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What Changed
Risk factors · Feb 28, 2025 → Feb 27, 2026
175 added · 224 removed between the two most recent 10-Ks. The risks a company starts — or stops — disclosing are often the story.
Newly disclosed
We recorded an impairment charge of $1.153 billion within the Food Ingredients operating segment as a result of the change in the Company’s segments, which is reflected in the Consolidated Statements of Income (Loss) and Comprehensive Income (Loss) during the year ended December 31, 2025.
The OECD released administrative guidance in February 2023 aiming to provide clarity over contentious areas of the model rules and aiming to provide greater certainty for businesses impacted by Pillar Two.
While these measures mitigate cybersecurity risks, potential threats are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, and conducted by a diverse group of actors, such as foreign governments, cyber terrorists, cyber criminals, malicious employees and other insiders and outsiders.
A significant IT disruption or breach of our systems or those of our third party providers could result in loss of confidential data, operational downtime, litigation, regulatory penalties, damages, reputational harm, and substantial remediation costs.
We may be exposed to AI-related risks in cases where we, our employees, or our third party partners, in each case whether or not known to us, use AI tools, as well as in cases where we fail to adopt AI tools at a pace or breath as our competitors.
The use of AI by us, our employees or any of our third-party partners may create risks, such as unauthorized disclosure of personal data, privacy risks, trade secrets, or confidential information, and potential receipt or use of third-party proprietary data, which could lead to intellectual property loss or disputes.
To the extent any of our businesses do not perform as anticipated and our underlying assumptions and estimates related to their fair value determination are not met, whether due to internal or external factors, the value of goodwill and other long-lived assets may be negatively affected and we may be required to record impairment charges.
Failure to adapt promptly and cost-effectively to these changes could result in increased costs to reformulate affected products and in loss of business to competitors with compliant products, operational disruptions, customer claims, regulatory fines, litigation, or reputational damage.
Such events could potentially harm consumer health and safety and may trigger recalls, regulatory enforcement actions, penalties, lost profits, reputational harm, productivity losses, property damage, personal injury, other liability or litigation.
See, also “ —Our results of operations may be negatively impacted by legal claims, disputes, investigations and litigation, including the ongoing antitrust and competition investigations and related class action lawsuits. ” Similarly, the enforcement of international trade laws, including duties, tariffs, licensing requirements, anti-boycott, dumping and others is relevant to our broad and worldwide business.
Failure by counterparties to meet applicable standards could harm our reputation and brand, expose us to litigation, investigations, enforcement actions, monetary liability, and additional costs, and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.
Any settlement or adverse judgment resulting from such litigation could require us to obtain a license to continue to use the intellectual property rights that are the subject of the claim, or otherwise restrict or prohibit our use of such intellectual property rights.
No longer disclosed
As a result of our acquisitions, including the acquisition of Frutarom and the N&B Transaction, as of December 31, 2024, we recorded approximately $15.525 billion of intangible assets and goodwill, including $4.289 billion of goodwill associated with the acquisition of Frutarom and $11.817 billion of goodwill associated with the merger with the N&B Business, prior to the impact of impairment charges and business divestitures.
While we have not yet completed our goodwill and long-lived assets impairment assessments required by this internal reporting structure, we anticipate incurring a material impairment charge in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, estimated to be in the range of $1.0 billion to $1.5 billion.
During the year ended December 31, 2024, we recorded a goodwill impairment charge of $64 million in the Consolidated Statements of Income (Loss) and Comprehensive Loss.
Our Revolving Credit Facility and Term Loan contain various covenants, limitations and events of default customary for similar facilities for similarly rated borrowers, including the requirement for us to maintain, at the end of each fiscal quarter, a maximum ratio of net debt for borrowed money to credit adjusted EBITDA in respect of the previous four fiscal quarters.
If our suppliers are unable to supply us with sufficient quantities of ingredients and raw materials to meet our needs, we would need to seek alternative sources of such materials (which may result in higher procurement costs) or pursue our own production of such ingredients or direct acquisition of such raw materials.
We rely on information technology systems, including some managed by third-party providers, to conduct business and to support our business processes, including those relating to product formulas, product development, manufacturing, sales, order and invoice processing, production, distribution, internal communications and communications with third parties throughout the world, processing transactions, summarizing and reporting results of operations, complying with regulatory (including SEC), tax or legal requirements, and collecting and storing customer, supplier, employee and other stakeholder information.
We believe that these preventative actions provide adequate measures of protection against information security breaches/incidents and generally reduce our cybersecurity risks, however, cybersecurity incidents, data breaches and operational disruptions are constantly evolving, becoming more sophisticated, including through the increasing use of AI, and conducted by groups and individuals with a wide range of expertise and motives, including foreign governments, cyber terrorists, cyber criminals, malicious employees and other insiders and outsiders.
A disruption to our information technology systems could result in the loss of confidential business, customer, supplier or employee information, litigation or fines, and may require substantial investigations, repairs or replacements or impact our ability to summarize and report financial results in a timely manner, affecting our productivity or resulting in significant financial, legal and relational costs and potentially harming our reputation and adversely impacting our operations, customer service and results of operations.
Additionally, the increasing use and evolution of technology, including cloud-based computing and AI, may lead to potential loss or unauthorized disclosure or use of personal data and proprietary information that was collected, used, stored, or transferred with respect to our business, and to dissemination or destruction of confidential information, unintentionally or otherwise, stored in our or in our third-party providers’ systems or through use of AI, which may significantly increase our business and information security costs, and expose us to reputational harm, penalties, or legal liability.
Additionally, an information security or data breach could require us to devote significant management and financial resources to address the problems created, and, as a result of the private rights of action provided for under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), the California Consumer Privacy Act (the “CCPA”) and other laws relating to data protection and privacy in other jurisdictions, in the event of such breaches, additional private litigation against us may result.
IFF may be exposed to risks in cases where IFF utilizes AI in connection with certain business activities now or in the future, in cases where, whether known or unknown to IFF, IFF personnel, use AI for our business or at IFF locations, or in cases where our third-party partners, whether or not known to IFF, use AI in their business activities (which we may not be in a position to control).
The use of AI by us, our employees or any of our third-party partners may result in unauthorized disclosure of personal data, proprietary information and trade secrets, commercially sensitive or confidential information of IFF, our employees or our partners.