ICL: How Much of the Story Is Specialty, and How Much Is Still Commodity

How Much of the Story Is Already Specialty

The main article focused on the cash test. This follow-up isolates a different question: how much of ICL in 2025 already looks like a Specialty company, and how much still runs on the old mineral base.

The strategic direction is not ambiguous. ICL says it is driving long-term growth through specialty agriculture and food, while strategically managing its bromine, potash and phosphate mineral resources. The profitable-growth section of the 20-F is built around that idea: Growing Solutions is framed as the specialty crop nutrition engine, and Phosphate Solutions is meant to expand its food-solutions layer beyond classic phosphates.

But once the discussion moves from narrative to numbers, the picture becomes more grounded. The company itself defines its core businesses as Potash, Industrial Products, and the commodity portion of Phosphate Solutions. So the real test here is not how often management uses the word Specialty. It is where the earnings power actually sits.

There is one important methodological limit. Industrial Products clearly contains businesses that are more specialized and less commodity-like than the label suggests, but the filing does not provide a clean numerical split between those specialty pockets and the broader bromine and minerals base. So this read is deliberately conservative: on the Specialty side, I only include the two buckets the company discloses cleanly, Growing Solutions and Phosphate Specialties. On the mineral-core side, I leave Potash, Industrial Products, and Phosphate Commodities.

That is the heart of the issue. The two disclosed Specialty buckets generated segment sales of $3.395 billion in 2025, already close to half of the picture. But they produced only $419 million of segment EBITDA, or about 26.6% of the disclosed total. The mineral core produced $3.969 billion of segment sales and $1.154 billion of segment EBITDA, about 73.4% of the disclosed total. So on the revenue line, ICL already looks much more balanced. On the earnings line, it is still unmistakably a mineral company.

There is an even sharper way to say it: the Potash segment alone generated $552 million of EBITDA. That is more than the combined $419 million generated by Growing Solutions and Phosphate Specialties together.

Where the Money Actually Sits

The gap between the strategic story and the earnings engine becomes even clearer when the business is broken down bucket by bucket.

These sales figures are segment sales, including intersegment sales, exactly as the company presents them in its segment disclosure.

The single most important line in that table is easy to miss: within Phosphate Solutions, the company shows Phosphate Specialties at $1.332 billion of sales and $206 million of EBITDA, while Phosphate Commodities generated only $1.001 billion of sales but $322 million of EBITDA. In other words, even inside the phosphate chain, the commodity side is smaller on sales and still larger on profit.

Growing Solutions, the cleanest Specialty story in the filing, still does not come close to the earnings density of the mineral core. The segment finished 2025 with $2.063 billion of sales and $213 million of EBITDA, a margin of about 10.3%. Potash, by contrast, finished the year with $1.714 billion of sales and $552 million of EBITDA, a margin of roughly 32.2%. That is not a cosmetic difference. It tells you which part of the portfolio is funding the rest.

That leads to the key analytical conclusion: the move toward Specialty is real at the level of direction, product mix and capital allocation, but it has not yet produced the same shift in earnings mix.

Why the Specialty Narrative Is Real

It would be a mistake to swing too far the other way and call this only branding. The company explicitly says long-term growth should come from specialty agriculture and food. Growing Solutions is described as a global leader in specialty crop nutrition, with emphasis on biostimulants, nutrient-use efficiency, and organic and recycled products, plus expansion in markets such as India, China and Brazil. In food solutions, ICL is also trying to move beyond phosphate-only ingredients into texturants, preservatives, acidulants and leavening agents.

The numbers show this is already more than an idea. Growing Solutions increased 2025 sales by 6% to $2.063 billion and EBITDA by 5% to $213 million. Inside Phosphate Solutions, the company is now giving separate disclosure for Phosphate Specialties, with $1.332 billion of sales and $206 million of EBITDA. Companies do not start carving out that kind of disclosure for a business they see as presentation decoration.

The post-balance-sheet moves point in the same direction. In January 2026, ICL acquired 49.9% of Bartek Ingredients shares and preferred debt for total consideration of about $90 million. Bartek is described as a global leader in food-grade malic and fumaric acids, and the company says Bartek will be consolidated because ICL holds a substantive call option and has the practical ability to exercise it at any time from the initial closing date. That matters strategically, but it should not be confused with 2025 proof. The deal strengthens the direction of travel. It does not change the 2025 earnings base.

Why the Earnings Engine Is Still Mineral-Led

The 2025 operating bridges reinforce the same point. The mineral core still has much stronger earnings torque.

In Potash, price alone added $102 million to operating income, and transportation added another $24 million. There were offsets from other costs and water fees, but the bottom line still moved higher. Segment EBITDA rose from $492 million to $552 million. That is exactly what a powerful cyclical earnings engine looks like when the market turns in its favor.

In Growing Solutions, by contrast, price added $92 million, but raw materials took away $79 million and operating and other expenses took away another $17 million. So a segment that added more than $100 million of sales ended the year with only an $11 million increase in EBITDA. That does not make the segment weak. It means it still is not built to convert incremental revenue into profit the way the potash base does.

Phosphate Solutions tells a similar story. Price added $73 million to operating income and quantity added another $21 million, but sulphur costs erased $96 million. And again, inside that segment, the commodity layer remained more profitable than the specialty layer. So even with management pointing investors toward Specialty, earnings sensitivity is still heavily shaped by mineral-chain economics, raw-material costs and commodity-cycle conditions.

That is why the cleanest description of ICL today is not “a Specialty company that already escaped commodities,” but also not “a commodity company telling a prettier story.” The more accurate read is: a mineral company using its existing base to build real Specialty growth platforms, without yet shifting the center of earnings gravity to those platforms.

What Would Prove That the Mix Has Really Shifted

The real proof will not come from another strategy slide. It will come from two numerical tests.

The first is margin. Growing Solutions does not need to overtake Potash overnight, but it does need to show that it can grow EBITDA faster than sales even in a raw-material-heavy environment. As long as it sits around a 10% EBITDA margin, it remains an important growth engine, not the dominant earnings engine.

The second test sits inside Phosphate Solutions. As long as Phosphate Commodities produces more EBITDA than Phosphate Specialties despite lower sales, it is difficult to argue that the specialty layer has taken center stage. The real turning point will come only when the specialty side starts to close that profit gap, not merely when it stays ahead on revenue.

A third, smaller but still important test will come from Bartek. If that acquisition starts turning the Specialty Food Solutions direction into visible earnings contribution, it can become another building block in a new mix. If it remains mainly a strategic extension, the market will keep reading ICL first through potash, bromine and phosphate economics.

Bottom Line

ICL’s strategic message is real. The company is investing, acquiring and defining its growth engines around Specialty Agriculture and Food Solutions. But in 2025, the business that funded that story was still the mineral core.

On the company’s own disclosed split, Specialty is already close to half of segment sales, but only about one quarter of disclosed segment EBITDA. Potash alone produces more EBITDA than the two cleanest Specialty buckets combined. And inside Phosphate Solutions, the commodity side is smaller on sales and larger on profit.

That is the point the market has to keep straight: ICL is no longer a clean commodity story, but it is also not yet a Specialty company that has broken free from the mineral cycle. It is in the middle of the transition. The direction has changed. The earnings engine, for now, has not.