Church & Dwight Co. CHD
Consumer Defensive · Household & Personal Products · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-07-03
The Overview
Church & Dwight makes the everyday household stuff you already have under your sink and in your bathroom: ARM & HAMMER baking soda and cat litter, OxiClean stain remover, Trojan condoms, First Response pregnancy tests, Waterpik flossers, TheraBreath mouthwash, and Hero acne patches. Boring, steady, recession-resistant — people buy this stuff whether the economy is good or bad.
The business itself is very good: it grows a little every year, keeps its costs tight, and gains market share with clever new products. The catch is the price of the stock. You're paying about $32 for every $1 the company earns in a year, which is expensive for a company whose sales only grow a few percent. So the stock is priced as if it's already a winner.
Our verdict is Watch — a great company, but not at a great price. We'd want it cheaper (or growing faster) before calling it a buy.
Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:
- Downside Risk 4/10 (fairly safe). The company is steady and its stock barely moves with the market — but because it's priced high, a stumble would hurt.
- Growth Quality 5/10 (solid, middle-of-the-road). A durable, profitable business, but it grows slowly.
- Exponential Potential 2/10 (low). Don't expect this to double quickly. It's a slow-and-steady grower in a mature market.
The one big worry: you're paying a premium price for a company that only grows a few percent a year, so if growth stalls or a big acquisition goes wrong, the stock can fall just by losing its premium.
Putting a number on it: our fair-value estimate is $96 against a current price of $101.25 — a premium price for a business we still like.
Our summary metrics
Low beta 0.47 & modest 1.45× net-debt/EBITDA, but 32× trailing on a low-single-digit grower and 68% goodwill+intangibles leaves little error margin.
~6% forward EPS CAGR, 45% gross margin, ROE 17% & steady share gains — durable but slow; organic +5% masked by portfolio pruning.
Decelerating low-single-digit revenue, mature $70B+ category, no acceleration — a quality compounder, not an exponential.
What does “fair value” mean?
Fair value is Synthos’s estimate of what one share is worth today, based on our model of the company’s future cash generation and the risks to it. It is not a price target or a prediction of where the stock trades next quarter — it’s the price where we think risk and reward are balanced. Above it, you’re paying for outcomes better than our base case; below it, the market is offering a margin of safety.
The model’s inputs and weightings are proprietary — they’re the product. What we publish is the output, plus an independent, public-math cross-check further down the page (“Check our number”) so you can judge it for yourself.
What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)
Exponential Potential
Decelerating low-single-digit revenue, mature $70B+ category, no acceleration — a quality compounder, not an exponential.
What could take this further than the base case — and where the market may be underpricing it. Full forward-growth and acceleration math in Deeper analysis, §4 below.
Deeper analysis
Technicals, fundamentals, valuation, and the full expert-claim evidence panel — the detail behind the numbers above.
Reference table
| Street consensus | $105 (high $114 / low $91; 18 Buy · 15 Hold · 1 Sell) — context, not our anchor |
| Valuation | 32× trailing EPS · 26× FY26E · 24× FY27E · 21× FY30E · EV/S 4.1× · EV/EBITDA 19.5× |
| Technicals | Mild uptrend — $98.60, −6.3% off 52-wk high, above 50/200-DMA, RSI 54, but only +1.0% 12-mo vs SPY +20.6% |
| Conviction | Low — 0 expert voices, 0 KB claims. Fundamentals/quant call only. |
| Position sizing | If owned, defensive ballast, ~2–3% max; not a conviction position |
What the experts actually said
No independent expert claims in the Synthos knowledge base yet for CHD — this dive is fundamentals- and technicals-driven, not panel-driven.
Price & moving averages 12 months · 50 & 200-day averages · 52-week range
Solid line = price · dashed line = 50-day average · dotted line = 200-day average · the two thin horizontal lines mark the 52-week high and low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.
Data summary: last close $101.26, 2% above the 50-day average ($99), 7% above the 200-day average ($95) — an uptrend. 4% below the 52-week high of $105, 24% above the 52-week low of $82.
Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations
The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.
Data summary: price $101.26 is currently inside the band (band $98–$105).
RSI (14) momentum gauge · 0–100
Above 70 (overbought zone, shaded) = overbought, below 30 (oversold zone, shaded) = oversold. Currently 53.
MACD 12 / 26 / 9 · trend & momentum
The MACD line crossing above the signal line (bars flip to the up color) = momentum turning up; crossing below (bars flip to the down color) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.
Data summary: MACD is currently above its signal line by 0.04, positive momentum.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLP (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = CHD · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLP (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.
Forward revenue & earnings actual → estimate · "FY" = fiscal year, "E" = estimate
Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.
Key stats an RIA wants
1. What it is
Church & Dwight (NYSE: CHD), founded in 1846 and headquartered in Ewing, NJ, is a consumer-products company built around a portfolio of category-leading household and personal-care brands. It runs three divisions: Consumer Domestic (the bulk of the business), Consumer International, and a small Specialty Products Division (industrial sodium bicarbonate and animal-nutrition products). Fiscal year ends December 31.
The brand roster spans ARM & HAMMER (baking soda, cat litter, laundry), OxiClean, Trojan, First Response, Nair, Orajel, Xtra, L'il Critters / Vitafusion gummy vitamins, Batiste dry shampoo, Waterpik, Zicam, TheraBreath, Hero (acne), and the recently acquired Touchland (hand sanitizer). Management describes its edge as a "balanced portfolio of value and premium products" — a deliberate mix that holds up in both good and weak consumer environments.
Revenue mix (FY2025, from filings):
- By division (geographic breakout in FMP): Consumer Domestic $4,774.8M (~77%) · Consumer International $1,129.4M (~18%) · Specialty Products $299.0M (~5%). Total FY25 net sales $6,203.2M.
- Global e-commerce is now ~24% of total consumer sales (per the Q1'26 release) — a structural share-shift the company has managed well.
The strategic engine is twofold: (a) innovation — management expects new-product launches to account for half of 2026 organic growth; and (b) bolt-on M&A — buying category-leading brands (Hero, TheraBreath, Touchland) and pruning underperformers ("2025 strategic portfolio actions"), which is why reported sales (+0.2% in Q1'26) look far weaker than organic sales (+5.0%).
2. The expert thesis
There is no expert coverage of CHD in the Synthos knowledge base. total_claims = 0, breadth 0, net conviction 0 — no bullish or cautionary voice in our distilled expert panel has an on-record view on this name. That is not a red flag; consumer staples simply attract less of the podcast/analyst-conviction commentary our KB is built from than AI, biotech, or metabolic-health names do.
Because there is no conviction signal to reconcile, this verdict is entirely fundamentals- and quant-driven. We do not manufacture conviction we do not have: no claim_id is cited in this note because none exists. The Street's sell-side view (18 Buy / 15 Hold / 1 Sell, consensus "Buy," target $105) is shown throughout as external context, not as a Synthos-endorsed thesis.
3. Synthos scores & the Bull / Base / Bear cases
The one-glance judgment — three scores, 0–10, each anchored to real metrics (not probabilities we can't honestly calibrate):
| Score | 0–10 | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Downside Risk (lower = safer) | 4 · Low-Moderate | Beta 0.47, net-debt/EBITDA 1.45×, staples-defensive demand, 12.9% max drawdown — genuinely sturdy. But 32× trailing EPS on ~3% reported growth, and goodwill+intangibles are 68% of assets, so an impairment or organic stall bites. |
| Growth Quality | 5 · Solid | 45% gross margin, ~17% ROE, ~11% ROIC, steady share gains, +5% organic — a durable compounder. Capped at 5 because reported revenue CAGR to 2030 is only ~3% and EPS CAGR ~6%; quality is high, magnitude is modest. |
| Exponential Potential | 2 · Low | Mature, low-single-digit category; revenue growth decelerating (portfolio pruning), no second-derivative lift. A dependable compounder, structurally not an exponential. |
The three cases (our own scenario model — assumptions shown; each target is a ~12–18-month fair value). We deliberately do not attach probabilities: the base case is by definition the expected path, so a weighted blend would just restate it with false precision. Instead the cases bound the range, and the scores above summarize them.
| Case | Key assumptions | Fair value |
|---|---|---|
| Bull | Organic growth holds 4–5%, Touchland/Hero/TheraBreath compound, gross margin expands 100bps+/yr. FY27E EPS beats to ~$4.20; multiple re-rates to a quality-staple ~28×. | ~$116 (+18%) |
| Base (our anchor) | Estimates roughly hit — FY27E EPS ~$4.03; a durable ~6% EPS compounder earns a ~24× multiple (in line with today's forward). | ~$96 (−3%) |
| Bear | Organic growth fades toward 2%, a bolt-on acquisition disappoints or triggers an impairment, staples multiples compress. FY27E EPS ~$3.80; multiple de-rates to ~19×. | ~$72 (−27%) |
Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$96 (−3%), with the full $72–$116 span as the honest range. This anchor sits below the Street's $105 consensus — we give less benefit of the doubt to multiple expansion on a ~3% reported grower. The stock is fairly-to-fully valued: quality is real, but the price already reflects it. This is a tracked call — the Forecaster Scorecard grades it once it matures.
4. Exponential Potential
Synthos separates compounders (durable high returns on capital) from exponentials (accelerating, multi-baggers-from-here). CHD is a high-quality compounder with essentially no exponential characteristics:
- Forward growth: reported revenue CAGR FY25→FY30E ~3.1% ($6.20B → $7.22B, and note the FY30 line rests on a single analyst); EPS CAGR FY26E→FY30E ~6.2% ($3.75 → $4.78). Organic growth runs higher (~5%) but portfolio pruning drags reported growth down.
- Acceleration (the 2nd derivative) is flat-to-negative: reported revenue +1.6% (FY25) → ~−0.5% to −1.5% guided (FY26, from portfolio actions) → low-single-digit thereafter. There is no inflection; this is a mature category growing with population and modest premiumization.
- Room to run: at a ~$23B market cap the company is mid-cap, not mega-cap, so size is not the binding constraint — the constraint is the category itself. Household/personal-care staples are a large but slow, share-fight market; CHD wins share, but the pie grows low-single digits. There is no large untapped TAM waiting to be inflected.
- Reinvestment runway: the real growth lever is M&A — buying category-leading brands and folding them into a proven distribution machine. That is a genuine, repeatable engine, but it compounds steadily, not exponentially, and it carries integration/impairment risk (68% of assets are already goodwill+intangibles).
Exponential Potential: Low (2/10). Own CHD for defensive, low-beta, steadily-compounding earnings — not for a fast multibagger. This honest framing is why it sits in a Watch/ballast bucket, not the growth sleeve.
5. Financials (real numbers — FMP annual/quarterly)
- Revenue: FY25 $6.20B, +1.6% (FY24 $6.11B, +4.1% on FY23 $5.87B). Reported growth is modest and slowing because of deliberate portfolio pruning; organic growth is ~5%.
- Quarterly trajectory: Q1'25 $1,467M → Q2 $1,506M → Q3 $1,586M → Q4 $1,644M → Q1'26 $1,469M (+0.2% YoY reported, +5.0% organic). Note Q3'24 carried a large ($357M) intangible-impairment charge that pushed that quarter to a GAAP loss (−$0.31 EPS) — a reminder of the M&A-impairment risk.
- Margins: gross 45.1% TTM (46.4% Q1'26 adjusted, +130bps YoY), EBITDA ~20.8% TTM, operating ~17.3%, net 11.8% TTM. Gross-margin expansion is a genuine, durable tailwind.
- Earnings: net income $736.8M FY25 (EPS $3.04, +27% on FY24's $2.39 — but FY24 was depressed by the impairment). Q1'26 net income $216.3M, EPS $0.91 reported / $0.95 adjusted (+4.4%).
- Cash flow: operating CF $1.22B FY25, capex only ~−$122M (2% of sales — asset-light), FCF ~$1.09B (FCF margin ~18%). Management guides ~$1.15B cash from operations for FY26. High-quality, capital-light cash generation is the crown jewel here.
- Balance sheet: total debt $2.21B, cash $409M, net debt ~$1.80B, net-debt/EBITDA ~1.45× — investment-grade, easily serviceable, and it leaves dry powder for bolt-on M&A. Goodwill + intangibles are $6.14B (68% of total assets) — the flip side of the acquisition-led strategy.
6. Valuation — priced in or room?
CHD is not cheap on any near-term measure: 32× trailing EPS, 4.1× EV/sales, 19.5× EV/EBITDA, ~21× P/FCF. The forward P/E does compress as EPS grows — 26× (FY26E) → 24× (FY27E) → 21× (FY30E) — but far more slowly than a high-growth name, because the underlying EPS CAGR is only ~6%. On a PEG basis the forward multiple looks rich for the growth rate (FMP's forward PEG ~4.5×). A quality-staple premium is warranted — the question is only how much, and at 32× trailing for ~3% reported growth the premium is already generous. Street targets (context): consensus $105, high $114, low $91 — implying only ~6% upside at the midpoint, i.e. even the sell-side (net "Buy," but 15 of 34 at Hold) sees the stock as close to fair. Our $96 base fair value sits below consensus: we give less credit to multiple expansion. Not a value buy, and not enough forward return to be a growth buy at today's price — a fairly-valued quality compounder.
7. Technicals (from the tech block)
- Trend: mild up. $98.60 sits above the 50-DMA ($95.94) and 200-DMA ($92.12), with the 50 above the 200 — a constructive posture. MACD +0.57 (slightly positive).
- Location: −6.3% off the 52-week high ($105.26), +20.8% off the 52-week low ($81.60); max drawdown from peak −12.9% — a low-volatility, range-bound staple.
- Momentum: RSI(14) 54 — neutral, neither overbought nor oversold; no stretched-entry signal either way.
- Relative strength (the tell): here's the caution — CHD is +1.0% over 12 months vs SPY +20.6% and QQQ +30.3%. It has massively lagged the market over the past year (classic defensive underperformance in a risk-on tape). It did better over 6 months (+16.8% vs SPY +8.4%), so leadership has rotated toward defensives recently.
- Read: technicals are neutral-constructive — a steady uptrend, no overbought warning, but a name that lags in strong markets and outperforms in weak ones. Nothing here argues for urgency; it trades like the low-beta staple it is.
8. Moat & competitive position
CHD's moat is a portfolio of #1/#2 brand equities in defensible niches (baking soda, cat litter, condoms, pregnancy tests, dry shampoo, acne patches), sold through a proven, scaled distribution and innovation machine that lets it both launch winners organically and acquire and scale bolt-on brands. The "balanced value + premium" mix gives resilience across consumer environments, and gross-margin expansion signals real productivity/pricing discipline. The durable weakness is that these are mature, competitive categories against far larger rivals (P&G, Colgate, Unilever, Kenvue), and growth increasingly depends on M&A — which introduces integration and impairment risk (68% intangible-heavy balance sheet).
Peer set (FMP-supplied comps, market cap): Kenvue $38B (the closest consumer-health comp), Clorox $12B, Constellation Brands $23B, Dollar General $26B, Dollar Tree $24B, Bunge $21B, Tyson $21B, FEMSA $44B, Coca-Cola FEMSA $23B, Somnigroup $16B. (The FMP list is a loose "consumer defensive" bucket — the truest brand comparables are Clorox and Kenvue; the retailers and beverage/protein names are less apt.) CHD's ~32× multiple is at the premium end of this group, reflecting its superior margins and consistency.
9. Management, capital allocation & guidance
- Capital allocation: disciplined and shareholder-friendly. FY25 returned ~$900M in buybacks and ~$287M in dividends (payout ~39%), while keeping net-debt/EBITDA at ~1.45× and reserving capacity for bolt-on M&A (Touchland closed recently). Capex is a lean ~2% of sales. This is a textbook capital-light compounder allocation.
- Insider activity: the most recent Form 4 cluster (2026-06-30 / 2026-07-01) is routine — director phantom-stock and common-stock awards (acquisitions), plus one small officer tax-withholding disposition (F-InKind, Raup, 853 shares at $98.15). No cluster of alarming discretionary selling in the sampled window.
- Management's own guidance (the earnings-release track — half-weighted, self-interested by design): the Q1'26 release (SEC 8-K, filed 2026-05-01) reaffirmed full-year 2026 outlook: reported net sales −1.5% to −0.5% (reflecting portfolio actions), organic sales +3% to +4%, adjusted gross-margin expansion ~100bps, reported EPS +18–22% / adjusted EPS +5–8%, and cash from operations ~$1.15B with capex ~$130M. Q1 beat its own outlook (organic +5.0% vs +3% guide; adjusted EPS $0.95 vs $0.92 guide). Management frames innovation as ~half of 2026 organic growth. Treat these as management's own, self-interested words — but the Q1 beat-and-reaffirm is a credible, constructive data point.
10. Catalysts & what to watch
- Next earnings: 2026-07-31 (Q2'26; Street EPS $0.90, revenue ~$1.50B). Key lines: organic sales growth (is 5% holding?), gross-margin expansion (the +100bps guide), and any outlook revision.
- Organic vs reported gap: the spread between organic (+5%) and reported (flat) growth is portfolio pruning working through — watch for it to narrow as comparisons lap.
- M&A cadence: further bolt-on acquisitions (and the price paid) — the primary growth lever, and the primary impairment risk.
- New-product traction: TheraBreath toothpaste line, Hero cleansers/Mighty Shield, ARM & HAMMER Dual Defense litter — management expects launches to drive half of organic growth.
- Waterpik softness: flagged as a drag in Q1 — a category to monitor.
Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): organic growth decelerating below ~3% for two quarters; a goodwill/intangible impairment on an acquired brand; gross-margin expansion stalling; or a multiple re-rating (a pullback toward the low-$80s would flip this from Watch to a more constructive stance).
11. Key risks
- Valuation / de-rating (the main risk): 32× trailing for ~3% reported growth leaves little margin for error; a growth stumble de-rates the stock even if the business is fine.
- M&A / impairment risk: growth depends on acquisitions; 68% of assets are goodwill+intangibles. The Q3'24 $357M impairment (GAAP loss quarter) shows this is not hypothetical.
- Category maturity / competition: mature staples categories against much larger rivals (P&G, Colgate, Unilever, Kenvue); private-label and promotional pressure in weak-consumer periods.
- Input-cost and tariff inflation: management explicitly cites higher inflation and tariff costs offsetting some margin gains.
- Defensive underperformance: in a strong risk-on market the stock lags badly (+1% vs SPY +21% over 12 months) — an opportunity-cost risk for growth-oriented portfolios.
- No expert corroboration: with zero KB coverage, there is no distilled-expert signal to confirm or challenge the fundamentals — the call rests on quant/fundamentals alone.
12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring
Watch. Church & Dwight is a genuinely high-quality, low-beta consumer-staples compounder — 45% gross margin, ~17% ROE, ~$1.1B FCF on 2% capex, +5% organic growth, disciplined capital allocation, and a management team that just beat and reaffirmed. None of that is in dispute. The issue is price: at 32× trailing EPS (26× forward) for a ~3% reported / ~6% EPS grower, the quality is already in the stock, and our base-case fair value of ~$96 sits slightly below both the current $98.60 price and the Street's $105 consensus. That is a fairly-valued quality name, not a buy at today's price.
- Sizing: if held, treat as defensive ballast, ~2–3% max — a low-volatility anchor, not a conviction position. There is no expert-conviction basis and only modest forward return, so this does not earn a core or tactical buy.
- Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; a pullback toward the low-$80s (closer to the 52-week low) or a re-acceleration in organic growth would move this toward a constructive stance. Formal re-score each earnings print.
- Single biggest risk: paying a premium multiple for low-single-digit reported growth — any organic stall or M&A misstep de-rates it. This verdict is logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-03 at $98.60.
Provenance & disclosures
- Traceability: 0 KB claims, breadth 0 — no expert coverage in the Synthos KB. The verdict is fundamentals- and quant-driven. No claim_id is cited because none exists; fabricating conviction is structurally impossible (claim-ID reconciliation) and none is asserted here.
- Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-03-31 (Q1'26) · estimates & prices 2026-07-02/03 · management guidance from the SEC 8-K earnings release filed 2026-05-01. Forward figures are analyst consensus (FMP) or management guidance, labeled as estimates. Outer-year estimates (FY29–FY30) rest on 1–2 analysts and should be treated as indicative only.
- Management caveat: the reaffirmed FY26 outlook in §9 is management's own, self-interested guidance, half-weighted by design.
- Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalized. Hypothetical/forward figures are labeled; the only performance numbers Synthos will headline are the live, real-money Flagship's.
- Version: 2026-07-03. Prior versions available via the deep-dive version dropdown ("based on the info at the time").