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Valhi’s main business is its majority-controlled subsidiary Kronos Worldwide, which sells KRONOS titanium dioxide pigments to manufacturers, chiefly for coatings and plastics. These pigments provide whiteness and opacity. Customers pay negotiated prices, with Europe and North America accounting for most sales volume. Earnings depend heavily on pigment prices, customer demand, and feedstock and energy costs. Suitable feedstock for its chloride-process plants comes from a limited supplier base, including Rio Tinto Iron and Titanium and Iluka Resources.
Valhi also controls CompX International, which sells cabinet locks, other security products and recreational boat components, mainly to equipment manufacturers. Security products generate most of this business’s revenue. The United States Postal Service is a major customer, and customers generally place purchase orders rather than commit to long-term minimum purchases.
Its smaller property business, Basic Management and LandWell, owns land in Henderson, Nevada. LandWell earns money principally by selling land to homebuilders. It has sold the last parcel in its Cadence planned community but still has development work to complete.
Valhi itself relies substantially on dividends and other distributions from its subsidiaries to meet its obligations. Those companies are not required to send it cash, and laws and borrowing agreements can restrict distributions.
The risk section is the longest, dullest part of the filing. This keeps only what can really hurt you: where it hits, how hard, when it plays out.
Every company claims an edge. Each one is checked against hard numbers like margins and returns: which hold, and which line gives way first.
Valhi’s results depend largely on Kronos’s TiO₂ margins, with LB Group adding competitive pressure and Iluka Resources supplying important rutile feedstock.
Kronos Worldwide drives Valhi’s largest business: Valhi controlled 81% at year-end 2025, and its pigment sales to customers using TiO₂ in paints, plastics and other products make up Valhi’s Chemicals Segment. Watch its average pigment selling prices against purchased titanium-feedstock costs, two key influences on that segment’s earnings.
NLI Holdings, Inc. shares Valhi’s exposure to pigment and component earnings: Valhi owns 83% of NL, which held 31% of Kronos and 87% of CompX at year-end 2025. Its underlying businesses sell TiO₂ pigments to customers using them in paints and plastics, and locks and marine components for applications including furniture, medical cabinetry and recreational boats.
Tronox competes with Valhi’s Kronos business for TiO₂ pigment customers worldwide, exposing both to industry demand and pricing pressure. Watch Tronox’s pigment production costs: it produces much of its own titanium feedstock to support low-cost supply, while purchased feedstock costs are a key influence on Valhi’s chemical earnings.
Chemours is Kronos’s principal North American competitor, so its Ti-Pure pigment business matters to the pricing pressure facing Valhi’s largest operation. Watch its Titanium Technologies results, which cover TiO₂ pigment sold into markets such as coatings and plastics, rather than its refrigerant or advanced-materials businesses.
Comp X International Inc.’s lock and marine-component earnings flow into Valhi’s Component Products Segment; Valhi controlled 87% through NL at year-end 2025. Watch sales of locks for furniture and medical cabinetry and components for ski/wakeboard and performance boats—the businesses behind the segment’s $22.6 million operating income in 2025.
Rio Tinto supplies Kronos with titanium-bearing slag used to make TiO₂ pigments, so its supply terms and prices feed into Valhi’s chemical production costs. Watch its chloride-grade and upgraded slag supply: suitable titanium feedstock comes from limited suppliers, and these contracts automatically renew every two years.
Fed Interest Rate Decision
For Valhi, the Fed’s decision on its benchmark interest rate matters because higher rates can raise interest expense on its variable-rate Contran loan and Kronos Global Revolver, while lower rates can ease that cost.
Expected4.0%Last release4.0%
If it comes in above expectations
If the Fed’s decision signals a higher policy rate than expected, Valhi may pay more interest as rates on its variable-rate borrowing rise, leaving less cash for other needs.
If it comes in below expectations
If the Fed’s decision signals a lower policy rate than expected, Valhi may pay less interest on its variable-rate borrowing, leaving more cash for other needs.
Comp X International Inc. earningsCIX
CompX International’s lock and marine-component businesses feed into Valhi’s Component Products segment, and its report shows how sales and operating income in those customer markets are holding up.
Read security-product and marine-component sales alongside the segment’s operating margin, the share of sales left as operating income. Steady sales with a firm margin would show that customer demand and product mix are supporting Valhi’s contribution from these businesses; weaker sales or a thinner margin would mean less support for its segment.
TRONOX LIMITED earningsTROX
Tronox competes with Valhi’s Kronos for TiO₂ customers, and its production costs and operating results offer a read on cost pressure in the pigment business, though not a direct measure of Kronos’s purchased-feedstock costs.
Read Tronox’s pigment production costs together with its operating results. Falling costs and improving results would suggest less strain at this competitor and a potentially easier cost backdrop for pigment producers; rising costs or weaker results would point to continuing pressure. Tronox produces much of its own titanium feedstock, unlike Kronos’s reliance on purchased feedstock, so this is context for Valhi—not proof that Kronos’s input costs moved the same way.
Valhi, Inc. earningsThis company
Valhi’s Chemicals segment is built mainly on titanium dioxide pigment, and this report shows how selling prices, sales volume and feedstock costs shape the results of its largest business.
Read average TiO₂ selling prices and sales volume alongside titanium-containing feedstock costs and the Chemicals segment’s operating result. If the added revenue from price or volume outweighs feedstock and manufacturing costs, the core business is converting pigment sales into better earnings; if results remain weak, or more volume fails to offset costs, that conversion is still under pressure.
The Chemours Company earningsCC
Chemours’s TiO₂ business competes with Valhi’s Kronos for North American coatings and plastics customers, so its report offers a view of the demand and competitive pressure they share.
Focus on Chemours’s Titanium Technologies results, not its refrigerants or advanced materials. If pigment sales and operating results hold up, demand or pricing in the shared North American coatings and plastics markets may be more resilient; if they weaken, pressure in those markets may be increasing. Chemours’s own costs and product mix also affect its results, so they do not establish Kronos’s prices by themselves.
Kronos Worldwide, Inc. earningsKRO
Kronos runs Valhi’s largest business, and its report shows whether the gap between TiO₂ selling prices and purchased titanium-feedstock costs is translating into better operating results.
Read Kronos’s average TiO₂ selling prices and sales volume alongside purchased titanium-feedstock costs and its operating result. If revenue from price or volume covers feedstock and manufacturing costs and results improve, Valhi’s core business is earning more; if costs absorb the price benefit and results weaken, that business remains squeezed.
