Solvay Cuts 2026 Guidance as Its Saudi Peroxide Plant Stays Shut

Solvay cut its 2026 profit forecast on Monday, October 19, 2026, because its hydrogen peroxide plant at the Sadara complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, is still shut by the Middle East conflict. The Belgian chemicals group now expects underlying EBITDA of €720 million to €740 million, down from €770 million to €850 million, and free cash flow of €120 million to €150 million instead of at least €200 million. The shares fell more than 5% in Brussels on Tuesday morning, according to Investing.com and Zonebourse. The headline reached the MoveSurge news feed at 07:04:52 UTC on October 20.

Underlying EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, with one-off items stripped out. It is the number Solvay steers the market on. Analysts had already pencilled in a result near the bottom of the old range: the company-compiled consensus was €775 million. The new range sits below even that.

What went wrong in the third quarter

Solvay published preliminary third-quarter figures with the cut. Underlying EBITDA was €173 million, 7% short of consensus, while sales of €1.03 billion matched expectations. The company said the conflict took about €25 million out of the quarter's underlying EBITDA, and nearly €15 million of that came from the Sadara shutdown. The conflict had already cost about €20 million in the second quarter.

Sales were flat from the second quarter while underlying EBITDA fell, so the damage showed up in margins rather than in volume.

Why the July promise did not survive

On July 29, Solvay confirmed its full-year range of €770 million to €850 million. It said the Saudi peroxide plant had been shut since mid-March and that it expected to restart it in the third quarter. That restart was built into the guidance. The third quarter ended with the plant still closed, and the new range assumes no Sadara revenue and no recovery of lost profit for the rest of 2026.

Sadara is majority-owned by Saudi Aramco, and Solvay runs its Jubail plant through a joint venture there. Solvay says it is exploring ways to limit the damage, including joint-venture contract terms that could let it recover lost profit. None of that is in the new numbers, so any recovery would come on top of them.

What the new range says about the fourth quarter

Jefferies calculated that the low end of the range implies fourth-quarter EBITDA of about €141 million, 23% below the Visible Alpha consensus. Stripping out a further €15 million Sadara hit, Jefferies put the underlying cut to fourth-quarter expectations at about 14%. So most of the cut to fourth-quarter expectations comes from outside the Saudi plant. KBC Securities pointed to difficult conditions in soda ash, one of Solvay's main products.

The dividend question

Solvay pays €2.43 per share and describes its dividend as stable or rising. KBC Securities estimates that costs about €255 million a year. The new free cash flow guidance of €120 million to €150 million is already net of about €90 million of transformation expenses, and it covers less than two thirds of that bill even at the top end. KBC and ING both raised the dividend as a concern after the warning.

Solvay reports full third-quarter results on November 4, 2026. That release is the next chance for the company to update the Sadara situation and to say how it plans to pay for the dividend.