SGL Carbon SE (XETRA: SGL) reported first half 2026 results on 6 August 2026 at 07:30 CET/CEST, with sales down 13.0 percent, a wider adjusted EBITDA margin, a return to positive net income, and full year guidance left unchanged. The Wiesbaden company makes specialty graphite, high-performance fibres and composite materials, employs approximately 3,800 people at 28 locations in Europe, North America and Asia, and generated revenue of 850 million euros in fiscal year 2025.
Consolidated sales for the six months came to EUR 394.2 million, against EUR 453.2 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA slipped 3.7 percent to EUR 69.8 million from EUR 72.5 million, while the adjusted EBITDA margin rose to 17.7 percent from 16.0 percent. Net result attributable to shareholders turned positive at EUR 11.8 million after a loss of EUR 31.4 million in the first half of 2025.
Restructuring costs fall away
The swing in the bottom line came mostly from what stopped happening. Restructuring expenses fell to minus EUR 3.9 million from minus EUR 47.0 million a year earlier, which lifted EBIT to EUR 40.5 million from minus EUR 3.2 million. Adjusted EBIT, which strips those items out, was almost flat at EUR 45.6 million against EUR 46.7 million, on depreciation and amortisation of minus EUR 24.2 million after minus EUR 25.8 million.
Balance sheet measures moved in the same direction. Net financial debt fell to EUR 79.3 million at 30 June 2026 from EUR 98.9 million at the end of 2025, taking the debt ratio to 0.6 from 0.7. The equity ratio was nearly constant at 39.7 percent against 39.2 percent. Capital expenditure of EUR 19.6 million ran below depreciation and amortisation of EUR 24.5 million. Free cash flow was reported at EUR 31.4 million against EUR 7.3 million.
Analysis: read the margin through the compensation payments
The improvement in the margin is real but it is not organic, and the release states the reason directly. Compensation payments of EUR 28.7 million were recognised in income during the half, arising from adjustments to existing supply contracts with semiconductor customers, and they sit inside Graphite Solutions sales. Those payments offset contractually agreed purchase obligations that customers did not fulfil. They arrived in two instalments, EUR 7.7 million in the first quarter and EUR 21.0 million in the second.
That single item reshapes the segment picture. Graphite Solutions reported sales up 5.9 percent at EUR 234.1 million and adjusted EBITDA up 14.2 percent at EUR 46.6 million, for a margin of 19.9 percent against 18.5 percent. The compensation payments are inside both figures. Strip them out and the largest business unit did not grow, which is consistent with the company’s own reference to lower demand in Graphite Solutions weighing on group sales. The company also states that earnings from these contract adjustments originally pertained to the entire fiscal year and were brought forward into the first half. The second half therefore starts without them.
Set that against the guidance. SGL Carbon confirmed consolidated sales of EUR 720 million to EUR 770 million and adjusted EBITDA of EUR 110 million to EUR 130 million for 2026, against actual 2025 figures of EUR 850.2 million and EUR 135.0 million. With EUR 394.2 million of sales and EUR 69.8 million of adjusted EBITDA already booked, the full year ranges imply a second half in which adjusted EBITDA falls well short of the first half even at the top of the guidance band. Confirming guidance in these circumstances does not imply an improving second half; the confirmed ranges accommodate a second half below the first.
Process Technology is where the underlying demand signal is cleanest, because no compensation payments distort it. Sales fell 28.2 percent to EUR 50.4 million and adjusted EBITDA fell from EUR 19.9 million to EUR 7.3 million, taking the margin from 28.3 percent to 14.5 percent. The company attributes this to cautious order placement by chemical industry customers, with energy prices, labour costs and regulatory requirements pushing investment projects back, and to low capacity utilisation that also defers maintenance and replacement spending. The prior-year comparison base is higher for a stated reason: the first half of 2025 still carried deliveries of large high-margin projects.
Fiber Composites, formed by merging the former Carbon Fibers and Composite Solutions segments, shows what the restructuring bought. Sales fell to EUR 99.4 million from EUR 152.6 million, a decline of EUR 53.2 million driven by the discontinuation of loss-making activities in mid-2025, while adjusted EBITDA rose by EUR 8.3 million to EUR 18.9 million and the margin went from 6.9 percent to 19.0 percent. Part of that comes from outside the operating business: the Brembo SGL Carbon Ceramic Brakes joint venture, accounted for using the equity method, contributed EUR 7.4 million against EUR 4.7 million.
The outlook and its stated risks
Chief executive Andreas Klein said the company is “on track to achieve its 2026 targets” despite what he described as the continuing challenging market environment, and pointed to the SGL Growth 2030 strategy and its target markets in semiconductors, power generation, defence and aerospace.
The company set conditions around that confirmation. It named the ongoing armed conflict in the Middle East as raising the risk of slower global and regional growth, and singled out a prolonged disruption to the Strait of Hormuz as a route by which raw material and fossil fuel availability or prices could be affected. The guidance is stated to hold assuming the economic and geopolitical situation does not deteriorate further.
The return on capital employed measured on adjusted EBIT was 9.8 percent at 30 June 2026, unchanged from a year earlier, against a 2026 outlook range of 9 percent to 10 percent and an actual 9.8 percent for 2025. Free cash flow is guided at the previous year’s level, which the company puts at EUR 37.0 million for 2025.
What to check next
Three things will show whether the first half was a floor or a peak. The first is Graphite Solutions sales in the third quarter, now that the contract adjustment income has been recognised. The second is order intake in Process Technology, since the weakness there is described as postponement rather than loss, and postponed chemical industry projects can return. The third is the nuclear graphite line: on 3 August 2026, three days before these results, SGL Carbon and X-energy announced a capacity expansion for nuclear-grade graphite, which belongs to the power generation market the company has named as a growth target. None of that appears in the first half numbers.
