We'll be building a forecast for Axo Noble.

This is a Dutch chemicals company best known for its paint.

However, like a lot of diversified, it makes many products and serves many end users.

Its paints have many different names in different countries.

For example, if you're in the uk, a very important market for Axo. You'll know them as Dulux.

You may have even bought direct from Axo as it runs its own shops in the uk. Very commonly, if you're based in India, you may have seen a very similar product. However, there it would be called astral Beyond geographic reach.

It also has diverse product offerings.

For example, if you've ever taken chunks outta your walls while trying to hang pictures, you may have reached fulfilling products such as poly filler Beyond retail consumers.

Axo also serves a more B2B role.

Sickens is a range that goes from wood stains to car body coatings.

This would mainly be sold to businesses.

Axo is a big company, but not a huge one.

In the context of the overall chemical industry, it's nowhere near as big as Basef. For example, the German chemicals giant is about five times as big by market cap and covers many more products and sub-sectors.

Like many European chemical companies, Axo struggles with costs and so has concentrated on higher margin specialty chemicals such as paints and coatings.

It shies away from bulk operations, which are usually lower margin.

Axo can pass on some of its costs and will be modeling that later in its revenue and EBIT bridges.

However, it can't do this Fully.

Axo, as of 2023, has flat volumes, and because of this, it's having trouble increasing its margin and doesn't compare well in margin terms to its American rivals, such as Sherman Williams paints who enjoy lower input costs and higher scale.

Axo is made up of two major segments, paints and performance coatings.

It reports six sub-segments such as geographic or detailed product splits.

For the model, we'll keep the detail to the two major segments.