SQMSociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A.
Is it safe?
Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (BBB) and big price swings.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -73% · now 32% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can SQM take a bad year?
Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. carries $3.65B of net debt at 2.59× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at FY2024 · between two and four years of EBITDA, normal for a stable business
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 2.59×
Net debt / EBITDA · 0.85× a year ago · the load is going up
- Interest cover
- 5.40×
Interest cover · operating profit covers the interest bill several times over
- Annualised volatility
- 47%
Annualised volatility · roughly twice as jumpy as the market
Details›
- Total debtFY2024
- $6.10B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $2.46B
- Net debt
- $3.65B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $1.41B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $1.07B
- Debt / equity
- 1.18×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 4.33×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 47%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −73%
- Below its 52-week high
- 32%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.