Faber-Castell remains on track: A profitable 2025/26 financial year and clear growth plans for the next three years

Following a challenging financial year 2025/26, the Faber-Castell Group is refining its global strategy with a clear focus on growth and profitability. The company is building on defined strategic priorities, driving forward the expansion of its cosmetics production in the USA, and continuing to focus specifically on innovation, e-commerce and global collaboration.

Stein, 11 November 2026. The 2025/26 financial year¹ saw Faber-Castell operating in a challenging market environment: US customs policy, geopolitical tensions and increasingly price-aggressive global competition weighed on the market and the business. The Faber-Castell Group’s turnover fell by 3.9 per cent year-on-year to EUR 562 million on a currency-adjusted basis, i.e. assuming stable exchange rates. This corresponds to a 6.7 per cent decline in turnover in euros (previous year: EUR 602 million). The group once again closed the financial year profitably – despite substantial investments in the brand, production and global IT infrastructure. This was largely due to the consistent implementation of the global ‘ONE Faber-Castell’ strategy, as well as the effects of the global restructuring, which was carried out at the German sites without any redundancies.

In the current financial year 2026/27, Faber-Castell is consistently further developing the “ONE Faber-Castell” strategy – with a sharpened focus on growth drivers and profitability. Key levers for this include further enhanced innovation, the expansion of e-commerce, a structured global production footprint and an optimised product range strategy. Momentum is coming from a range of markets and business segments: strong performance in the USA, sustained growth in India, the expansion of high market shares in Germany and the dynamically developing cosmetics business are opening up a wide range of opportunities for the company to tap into new revenue potential. At the same time, Faber-Castell has successfully implemented global innovation initiatives and synchronised product launches.

“Last year, we set a record for the launch of new product concepts,” summarises Stefan Leitz, Chief Executive Officer of Faber-Castell AG. “The share of revenue generated by product innovations in the portfolio is higher than ever before, and these have also been very well received by trade partners and consumers. In the current and coming financial year, too, we can expect many new products, brand collaborations and strategic relaunches across all business segments from Faber-Castell. At the same time, we have optimised our processes so that we can supply markets more synchronised and more quickly, both regionally and globally – a clear advantage in international competition.”

The economic environment remains challenging and difficult to predict. Nevertheless, Faber-Castell considers itself well positioned: the planned positive effects of the restructuring measures, together with consistently implemented efficiency measures, are creating further scope – for investment in strategic priority areas and for sustainable, profitable growth. A strategic milestone is the full expansion of cosmetics production at the Elgin site in the US. With this step, Faber-Castell is establishing a complete local value chain in the US, serving its US customers with even greater flexibility and, in future, will be able to capitalise on the ‘Made in USA’ label.

Outlook for the second half of 2026/27

At the halfway point of the current financial year, Faber-Castell considers itself on track in terms of revenue and earnings performance. The company has been buoyed, amongst other things, by the strong performance of Faber-Castell USA and the cosmetics business in Germany, as well as by positive currency effects. For the second half of the year, the operating environment continues to be characterised by rising costs, declining purchasing power and consumer caution, intense competitive pressure and currency volatility. Leitz: “Despite all the geopolitical and geo-economic uncertainties, Faber-Castell has proven that we can develop markets. We have laid the foundations. Now is the time to set ambitious growth targets for the coming years: the strategic focus areas and priorities are clearly defined – and the initial results confirm that we are on the right track,” commented Stefan Leitz, Chief Executive of Faber-Castell AG.

^{¹ 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026}

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