Goldman Sachs moved Umicore from a neutral stance to a buy recommendation and increased its 12-month price target to €33 from €21, indicating roughly 46.9% upside from the stock's closing price of €22.46. The upgrade reflects higher projections across Umicore’s Recycling and Specialty Materials operations.
The bank said its updated hedged metals basket - adjusted for the composition of Umicore’s existing hedge book - suggests about a 26% average upside for Recycling EBITDA compared with Visible Alpha consensus data for the 2026-2028 period. Goldman noted that consensus estimates still assume a normalisation of earnings, while Recycling represents roughly 40% of the group’s earnings base.
Goldman’s Recycling EBITDA forecasts are set at €456 million for 2026, €431 million for 2027 and €501 million for 2028. Those figures compare with Visible Alpha consensus estimates of €392 million, €363 million and €350 million for the same years.
Umicore maintains hedges across several metals - including platinum, palladium, rhodium, gold and silver. Goldman highlighted that the company’s hedging coverage is expected to decline from 67% in 2026 to about 55% in 2028 and to 30% in 2029. The bank said this step-down in hedging should enable a greater portion of spot metal price strength to flow through to realised earnings over time.
In Specialty Materials, Goldman revised its assumptions sharply higher, raising the 2026 revenue growth estimate to 40% from 30% and lifting the adjusted EBITDA margin assumption to 31% from 27%. These projections stand in contrast to Visible Alpha consensus, which Goldman cites as roughly 5% revenue growth and a 23% margin for the division.
Goldman attributed much of the Specialty Materials upside to strong moves in commodity prices - specifically noting that cobalt is up 102% since January 2025 and germanium has climbed 233% over the same period. The bank also observed that about half of Umicore’s germanium feedstock is sourced via the company’s own recycling operations at below-spot costs, which it said provides insulation from input cost volatility.
Goldman described Umicore as the market leader in germanium solutions within Electro-Optic Materials, supplying customers across applications such as fiber optic cable for data centers, space exploration, defense and semiconductors. The bank expects the segment to grow at an average annual rate near 18% through 2028, a pace faster than Umicore’s guidance of greater than 10% per annum.
Overall, Goldman is ahead of group adjusted EBITDA consensus by 14% for 2026, 10% for 2027 and 19% for 2028. The bank’s group adjusted EBITDA forecasts are €1.06 billion for both 2026 and 2027, rising to €1.22 billion in 2028. Goldman also raised its EPS estimates for the group to €2.18, €2.17 and €2.63 for 2026, 2027 and 2028, up from prior estimates of €2.01, €1.81 and €1.93.
Based on Goldman’s projections, Umicore’s stock is trading at 6.7x 2026 EV/EBITDA, implying a roughly 30% discount to its 10-year average multiple. The €33 price target corresponds to an implied target multiple of 9.2x. At the same time, Goldman said it remains cautious about the pace of earnings progression in Battery Materials.
Sector impact - The upgrade and raised estimates primarily affect metals recycling, specialty materials and parts of the battery materials supply chain. Related end markets cited include data center infrastructure, fiber optics, defense, space and semiconductor components.