Has Ingredion’s 18% Slide in 2025 Created an Opportunity for Investors?

• Wondering if Ingredion at around $111 a share is a bargain or a value trap? You are not alone, and this breakdown is designed to help you decide with confidence.
• The stock has bounced 2.8% over the last week and 4.4% over the past month, but it is still down 18.1% year to date and 19.3% over the last year, despite being up 61.4% over five years.
• That pattern reflects a market that has been rethinking Ingredion's role as a steady cash-generating ingredients supplier. Cyclical concerns and shifting expectations around consumer demand have weighed on sentiment. At the same time, investors are paying closer attention to structural trends like clean label ingredients, cost management, and capital returns, which could all influence where the stock goes next.
• On our framework, Ingredion scores a 3/6 valuation check, suggesting it looks undervalued on some metrics but not across the board. In this article, we will walk through those methods and then finish with a more holistic way to think about its true worth.

Find out why Ingredion's -19.3% return over the last year is lagging behind its peers.

Approach 1: Ingredion Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis

A Discounted Cash Flow model estimates what a company is worth by projecting its future cash flows and discounting them back to today's value. For Ingredion, the model uses a 2 stage Free Cash Flow to Equity approach based on its recent and forecast cash generation.

Ingredion generated about $656 million in free cash flow over the last twelve months, and analysts expect this to rise to around $778 million in 2024. Further out, Simply Wall St extrapolates cash flows rather than relying on formal analyst estimates, with projections gradually easing over the next decade as growth slows and stabilizes.

Putting these projections together, the DCF model arrives at an intrinsic value of roughly $97.06 per share. Compared with the current market price around $111, the model implies the stock is about 15.1% overvalued on a cash flow basis. This suggests investors are paying a premium for future growth and stability.

Result: OVERVALUED

Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests Ingredion may be overvalued by 15.1%. Discover 908 undervalued stocks or create your own screener to find better value opportunities.

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

Approach 2: Ingredion Price vs Earnings

For a profitable company like Ingredion, the price to earnings ratio is a useful yardstick because it links what investors pay directly to the profits the business generates today. In general, faster growing and lower risk companies justify higher PE ratios, while slower growing or riskier businesses tend to trade on lower multiples.

Ingredion currently trades on about 10.8x earnings, which is well below both the Food industry average of roughly 19.8x and the broader peer group average of around 27.8x. On the surface, that gap suggests the market is assigning a discount to Ingredion relative to similar businesses.

Simply Wall St also calculates a Fair Ratio of 13.8x for Ingredion, which is the PE multiple the stock might reasonably command given its specific earnings growth profile, margins, size, industry, and risk factors. This Fair Ratio is more tailored than a simple comparison to peers or industry averages because it adjusts for Ingredion's own fundamentals rather than assuming all companies deserve the same multiple. With the actual PE of 10.8x sitting meaningfully below the Fair Ratio of 13.8x, the multiple based view points to the shares being undervalued.

Result: UNDERVALUED

PE ratios tell one story, but what if the real opportunity lies elsewhere? Discover 1455 companies where insiders are betting big on explosive growth.

Upgrade Your Decision Making: Choose your Ingredion Narrative

Earlier we mentioned that there is an even better way to understand valuation, so let's introduce you to Narratives, a simple way to connect your view of Ingredion's story with a concrete forecast and fair value estimate. A Narrative lets you spell out what you believe about the business, from future revenue and earnings growth to profit margins and risks, and then turns that story into numbers that produce a fair value which you can compare to today's share price on Simply Wall St's Community page, used by millions of investors. Because Narratives update dynamically when new information like earnings or major news hits, they stay aligned with reality rather than a static snapshot. For example, one bullish Ingredion Narrative on the platform might lean toward the higher analyst targets near $168, assuming resilient specialty ingredient growth and a stronger future PE, while a more cautious Narrative might sit closer to $140, emphasizing macro headwinds and pressure on legacy products, and seeing these different fair values side by side helps you decide whether Ingredion looks like a buy, hold, or sell at its current market price.

Do you think there's more to the story for Ingredion? 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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