Ecolab's Q2 2026 sales rose 9.7% to $4.42B (organic +5%, pricing +4%) and adjusted EPS rose 11% to $2.09 as price increases offset rising commodity costs; GAAP EPS rose 3% to $1.90 on higher special charges, and full-year guidance was raised to $8.05–$8.25.
Revenue
$4.4B
+9.7% YoY
Net income
$535M
+2.0% YoY
Diluted EPS
$1.90
+3.3% YoY
Operating margin
17.2%
Overview
Ecolab sells cleaning, sanitizing, water-treatment and pest-control products, plus the on-site service that goes with them, to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, factories, chip plants, data centers and drug makers. In the second quarter of 2026 (April–June), reported sales rose 9.7% to $4,415.4 million, but a good part of that came from outside the existing business: about 3 points came from acquisitions (mainly Ovivo Electronics, an ultrapure-water supplier to semiconductor plants bought in December 2025) and about 2 points from currency. Organic sales — growth from businesses owned in both years, at constant exchange rates — rose 5%, split into 4% from higher prices and 1% from higher volumes.
Reported profit grew more slowly than sales. Net income attributable to Ecolab rose 2.0% to $534.9 million and diluted EPS rose 3.3% to $1.90, held back by $57.7 million of one-off "special charges" (restructuring, deal costs and legal items, up from $27.1 million a year earlier) and a higher tax rate. Excluding those items, adjusted EPS rose 11% to $2.09 — the figure management guides to.
Key figures
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Net sales
$4,415.4M
$4,025.2M
+9.7%
Organic sales growth (volume / pricing)
+5% (+1% / +4%)
—
—
Gross margin (reported)
44.1%
44.8%
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First half of 2026: net sales $8,481.5M (+9.9%; organic +4%, with volume +1% and pricing +3%); operating income $1,379.9M (+9%); net income attributable to Ecolab $967.5M (+4.4%); diluted EPS $3.42 vs. $3.25 (+5.2%); adjusted diluted EPS $3.79 vs. $3.39 (+12%). Operating cash flow was $1,175.4M, up $104M, despite $60M of one-time equity incentive payments to Ovivo Electronics employees.
Takeaway: The underlying business did better than the GAAP headline suggests. Organic operating margin widened 0.4 points to 18.8% and adjusted EPS grew 11% because price increases caught up with rising raw-material costs within a single quarter. The 8-point gap between GAAP EPS growth (+3%) and adjusted EPS growth (+11%) comes from special charges and tax items, not weaker operations.
Pricing vs. commodity costs: the story of the quarter
Gross margin — the share of sales left after paying for the products, delivery and service staff — fell from 44.8% to 44.1% on a reported basis. That decline is mainly a mix effect: the newly acquired Ovivo business earns a lower gross margin than Ecolab's core chemistry. Excluding special charges, currency and acquisitions, organic gross margin edged up to 44.9% from 44.8%, which the 10-Q attributes to "accelerating pricing [that] offset higher commodity costs." In the earnings release, CEO Christophe Beck said pricing reached 4% partly on "the early benefits of our energy surcharge implementation," and that reported volume grew 1% "despite a nearly 1% headwind from customer operations disrupted by the conflict in the Middle East."
Selling, general and administrative costs fell to 25.9% of sales from 26.5%, which the filing credits to "good productivity gains and the favorable impact of recent acquisitions" outweighing growth investments. That cost efficiency is what lifted organic operating margin (the share of sales left after all operating costs, before interest and tax) to 18.8%. Ecolab's One Ecolab restructuring program has delivered $180 million of cumulative savings toward a targeted $325 million a year by 2027.
Segment performance
Ecolab reports four segments. From January 2026 its former Light & Heavy unit was split into Heavy Water, Light Water and High-Tech, all still inside Global Water. Figures below are at Ecolab's fixed internal exchange rates.
Segment
Q2 2026 sales
Organic sales growth
Operating income (change)
Organic op. margin, Q2 26 vs Q2 25
Global Water
$2,215.5M
+4%
$347.7M (+5%)
15.9% vs 16.4%
Global Institutional & Specialty
$1,617.4M
+4%
$389.9M (+6%)
24.1% vs 23.6%
Global Pest Elimination
$350.5M
+7%
$70.5M (+13%)
20.4% vs 19.5%
Global Life Sciences
$221.0M
+15%
$58.5M (+46%)
26.5% vs 21.0%
Global Water (industrial water treatment): sales rose 10%, of which 6 points came from the Ovivo acquisition ($117.0M of sales but only $14.1M of segment operating income). Organic growth of 4% covers a wide spread: High-Tech +29% (microelectronics and data centers), Food & Beverage +7%, Light Water +3%, Paper flat and Heavy Water -1% ("softer sales in basic industries"). Organic margin slipped 0.5 points because pricing (+2.4 points) was more than offset by investments and higher commodity costs (-3.2 points). This is the one segment where cost inflation won the quarter.
Global Institutional & Specialty (restaurants, hotels, hospitals, food retail): organic sales +4%. Institutional grew 3% on hospitality customers, "which more than offset softer sales to hospitals," and Specialty grew 6%. Margin rose 0.5 points as pricing (+3.0 points) beat supply-chain and commodity inflation plus investment (-2.2 points).
Global Pest Elimination: organic +7% from restaurants, food retail, food & beverage and healthcare, plus a 2% lift from small North American acquisitions. Margin rose 0.9 points despite spending on "pest intelligence" (connected monitoring).
Global Life Sciences (bioprocessing and pharmaceutical cleaning and purification): organic +15% and operating income +46%. Part of the 5.5-point margin jump came from "a spike in bioprocessing", and the earnings release says the third-quarter margin should return to its "high-teens" trajectory, so this quarter's 26.5% is not a new run rate.
Corporate costs (fixed currency, excluding special items) rose to $57.9M from $49.2M. The $9.9M attributed to acquisitions — Corporate carries the amortization of Ovivo's acquired intangible assets — accounts for all of that increase.
Special charges, tax and GAAP vs. adjusted EPS
Total special charges were $57.7M pre-tax ($50.5M after tax, or $0.18 per share), versus $27.1M ($0.07) a year ago. The pieces: $28.8M for One Ecolab restructuring, $13.6M of "other" items, primarily "certain legal charges and the estimated loss on sale of an investment," $4.6M of acquisition and integration costs (Ovivo and CoolIT), $4.1M of other restructuring, and $6.6M of interest on debt raised ahead of the CoolIT deal. The reported tax rate rose to 22.3% from 19.9%. Excluding special charges and discrete tax items (such as prior-year return adjustments and audit settlements), the adjusted rate was 21.0% vs. 20.8%. Discrete tax items cost $0.01 per share this year against a $0.02 benefit last year. Currency added about $0.04 per share.
The CoolIT acquisition and the balance sheet
Ecolab closed its $4.75 billion acquisition of CoolIT Systems, a maker of liquid-cooling systems for data-center servers, on July 2, 2026. That was after quarter-end, so none of CoolIT's results are in these figures. To fund it, Ecolab issued $5.0 billion of senior notes in May; total debt rose to $13.2 billion from $8.2 billion at year-end, while $5.1 billion of cash was held to pay at closing. Net debt to EBITDA (debt minus cash, divided by a year of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) was 2.0x at June 30, but that is before the purchase price went out. Adjusted net interest expense rose 5%, reflecting Ovivo-related borrowing partly offset by lower rates. Ecolab also repurchased $669M of stock and paid $424M of dividends in the first half. CoolIT joins Global Water from the third quarter; per the earnings release, its pre-acquisition sales rose more than 100% in the first half.
Outlook
From the July 28, 2026 earnings release (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1), management:
Raised full-year 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $8.05–$8.25 (+7% to +10%), from $8.03–$8.23.
Guided Q3 2026 adjusted EPS to $2.13–$2.23 (+3% to +8% vs. $2.07 a year ago), with about $0.28 per share of special charges expected in Q3. Both ranges absorb "a short-term impact from non-cash amortization and financing costs of the CoolIT acquisition."
Expects second-half pricing of 5–6%, organic sales growth of 6–7%, reported sales growth of 12–14%, an adjusted operating margin of about 19% and an organic operating margin of about 20%.
Our read: Ecolab offset a commodity-cost spike within one quarter while volumes still grew, which shows it can pass costs through to customers. But the second-half guidance relies mostly on pricing (5–6%) rather than volume, so the key thing to watch in Q3 is whether customers accept the energy surcharge without cutting orders, especially in Heavy Water and hospitals, where demand is already soft. Q3 adjusted EPS growth of only 3–8% (vs. 11% this quarter) shows the near-term cost of CoolIT: about $5 billion of new debt and new intangible amortization arrive before the business adds much profit. Management expects its High-Tech platform (chip-plant water plus data-center cooling) to reach $4 billion of sales by 2030; CoolIT's results from next quarter will be the first test of that target.
Source: Ecolab Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 6, 2026). Guidance and management quotes are from the Q2 2026 earnings release filed as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K on July 28, 2026.