Yara International ASA (YAR)
Verdict history · YAR
Period return = price change from verdict date to next verdict date (or present for Active). Prices are from published frontmatter — a stated fact, not a live feed. Full track record →
Hold YAR with conviction. Here’s why the panel thinks it’s a WAIT, and where they disagree.
A quality business, but not at today's price — the panel is waiting for a better price or a catalyst.
OSL · Materials / Nitrogen Fertilizers · 2026-07-16 · analysis, not advice
Key levels and fundamentals figures are sourced from public market data and filings. All panel verdicts, archetype reasoning, and synthesis are AI-generated analysis.
The panel's take
Verdict: WAIT · Conviction: MEDIUM · Last price: NOK 459.0 (as of 2026-07-16)
Yara enters this panel with no bullish voices and two outright bearish ones — not because the business is troubled, but because the price doesn't yet reflect normalized, through-the-cycle earnings. The stock's run to an all-time high near NOK 599 was driven largely by a geopolitical urea-price spike; that spike has partly unwound, and the same disruption is now pushing Yara's natural-gas input costs higher into tomorrow's earnings print. The balance sheet is genuinely strong and management's capital allocation is disciplined — but with a dated catalyst (Q2 results) and a value-lens fair-value zone still meaningfully below today's price, the panel's synthesis is WAIT.
Key levels
Key levels · YAR
NOK · as of 2026-07-16Analyst consensus target 505 NOK · range 470–540
Key support & resistance and analyst consensus — educational analysis, not advice. These are not entry or exit prices. Trading involves risk of loss.
Key support sits at NOK 437-440, a Fibonacci/prior-pullback confluence, but this is a shallow technical shelf, not a value-confirmed zone. A deeper historical accumulation zone sits at NOK 340-345 — the prior consolidation range that launched the entire 2025 advance — and it is here, not at the shallower shelf above it, that the panel's own valuation math (see below) starts to agree with the chart. The analyst consensus target sits at NOK 505, modestly above today's price.
Where the chart and the valuation models agree: the panel's two normalized-earnings estimates — one from the value lens's conservative multiple, one from the intrinsic-value model's discounted cash flow — both land close to the NOK 340-380 range. That's the same neighborhood as the deeper historical accumulation zone above, not the shallower support just below today's price. When a technical base and an independent valuation estimate converge like this, it's a stronger signal than either alone — though still a zone to watch, not a level to chase.
What legendary investors think
We ran Yara past a panel of six legendary investors' frameworks.
The panel · 6 investors
The Moat CompounderValue⚫ NeutralMedium
"A ton of urea from Yara competes against a ton of urea from anyone sitting on cheaper gas — that's a cost edge, not a moat." Net income swung from near-zero to a near-100x rebound in two years: "proof there's no pricing power cushioning the cycle." The 8.7x trailing multiple "looks cheap against earnings that just came off a peak, not against what this business normally earns."
The Margin-of-Safety HunterDeep Value⚫ NeutralMedium
On trailing (peak) earnings, the classic value formula says fair value near NOK 642 — looks like a bargain. But run the same formula on a 3-year-average earnings base, as the method itself prescribes for cyclicals, and fair value drops to roughly NOK 374 — below, not above, today's price. "The pullback hasn't created a bargain. It's returned the price to where normalized earnings say it belongs."
The Quality RationalistMental Models⚫ NeutralMedium
"This is a decent, well-run commodity producer — not a wonderful business." Global ammonia capacity is projected to grow ~10.5% by 2029, with forecasters already calling for urea-price declines into 2027. "The whole industry is racing to build low-cost capacity right now, precisely because today's prices are attractive. That new supply is the mechanism that ends the cycle. It always does."
The Intrinsic-Value ModelerValuation🔴 BearishMedium
A discounted cash flow (normalized margin fading from today's elevated level toward a through-cycle average, appropriate discount rate for a cyclical) lands fair value around NOK 330-380. "Today's price sits closer to my bull scenario than my base case — the market is still pricing peak-cycle margins as if they were durable."
The Macro OpportunistMacro🔴 BearishMedium
"The input-output spread just inverted against this business — gas costs re-accelerating on fresh geopolitical risk while the output price has already given back most of its spike." The trend signal (weekly Supertrend) has flipped and price has already moved well through the flip level — "that's confirmed technical damage, not a marginal whipsaw."
The Asymmetric BargainerContrarian⚫ NeutralMedium
"This business already ran hard off its 2024 low before rolling over — I'm being asked to buy the back half of a round trip, not the front half of maximum pessimism." The sell-side's own average target sits barely above today's price: "that's not a margin of safety, that's a coin flip landing right before a binary earnings print."
Each view is one investing framework applied to the stock — a perspective, not advice, and identical for every reader. Signals are the panel's own scale, not a recommendation to act.
Where they agree — and where they clash
Common ground
- Nobody sees a broken business — balance sheet strength and disciplined capital allocation (a recent bolt-on acquisition funded without stretching leverage targets) draw consistent praise.
- The recent earnings strength was substantially a geopolitical price shock, not a structural step-change in margins, and that shock has already started to unwind.
- A dated catalyst — the next quarterly print — lands imminently and is treated by every lens as the near-term swing factor.
The real debate
- Is the low headline multiple real value, or a cyclical mirage? The deep-value and intrinsic-value lenses both say normalized fair value sits meaningfully below today's price; the raw trailing multiple says the opposite.
- Healthy pullback or broken trend? One read treats the multi-year uptrend as intact but stalling; the macro/technical lens treats the same chart as already-confirmed damage.
- Does the recent bolt-on acquisition signal discipline or risk? Most of the panel reads it as smart, cheap-feedstock positioning; the more cautious voices note it raises leverage right as the cycle cools.
The question it comes down to: Is this a disciplined, financially strong operator caught in an ordinary post-spike pullback toward a genuine value zone — or a well-run cyclical business still priced for a peak that's already fading, with a binary earnings event about to test which is true?
The numbers
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Price / Market cap | NOK 459.0 / ~NOK 117B |
| P/E (TTM / fwd) | ~8.7x / ~10.7x (forward above trailing — the market is pricing some normalization) |
| ROE | ~14.6% (ROIC 10.7%, above the company's own 10% through-cycle target) |
| Operating margin | ~18% EBITDA margin (FY2025) |
| Dividend yield | ~4.8% (NOK 22/share, FY2025) |
| Debt / equity | Net debt/EBITDA 1.0x pre-acquisition (1.7x pro forma) / net debt-to-equity 0.33x — both inside policy targets |
| Free cash flow | Positive and improving; medium-term target of >$600M cumulative FCF expansion, 2024-2030 |
Figures as of Q1 2026 (reported Apr 24, 2026) and FY2025; sourced from Yara investor relations, GuruFocus, stockanalysis.com, Jefferies research notes. Multiple third-party aggregators show wide dispersion on P/E/ROE figures for this name due to a 2024-2025 earnings base effect (near-zero to peak in one year) — the figures above are reconciled to company-reported net income rather than taken from a single source. Next print: July 17, 2026 (Q2 2026) — one day after this analysis.
The bottom line
Yara is a financially disciplined, well-run nitrogen producer whose stock ran hard on a geopolitical supply shock and has since given back roughly a quarter of that move. The panel finds no bullish conviction and two explicitly bearish views, but the underlying disagreement isn't about whether Yara is a sound business — it clearly is, on the balance sheet and management-quality dimensions. It's about price: two independent value estimates land meaningfully below today's level, and the chart's highest-quality historical accumulation zone sits in that same lower neighborhood, not at the shallower support just beneath the current price. With a binary earnings catalyst landing the day after this analysis and no lens finding a genuine discount at NOK 459, the synthesis is patience rather than either enthusiasm or alarm — a business worth continuing to watch, at a price the panel isn't yet ready to call cheap.
contact@verdixhq.com · Published 2026-07-16 · Prices as of 2026-07-16 · Time horizon: 3–12 months · No direct position held in YAR · YAR verdict history → · Methodology →
Verdix's panel is made up of AI archetypes that apply the well-documented, publicly known investment frameworks of famous investors. They are AI agents — not the investors themselves. Verdix is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by any real individual, and the archetypes do not represent any real person's actual views, holdings, or statements. Every verdict is AI-generated.
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