# The share of the world's largest chocolatemaking sinks
Swiss Barry Callebaut, the world's largest chocolate industry, downgraded profitability forecasts for the financial year 2025-2026, causing a sharp drop of 17% in its share. The company expects a 15% reduction in repeated earnings before interest and taxes, due to the sharp fall in cocoa prices, oversupply to the industry and supply chain disturbances from the war with Iran. New CEO Hein Schumacher described the period «turbulent». The recurring EBIT retreated 4.2% in the semester, while sales declined 6.9%.
Analyticalally:
The world's largest chocolatemaking downgraded the forecasts for its functional profitability, warning for a difficult year.
This is because the sharp fall in cocoa prices, the excess capacity in the industry and the disruptions in the supply chain compress its performance.
Swiss Barry Callebaut revised in particular its estimates for the financial year 2025-2026 and causing a strong sell-off to its share. The market reacted directly, with the title retreating intra-sessionally up to 17%, as investors assess a much more difficult environment for the group's profitability.
The company announced that it now expects the recurring pre-interest and tax profits (EBIT) to be reduced by about 15% in the current financial year. This is a clear deterioration in relation to the image it gave just three months ago when it was talking about a return to growth.
Pressures from cocoa, oversupply and war
Barry Callebaut's new CEO, Hein Schumacher, spoke of a «turbulent period» for industry, noting that the company still has a strong market position and significant long-term growth prospects.
However, it made it clear that the speed at which cocoa prices fell, combined with the strong oversupply in the industry, the decrease in volumes and supply disturbances, affected profitability.
According to the administration, the fall in cocoa grain prices is encouraging for the future dynamics of the chocolate market and boosted free cash flows in the first half of the year, but such sharp correction eventually worked destabilising for the operational results.
Concerns about supply chain problems are also added to this pressure, which connects the company to the turbulence caused by the war with Iran. The environment becomes even more difficult than the fact that the market remains oversaturated, while demand has not returned with the intensity the industry would like.
The market immediately punished the stock
The reaction to the dashboard was severe. Barry Callebaut's shares recorded an intra-sessional fall of up to 17%, with losses remaining double digits and later within the meeting. This decline reflects the investor's concern both for the deterioration of short-term prospects and for the difficulty of recovering sales volumes in a market that remains unstable.
The results of the semester strengthened this image. The company announced that the recurring EBIT declined by 4.2% in local currencies, at 310.9 million Swiss francs, while sales volumes decreased by 6.9% annually. For the entire year, however, it still provides for a lower volume drop of 1% to 3%, estimated that there will be an improvement in the second half of the year.
The collapse of the price of cocoa changes the balance
The cocoa market has changed spectacularly in a few months. After the explosive rise in 2024 and by early 2025, prices have slipped sharply, as production prospects have improved significantly, mainly due to surpluses in key production countries such as Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
The price has been reduced by 41.6% since the beginning of 2026 and a total of 57.6% over the past 12 months, according to data from Trading Economics. It now moves just over $3,530 per tonne, while the historical record had been recorded in December 2024, near $12,900 per tonne. This de-escalation, which should theoretically relieve industry, does not necessarily work beneficial for all to the same extent.
For a giant like Barry Callebaut, the extremely rapid change in the market, combined with international competition and problems in the supply chain, turns into a source of pressure instead of a net benefit.
