Element Solutions ESI
Basic Materials · Chemicals - Specialty · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-07-06
The Overview
Element Solutions makes the specialty chemicals that factories consume when they build electronics — the solder pastes that attach chips to boards, the plating solutions that put copper circuits on printed circuit boards, and the chemistries used in advanced chip packaging. It also has a smaller industrial arm (metal-surface treatments, packaging-printing chemistry, offshore-energy fluids). When the world builds more electronics — especially the dense, high-end boards and packages the AI build-out needs — Element sells more chemistry.
Business is suddenly very good: revenue jumped over 40% last quarter versus a year ago, and the company has beaten profit expectations four quarters in a row. The catch is threefold. First, the stock already knows — it is up about 76% in a year, nearly quadruple the market. Second, the new revenue carries thinner margins than the old revenue, so profits are growing much more slowly than sales. Third, Wall Street's own forecasts say the growth party largely ends after 2026 — slowing to single digits.
Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:
- Downside Risk 6/10 (elevated). Not a fragile company — it produces real cash and isn't wildly volatile — but it carries meaningful debt, most of its balance sheet is acquisition goodwill rather than hard assets, about a fifth of sales come from China, and a stock that just ran 76% has more room to fall on disappointment.
- Growth Quality 5/10 (middling). The growth is real but not high-quality: returns on invested capital are modest (~7%), the reported GAAP profits are noisy, and the fastest-growing revenue is the lowest-margin kind.
- Exponential Potential 4/10 (low-moderate). One great year does not make an exponential. Analysts expect growth to decelerate sharply after 2026 — this is a good cyclical franchise having an upswing, not a company compounding faster every year.
The one big worry: if the electronics ramp turns out to be a spike — inventory build, pass-through metal costs, one hot product cycle — rather than a new plateau, you'd own a fully-priced specialty chemical company whose growth just went back to ~4%.
Putting a number on it: our fair-value estimate is $46 against a current price of $34.93 — real upside if our numbers are right.
Our summary metrics
Beta 1.24 and real FCF are the brakes; against them — net debt ~3× EBITDA, 62% of assets goodwill/intangibles (tangible book negative), 22% China revenue, GAAP noise, and a +76% 12-mo run that has already banked good news.
2026E revenue +35% is real but margin-dilutive (Q1 gross margin 38.4% vs 42.2% a year ago); ROIC ~7%, ROE ~6%, and the Street models growth fading to +7% / +4% in 2027-28.
A genuine 2026 step-change (+41.5% YoY in Q1), but the 2nd derivative turns sharply negative on consensus — a cyclical upswing in a specialty-chemicals franchise, not a compounding 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
A genuine 2026 step-change (+41.5% YoY in Q1), but the 2nd derivative turns sharply negative on consensus — a cyclical upswing in a specialty-chemicals franchise, not a compounding 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 | $46.43 (high $54 / low $36; 17 Buy · 11 Hold · 7 Sell) — our anchor for the base case, labeled as such |
| Valuation | 69× trailing GAAP EPS (depressed by charges) · ~27× TTM adjusted · ~24× 2026E · 21× 2027E · 18× 2028E · EV/S 4.4× · EV/EBITDA 36.6× (TTM GAAP) |
| Technicals | Constructive but cooling — $42, −14% off the 52-wk high ($49), just under the 50-DMA ($43), far above the 200-DMA ($33), RSI 47 (neutral), +76% 12-mo (SPY +21%) |
| Conviction | None from the panel — 0 KB claims on ESI; verdict rests entirely on the numbers in the data file |
| Position sizing | No position — if the ~$38 trigger hits with the ramp intact, a starter ~0.5–1.5% satellite is the right size for a mid-cap chemical |
What the experts actually said
No independent expert claims in the Synthos knowledge base yet for ESI — 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 $34.93, 11% below the 50-day average ($39), 0% above the 200-day average ($35) — a mixed trend. 29% below the 52-week high of $49, 52% above the 52-week low of $23.
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 $34.93 is currently inside the band (band $34–$40).
RSI (14) momentum gauge · 0–100
Above 70 (overbought zone, shaded) = overbought, below 30 (oversold zone, shaded) = oversold. Currently 39.
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 below its signal line by 0.08, negative momentum.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLB (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = ESI · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLB (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
Element Solutions Inc (NYSE: ESI) is a multinational specialty-chemicals company headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, FL; CEO Benjamin Gliklich; ~5,300 employees. Formerly Platform Specialty Products, renamed in January 2019; IPO 2013. It runs two segments:
- Electronics — chemical formulations and materials for electronics hardware: solder technologies, fluxes, cleaning/attachment solutions for assembly; proprietary liquid-chemical processes for printed-circuit-board fabrication; and advanced-packaging chemistries (copper interconnect, die attach, wafer bumping, photomask) for IC fabrication and semiconductor packaging. End markets: mobile, computing, automotive, aerospace.
- Industrial & Specialty — surface-treatment chemistry for metals and plastics, image-transfer consumables for flexible-packaging printing, and water-based hydraulic control fluids for offshore energy.
Revenue mix (from the data file's segment tables):
- By segment: FY2024 — Electronics $1,561.4M (64%), Industrial & Specialty $895.5M (36%). FY2025 the file reports only Electronics $1,786.2M (+14.4% YoY) against total revenue of $2,551.2M — the Industrial & Specialty line is missing from the FY25 segment data (implied residual ~$765M, but that is our arithmetic, not a reported figure). The FY25 cash-flow statement also shows +$348.3M of "other investing" inflows and large non-operating items, consistent with portfolio/divestiture activity that the data file does not itemize — an honest gap in this note.
- By geography (FY2025): China $557.9M (21.9%) · United States $524.3M (20.6%) · Other countries $1,469.0M (57.6%). Real China exposure worth naming (§11).
The franchise logic: consumable, spec'd-in chemistry — once a plating bath or solder paste is qualified into a customer's manufacturing line, it repeats with volume. The AI-era electronics build-out (advanced packaging, high-layer-count boards, power electronics) is the demand wave the Q1 2026 numbers are riding.
2. The expert thesis (traceable)
No expert-panel coverage — this note is fundamentals-driven. A search of the Synthos KB for ESI returns zero claims: no bullish voices, no bearish voices, no management transcript ingests. That is the honest house standard for a screen-surfaced name — ESI entered the pipeline through the quant momentum screen (+76% 12-mo, +24% 3-mo vs SPY +15%), not through conviction-track expert coverage.
What that means for how to read this note:
- The verdict below is built entirely from the FMP data file (financials, consensus estimates, technicals) — there is no independent expert thesis to corroborate or to push back on.
kb_breadth: 0,kb_claim_count: 0,kb_net_conviction: null— nothing is fabricated to fill the gap.- Conviction is accordingly capped: a fundamentals-only note on a mid-cap chemical cannot honestly carry more than a Watch/Tactical-grade conviction, whatever the momentum says.
3. Synthos scores & the Bull / Base / Bear cases
The one-glance judgment — three scores, 0–10, each anchored to real metrics:
| Score | 0–10 | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Downside Risk (lower = safer) | 6 · High | Beta 1.24, positive FCF every year in the file, current ratio 2.7× — real brakes. Against them: net debt $1.02B (~3.2× FY25 EBITDA; the TTM metric reads 5.9× on charge-depressed GAAP EBITDA), 62% of assets are goodwill + intangibles (tangible book negative, −$3.35/sh), 21.9% China revenue, interest coverage ~6×, and a +76% 12-mo run that leaves expectations elevated. |
| Growth Quality | 5 · Moderate | Four straight EPS beats and 2026E revenue +35% — but the growth is margin-dilutive (Q1 2026 gross margin 38.4% vs 42.2% a year earlier; revenue +41.5% YoY, gross profit only +28.8%), ROIC ~7.1%, ROE ~5.6%, TTM net margin 5.3%, and GAAP is noisy (negative effective tax rate TTM, Q4 2025 EBITDA of −$0.3M on charges). |
| Exponential Potential | 4 · Moderate-Low | Revenue: FY25 $2.55B → 2026E $3.44B (+35%) → 2027E $3.70B (+7.4%) → 2028E $3.86B (+4.3%). EPS (adjusted basis): ~$1.49 → $1.77 → $2.05 → $2.31 (+19%/+16%/+13%). Fast, then decelerating hard — the 2nd derivative is negative. A cyclical upswing, 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 the expected path; the cases bound the range.
| Case | Key assumptions | Fair value |
|---|---|---|
| Bull | The electronics/advanced-packaging ramp proves durable — 2027E EPS beats to ~$2.20 and the market pays ~24–25× for a spec'd-in consumables franchise with AI-linked growth. Matches the Street-high $54. | ~$54 (+28%) |
| Base (our anchor) | Estimates roughly hit — 2027E EPS ~$2.05; a good-but-decelerating specialty chemical earns ~22–23× forward. This lands on the Street consensus $46.43, which we adopt as the anchor (labeled, not laundered). | ~$46 (+9%) |
| Bear | The 2026 surge proves partly pass-through/inventory-driven; 2027E EPS misses to ~$1.85 and the multiple de-rates to ~18× as the cycle rolls. Near the Street-low $36. | ~$33 (−22%) |
Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$46 (+9%), full range $33–$54. With no expert panel to lean on, we anchor on the Street's $46.43 consensus and our own multiple math around it — and note the Street itself is split (17 Buy / 11 Hold / 7 Sell, a genuinely contested tape). +9% base-case upside is not enough to pay up for after a 76% year; hence Watch, with ~$38 as the level where the risk/reward earns a Tactical buy (≈21× 2026E, ~15% below consensus fair value). 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). ESI is neither, honestly — it is a cyclical franchise in an upswing:
- Forward growth: revenue 2026E→2028E CAGR only ~5.9% ($3.44B → $3.86B) after the 2026 step; EPS CAGR ~14% ($1.77 → $2.31) on margin recovery and deleveraging.
- Acceleration (the 2nd derivative) is negative: +35% (2026E) → +7.4% (2027E) → +4.3% (2028E). The pre-2026 base was flat for four years ($2.40B in 2021 → $2.55B in 2025). One spectacular year bracketed by low-single-digit years is a cycle, not a curve.
- Room to run: a $10.3B cap is small enough to multiply in principle, and advanced-packaging chemistry is a real secular niche — but the Street's own numbers cap the dream, and the file gives no segment detail to underwrite a bigger electronics mix-shift than consensus already assumes.
- Reinvestment runway: capex is light (~2.7% of revenue TTM) and FCF is consistently positive ($227.6M FY25) — a capital-light consumables model, which supports the compounder case more than the exponential one.
Exponential Potential: Moderate-Low (4/10). The honest read: the exciting derivative (Q1 +41.5% YoY) is already in the price, and every forward derivative in the data file points down.
5. Financials (real numbers — FMP annual/quarterly)
- Revenue: FY2025 $2,551.2M, +3.8% (FY24 $2,456.9M, FY23 $2,333.2M, FY22 $2,549.4M, FY21 $2,399.8M — essentially flat for four years). The inflection is now: Q1 2026 revenue $840.0M, +41.5% YoY ($593.7M) and +24% sequentially ($676.2M Q4 25), crushing the $710.5M estimate.
- Quarterly trajectory: Q1 25 $593.7M → Q2 $625.2M → Q3 $656.1M → Q4 $676.2M → Q1 26 $840.0M. Four straight adjusted-EPS beats ($0.34 vs $0.33 est · $0.37 vs $0.36 · $0.41 vs $0.39 · $0.37 vs $0.36 · $0.41 vs $0.38).
- Margins — the caveat inside the growth: Q1 2026 gross margin 38.4% vs 42.2% a year earlier — revenue grew +41.5% but gross profit only +28.8%, i.e., the incremental revenue is lower-margin mix (the file doesn't itemize; pass-through metal content in solder chemistry is the classic mechanism in this industry, but that attribution is ours, not the file's). TTM gross margin 40.8%, TTM net margin 5.3%.
- Earnings quality — read carefully. FY25 GAAP is noisy: EPS $0.79 (vs $1.01 FY24) with a $74.6M tax benefit, +$172.6M of non-operating income, and a Q4 25 that printed EBITDA of −$0.3M with +$107.2M of non-operating items — consistent with divestiture/portfolio effects the file doesn't itemize. The cleaner lens is the adjusted quarterly actuals: ~$1.49 adjusted EPS for 2025, ~$1.56 TTM. Income-quality ratio 1.33 (cash exceeds book income — a point in its favor).
- Cash flow: FY25 operating CF $289.8M, capex −$62.2M (light), FCF $227.6M (FY24 $293.6M, FY23 $283.1M — consistent generator). TTM FCF yield ~1.2% at this price. Dividends ~$78M/yr ($0.32/sh, 0.76% yield); buybacks token ($25M FY25).
- Balance sheet: total debt $1,642.4M, cash $626.5M, net debt $1,015.9M — ~3.2× FY25 EBITDA ($320.8M, GAAP-depressed; ~2.0× FY24's cleaner $501.6M; ~1.7× 2026E consensus EBITDA of $599.4M). Deleveraging is real (net debt was $1,736M in 2023). But 57–62% of assets are goodwill + intangibles ($2.90B of $5.10B) from the Platform-era roll-up — tangible book value is negative (−$3.35/sh).
6. Valuation — priced in or room?
The trailing optics are ugly and partly artificial: 69× trailing GAAP EPS (depressed by FY25 charges), 36.6× TTM EV/EBITDA, 85× TTM P/FCF, 3.8× book. FMP's letter rating is B (overall 3/5 — DCF/ROE/ROA score 4, but debt-to-equity and P/E score 1). The forward story is more reasonable but no longer cheap: ~27× TTM adjusted EPS (~$1.56) → ~24× 2026E ($1.77) → 20.6× 2027E ($2.05) → 18.3× 2028E ($2.31). That is a full multiple for a business the Street models at +7%/+4% revenue growth after this year — the market is paying up for the 2026 ramp and giving partial credit for it persisting. A reverse read: at $42, you need the electronics upcycle to hold and the multiple not to mean-revert toward a specialty-chemical norm (mid-to-high teens). Street targets (context and our anchor): consensus $46.43, median $49, high $54, low $36 — and a genuinely split rating sheet (17 Buy / 11 Hold / 7 Sell). Fairly valued after a big run; the margin of safety only appears below ~$38. Estimate-coverage caveat: only 5-6 analysts on 2026-27 and 2-3 on 2028 — thin consensus, treat the out-years loosely.
7. Technicals (from the tech block)
- Trend: intact but cooling. $42.32 sits just below the 50-DMA ($43.01, −1.6%) and +29% above the 200-DMA ($32.68) — long uptrend, short-term stall.
- Location: −13.8% off the 52-week high ($49.09) — also the max drawdown from peak — and +84% off the 52-week low ($22.99). −3.0% on the latest session.
- Momentum: RSI(14) 47 — neutral; the overbought froth of the run has come out. MACD +0.78, still positive.
- Relative strength (the tell): +76.0% 12-mo vs SPY +21.1% / QQQ +31.2%; +24.2% 3-mo vs SPY +14.6% / QQQ +23.6% — big leadership over a year, but the 3-month edge vs QQQ has narrowed to roughly nothing. The momentum that put it on our screen is decelerating.
- Read: constructive, not compelling. A pullback that holds the rising 200-DMA region / the ~$38 trigger with the ramp intact is the setup worth acting on; chasing a stalled 50-DMA at 24× 2026E is not.
8. Moat & competitive position
The moat is spec'd-in consumables: plating baths, solder pastes, and packaging chemistries are qualified into customers' manufacturing processes, where switching risk (yield, requalification) far exceeds the chemical's cost — classic razor-blade economics with high retention. Advanced-packaging and high-end PCB chemistry add a technology layer where formulation know-how matters. But the moat has honest limits in the numbers: ROIC ~7.1% and ROE ~5.6% say the franchise has not historically earned elite returns on its (goodwill-heavy) capital base; the fastest-growing revenue is diluting gross margin; and four flat years (2021-25) show the demand side is cyclical, not secular, most of the time.
Peer set (FMP-supplied, market cap): a poor comp list — Axalta $7.5B, Balchem $5.4B, Commercial Metals $6.9B, Eastman Chemical $7.9B, Eagle Materials $6.7B, Hudbay Minerals $10.4B, Iamgold $9.6B, Louisiana-Pacific $5.4B, NewMarket $7.3B, Ternium $8.3B. Gold miners and steel mills are size-matched noise, not comparators; the relevant electronics-chemistry cohort (e.g., specialty electronic-materials names) is not in the supplied set — judge ESI against that group, not this list.
9. Management, capital allocation & guidance
- Capital allocation: debt paydown first ($202.6M of net debt retired in FY25; net debt down ~$720M since 2023), a steady dividend (~$78M/yr, payout ~53% of TTM GAAP), token buybacks ($25M FY25; $151M back in 2022). FY25 also shows +$348.3M of other investing inflows — asset-sale/portfolio proceeds the file doesn't itemize. For a roll-up-era balance sheet, prioritizing deleveraging is the right call.
- Insider activity: the file's most recent Form 4s (2026-05-04/05) are routine director RSU vests and annual awards at $0 (Filon, Sofronas, Fraser; a Franklin filing with no transaction data). No discretionary open-market buys or sells in the file — no tell either way.
- Management guidance: the data file contains no ingested guidance or earnings-call claims for ESI (no
ESI_mgmtvoice in the KB). The only forward markers are the analyst consensus (§3, §6) and the next print's estimates (Q2 2026: EPS $0.43, revenue ~$854M). We flag the absence rather than paraphrase guidance we haven't seen.
10. Catalysts & what to watch
- Next earnings: 2026-07-29 (Q2 2026; Street EPS $0.43, revenue ~$854M). The key lines: does revenue hold the ~$850M run-rate, and does gross margin stabilize (Q1's 38.4% vs 42.2% is the bear case forming)?
- Electronics-cycle signals: advanced-packaging/PCB demand commentary across the electronics supply chain — ESI is a picks-and-shovels derivative of that capex.
- Margin mix: any disclosure separating volume/price from pass-through content in the revenue surge — it decides whether 2026E EPS of $1.77 has upside or is already stretched.
- Deleveraging cadence: net debt below ~$900M / toward 1.5× on 2026E EBITDA would de-risk the equity.
- China exposure headlines: 21.9% of FY25 revenue.
Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): a revenue print back below ~$750M/quarter; gross margin below ~37%; 2027E consensus revisions turning negative; or the stock reaching ~$38 with the ramp intact — that last one flips this to Buy — Tactical.
11. Key risks
- Cycle risk (the dominant one): the 2026 surge sits on four flat years. If it is inventory build or a one-time content spike, growth reverts to the ~4% the Street already pencils for 2028 — and a 24× 2026E multiple de-rates toward the sector's mid-teens.
- Margin dilution: revenue +41.5% with gross profit +28.8% means the growth is being bought at lower margin; if mix keeps degrading, EPS estimates are too high.
- Balance sheet composition: net debt ~3× depressed EBITDA, tangible book negative, 62% of assets goodwill/intangibles — an impairment or a downturn bites equity holders fast.
- China / geopolitics: 21.9% of revenue from China plus a global electronics supply chain — export controls and trade friction are live risks.
- GAAP opacity: FY25's tax benefit, non-operating gains, and un-itemized portfolio moves make the reported numbers hard to underwrite; we lean on adjusted actuals and label it.
- Thin coverage: 5-6 analysts on the out-years and zero expert-panel voices — estimate error (both directions) is higher than for a well-covered name, and 7 Sell ratings say the debate is real.
- Momentum unwind: +76% in 12 months with 3-month relative strength fading — screen-surfaced momentum names give back fast when prints disappoint.
12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring
Watch. Element Solutions is a genuinely good franchise having a genuinely good moment: spec'd-in consumable chemistry riding the electronics/advanced-packaging build-out, Q1 revenue +41.5%, four straight beats, real FCF, and an improving balance sheet. But the note must be honest about what's left: the stock has already re-rated +76%, the base-case fair value (~$46, anchored on a split Street) offers only ~+9%, the growth the market is paying ~24× for decelerates to single digits on consensus by 2027, the surge is margin-dilutive, and there is no expert-panel conviction behind the name — only a momentum screen. That combination is a Watch, not a Buy.
- Trigger: ~$38 (≈21× 2026E EPS, ~18.5× 2027E, ~15% below the $46 base case) with the ramp intact (revenue ≥ ~$800M/qtr, gross margin ≥ ~38%) → upgrade to Buy — Tactical, starter size ~0.5–1.5% of the flagship, sized for a mid-cap chemical with a goodwill-heavy balance sheet.
- Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; formal re-score each earnings print (next 2026-07-29). This verdict is logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-06 at $42.32.
- Single biggest risk: the 2026 electronics ramp proving to be a spike, not a plateau — fully-priced cyclicals with fading momentum de-rate quickly.
Provenance & disclosures
- Traceability: 0 KB claims on ESI — a search of the labeled knowledge base returns nothing, so this note carries no expert-panel conviction and fabricates none (
kb_breadth: 0,kb_net_conviction: null). Screen-surfaced, fundamentals-driven — stated plainly. - Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-03-31 (Q1 2026, filed 2026-04-29) · estimates & prices per the 2026-07-06 data file · no expert claims exist. Every figure in this note comes from
ESI_data.json; forward figures are analyst consensus (FMP), labeled as estimates, with thin coverage (5-6 analysts near-term, 2-3 for 2028) flagged. - Data gaps flagged, not filled: FY25 segment table omits Industrial & Specialty; the FY25 divestiture/portfolio items (+$348.3M investing inflow, non-operating gains, tax benefit) are visible in the statements but not itemized in the file; no management guidance is ingested. Where we attribute (e.g., pass-through metals diluting gross margin), we label it as our inference.
- Earnings-quality caveat: FY25 GAAP EPS ($0.79) is distorted by charges, non-operating gains, and a tax benefit; we underwrite the adjusted quarterly actuals (~$1.49 for 2025) and say so.
- Peer caveat: the FMP-supplied peer list (gold miners, steel) is size-matched noise; judge ESI against the electronics-chemistry cohort.
- 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: 2026-07-06. Prior versions available via the deep-dive version dropdown ("based on the info at the time").