Does Church & Dwight’s 20% Share Price Slide in 2025 Signal a Long Term Opportunity?

• If you have been wondering whether Church & Dwight is starting to look like quietly attractive value or just a quality name at the wrong price, you are not alone.
• The stock has drifted lower recently, with shares down about 0.8% over the last week, 2.5% over the past month and roughly 20.2% over the last year, even though the 3 year return is still positive at 9.4%.
• That pullback comes after a long run where defensive, household names like Church & Dwight were bid up as safe havens. The market is now rethinking how much it wants to pay for steady brands versus faster growing themes. At the same time, shifting sentiment around inflation, interest rates and consumer staples has made investors more sensitive to what they are getting for every dollar of earnings and cash flow.
• On our scorecard, Church & Dwight currently clocks a 2/6 valuation score, suggesting it screens as undervalued on a couple of checks but not across the board. Next we will dig into the different valuation approaches, then finish by looking at a smarter way to tie all those numbers together.

Church & Dwight scores just 2/6 on our valuation checks. See what other red flags we found in the full valuation breakdown.

Approach 1: Church & Dwight Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis

A Discounted Cash Flow model estimates what a stock is worth by projecting the cash it can generate in the future and then discounting those cash flows back to today in dollar terms.

For Church & Dwight, the latest twelve month Free Cash Flow is about $955.9 million. Analysts provide explicit forecasts for the next few years, and Simply Wall St extends those trends further out. Under this two-stage Free Cash Flow to Equity approach, Free Cash Flow is projected to rise to roughly $1.49 billion by 2035 as growth moderates over time.

When all those future cash flows are discounted back, the model arrives at an intrinsic value of about $125.03 per share. That implies the stock is trading at roughly a 32.4% discount to its estimated fair value, indicating that the market valuation is lower than this particular cash flow-based estimate.

Result: UNDERVALUED (based on this DCF model)

Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests Church & Dwight is undervalued by 32.4%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 906 more undervalued stocks based on cash flows.

Head to the Valuation section of our Company Report for more details on how we arrive at this Fair Value for Church & Dwight.

Approach 2: Church & Dwight Price vs Earnings

For profitable, established businesses like Church & Dwight, the Price to Earnings (PE) ratio is a useful shorthand for how much investors are willing to pay today for each dollar of current earnings. It naturally connects valuation with profitability and is widely used for comparing consumer staples companies.

What counts as a “normal” PE depends on how fast earnings are expected to grow and how risky those earnings are. Higher growth and lower perceived risk can justify a higher PE, while slower or uncertain growth tends to pull it down. Church & Dwight currently trades on about 25.9x earnings, well above the Household Products industry average of roughly 17.5x and the peer average near 17.9x. This suggests the market is assigning a premium to its earnings.

Simply Wall St’s Fair Ratio framework refines this view by estimating what PE the stock should trade on, given its growth profile, margins, industry, market cap and risk. For Church & Dwight, that Fair Ratio is about 18.0x, which is a more tailored benchmark than a simple industry or peer comparison. Since the current 25.9x multiple sits materially above this fair level, the shares look expensive on an earnings basis.

Result: OVERVALUED

PE ratios tell one story, but what if the real opportunity lies elsewhere? Discover 1442 companies where insiders are betting big on explosive growth.

Upgrade Your Decision Making: Choose your Church & Dwight Narrative

Earlier we mentioned that there is an even better way to understand valuation, so let us introduce you to Narratives, which are simple stories that you create about a company and then connect directly to your assumptions for its future revenue, earnings, margins and fair value. A Narrative on Simply Wall St links what you believe about Church & Dwight’s brands, competitive position and risks to a structured financial forecast, and then turns that into a Fair Value estimate you can compare with today’s share price to help you decide whether you think it is a buy, sell or hold. Narratives are an easy, accessible tool available in the Community page on Simply Wall St, used by millions of investors, and they update dynamically when new information like results, guidance or news flows in. For example, one Church & Dwight Narrative might focus on strong e commerce, innovation and buybacks to justify a fair value near $120, while another might emphasize input cost pressure, slower categories and private label risk to anchor fair value closer to $73. This gives you a clear, side by side view of how different perspectives translate into different price targets.

Do you think there's more to the story for Church & Dwight? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying!

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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