Albemarle (ALB) FY2025 results: revenue $5.1 billion, down 4.4% on the year

Albemarle turns mined and brine-sourced minerals, mainly lithium and bromine, into chemicals that other manufacturers build into their products. The end markets it lists are grid storage, automotive, aerospace, conventional energy, electronics, construction, agriculture and food, pharmaceuticals and medical devices. It was incorporated in Virginia in 1993 and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. With its joint ventures it operates more than 25 production and research and development facilities around the world, and at 31 December 2025 it served approximately 1,900 customers in approximately 70 countries. It reported three segments during 2025: Energy Storage, Specialties and Ketjen.

Energy Storage

Basic lithium compounds, principally lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide and lithium chloride. They go into lithium batteries for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, power grids and solar panels, and into high performance greases and the specialty glass used in appliances and electronics. The filing describes the global lithium market as highly competitive and expanding quickly, with new entrants including car makers, commodity traders, junior miners and large diversified miners, and names Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, Sichuan Tianqi Lithium, Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium, Rio Tinto, Pilbara Minerals and Tesla among its competitors. Pricing in the market is increasingly index-based.

Where the lithium comes from

Two routes. The company buys lithium concentrate from Windfield Holdings, a 49%-owned joint venture that owns Talison Lithium, owner of the Greenbushes mine in Australia, and from MARBL Lithium Joint Venture, an unincorporated venture it owns half of, which holds the Wodgina hard rock lithium project in Western Australia. It also produces lithium by solar evaporation from its own ponds at the Salar de Atacama in Chile and at Silver Peak, Nevada. Beyond those it holds mineral rights at Kings Mountain, North Carolina and undeveloped land with access to a lithium resource at Antofalla in Catamarca Province, Argentina.

Specialties

Bromine chemistry and the more specialised lithium products. Fire safety compounds are the largest strand: they raise the flame resistance of plastics so those plastics can be used in hot, demanding applications such as enclosures for consumer electronics, printed circuit boards, wire and cable, electrical connectors, textiles and foam insulation, and in renewable grid and electrified transport infrastructure. Other bromine products include elemental bromine, alkyl bromides, inorganic bromides, brominated powdered activated carbon and bromine fine chemicals, some used in food and water safety. The lithium specialties include butyllithium and lithium aluminium hydride, used in organic synthesis for steroid chemistry, vitamins, life sciences and pharmaceutical intermediates. The segment also makes cesium products for chemical and pharmaceutical customers and zirconium, barium and titanium products for pyrotechnics including airbag initiators, and it offers technical services and recycling of lithium-containing by-products. Bromine is sourced from Arkansas, supported by a brine rights leasing programme, and from the Dead Sea through Jordan Bromine Company Limited, a half-owned consolidated joint venture formed in 1999 with operations at Safi in Jordan. Lanxess, Israel Chemicals and Rio Tinto are named as its main competitors here.

Ketjen and its sale

Three product lines: Clean Fuels Technologies, mainly hydroprocessing catalysts that strip sulfur and nitrogen out of refinery feedstocks, together with isomerisation and alkylation catalysts; fluidized catalytic cracking catalysts and additives, which crack refinery streams into transport fuels and petrochemical feedstocks such as propylene and cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions; and performance catalyst solutions, mainly organometallic co-catalysts and curatives. On 25 October 2025 the company agreed to divest control of the Refining Solutions business to ChemCat AcquisitionCo, LLC and contribute the remainder to a new partnership, ChemCat Holdings, LP, retaining the performance catalyst solutions business and common units initially representing a 49% interest. On 23 January 2026 it completed the separate sale of its 50% interest in Eurecat S.A. to Axens SA.

People

There were approximately 7,800 employees at 31 December 2025, including those of consolidated joint ventures: 3,100 or 40% in the United States and the Americas, 2,600 or 33% in Asia Pacific, 1,500 or 19% in Europe and 600 or 8% in the Middle East and elsewhere. Approximately 26% are represented by unions or works councils.

From Albemarle's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 11 February 2026: read the full 10-K.