European Chemicals: Weekend Chemical Reactions

Research evidence excerpt

J P M O R G A N

Europe Equity Research

16 August 2026

European Chemicals

Weekend Chemical Reactions

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European Chemicals

Chetan Udeshi, CFA AC

Trending Over the Past Week

What Caught Our Eye?

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J.P. Morgan Securities plc

Key Upcoming Events

Angelina Glazova, CFA AC

Weekly Recap: Key Insights from JPM Research

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J.P. Morgan Securities plc

Sector Valuation

Kanchan Sangtani

Trending Over the Past Week

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J.P. Morgan India Private Limited

Here, we discuss the stocks/topics where we have seen the most incremental client

interest and feedback over the past week.

Specialist Sales contact details:

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Syensqo (SYENS): We reiterated OW in our note: “Syensqo: SOTP catalyst

meets Polymers recovery – raising PT to €100”. The key pushbacks were:

Too early to call a Specialty Polymers inflection based on just 2Q

improvement, especially given demand distortions (e.g., customer prebuying) tied to the Middle East conflict. JPM view: The concern is

reasonable, but we are encouraged by management’s comments on a robust

2Q exit order book with share gains in semis/autos, as well as one of its key

semis customers (Georg Fischer) reporting its semis-business orders

doubling YoY in 2Q.

Risk of value-destructive M&A following the potential sale of two less

attractive businesses. JPM view: We see logical industry consolidation as

key to improving fundamentals given rising competitive pressure—even

across a growing number of specialty products—from China/other EMs.

We therefore don’t view value-accretive consolidation and/or moatenhancing deals as problematic per se, though we are curious about

potential targets. Several Japanese diversified companies have niche

specialty polymers exposures that could be attractive to Syensqo,

particularly if they strengthen its foothold in the Japanese market.

Materials division valuation at an implied ~9x 2027E EV/EBITDA on

our SOTP—cheaper than the ~12x weighted-average of closest global

peers, but seen as expensive relative to the broader EU diversified

chemicals space.…