, with 113,590 options outstanding. No buyback. For a company spending everything it earns on plants that are not finished, a token dividend and a small raise is the coherent position. It would be stranger if it were paying out.
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