Axalta Coating Systems Ltd.: Form 10-K for the period ended Dec 31, 2025

Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (“Axalta,” the “Company,” “we,” “our” and “us”), a Bermuda exempted holding company incorporated in 2012, is a leading global manufacturer, marketer and distributor of high-performance coatings systems and products. We have over a 150-year heritage in the coatings industry and are known for manufacturing high-quality products with well-recognized brands supported by market-leading technology and customer service. Over the course of our history we have remained at the forefront of our industry by continually developing innovative coatings technologies and services designed to enhance the performance, appearance and sustainability attributes of our customers’ products, while improving their productivity and profitability.

Our diverse global footprint allows us to meet the needs of our customer base through an extensive sales force and technical support organization, as well as independent, locally-based distributors. Our scale and strong local presence are critical to our success, allowing us to leverage our technology portfolio and customer relationships globally while meeting customer demands locally. We operate our business in two operating segments, Performance Coatings and Mobility Coatings, serving four end-markets globally as highlighted below.

The table above reflects numbers for the year ended December 31, 2025.

Net sales for our four end-markets and four regions for the year ended December 31, 2025 are highlighted below:

Note: Latin America includes Mexico. EMEA represents Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Proposed Merger with Akzo Nobel N.V.

During November 2025, we entered into a Merger Agreement (the “Merger Agreement”) with Akzo Nobel N.V., a public company with limited liability incorporated under the laws of the Netherlands (“AkzoNobel”) providing for the combination of the Company and AkzoNobel in an all-stock merger (the “Merger”). See Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

SEGMENT OVERVIEW

Performance Coatings

Through our Performance Coatings segment, we provide high-quality sustainable liquid and powder coating solutions to both large regional and global customers and to a fragmented and local customer base. These customers comprise, among others, independent or multi-shop operator body shops as well as a wide variety of industrial manufacturers. We are one of only a few suppliers with the technology to provide precise color matching and highly durable coatings systems. The end-markets within this segment are refinish and industrial.

Performance Coatings End-Markets

Refinish

Sales in the refinish end-market are driven by the number of vehicle collisions, owners’ and insurers’ willingness to repair vehicles, the number of miles vehicle owners drive and the size of the car parc. Although refinish coatings typically represent only a small portion of the overall vehicle repair cost, they are critical to the vehicle owner’s satisfaction given their impact on appearance. As a result, body shop operators are focused on coatings manufacturers with a strong track record of performance and reliability. Body shops look for coatings manufacturers with productivity enhancements, regulatory compliance, consistent quality, the presence of ongoing technical support, an attractive service portfolio and exact color match technologies. Color matching is a critical component of coatings manufacturer selection, since inexact matching adversely impacts vehicle appearance, and if repainting is required due to a poor match, it can reduce the speed and volume of repairs at a given shop. Sustainability is another important component of coatings supplier selection as the current market trend is for products that are inherently more environmentally friendly and use less energy, such as our specially-formulated waterborne and our high solids solventborne products that improve productivity and performance, while reducing the impact on the environment.

We develop, market and supply a complete portfolio of innovative coatings systems and color matching technologies to facilitate faster automotive collision repairs relative to competing technologies. Our color matching technology provides Axalta-specific formulations that enable body shops to accurately match thousands of vehicle colors, regardless of vehicle brand, color, age or supplier of the original paint during production. It would be time-consuming and costly for a new entrant to create such an extensive color inventory.

Industrial

The industrial end-market comprises liquid, e-coat and powder coatings used in a broad array of end-business applications. Within the industrial end-market, we focus on the following:

• Building Products: Focused on North America, offering leading innovation for performance, style, and durability in liquid coatings serving the OEMs and aftermarket building segments, including external finishes, kitchen cabinets, flooring and furniture.
• Construction: Global solutions in liquid and powder coatings for applications such as window frames, structural steel, steel roofing, and metal building materials, typically used in residential, industrial, commercial, and monumental buildings. Coil coaters benefit from our performance solutions for applications serving customers producing buildings as well as appliances, lighting, garage doors, HVAC systems and trailers. Architects and designers can benefit from the advice of our in-house color experts, superior technical service and the latest trend collections available in our dedicated color experience rooms and digital tools.
• Energy & Battery Solutions: Innovative technologies in liquid and powder coatings for battery performance, insulation and conduction to enable innovation in the electrification and energy transition market. These innovative technologies complement our solutions to insulate copper wire used in motors and transformers and our coatings insulate sheets forming magnetic circuits of motors and transformers, computer elements and other electrical devices to provide increased motor and power efficiency.
• Transportation: Key provider of liquid and powder coatings for vehicle components, chassis, and agricultural, construction, and earth moving equipment, that protect against corrosion, provide increased durability, and deliver a superior appearance.
• General Metal Finishing: Global provider of multiple technologies for a wide array of applications, including racking and shelving, metal furniture, appliances, protective coating, pipes and tubes, metal enclosures and fencing, industrial components, gutters, garage and entry doors, HVAC systems, metal wall panels, and power storage and electrical boxes.

Demand in this end-market is driven by a wide variety of macroeconomic factors, such as growth in GDP and new residential and commercial construction, as well as automotive and industrial production. There has also been an increase in demand for products that enhance environmental sustainability, corrosion resistance, productivity and color aesthetics, which we provide through a combination of e-coat, waterborne, solventborne, ultraviolet (“UV”) and powder technologies. Customers select industrial coatings based on protection, durability, appearance and value added through technical service and solutions, which can improve customers’ application sustainability and productivity.

Performance Coatings Products and Brands

We offer a comprehensive range of specially-formulated waterborne and solventborne products and systems used by the global automotive refinish industry to repair damaged vehicles. Our refinish products and systems comprise a range of coatings layers, as well as fillers, aerosols, and adhesives required to match the vehicle’s color and appearance, producing a repair surface indistinguishable from the adjacent surface.

We provide systems that enable body shops to match approximately 230,000 color variations, using a database with more than four million formulations, globally. Our color technology is manifested in the pigment and dispersion technology that are utilized in our tints, one of the most technologically advanced parts of the refinish coatings system, which makes up most of our products in a body shop. We have a large color library and several well-known, long-standing premium brands, including Cromax®, Standox®, Spies Hecker®, Syrox™, and Raptor®, as well as other regional and local brands.

Our color matching and retrieval systems allow customers to quickly match any color, reducing the need for body shop technicians to repeat the color matching process, which saves time and materials. The color matching process begins with a technician scanning a damaged vehicle with one of our advanced color matching tools, such as our Axalta Irus Scan™ hand-held spectrophotometer. The Axalta Irus Scan™ reads the vehicle color, evaluating both the unique flake and color characteristics of the specific vehicle. These characteristics may vary significantly, even for vehicles of the same make, model and original color, due to a variety of factors, including a vehicle’s age, plant at which it was assembled, weather conditions and operating history. The Axalta Irus Scan™ electronically connects with our ColorNet® database and generates for the body shop technician the precise mix of tints and colors needed to recreate that specific color for the part being repaired. In addition to the Axalta Irus Scan™, we offer customers several other color matching tools, including our VINdicator® database, which identifies vehicle color based on its vehicle identification number, and traditional color matching fan decks.

We have launched a completely automated and hands-free mixing machine for our automotive refinish customers, Axalta Irus Mix™. Axalta Irus Mix™ delivers highly accurate color and works with Axalta’s innovative packaging, designed to help refinish customers meet or exceed key business goals, including maximizing profitability and minimizing environmental impact.

We have also launched a global customer experience platform for refinish customers, Axalta Nimbus™. This technology seamlessly connects refinish customers to Axalta’s tools and resources to improve efficiency, enhance productivity, boost performance, and maximize profitability. With Axalta Nimbus™, customers have everything they need to power the refinish process in a single platform, including color retrieval, product ordering, inventory management, training resources, and support. By working together in a single platform, comprehensive business insights provide actionable data that help owners and managers make informed decisions to increase profitability and performance. Axalta Nimbus is designed to be easy to use with an intuitive user interface for increased efficiency and customizable capabilities based on business need.

In addition, we are a leading global developer, manufacturer and supplier of functional and decorative liquid and powder coatings for a large number of diversified applications in the industrial end-market, including building materials, cabinet, wood and luxury vinyl flooring and furniture applications in North America. Our liquid systems are used to provide insulation and thermo-mechanical protection for electrical conductors and devices, protect automotive parts and serve as primers, basecoats, and clearcoats for alloy and steel wheels, and provide weatherability and corrosion protection for metal building and infrastructure projects. Powder coatings products, both thermoset and thermoplastic, are an environmentally responsible, higher transfer efficiency alternative to liquid coatings. These coatings are typically electrostatically sprayed using a specialized spray gun and cured to create a uniform, high-quality finish. In the oil and gas industry, our powder and liquid products are used to protect components from corrosion and severe conditions such as extreme temperatures, pressures, and harsh chemicals.

Our major industrial brands include Imron® Industrial, Tufcote™ Industrial, Corlar™ Industrial, Strenex™ Industrial, PercoTop®, Voltatex®, AquaEC™, Durapon70®, Ceranamel™, UNRIVALED™, Zenamel™ and Cerulean™ for liquid coatings and Alesta® series, Nap-Gard®, Abcite® and Plascoat® for powder coatings.

Performance Coatings Sales, Marketing and Distribution

We leverage a large global refinish sales and technical support team to effectively serve our broad refinish customer base of approximately 96,000 body shops. Most of our products are supplied by our network of over 5,000 independent local distributors. In select regions, including parts of Europe, we also sell directly to body-shop customers through our company owned stores. These stores maintain an inventory of our products to fill orders from body shops in their market and assume credit risk and responsibility for logistics, delivery and billing. In certain countries, we utilize importers that buy directly from us and actively market our products to body shops. Our relationships with our top ten distributors are longstanding and continue to contribute to our success in the global refinish market.

Our large refinish sales force manages relationships directly with our end-customers to drive demand for our products, which in turn are purchased through customers in our distributor network. Due to the local nature of the refinish industry, our sales force operates on a regional/country basis to provide clients with responsive customer service and local insight. As part of their coverage efforts, salespeople introduce new products to body shops and provide technical support and ongoing training. We currently have 48 customer training centers established globally, which helps to deepen our customer relationships.

Our sales force also helps to drive shop productivity improvements and to install or upgrade body shop color matching and mixing equipment to improve shop profitability. Once a coating and color system is installed, a body shop almost exclusively uses its specific supplier’s products. The proprietary nature of a coatings supplier’s color systems, the substantial inventory needed to support a body shop and the body shop’s familiarity with an established brand lead to high levels of customer retention. Our customer retentions have been and continue to be strong.

Our large direct sales team in industrial serves its end customers, driving demand which is then primarily filled directly or through channels of distribution and e-commerce. We leverage this dedicated sales force and technical service team to provide regional support and identify global innovation projects to meet evolving market needs. In the powder coatings segment, we believe we are one of only three truly global producers that can satisfy the needs and specifications of a customer in multiple regions of the world, while maximizing productivity from the broad scale and scope of our operations.

Performance Coatings Customers

Within our Performance Coatings segment, we sell coatings to customers in more than 140 countries. Our top ten customers accounted for approximately 17% of our Performance Coatings net sales during the year ended December 31, 2025.

In our industrial and refinish end-markets we serve both large OEMs and a broad, fragmented local customer base. Our industrial end-market comprises a wide variety of industrial manufacturers, while our refinish end-market primarily comprises approximately 96,000 body shops, including:

• Independent Body Shops: Single location body shops that utilize premium, mainstream or economy brands based on the local market.
• Multi-Shop Operators (“MSOs”): Body shops with more than five locations focused on providing premium paint jobs with industry leading efficiency. MSOs use premium/mainstream coatings and state-of-the-art painting technology to increase shop productivity, allowing them to repair more vehicles faster.
• OEM Dealership Body Shops: High-productivity body shops, located in OEM car dealerships, that operate like MSOs and provide premium services to customers using premium/mainstream coatings.

Performance Coatings Competition

Our primary competitors in the refinish end-market include AkzoNobel, BASF, PPG and Sherwin Williams, but we also compete against local and regional players in the markets we serve. Similarly, in the industrial end-market, we compete against multi-national suppliers, such as AkzoNobel, PPG and Sherwin-Williams, as well as a large number of local and regional players in the markets we serve. We believe we are one of the few performance coatings companies that can provide the customer service, total technology solutions, color design capability and product performance necessary to deliver exceptional value to our customers.

Mobility Coatings

Through our Mobility Coatings segment, we provide coatings technologies for light vehicle and commercial vehicle OEMs. These global customers are faced with evolving megatrends in electrification, sustainability, personalization and autonomous driving that require a high level of technical expertise. These OEMs require efficient, environmentally responsible coatings systems that can be applied with a high degree of precision, consistency and speed. The end-markets within this segment are light vehicle and commercial vehicle.

Our portfolio brings together the best of Axalta’s experience and innovation into three categories: Core Mobility Solutions, Advanced Mobility Solutions and Axalta Advantage.

• Core Mobility Solutions comprises Axalta’s best-in-class basecoats and clearcoats for color and beautification along with primers, electrocoats and powder applications for surface protection.
• Advanced Mobility Solutions encompasses products and applications for trends like sustainability, mass customization, two-tone and digital paint. It includes coatings with enhanced functionality that improve LiDAR and radar performance and exterior protection for electric vehicle platforms and components.
• Axalta Advantage features expert services and consulting to improve productivity in and outside the paint shop, including application design, process improvement, cost and CO2 modeling, and troubleshooting.

Mobility Coatings End-Markets

Light Vehicle

Demand for light vehicle coatings is driven by regional light vehicle production. Light vehicle OEMs select coatings providers based on their global ability to deliver core and advanced technological solutions that improve exterior appearance and durability and provide long-term corrosion protection. These customers also look for suppliers that offer sustainable solutions to aid in the customer portfolio transformation and can enhance process efficiency, improve productivity and provide superior technical support. Rigorous environmental and durability testing as well as obtaining engineering approvals are also key criteria used by global light vehicle OEMs when selecting coatings providers. Globally integrated suppliers are important because they offer products with consistent standards across regions and can deliver high-quality products in sufficient quantity while meeting OEM service requirements. Our global scale, people, expertise, innovative technology platforms, and customer focus position us to be a global partner and solutions provider to the most discerning and demanding light vehicle OEMs. We believe we are one of the few coatings producers that can provide OEMs with global product specifications, standardized color development, compatibility with the growing number of substrates, increasingly complex colors and environmentally-responsible coatings while continuing to simplify and reduce steps in the coating application process.

Commercial Vehicle

Sales in the commercial vehicle end-market are generated from a variety of applications, including HDT, MDT, bus and rail, motorcycles, marine and aviation, as well as related segments such as trailers, recreational vehicles and personal sport vehicles. This end-market is primarily driven by global commercial vehicle production, which is influenced by overall economic activity, government infrastructure spending, equipment replacement cycles and evolving environmental standards for sustainability.

Commercial vehicle OEMs select coatings providers on the basis of their ability to consistently deliver advanced technological solutions that improve exterior appearance, protection and durability and provide extensive color libraries and matching capabilities at the lowest total cost-in-use, while meeting stringent environmental requirements. Particularly for HDT applications, truck owners demand a significant variety of custom colors and advanced product technologies to enable custom designs. Our strong competitive position and growth are driven by our ability to provide customers with our market-leading brand, Imron®, as well as leveraging our global product lines, regional knowledge and customer service.

Mobility Coatings Products and Brands

We develop and supply a complete coatings product line for light vehicle OEMs. Our products are designed to enhance the styling and appearance of a vehicle’s exterior while providing protection from the elements, extending the life of the vehicle. Widely recognized in the industry for our advanced and patented technologies, we believe our products not only increase productivity and profitability for OEMs but also produce attractive and durable finishes. Our light vehicle coatings portfolio is one of the broadest in the industry.

The coatings operation is a critical component of the light vehicle assembly process, requiring a high degree of precision, speed and productivity. The paint shop process typically includes a dip process, three application zones and three high-temperature ovens that cure each coating layer at temperatures ranging from 320°F to 400°F (i.e., “high bake”). Our key products consist of the four main coatings layers: electrocoat (AquaEC®), primer (HyperDur™), basecoat (ChromaDyne™) and clearcoat (Lumeera™).

The coatings process accounts for a majority of the total energy consumed during the light vehicle manufacturing process. With that in mind, we have developed coatings technologies, including 3-Wet™, Eco-Concept™ and 2-Wet Monocoat™, that help our OEM customers lower costs by reducing energy consumption and increasing productivity.

In today’s existing mobility ecosystem, coatings provide essential beauty and color to vehicle bodies while extending the useful life of the vehicle via durability-related properties such as chemical resistance and chip and corrosion protection. As the industry evolves, each dimension of mobility – electric vehicles, shared transportation and autonomous driving – requires coatings with advanced functionality that, in addition to aesthetics and protection, contribute to the efficiency of electrification, vehicle design, navigation and passenger safety, among other areas. Evolution within the mobility industry creates tremendous opportunities for OEMs but requires them to undertake significant shifts in how they design and produce vehicles. OEMs are also increasingly looking to reduce the weight of vehicles in response to stricter vehicle emissions, fuel consumption regulations and electric vehicle range extensions. As a result, OEMs are constructing vehicle platforms using a variety of new materials in addition to steel and plastic, including aluminum, carbon fiber and other substrates, each of which requires specialized coatings formulations to create a uniform color and finish. We continue to innovate with our OEM customers in driving this trend, as evidenced by use of our coatings on their flagship vehicle platforms.

We also develop and supply a wide array of coatings systems for a broad range of commercial vehicle applications. These products simultaneously enhance aesthetic appearance and provide protection from the elements. We meet the demands of commercial vehicle customers with our extensive offering of over 90,000 different colors. In HDT, because the metal and composite components are painted simultaneously in an automatic process, most truck OEMs use low bake coatings to ensure that the plastic composite parts on a truck’s exterior do not deform during the bake process. Truck owners demand a wide variety of custom colors that are formulated using a combination of on-site mixing machines at the OEM or direct shipments of premixed high-volume colors from us. Our commercial vehicle brands include Imron®, Imron Elite®, Centari®, Rival®, Corlar® epoxy undercoats and AquaEC™.

Mobility Coatings Sales, Marketing and Distribution

We have full-time technical representatives stationed at most of our light vehicle OEM customers’ facilities around the world. These on-site representatives provide customer support, monitor the painting process and track paint demand at each assembly plant. Monitoring OEM line performance in real-time is intended to allow our technical support teams to help improve paint department operating efficiency and provide performance feedback to our formulating chemists and paint manufacturing teams. Many of our customer technical support representatives also help OEMs manage their physical inventory by forecasting facility coatings demand based on the customer’s build schedule.

We sell and ship products directly to light vehicle OEMs in each of our four regions coordinated via a global point of contact for each customer and assist OEMs with on-site customer support. Located in 9 countries, our manufacturing facilities provide a local presence intended to cultivate strong relationships, gain intimate customer knowledge, provide superior technical support to our key customers and maintain “just-in-time” product delivery capabilities critical to OEMs. We believe our local presence also allows us to quickly react to changing local dynamics, offer high-quality products and provide excellent customer service.

In the commercial vehicle end-market, we employ a dedicated sales and technical service team to support our diverse customer base, including a direct sales force supporting the HDT market. We ship our coatings directly to commercial vehicle OEMs and may also provide on-site technical service representatives that play an important role by helping to optimize the painting process and by providing responsive customer support.

Mobility Coatings Customers

We provide our products and services to light and commercial vehicle customers at over 200 assembly plants worldwide, including nine of the top ten global automotive manufacturers. We have a stable customer base and believe we are well positioned with the fastest-growing OEMs in both the developed and emerging markets. Our top ten customers accounted for approximately 61% of our Mobility Coatings net sales during the year ended December 31, 2025.

Mobility Coatings Competition

We primarily compete against large multi-national suppliers such as AkzoNobel, BASF and PPG, as well as a few regional suppliers, in the light and commercial vehicle end-markets. With our state-of-the-art coatings solutions and local presence in key OEM geographies, we are one of the few competitors in the industry that offers global OEM manufacturers the combination of high-quality products, personalized, top-rate technical service and short lead-times for product delivery.

SEASONALITY

Generally, our first quarter net sales are less than other quarters primarily driven by our Performance Coatings segment as a result of the nature of repairs typically performed by our refinish end-market customers. In North America and EMEA, we typically see more significant accidents from the inclement weather that require more time to repair and less repair throughput for our customers. Our Mobility Coatings segment does not experience significant net sales seasonality. Cash provided by operating activities has typically been the greatest in the fourth quarter primarily driven by the timing of collections from our customers and payments to our vendors.

Economic and weather conditions have altered, and could continue to alter, seasonal patterns.

KEY RAW MATERIALS

We use thousands of different raw materials, which fall into six broad categories: resins, pigments, solvents, monomers, isocyanates and additives. We purchase raw materials from a diverse group of global suppliers. Where possible, we work to mitigate risks to our raw material supply through alternative sourcing strategies, strategic supplier relationships and maintaining strategic inventories. Raw materials represent our single largest production cost component.

Prices for our raw materials generally fluctuate with supplier feedstock prices as well as supply and demand dynamics of the given raw material market. Over the past several years, the dynamics of supply and demand had a greater impact in the cost of our raw materials than the price of the supplier feedstocks.

Historically, to manage raw material volatility, we have used a combination of price increases to customers and, in certain circumstances, contractual raw material indexing mechanisms.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Our focus on technology has allowed us to proactively provide customers with next-generation offerings that enhance product performance, improve productivity and satisfy increasingly strict environmental regulations. Since our entry into the coatings industry over 150 years ago, we believe we have consistently been at the forefront of coatings technology innovation. These innovations have played a fundamental role in our ability to maintain and grow our global market share as well as deliver substantial financial returns.

We believe that we are a technology leader well positioned to benefit from continued industry shifts in customer needs. Our end-markets are among the most demanding in the coatings industry with high levels of product performance requirements that continuously evolve, with increasing expectations for productivity on customer lines and environmentally responsible products. Our technology development is led by a highly experienced and educated workforce that is focused on new product development, color development, technical customer support and improving our manufacturing processes. As such, our technology development covers two critical interrelated aspects for us, research and development as well as technical support and manufacturing. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 1,300 team members dedicated to technology development. We operate four major technology centers throughout the world where we develop and align our technology investments with regional business needs complemented by more than 20 development laboratories which provide local connection to our global customer base. This includes our Global Innovation Center located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which opened in 2018 for global research, product development and technology initiatives and since 2024, has served as our global headquarters.

PATENTS, LICENSES AND TRADEMARKS

As of December 31, 2025, we had a global portfolio of approximately 610 issued patents and approximately 520 trademarks. We actively apply for and obtain U.S. and foreign patents and trademarks on new products and process innovations and as of December 31, 2025, approximately 240 patent applications were pending throughout the world.

Our primary purpose in obtaining patents is to protect the results of our research for use in operations and licensing. We are also party to patent licenses and other technology licensing agreements. We have a significant number of trademarks and trademark registrations in the U.S. and in other countries, as described below.

We own or otherwise have rights to the trademarks, service marks, copyrights and trade names used in conjunction with the marketing and sale of our products and services. These trademarks include Abcite®, Alesta®, AquaEC®, Audurra®, Axalta Irus Mix™, Axalta Irus Scan™, Axalta NextJet™, Axalta Nimbus™, Centari®, Ceranamel®, Challenger®, ChemophanTM, ColorNet®, Corlar®, Cromax®, Cromax Mosaic®, Durapon 70®, Duxone®, Harmonized Coating Technologies®, HydroponTM, Imron®, Imron EliteTM, Imron ExcelProTM, LutophenTM, Nap-Gard®, Nason®, Raptor®, Rival®, Spies Hecker®, Standox®, StollaquidTM, SyntopalTM, SyroxTM, U-POL®, VermeeraTM and Voltatex®, which are protected under applicable intellectual property laws and are the property of us and our subsidiaries.

Although we believe that our patents, licenses and trademarks in the aggregate constitute a valuable asset, we do not regard our business as being materially dependent on any single or group of related patents, licenses or trademarks.

JOINT VENTURES

At December 31, 2025, we were party to six joint ventures, of which three were focused in the light vehicle end-market, one was focused in the refinish end-market and two were focused in the industrial end-market. At December 31, 2025, we were the majority shareholder, and/or exercised control, in four joint ventures, which we consolidated. Our fully consolidated joint venture-related net sales were $63 million, $62 million, and $62 million for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively. See Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—Risks Related to our Business—Risks Related to Other Aspects of our Business—Our joint ventures may not operate according to our business strategy if our joint venture partners fail to fulfill their obligations”.

HUMAN CAPITAL RESOURCES

We believe our success is realized through the engagement and commitment of our people. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 12,300 team members, inclusive of team members added from recent acquisitions, with 25% of our team members based in the U.S. and 75% based in international locations. Our workforce is distributed globally, with approximately 45% in the Americas, 36% in EMEA and 19% in Asia Pacific.

Axalta’s ability to attract, develop and retain highly skilled talent requires us to focus on the engagement, growth and well-being of each team member. As a global coatings company, we have a dynamic group of employees, including but not limited to management professionals, scientists, technicians, engineers, sales representatives, operators, supply chain experts, and administrative and customer service professionals.

Axalta fosters a performance-driven culture rooted in the One Axalta way of working. One Axalta reflects our commitment to doing what is best for the enterprise, aligning and executing on top priorities, acting with speed and urgency, simplifying to eliminate unnecessary complexity, and breaking down silos to address our biggest challenges together. We believe this enterprise-wide approach positions Axalta well for future success. To embed this way of working, we have provided training to all employees focused on our purpose, values, and One Axalta principles.

As part of our efforts to promote employee engagement, Axalta captures employee feedback via an annual engagement survey that is designed to provide insights into how employees can perform at their best. Since its inception, employee participation in the survey has continued to increase, reaching an all-time high of 96% in 2025 and measures of engagement have steadily improved. We believe these continued improvements reflect our commitment to focusing on addressing employee feedback and the needs of our global workforce, including a robust engagement in action program that has focused on enhancing internal communications, career development, and learning and development opportunities. Axalta strives to provide a wide variety of growth opportunities for our employees, including online training, on-the-job experiences, tuition assistance and financial counseling. We also aim to provide competitive compensation and benefits across all global locations.

Safety is paramount and the well-being of our employees is our greatest responsibility. We are committed to providing a workplace that enables team members to operate safely. Safety is ingrained in the way we do business, and our safety program is structured on the foundation that every employee is engaged and committed to improving safe operating practices and eliminating injuries. We have further committed to employee safety by continuing to make significant safety-related capital investments at our sites. When health and safety incidents do occur, we work to determine the causes and eliminate the potential for future similar incidents. In 2025, Axalta’s injury and illness performance resulted in a 0.18 OSHA Total Recordable Incident Rate (“TRIR”), compared to the 2.6 OSHA TRIR for the Paint and Coating Manufacturing Industry as a whole (according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024 data). These efforts have resulted in a recent recognition from the National Safety Council (“CEOs Who Get It”), honoring companies that demonstrate a commitment to worker safety and health.

The Compensation Committee of our Board of Directors (“Board”) has oversight of the Company’s human capital management efforts. The Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability Committee of our Board (the “EHS&S Committee”) has oversight of the Company’s policies to protect the health and safety of our employees and contractors (among others), and this committee regularly reviews data on our safety metrics and performance.

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

Our business is subject to significant regulations in all of the markets that we operate in and we are committed to operating our business in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.

Environmental

We are subject to applicable federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations relating to environmental protection and workers’ safety, including those required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”). Our Environment, Health, Safety (“EHS”) and Sustainability policies and standards are a key element of the foundation upon which we develop, market, manufacture, and distribute products and services to our global customers. In 2017, we established the EHS&S Committee, a Board-level committee responsible for the oversight of our EHS and Sustainability policies, performance, strategy and compliance matters. We strive to assure that all of our manufacturing and distribution facilities are operated in compliance in all material respects with applicable environmental requirements. Investigation, remediation, operation and maintenance costs associated with environmental compliance and management of sites are a normal recurring part of our operations. We do not expect outstanding remediation obligations to have a material impact on our financial position; however, the ultimate cost of remediation is subject to a number of variables and is difficult to accurately predict. We may also incur significant additional costs as a result of contamination that is discovered and/or government-required remediation obligations that are imposed at these or other facilities in the future.

In addition, we are, or may become, subject to various climate disclosure regimes regulating the disclosure of greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions, climate-related risks and opportunities and related information, such as the European Union’s (“EU”) Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD”) and California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (also known as “SB 253”) and Climate Related Financial Risk Act (also known as “SB 261”, and together with SB 253, the “California Climate Laws”). The interpretation, timing, requirements and enforcement of such climate disclosure regimes remains uncertain, and compliance may require the investment of significant resources, increase our costs, disrupt our business operations and pose reputational and other risks. For additional information, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Compliance and Litigation—Evolving environmental, safety, product stewardship, consumer protection or other regulations and laws, including with respect to disclosure of metrics related to such areas, could have a material adverse effect on our business and consolidated financial condition”.

Non-U.S. Sales

Our non-U.S. sales are subject to both U.S. and non-U.S. governmental regulations and procurement policies and practices, including regulations relating to import-export control, tariffs, investment, exchange controls, anti-corruption and repatriation of earnings. Non-U.S. sales are also subject to varying currency, political and economic risks. For additional information, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—Risks Related to our Global Operations - As a global business, we are subject to risks associated with our non-U.S. operations and U.S. and foreign trade policy”.

Privacy Regulations

We are also subject to and comply with increasingly complex privacy and data protection laws and regulations in the United States and other jurisdictions. This includes the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which enforces rules relating to the protections around the processing and transfer of personal data. In addition, California’s Consumer Privacy Act, as modified by the California Privacy Rights Act, provides consumers with the right to know what personal data is being collected, know whether their personal data is sold or disclosed and to whom and opt out of the sale of their personal data, among other rights. The interpretation and enforcement of such regulations are continuously evolving and there may be uncertainty with respect to how to comply with them. Noncompliance with GDPR and other data protection laws could result in damage to our reputation and payment of significant monetary penalties. For additional information, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—General Risk Factors - We are subject to complex and evolving data privacy laws”.

WHERE YOU CAN FIND MORE INFORMATION

Our website address is www.axalta.com (http://www.axalta.com). We post, and shareholders may access without charge, our recent filings and any amendments thereto of our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and proxy statements as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). We also post all financial press releases, including earnings releases, to our website. We use our investor relations page at ir.axalta.com as a means of disclosing material information to the public in a broad, non-exclusionary manner for purposes of the SEC’s Regulation Fair Disclosure (or Reg. FD). Investors should routinely monitor that site, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts, as information posted on that page could be deemed to be material information. All other reports filed or furnished to the SEC on the SEC’s website, www.sec.gov (http://www.sec.gov), including current reports on Form 8-K, are available via direct link on our website. Reference to our and the SEC’s websites herein do not incorporate by reference any information contained on those websites and such information should not be considered part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

As a global manufacturer, marketer and distributor of high-performance coatings systems, we operate in a business environment that includes risks. If any of the events contemplated by the following discussion of risks should occur, our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows could suffer materially and adversely. While the factors listed here are considered to be the more significant factors facing our business, they should not be considered to be a complete statement of all potential risks and uncertainties. Unlisted factors, including those described in other documents we file from time to time with the SEC, may materially and adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

Risk Factors Summary

The following is a summary of the material risks that could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

Risks Related to the Proposed Merger with Akzo Nobel N.V.

• The Merger Agreement may be terminated in accordance with its terms and the Merger may not be completed.
• Failure to consummate the Merger could negatively impact the share price and the future business and financial results of the Company.
• The Merger Agreement contains provisions that limit the Company’s ability to pursue alternatives to the Merger.
• Because the value of the Company and AkzoNobel ordinary shares may fluctuate, our shareholders cannot be sure of the value of the Merger Consideration they will receive.
• The Merger Agreement subjects us to restrictions on business activities prior to the effective time of the Merger.
• While the Merger is pending, the Company will be subject to business uncertainties.
• If completed, the Merger may not achieve its intended results.
• After the Merger, our shareholders will have a significantly lower ownership and voting interest in the Combined Company than they currently have in the Company.
• The ordinary shares of the Combined Company will have different rights from our common shares and the market price of the Combined Company ordinary shares may be affected by factors different from those currently affecting the market price of our common shares.
• The Company and AkzoNobel may be targets of legal proceedings that could result in substantial costs and may delay or prevent the Merger from being completed.
• The Company and AkzoNobel have incurred, and will incur additional, substantial transaction fees and costs in connection with the Merger.

Risks Related to our Business

• Our financial position, results of operations and cash flows could be materially adversely affected by difficult economic conditions and/or significant volatility in the capital, credit and commodities markets.
• Improved safety features on vehicles, commercialization of autonomous vehicles, insurance company influence, the introduction of new business models or new methods of travel, and weather conditions may reduce the demand for some of our products.
• The loss of, or reduced purchases by, or our failure to meet our obligations to, any of our largest customers, or the consolidation of any of our customers, could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
• We may be unable to successfully execute on our growth initiatives or targets, business strategies or operating plans.
• We rely on our distributor network and third-party delivery services for the distribution and export of our products.
• Price increases, business and supply chain interruptions, declines in the supply of raw materials or disruptions to our major tolling arrangements could have a significant impact on our ability to grow or sustain earnings.
• We rely on certain of our manufacturing facilities to make a significant amount of product, and certain products can only be made at specific facilities.
• Failure to develop and market new products and manage product life cycles could impact our competitive position.

Risks Related to our Global Operations

• We are subject to risks associated with our non-U.S. operations and U.S. and foreign trade policy.

Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Compliance and Litigation

• Our failure to comply with the anti-corruption laws of the United States and various international jurisdictions could negatively impact our reputation and results of operations.
• Evolving environmental, safety, product stewardship, consumer protection or other regulations and laws could have a material adverse effect on our business and consolidated financial condition.
• As a result of our current and past operations and/or products, including operations and/or products related to our businesses prior to the Acquisition, we could incur significant environmental liabilities and costs.
• We handle and transport certain materials that are inherently hazardous due to their toxic nature.
• Our results of operations could be adversely affected by litigation and claims.

Risks Related to Human Resources

• If we are required to make unexpected payments to any pension plans applicable to our employees, our financial condition may be adversely affected.
• We are subject to work stoppages, union negotiations, labor disputes and other matters associated with our labor force, which may adversely impact our operations and cause us to incur incremental costs.
• We may not be able to recruit and retain the experienced and skilled personnel we need to compete.

Risks Related to Intellectual Property

• Our inability to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could adversely affect our financial results.
• If we are sued for infringing intellectual property rights of third parties, it could harm our business.

Risks Related to Other Aspects of our Business

• We may continue to engage in acquisitions and divestitures, and may encounter difficulties integrating acquired businesses with, or disposing of divested businesses from, our current operations.
• Our joint ventures may not operate according to our business strategy.
• EIDP, Inc.’s potential breach of its obligations in connection with the Acquisition (as defined below), including failure to comply with its indemnification obligations, may materially affect our business and operating results.
• We may be classified as a passive foreign investment company, which could result in adverse U.S. federal income tax consequences to U.S. holders of our common shares.

Risks Related to our Indebtedness

• We have substantial indebtedness, which could have a material adverse effect on us.
• To service all of our indebtedness, we will require a significant amount of cash and our ability to generate cash depends on many factors beyond our control.
• We are dependent upon our lenders for financing to execute our business strategy and meet our liquidity needs.
• Our ability to obtain additional capital on commercially reasonable terms may be limited.
• Difficult and volatile conditions in the capital, credit and commodities markets and in the overall economy could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
• We are subject to risks associated with the current interest rate environment.

Risks Related to Ownership of our Common Shares

• Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. is a holding company with no operations of its own and is largely dependent on the receipt of distributions and dividends or other payments from subsidiaries and joint ventures for cash to fund operations and expenses.
• The price of our common shares has fluctuated, and may in the future fluctuate, significantly.
• We do not expect to pay dividends on our common shares and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common shares.
• Future sales of our common shares could lower our share price and may dilute your ownership in us.
• We are a Bermuda company and it may be difficult for you to enforce judgments against us or our directors and executive officers.
• Bermuda law differs from the laws in effect in the U.S. and may afford less protection to our shareholders.
• We have anti-takeover provisions in our bye-laws that may discourage a change of control.

General Risk Factors

• Interruption, interference with, or failure of our information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services.
• Uncertainty in the development, deployment, and use of artificial intelligence in our products and services, as well as our business more broadly, could adversely affect our business and reputation.
• Increased competition may adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
• We take on credit risk exposure from our customers in the ordinary course of our business.
• Currency risk may adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
• Terrorist acts, conflicts, wars, natural disasters, pandemics and other health crises, among other events beyond our control, may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
• The insurance we maintain may not cover all potential exposures.
• We are subject to complex and evolving data privacy laws.
• We may be subject to changes in our tax rates, the adoption of tax legislation or additional tax liabilities.
• Increasing scrutiny and evolving expectations from customers, regulators, investors, and other stakeholders with respect to our sustainability practices may impose additional costs on us or expose us to new or additional risks.

For a more complete discussion of the material risks facing our business, see below.

Risks Related to the Proposed Merger with Akzo Nobel N.V.

The Merger Agreement may be terminated in accordance with its terms and the Merger may not be completed.

The completion of the Merger is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions as set forth in the Merger Agreement (the “Closing Conditions”) and there can be no assurance that such conditions will be satisfied or waived. The failure to timely satisfy the Closing Conditions could delay the completion of the Merger for a significant period of time or prevent the completion of the Merger from occurring at all. The Closing Conditions require that the parties seek certain applicable foreign antitrust and other regulatory approvals in connection with the Merger, and the governmental agencies from which such approvals are sought have broad discretion in administering applicable governing regulations. Those agencies may impose requirements, limitations or costs, require divestitures or place restrictions on the conduct of the Combined Company’s business after the closing. Such requirements, limitations, costs, divestitures or restrictions could delay or prevent the consummation of the Merger or have a material adverse effect on the Combined Company’s business and results of operations.

Approval by the Company’s shareholders is one such Closing Condition. A proxy contest or activist campaign related to the Merger could reduce the likelihood that we obtain shareholder approval for the Merger, demand extensive management attention and require that we incur additional costs to respond to the proxy contest or activist campaign, and, if successful, prevent the Merger from being completed.

In addition, the Merger Agreement contains certain termination rights for the Company and AkzoNobel, including (i) if the Merger is not consummated on or before the “outside date” of May 18, 2027 (subject to extension to November 18, 2027 under certain circumstances), (ii) subject to compliance with certain terms of the Merger Agreement, in order to enter into a definitive agreement providing for a superior proposal, or (iii) if, prior to the applicable shareholders’ meeting, the Company Board or either of the AkzoNobel Boards, as applicable, changes its recommendation or fails to reaffirm such recommendation in certain circumstances.

Failure to consummate the Merger could negatively impact the share price and the future business and financial results of the Company.

If the Merger is not consummated, the Company will not realize any of the potential benefits of consummation of the Merger and the Company will be subject to a number of risks, including the following:

• The Company may experience negative reactions from the financial markets, including significant and lasting negative impacts on its stock price;
• The Company may experience negative reactions from its customers, suppliers, business partners and employees;
• The Company will be required to pay certain costs and expenses relating to the Merger whether or not the Merger is consummated;
• Matters relating to the Merger (including integration planning) require substantial Company management time and resources, which could otherwise have been devoted to other beneficial opportunities;
• The Merger Agreement restricts the Company, without AkzoNobel’s consent and subject to certain exceptions, from taking certain specified actions during the pendency of the Merger. These restrictions may prevent the Company from pursuing otherwise attractive business opportunities, entering into contracts, incurring capital expenditures to grow its business and making other changes to its business; and
• If the Merger Agreement is terminated in certain circumstances, the Company may be required to pay a termination fee of €150 million to AkzoNobel.

If the Merger is not consummated, these risks may materialize and may materially and adversely affect our business, operations, financial results and share price.

The Merger Agreement contains provisions that limit the Company’s ability to pursue alternatives to the Merger.

Under the Merger Agreement, the Company is subject to certain restrictions on its ability to solicit alternative business combination proposals from third parties, engage in discussion or negotiations with respect to such proposals or provide information in connection with such proposals, subject to certain customary exceptions. Further, other than in response to a superior proposal or an intervening event, the Board may not withdraw or modify its recommendation to the Company’s shareholders in favor of the adoption of the Merger Agreement, and AkzoNobel generally has a right to match any competing business combination proposals that may be made. The Company may terminate the Merger Agreement and enter into an agreement providing for a superior proposal only if specified conditions have been satisfied, and such a termination would result in the Company being required to pay AkzoNobel a termination fee equal to €150 million. If the Merger Agreement is terminated and the Company determines to seek another business combination, the Company may not be able to negotiate a transaction with another party on terms comparable to, or better than, the terms of the Merger. While the Company believes these provisions and agreements are reasonable and customary and are not preclusive of other offers, these provisions could discourage a third party that may have an interest in entering into a strategic transaction with the Company from proposing such a strategic transaction, even if such third party were prepared to pay consideration with a higher value than the Merger Consideration (as defined below).

Because the value of the Company and AkzoNobel ordinary shares may fluctuate, our shareholders cannot be sure of the value of the Merger Consideration they will receive.

Upon completion of the Merger, our shareholders will be entitled to receive 0.6539 ordinary shares in the Combined Company in exchange for each outstanding and issued ordinary share of the Company (the “Merger Consideration”). Because this exchange ratio is fixed and will only be adjusted in certain limited circumstances (including reclassifications, stock splits or combinations, exchanges or readjustments of shares, or stock dividends, reorganization, recapitalization or similar transactions involving the Company or AkzoNobel), any changes in the market value of Company ordinary shares or AkzoNobel common shares may affect the value that our shareholders will be entitled to receive upon completion of the Merger. Share price changes may result from a variety of factors, including changes in the business, operations or prospects of the Company or AkzoNobel, market assessments of the likelihood that the Merger will be completed, the timing of the Merger, regulatory considerations, general market and economic conditions and other factors.

The Merger Agreement subjects us to restrictions on business activities prior to the effective time of the Merger.

The Merger Agreement restricts us from entering into certain corporate transactions, including with respect to certain acquisitions, and taking other specified actions without the consent of AkzoNobel and generally requires us to continue our operations in the ordinary course through the completion of the Merger. These restrictions could be in place for an extended period of time as the pendency of the Merger continues and could prevent us from pursuing attractive business opportunities that may arise during the pendency of the Merger.

While the Merger is pending, the Company will be subject to business uncertainties which could adversely affect the Company’s business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

Uncertainty about the effect of the Merger on our employees, customers, suppliers and other business partners may have an adverse effect on the Company. These uncertainties may impair the Company’s ability to attract, retain and motivate key personnel until the Merger is consummated and for a period of time thereafter. If, despite the Company’s retention efforts, key employees depart because of issues relating to the uncertainty and difficulty of integration or a desire not to remain with the Combined Company, the Combined Company’s (or, if the Merger is not consummated, the Company’s) business could be harmed and its ability to realize the anticipated benefits of the Merger could be adversely affected.

Parties with which the Company does business may experience uncertainty associated with the Merger, including with respect to current or future business relationships with the Company. The Company’s business relationships may be subject to disruption as customers and suppliers may attempt to negotiate changes in existing business relationships or consider entering into business relationships with parties other than the Company. These disruptions could have an adverse effect on the businesses, financial condition, results of operations or prospects of the Company, including an adverse effect on the anticipated benefits of the Merger, which may be exacerbated by a delay in completion of the Merger or termination of the Merger Agreement. Additionally, certain contracts entered into by the Company contain change in control, anti-assignment, or certain other provisions that may be triggered as a result of the Merger. If the counterparties to these agreements do not consent to the Merger, the counterparties may have the ability to exercise certain rights (including termination rights), resulting in the Combined Company incurring liabilities as a consequence of breaching such agreements, or causing the Combined Company to lose the benefit of such agreements or incur costs in seeking replacement agreements.

If completed, the Merger may not achieve its intended results.

The Company and AkzoNobel entered into the Merger Agreement with the expectation that the Merger will result in various benefits. Achieving the anticipated benefits of the transaction is subject to a number of uncertainties, including whether the businesses of the Company and AkzoNobel can be integrated in an efficient and effective manner.

It is possible that the integration process could take longer than anticipated, could give rise to unanticipated costs and could result in the loss of valuable employees, the disruption of each of our and AkzoNobel’s ongoing businesses, processes and systems or inconsistencies in standards, controls, procedures, practices, policies and compensation arrangements, any of which could adversely affect the Combined Company’s ability to achieve the anticipated benefits of the transaction. The Company and AkzoNobel may have difficulty addressing possible differences in corporate cultures and management philosophies, and there can be no assurance that the Company and AkzoNobel will be able to effectively integrate their management teams. Failure to successfully integrate the businesses of the Company and AkzoNobel in the expected timeframe may adversely affect the future results of the Combined Company, and, consequently, the value of the Merger Consideration.

In addition, there can be no assurance that the Combined Company will achieve a particular credit rating or maintain a particular credit rating in the future. Such credit ratings will affect the cost and availability of future borrowings and, accordingly, the Combined Company’s cost of capital. Further, there can be no guarantee that the Combined Company will obtain or maintain a listing on a U.S. stock exchange.

After the Merger, our shareholders will have a significantly lower ownership and voting interest in the Combined Company than they currently have in the Company.

Under the terms of the Merger Agreement, our shareholders are expected to own 45% of the Combined Company on a pro forma basis immediately after closing. As a result of this reduced ownership percentage, our shareholders will have less ability to influence matters that are put to a vote of the Combined Company.

The ordinary shares of the Combined Company will have different rights from our common shares and the market price of the Combined Company ordinary shares may be affected by factors different from those currently affecting the market price of our common shares.

Upon completion of the Merger, our shareholders will no longer be shareholders of the Company but will instead become holders of ordinary shares of the Combined Company. Certain rights of our shareholders as holders of Combined Company ordinary shares will be governed by Dutch law, and the terms of the Combined Company’s organizational documents are expected to be in some respects materially different than the terms of our memorandum of association and bye-laws, which currently govern the rights of our shareholders. For example, Dutch law significantly limits the circumstances under which shareholders of Dutch companies may bring an action on behalf of a company. In addition, the businesses of AkzoNobel differ from those of the Company in important respects, and, accordingly, the results of operations of the Combined Company, as well as the market price of the Combined Company ordinary shares, may be affected by factors different from those currently affecting the results of operations of the Company.

The Company and AkzoNobel may be targets of legal proceedings that could result in substantial costs and may delay or prevent the Merger from being completed.

Although, currently, we are not aware of any legal proceedings having been brought against the Company or AkzoNobel in connection with the Merger, securities class action lawsuits, derivative lawsuits and other legal proceedings are often brought against public companies that have entered into merger agreements. Even if such legal proceedings are without merit, defending against these claims can result in substantial costs and divert management attention, time and resources. An adverse judgment or settlement could result in significant costs, which could have a negative impact on our and AkzoNobel’s respective liquidity and financial condition. Additionally, if a plaintiff is successful in obtaining an injunction prohibiting completion of the Merger, such injunction may delay or prevent the Merger from being completed, or from being completed within the expected timeframe, which may adversely affect our business, financial position and results of operation.

The Company and AkzoNobel have incurred, and will incur additional, substantial transaction fees and costs in connection with the Merger.

The Company and AkzoNobel have incurred, and expect to further incur, a number of non-recurring transaction-related costs associated with completing the Merger, combining the operations of the two organizations and achieving desired benefits of the Merger. These fees and costs will be substantial. Non-recurring transaction costs include, but are not limited to, fees paid to legal, financial and accounting advisors, retention, severance, change in control and other integration-related costs, filing fees and printing costs. Additional unanticipated costs may be incurred in order to complete the Merger (including, for example, in the event of a proxy fight or activist campaign) or as part of the integration of the businesses of the Company and AkzoNobel. Some of these costs will be payable by us regardless of whether or not the Merger is completed.

Risks Related to our Business Risks Related to Execution of our Strategic and Operating Plans

Our financial position, results of operations and cash flows could be materially adversely affected by difficult economic conditions and/or significant volatility in the capital, credit and commodities markets.

Several of the end-markets we serve are cyclical, and macroeconomic and other factors beyond our control have in the past and could in the future reduce demand from these end-markets for our products, including as a result of depressed demand for our customers' products or services, and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. For example, weak economic conditions have in the past depressed and could in the future depress new car sales and/or production, reducing demand for our light vehicle OEM coatings and limiting the growth of the car parc. This has in the past and could in the future cause a related decline in demand for our automotive refinish coatings because, as the age of a vehicle increases, the propensity of car owners to pay for cosmetic repairs generally decreases. Also, during difficult economic times or times of significant cost inflation (including with respect to insurance premiums), car owners may refrain from seeking repairs for their damaged vehicles, which we saw in 2025. Similarly, periods of reduced global economic activity could hinder global industrial output or cause our customers to reduce or rationalize their levels of inventory, which we saw in our refinish end market in 2025 and which could further decrease demand for our products in the future.

Our global business is adversely affected by decreases in the general level of economic activity, such as decreases in business and consumer spending, construction activity, Class 8 truck production and industrial manufacturing, which effects are exacerbated in a high interest rate environment. Disruptions in the U.S., Europe or other economies, or weakening of emerging markets, such as China or Latin America, could adversely affect our sales, profitability and/or liquidity.

Further, a tightening of credit in financial markets could adversely affect the ability of our customers to obtain financing to support their operations, which could result in a decrease in or cancellation of orders for our products and services and impact the ability of our customers to make payments owed to us. Similarly, a tightening of credit in financial markets could adversely affect our supplier base and increase the potential for one or more of our suppliers to experience financial distress or bankruptcy, which could impact our ability to procure materials in a timely manner or at all. In addition, a tightening of credit markets and a high interest rate environment make it more difficult for our customers to borrow to fund construction activity, manufacturing operations and other capital projects, which in turn reduces demand for our products and could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Lastly, during times of depressed economic conditions and cost inflation, car owners may choose to delay or forgo entirely repairing damaged vehicles, thereby reducing the demand for our refinish coatings, which dynamic has impacted our refinish end-market since 2025.

Improved safety features on vehicles, commercialization of autonomous vehicles, insurance company influence, the introduction of new business models or new methods of travel, and weather conditions may reduce the demand for some of our products and could have a negative effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Vehicle manufacturers continue to develop new safety features such as collision avoidance technology and autonomous vehicles. The market for semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles in particular is experiencing rapid growth, which is projected to continue or accelerate in the near-term. These advancements have reduced the rate and amount of vehicle collisions, which negatively impacts demand for our refinish coatings; this reduction could accelerate in the future and have a material adverse impact on our results of operations. Insurance companies may influence vehicle owners to use body shops that do not use our products, which could also negatively impact demand for our refinish coatings. In addition, through the introduction of new technologies, new business models or new methods of travel, such as ridesharing, the number of automotive OEM new builds may decline, potentially reducing demand for our automotive OEM coatings. Furthermore, weather conditions have had and may in the future have an adverse effect on our sales of coatings and related products. For example, unusually mild weather during winter months may lead to fewer vehicle collisions, reducing demand for our refinish coatings. Any resulting reduction in demand for our refinish coatings could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

The loss of, or reduced purchases by, or our failure to meet our obligations to, any of our largest customers, or the consolidation of any of our customers, including MSOs, distributors and/or body shops, could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We have some customers that purchase a large amount of products from us and we are also reliant on distributors to assist us in selling our products and servicing certain customers. Our largest single customer accounted for approximately 5% of our 2025 net sales and our largest distributor accounted for approximately 2% of our 2025 net sales. Consolidation of any of our customers, including MSOs, distributors and body shops, could decrease our customer base and impact our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. For example, consolidation among distributors, like that seen within the refinish end-market in 2024 and 2025, may create larger enterprises with greater negotiating power and has resulted, and may in the future result in changes to purchasing behaviors (including inventory rationalization measures) or the loss of our customers if the resulting business chooses to use one of our competitors for the consolidated business. Further, the loss of any of our large customers or significant changes in their level of purchases, as a result of changes in business conditions, working capital levels, product requirements, work stoppages, consolidation, inventory rationalization or otherwise, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

In addition, certain key customers have substantial purchasing power and leverage in negotiating contractual arrangements with us. These customers have demanded and may in the future demand contract terms that differ considerably from our standard terms and conditions. Large orders have also included and may in the future also include severe liabilities if we fail to provide the quantity and quality of product at the required delivery times or fail to meet other obligations. While we attempt to obtain favorable terms in our contracts (including with respect to limiting our potential liability and maintaining customary payment terms), we have agreed to, and we may in the future agree to, unfavorable contracting terms to secure these orders. Such actions have exposed us, and in the future could expose us to, significant additional risks should we fail to meet our obligations. For example, failure to meet customer expectations or contractual obligations related to the quality of our products has previously resulted in liabilities or indemnification claims, including those resulting from the operational matter discussed in Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K; any such future failures may result in a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We may be unable to successfully execute on our growth initiatives or targets, business strategies or operating plans.

We continue to execute, and have in the past executed, on a number of growth initiatives, strategies and operating plans designed to enhance our business, including productivity enhancements, cost reduction measures, cost savings initiatives and restructurings. For example, during February 2024, we announced a global transformation initiative intended to simplify the Company’s organizational structure and enable us to be more proactive, responsive, and agile and to better serve our customers and to lower our cost base and improve financial performance and cash flow generation (the "2024 Transformation Initiative") and, at our Strategy Day in May 2024, we announced our three-year 2024-2026 strategy (the “2026 A Plan”). The anticipated benefits from these efforts are based on several assumptions that may prove to be inaccurate and a variety of factors could cause us to fail to realize some or all of the expected benefits and targets, including growth, cost savings, improved financial performance and productivity enhancements. These factors include, among others: delays in the anticipated timing of activities related to such growth initiatives, strategies and operating plans, including those related to actions needed to satisfy legal requirements in certain jurisdictions; adverse changes in demand for our products; increased difficulty and cost in implementing these efforts; adverse legal, reputational and financial effects on the Company resulting from such efforts; the incurrence of other unexpected costs associated with operating the business; and management’s time and attention paid to the Merger. Further, our continued implementation of these programs may disrupt our operations and performance. We have in the past, and may in the future, fail to realize the full extent of the anticipated benefits from, or targets related to, such efforts and we cannot assure you that we will realize these benefits or targets. If, for any reason, the benefits we realize, or our actual results, are less than our estimates or targets, or the implementation of these growth initiatives, strategies and operating plans adversely affect our operations or cost more or take longer to effectuate than we expect, or if our assumptions prove inaccurate, our results of operations may be materially adversely affected. From time to time, we may commence operations at new manufacturing facilities and cease operations at existing manufacturing facilities, including through relocating, eliminating or utilizing alternative sources for such operations. We may not be able to successfully commence such new operations or cease such existing operations and our failure to successfully do so could have a material adverse impact on our business results.

We rely on our distributor network and third-party delivery services for the distribution and export of certain of our products.

We ship a significant portion of our products to our customers through our distributor network as well as independent third-party delivery companies. If any of our key distributors or third-party delivery providers experiences a significant disruption, our products may not be timely delivered. Distributors may also decide to reduce their levels of inventory with respect to our products, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. In addition, if any of our third-party delivery providers increase prices and we are not able to pass along these increases to customers, find comparable alternatives or adjust our delivery network, our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected.

We rely on certain of our manufacturing facilities to make a significant amount of product, and certain products can only be made at specific facilities.

A small number of our manufacturing facilities have historically produced a substantial majority of our products, and certain of our products can only be made at specific facilities. Any disruption of operations at one of these facilities, like that which occurred in North America in the second quarter of 2023 due to production constraints following our implementation of a new enterprise resource planning system ("ERP") in the region in the quarter, have in the past and could in the future significantly affect our production, distribution or our ability to fulfill our contractual obligations, including to our largest customers, which have in the past and could in the future damage our customer relationships, and our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected. While we have certain plans in place that are intended to mitigate the risks of such manufacturing concentration, we cannot be certain that such contingency plans would be effective.

Price increases, business and supply chain interruptions, declines in the supply of raw materials or disruptions to our major tolling arrangements could have a significant impact on our ability to grow or sustain earnings.

Our manufacturing processes consume significant amounts of raw materials, the costs of which are subject to change based on fluctuations in worldwide supply and demand as well as other factors beyond our control, including inflationary pressures. We use a significant amount of raw materials derived from crude oil and natural gas. While the majority of our raw material inputs are fourth to sixth generation derivatives of crude oil and natural gas, volatile oil and gas prices, as well as other unrelated factors, can cause significant variations in our raw materials costs, affecting our operating results. While we attempt to limit the impact of such fluctuations by implementing raw material price adjustment mechanisms based on index pricing in certain of our contractual arrangements, such mechanisms may be ineffective and often lag market price changes and we can provide no assurance that we will be able to secure such contractual terms in future contracts or renewals of existing contracts. As a result, in rising raw material price environments, we may be unable to pass along these increased costs to our customers. Additionally, in declining raw material price environments, we may not realize raw material cost savings because of such lags, or customers may seek price concessions from us greater than any raw material cost savings we realize. If we are not able to fully offset the effects of higher raw materials costs, or if customers demand greater raw material price concessions than we obtain in low raw material cost environments, our financial results could deteriorate. Additionally, we obtain certain of our raw materials from selected key suppliers. If any sole source supplier of raw materials ceases supplying raw materials to us, or if any of our key suppliers is unable to meet its obligations in a timely fashion or at an acceptable price, or at all, we may be forced to incur higher costs to obtain the necessary raw materials elsewhere or, in limited instances, we may not be able to obtain the necessary raw materials. Additionally, in certain instances, we rely on third parties to toll manufacture certain of our intermediates and products. If any of our key tolling partners ceases to provide toll manufacturing services to us, either permanently or temporarily, we would be required to arrange for alternative manufacturing arrangements, which we may not be able to arrange on financially attractive terms, on a timely basis or at all.

Supplier capacity constraints, supplier production disruptions, including as a result from work stoppages, supply chain and logistics congestion and disruptions, the unavailability of certain raw materials or disruptions to our key tolling arrangements could also result in harm to our manufacturing capabilities or supply imbalances that may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Moreover, rising costs of freight, logistics, energy or labor may increase our cost of sales and reduce our profitability.

Failure to develop and market new products and manage product life cycles could impact our competitive position and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Our operating results are largely dependent on our development and management of our portfolio of current, new and developing products and services as well as our ability to bring those products and services to market. Difficulties or delays in product development, such as the inability to identify viable new products, successfully complete research and development, obtain relevant regulatory approvals, effectively manage our manufacturing process or costs, obtain intellectual property protection, or gain market acceptance of new products and services, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Because of the lengthy and costly development process, technological challenges and intense competition, we cannot assure you that any of the products we are currently developing, or that we may develop in the future, will achieve commercial success. For example, in addition to developing technologically advanced products, commercial success of those products will depend on customer acceptance and implementation of those products as well as the products and services offered and developed by our current and future competitors and the related intellectual property rights held by such competitors. A failure to develop commercially successful products or to develop additional uses for existing products could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. Further, sales of our new products could replace sales of some of our current products, offsetting the benefit of even a successful product introduction.

Risks Related to our Global Operations

As a global business, we are subject to risks associated with our non-U.S. operations and U.S. and foreign trade policy.

We conduct our business on a global basis, with approximately 69% of our 2025 net sales occurring outside the United States. We anticipate that international sales will continue to represent a substantial portion of our net sales and that our strategy for continued growth and profitability may entail further international expansion, particularly in emerging markets. Our financial results could be affected by factors including, but not limited to, changes in trade, monetary and fiscal policies, laws and regulations, activities of U.S. and non-U.S. governments, agencies and similar organizations, changes in a country's or region's social, economic or political conditions, military conflicts, including the current conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East, geopolitical disputes, including as a result of China-Taiwan relations, trade regulations affecting production, pricing and marketing of products, local labor conditions and regulations, semiconductor chip shortages, reduced protection of intellectual property rights, changes in the regulatory or legal environment, restrictions on currency exchange activities, trapped cash issues, burdensome taxes and tariffs and other trade barriers, as well as the imposition of economic or other trade sanctions or other protectionist policies, each of which could impact our ability to do business in certain jurisdictions or with certain persons.

The U.S. government has taken actions or made proposals that are intended to address trade imbalances or trade practices and encourage increased production in the United States, including through measures such as the imposition of higher tariffs on imports into the U.S., the renegotiation of some U.S. trade agreements and other government regulations affecting trade between the U.S. and other countries where we conduct our business. These actions and proposals have resulted or could result in retaliatory actions by affected countries. Such changes increased prices for certain raw materials we import from such countries in 2025 and could further increase our raw material costs in 2026. In addition, these changes could reduce demand for our products in other countries and adversely impact the U.S. economy or certain sectors thereof or the economy of other countries in which we conduct operations, our industry and supply chain, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Compliance and Litigation

Our failure to comply with the anti-corruption laws of the United States and various international jurisdictions could negatively impact our reputation and results of operations.

Doing business on a global basis requires us to comply with the laws and regulations of the U.S. government and those of various international and sub-national jurisdictions, and our failure to successfully comply with these rules and regulations may expose us to liabilities which may be significant. These laws and regulations apply to companies, individual directors, officers, employees and agents, and may restrict our operations, trade practices, investment decisions and partnering activities. In particular, our international operations are subject to U.S. and foreign anti-corruption laws and regulations, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”) and the United Kingdom Bribery Act 2010 (the “Bribery Act”), as well as anti-corruption laws of the various jurisdictions in which we operate. The FCPA, the Bribery Act and other laws prohibit us and our officers, directors, employees and agents acting on our behalf from corruptly offering, promising, authorizing or providing anything of value to foreign officials for the purposes of influencing official decisions or obtaining or retaining business or otherwise obtaining favorable treatment. As part of our business, we may, from time to time, deal with state-owned business enterprises, the employees and representatives of which may be considered foreign officials for purposes of the FCPA or the Bribery Act. We are subject to the jurisdiction of various governments and regulatory agencies outside of the U.S., which may bring our personnel into contact with foreign officials responsible for issuing or renewing permits, licenses or approvals or for enforcing or overseeing other governmental regulations. In addition, some of the international locations in which we operate lack a developed legal system and have elevated levels of corruption. Our global operations expose us to the risk of violating, or being accused of violating, the foregoing or other anti-corruption laws. Such violations could be punishable by criminal fines, imprisonment, civil penalties, disgorgement of profits, injunctions and exclusion from government contracts, as well as other remedial measures. Investigations of alleged violations can be very expensive, disruptive and damaging to our reputation. Although we have implemented anti-corruption policies and procedures and provide training on these matters, there can be no guarantee that these policies, procedures and training will effectively prevent violations or alleged violations by our employees or representatives in the future, and we could face liability and reputational harm if our distributors and other business partners violate such laws or regulations.

Evolving environmental, safety, product stewardship, consumer protection or other regulations and laws, including with respect to disclosure of metrics related to such areas, could have a material adverse effect on our business and consolidated financial condition.

Our manufacturing activities and products, both inside and outside of the U.S., are subject to regulation by various federal, state, provincial and local laws, regulations and government agencies, including the EPA, as well as other authorities both inside and outside of the U.S. Legal and regulatory systems in emerging and developing markets may be less developed and less consistent. Laws and regulations, and the interpretation and enforcement thereof, may change as a result of a variety of factors, including political, economic, regulatory or social events or in response to climate change. Changes in our business, whether resulting from acquisitions or otherwise, have previously increased, and may further increase, our exposure to additional laws and regulations, such as consumer protection statutes. The specific impact of changing laws and regulations, or the interpretation or enforcement of current or future laws and regulations, on our business may vary depending on a number of factors. As a result of changing laws and regulations, or the interpretation or enforcement of current or future laws and regulations, we have been and may in the future be required to make expenditures to modify operations, relocate operations, perform site cleanups or other environmental remediation, or curtail or cease operations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Requirements relating to product stewardship and resource sustainability, including product recycling, packaging, composition and disposal, may also require us to incur significant expenses, including expenses related to costs, fines or other penalties, suspensions or modifications of products or manufacturing processes related to such products, or prohibitions of products we manufacture. In addition, new disclosure and due diligence requirements related to GHG emissions and climate change and other sustainability related topics, such as supply chain due diligence requirements, the California Climate Laws, the EU's CSRD and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (“CSDDD”), and other requirements adopted by national and sub-national jurisdictions from time to time, may negatively impact our business by diverting resources and harming our reputation.

We cannot predict the impact that changing climate conditions or more frequent and severe weather events, if any, will have on our business, results of operations, financial condition or cash flows. Moreover, we cannot predict how legal, regulatory and social responses to concerns about climate change, as well as other sustainability and environmental matters, will impact our business.

As a result of our current and past operations and/or products, including operations and/or products related to our businesses prior to the Acquisition, we could incur significant environmental liabilities and costs.

We are subject to various laws and regulations around the world governing the protection of the environment and health and safety, including the discharge of pollutants into the air and water and the management and disposal of hazardous substances. These laws and regulations not only govern our current operations and products, but also impose potential liability on us for our or our predecessors' past operations. We could incur fines, penalties and other sanctions as a result of violations of such laws and regulations. In addition, as a result of our operations and/or products, including our past operations and/or products related to our businesses prior to the acquisition of DuPont Performance Coatings ("DPC"), a business formerly owned by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (now known as EIDP, Inc., a subsidiary of Corteva, Inc.) (“EIDP”), including certain assets of DPC and all of the capital stock and other equity interests of certain entities engaged in the DPC business (the "Acquisition"), we could incur substantial costs, including costs relating to remediation and restoration activities and third-party claims for property damage or personal injury. The ultimate costs under environmental laws and the timing of these costs are difficult to accurately predict. Our accruals for costs and liabilities at sites where contamination is being investigated or remediated may not be adequate because the estimates on which the accruals are based depend on a number of factors, including the nature and extent of contamination, the outcome of discussions with regulatory agencies, available technology, site-specific information, remediation alternatives and, at multi-party sites, other Potentially Responsible Parties ("PRPs") and the number and financial viability of the other PRPs. Additional contamination may also be identified, and/or additional cleanup obligations may be incurred, at these or other sites in the future. For example, periodic monitoring or investigation activities are ongoing at a number of our sites where contaminants have been detected or are suspected, and we may incur additional costs if more active or extensive remediation is required. In addition, in connection with the Acquisition, EIDP has, subject to certain exceptions and exclusions, agreed to indemnify us for certain liabilities relating to environmental remediation obligations and certain claims relating to the exposure to hazardous substances and products manufactured prior to our separation from EIDP. We could incur material additional costs if EIDP fails to meet its obligations, if the indemnification proves insufficient or if we otherwise are unable to recover costs associated with such liabilities. The costs of our current operations, complying with complex environmental laws and regulations, as well as internal voluntary programs, are significant and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future as environmental regulations become more stringent.

We handle and transport certain materials that are inherently hazardous due to their toxic nature.

In our business, we handle and transport hazardous materials. If mishandled or released into the environment, whether by us or providers who are contracted for transportation, these materials could cause substantial property damage, environmental harm or personal injuries resulting in significant legal claims against us. In addition, evolving regulations concerning the handling and transportation of certain materials could result in increased future capital or operating costs.

Our results of operations could be adversely affected by litigation and claims.

We face risks arising from various litigation matters and other claims that have been asserted against us or that may be asserted against us in the future, including, but not limited to, claims for product liability, patent and trademark infringement, antitrust, warranty, contract and third-party property damage or personal injury, including claims arising from the matters described in Note 5 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. For instance, we have seen a continuing nationwide trend in purported class actions against chemical manufacturers generally seeking relief such as medical monitoring, property damages, off-site remediation and punitive damages arising from alleged environmental torts without claiming present personal injuries. We have also seen a continuing trend in public and private nuisance suits being filed on behalf of states, counties, cities and utilities alleging harm to the general public. There is also heightened scrutiny by governments, regulators and potential plaintiffs on the usage of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”) and microplastics in products, the role of PFAS and microplastics in the contamination of soil, air and water and health concerns related to the use of products containing PFAS and microplastics. Governmental inquiries or requirements involving PFAS and microplastics could cause us to incur liability for damages or other costs, civil proceedings, including personal injury claims, class actions, the imposition of fines and penalties, or other remedies, as well as restrictions on or added costs for our business operations going forward.

Various factors or developments can lead to changes in current estimates of liabilities such as a final adverse judgment, significant settlement or changes in applicable law. A future adverse ruling or unfavorable development in any one or more of these matters could result in future charges that could have a material adverse effect on us or could be material to our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Risks Related to Human Resources

If we are required to make unexpected payments to any pension plans applicable to our employees, our financial condition may be adversely affected.

We have defined benefit pension plans in which many of our current and former employees outside the U.S. participate or have participated. Many of these plans are underfunded or unfunded and the liabilities in relation to these plans will need to be satisfied as they mature from our operating reserves. In jurisdictions where the defined benefit pension plans are intended to be funded with assets in a trust or other funding vehicle, the liabilities exceed the corresponding assets in many of the plans. Various factors, such as changes in actuarial estimates and assumptions (including as to life expectancy, discount rates and rate of return on assets) as well as changes in asset allocations and actual return on assets, can increase the expenses and liabilities of the defined benefit pension plans. The assets and liabilities of the plans must be valued from time to time under applicable funding rules and as a result we may be required to increase the cash payments we make in relation to these defined benefit pension plans.

Our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows may be adversely affected to the extent that we are required to make any additional payments to any relevant defined benefit pension plans in excess of the amounts assumed in our current projections and assumptions or report higher pension plan expenses under relevant accounting rules.

We are subject to work stoppages, union negotiations, labor disputes and other matters associated with our labor force, which may adversely impact our operations and cause us to incur incremental costs.

Many of our employees globally are in unions or otherwise covered by labor agreements, including works councils. As of December 31, 2025, substantially all of our U.S. workforce was not unionized and approximately half of our workforce outside the U.S. was unionized or otherwise covered by labor agreements. Consequently, we have been and may in the future be subject to union campaigns, work stoppages, union negotiations and other labor disputes. Additionally, negotiations with unions or works councils in connection with existing labor agreements may result in significant increases in our cost of labor, limit our ability to restructure or manage our operations, divert management's attention away from operating our business or break down and result in the disruption of our operations. The occurrence of any of the preceding outcomes could impair our ability to manufacture our products and result in increased costs and/or worsened operating results.

We may not be able to recruit and retain the experienced and skilled personnel we need to compete.

Our future success depends on our ability to attract, retain, develop and motivate highly skilled personnel. We must have talented personnel to succeed, and competition for management and skilled employees in our industry is intense. Our ability to meet our performance and growth goals depends upon the personal efforts and abilities of our management and skilled employees. We cannot assure you that we will retain or successfully recruit senior management, or that their services will remain available to us. We may experience retention risks during periods of uncertainty, including during the pendency of the Merger. In addition, increasing legislative, regulatory and judicial scrutiny, or limitations, on employee non-compete and similar agreements and restrictions may make it easier for former employees to work for our competitors or to otherwise compete with our business. Failures in these areas could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Risks Related to Intellectual Property

Our inability to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could adversely affect our financial results.

Intellectual property rights both in the U.S. and in foreign countries, including patents, trade secrets, confidential information, trademarks and trade names, are important to our business and will be critical to our ability to grow and succeed in the future. We make decisions on whether to apply for intellectual property protection and what kind of protection to pursue based on a cost benefit analysis. While we endeavor to protect our intellectual property rights in certain jurisdictions in which our products are produced or used and in jurisdictions into which our products are imported, the decision to file for intellectual property protection is made on a case-by-case basis and we may not accurately assess the jurisdictions where intellectual property protection is worthwhile. Our intellectual property rights may not receive the same degree of protection in foreign countries as they would in the U.S. Our failure to obtain or maintain adequate protection of our intellectual property rights for any reason could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We have applied for patent protection relating to certain existing and proposed products, processes and services in certain jurisdictions. If we fail to timely file a patent application in any jurisdiction, we may be precluded from doing so at a later date. Furthermore, the initial claims may be narrowed through the prosecution process and we cannot assure you that our pending patent applications will not be challenged by third parties or that such applications will eventually be granted by the applicable patent offices. The patents we own could be challenged, invalidated or circumvented by others and may not be of sufficient scope or strength to provide us with any meaningful protection or commercial advantage. Our existing patents will all eventually expire, after which we will not be able to prevent our competitors from using our previously patented technologies, which could materially adversely affect our competitive advantage stemming from the applicable products and technologies. We also cannot assure you that competitors will not infringe our patents, or that we will have adequate resources to enforce our patents.

We also utilize and rely on a significant number of unpatented proprietary technologies. It is possible that others will independently develop the same or similar technology or otherwise obtain access to our unpatented technology. To protect our trade secrets and other proprietary information, we require certain employees, consultants, advisors and collaborators to enter into confidentiality agreements as we deem appropriate. We cannot assure you that we will be able to enter into these confidentiality agreements or that they will provide meaningful protection for our trade secrets, know-how or other proprietary information in the event of any unauthorized use, misappropriation or disclosure.

We rely on our trademarks, trade names and brand names to distinguish our products from the products of our competitors and have registered or applied to register many of these trademarks. We cannot assure you that our trademark applications will be approved. Third parties have in the past and in the future may oppose our trademark applications, or otherwise challenge our use of the trademarks. In the event that our trademarks are successfully challenged, we could be forced to rebrand our products, which could result in loss of brand recognition, and could require us to devote resources to advertising and marketing new brands. Further, we cannot assure you that competitors will not infringe our trademarks, or that we will have adequate resources to enforce our trademarks.

We also license certain of our trademarks for use by third parties. In an effort to preserve our trademark rights, we enter into license agreements with these third parties that govern the use of our trademarks and contain limitations on their use. Although we make efforts to police the use of our trademarks by our licensees, these efforts may not be sufficient to ensure that our licensees abide by the terms of their licenses and our trademark rights could be diluted. We are also a licensee of certain intellectual property owned by third parties. Failure to maintain such licenses or our inability to continue to use such intellectual property, due to disputes with those third parties or otherwise, could adversely affect our business.

If we are sued for infringing intellectual property rights of third parties, it may be costly and time consuming, and an unfavorable outcome in any litigation could harm our business.

We cannot assure you that our activities will not, unintentionally or otherwise, infringe on the intellectual property rights owned by others. We may spend significant time and effort and incur significant litigation costs if we are required to defend ourselves against infringement claims, regardless of whether the claims have merit. If we are found to have infringed on the intellectual property rights of others, we may be subject to substantial claims for damages, which could materially impact our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flow. We may also be required to cease development, use or sale of the relevant products or processes, or we may be required to obtain a license on the disputed rights, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.

Risks Related to Other Aspects of our Business

We may continue to engage in acquisitions and divestitures, and may encounter difficulties integrating acquired businesses with, or disposing of divested businesses from, our current operations and, as a result, we may not realize the anticipated benefits of these acquisitions and divestitures.

While the Merger Agreement contains certain restrictions in this regard, we may continue to seek to grow through acquisitions, joint ventures or other arrangements. Our due diligence reviews in these transactions may not sufficiently identify all problems, costs or liabilities with respect to a particular transaction and we may incur unanticipated costs or expenses from litigation and other liabilities. We may face regulatory scrutiny as a result of perceived concentration in certain markets, which could cause additional delay or prevent us from completing certain acquisitions that would be beneficial to our business. We may also encounter difficulties in integrating acquisitions with our operations. Additionally, we may not achieve the benefits, including synergies and cost savings, we anticipate when we first enter into a transaction in the amount or on the timeframe anticipated. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our business and results of operations. Furthermore, we have in the past made and may in the future make divestitures from time to time. These divestitures may result in continued financial involvement in the divested businesses, such as through indemnities, guarantees or other financial arrangements, and could ultimately impose additional financial obligations upon us, affecting our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Acquisitions and divestitures may also require us to devote significant internal resources and could divert management's attention away from operating our business.

Our joint ventures may not operate according to our business strategy if our joint venture partners fail to fulfill their obligations.

As part of our business, we have entered into certain, and may in the future enter into additional, joint venture arrangements. Because the nature of a joint venture requires us to share control over significant decisions with unaffiliated third parties, we may not be able to require our joint ventures to take actions that we believe are necessary to implement our business strategy. Additionally, differences in views among joint venture participants may result in delayed decisions or failures to agree on major issues. If these differences cause the joint ventures to deviate from our business strategy, our results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

EIDP’s potential breach of its obligations in connection with the Acquisition, including failure to comply with its indemnification obligations, may materially affect our business and operating results.

Although the Acquisition closed on February 1, 2013, EIDP still has performance obligations to us, including fulfilling certain indemnification requirements. We could incur material additional costs if EIDP fails to meet its obligations or if we otherwise are unable to recover costs associated with such liabilities.

We may be classified as a passive foreign investment company, which could result in adverse U.S. federal income tax consequences to U.S. holders of our common shares.

Based on the market price of our common shares and the composition of our income, assets and operations, we do not expect to be treated as a passive foreign investment company ("PFIC") for U.S. federal income tax purposes for the current taxable year or in the foreseeable future. However, the application of the PFIC rules is subject to uncertainty in several respects, and we cannot assure you the U.S. Internal Revenue Service will not take a contrary position. Furthermore, this is a factual determination that must be made annually after the close of each taxable year. If we are treated as a PFIC for any taxable year during which a U.S. person holds our common shares, certain adverse U.S. federal income tax consequences could apply to such U.S. person.

Risks Related to our Indebtedness

Our substantial indebtedness could adversely affect our ability to raise additional capital to fund our operations, limit our ability to react to changes in the economy and our industry and our flexibility in managing our business, expose us to interest rate risk to the extent of our variable rate debt and prevent us from meeting our obligations with respect to our indebtedness.

As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately $3.2 billion of indebtedness on a consolidated basis. As of December 31, 2025, we were in compliance with all of the covenants under our outstanding debt instruments. We are more leveraged than some of our competitors, which could adversely affect our business plans.

Our substantial indebtedness could have important consequences to you. For example, it could:

• limit our ability to obtain additional financing to fund future working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, general corporate purposes or other purposes;
• require us to devote a substantial portion of our annual cash flow to the payment of interest on our indebtedness;
• expose us to the risk of high interest rates, as, over the term of our debt, the interest cost on a significant portion of our indebtedness is subject to changes in interest rates;
• limit our ability to repurchase our common shares or pay dividends;
• limit our flexibility in managing our business through our obligation to comply with customary financial and other covenants in the instruments governing our indebtedness, including the indentures governing our Senior Notes (as defined in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K) and the credit agreement governing our Senior Secured Credit Facilities (as defined in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K), which covenants are described in further detail in Note 18 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K; and
• increase our vulnerability to and limit our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, downturns in general economic conditions or in one or more of our businesses.

In addition, we and our subsidiaries may incur significant additional indebtedness under the agreements governing our indebtedness or otherwise, which could intensify the risks noted above and other related risks. Although the indentures governing our Senior Notes and the credit agreement governing our Senior Secured Credit Facilities contain restrictions on the incurrence of additional indebtedness, these restrictions are subject to a number of thresholds, qualifications and exceptions, and the additional indebtedness incurred in compliance with these restrictions could be substantial. Additionally, these restrictions may not prevent us from incurring obligations that, although preferential to our common shares in terms of payment, do not constitute indebtedness. See Part II, Item 7, "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Financial Condition."

To service all of our indebtedness, we will require a significant amount of cash and our ability to generate cash depends on many factors beyond our control.

As described below in "Risks Related to Ownership of our Common Shares", our ability to generate cash is dependent on the earnings and receipt of funds from our subsidiaries and joint ventures, which businesses are subject to prevailing economic and competitive conditions, and to financial, business, legislative, regulatory and other factors beyond our control. Our business may not generate sufficient cash flow from operations and future borrowings may not be available under our Senior

Secured Credit Facilities in an amount sufficient to enable us to pay the principal, premium, if any, and interest on our indebtedness, or to fund our other liquidity needs, including planned capital expenditures. In such circumstances, we may need to refinance all or a portion of our indebtedness at or before maturity. We may not be able to refinance any of our indebtedness on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If we cannot service our indebtedness, we may have to take actions such as selling assets, issuing additional equity or reducing or delaying capital expenditures, strategic acquisitions and investments. Such actions, if necessary, may not be effected on commercially reasonable terms or at all. The instruments governing our indebtedness restrict our ability to sell assets and to use the proceeds from such sales, and we may not be able to consummate those dispositions or obtain proceeds in an amount sufficient to meet any debt service obligations then due.

If we are unable to generate sufficient cash flow or are otherwise unable to obtain funds necessary to meet required payments on our indebtedness, or if we otherwise fail to comply with the various covenants in the instruments governing our indebtedness, we could be in default under the terms of the agreements governing such indebtedness, and we may not be able to obtain waivers of such defaults from our lenders. In the event of such un-waived default, the holders of such indebtedness could elect to declare all the funds borrowed thereunder to be due and payable, together with accrued and unpaid interest, the lenders under our Revolving Credit Facility (as defined in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K) could elect to terminate their commitments thereunder, cease making further loans and institute foreclosure proceedings against our assets, and we could be forced into bankruptcy or liquidation.

We are dependent upon our lenders for financing to execute our business strategy and meet our liquidity needs. If our lenders are unable or unwilling to fund borrowings under their credit commitments or we are unable to borrow, it could negatively impact our business.

We are dependent upon our lenders for financing to execute our business strategy and meet our liquidity needs. If our lenders are unable to fund borrowings under their credit commitments or we are unable to borrow from them for any reason, our business could be negatively impacted. During periods of volatility in the credit markets, there is risk that any lender, even those with strong balance sheets and sound lending practices, could fail or refuse to honor their legal commitments and obligations under existing credit commitments, including, but not limited to, extending credit up to the maximum permitted by a credit facility, or allowing access to additional credit features. If our lenders are unable or unwilling to fund borrowings under their revolving credit commitments or we are unable to borrow from them, it could be difficult to obtain sufficient liquidity to meet our operational needs.

Our ability to obtain additional capital on commercially reasonable terms may be limited.

Although we believe our cash and cash equivalents, together with cash we expect to generate from operations and unused capacity available under our Revolving Credit Facility, provide adequate resources to fund ongoing operating requirements, we may need to seek additional financing to compete effectively. If we are unable to obtain capital on commercially reasonable terms, it could:

• reduce funds available to us for purposes such as working capital, capital expenditures, research and development, strategic acquisitions and other general corporate purposes;
• restrict our ability to introduce new products, exploit business opportunities and compete effectively; and
• increase our vulnerability to economic downturns and competitive pressures in the markets in which we operate.

Difficult and volatile conditions in the capital, credit and commodities markets and in the overall economy could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Difficult global economic conditions, including significant volatility in the capital, credit and commodities markets, low levels of business and consumer confidence and high levels of unemployment in certain parts of the world, could affect our business in a number of ways. For example:

• under difficult market conditions there can be no assurance that borrowings under our Revolving Credit Facility would be available or sufficient to meet our operational needs, and in such a case, we may not be able to successfully obtain additional financing on reasonable terms, or at all;
• in order to respond to market conditions, we may need to seek waivers from the applicability of various provisions in the credit agreement governing our Senior Secured Credit Facilities or the indentures governing our Senior Notes, and in such case, there can be no assurance that we can obtain such waivers at a reasonable cost, if at all; and
• market conditions could cause the counterparties to the derivative financial instruments we may use to hedge our exposure to interest rate, commodity or currency fluctuations to experience financial difficulties and, as a result, our efforts to hedge these exposures could prove unsuccessful and, furthermore, our ability to engage in additional hedging activities may decrease or become more costly.

We are subject to risks associated with the current interest rate environment and, to the extent we use debt to fund our operations, changes in interest rates will affect our cost of debt.

A substantial portion of our indebtedness bears interest at variable rates, including the Secured Overnight Financing Rate ("SOFR"), making our cost of debt higher in elevated interest rate environments, which increased costs could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition. While we may choose to, and routinely do, enter into interest rate hedging transactions to mitigate the effect of fluctuations in interest rates, we can provide no assurance that we will enter any such transactions in the future or that any such transactions would be successful in mitigating the risks of fluctuations in interest rates.

Risks Related to Ownership of our Common Shares

Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. is a holding company with no operations of its own. Because our operations are conducted almost entirely through our subsidiaries and joint ventures, we are largely dependent on our receipt of distributions and dividends or other payments from our subsidiaries and joint ventures for cash to fund all of our operations and expenses, including to make future dividend payments, if any. We may engage in restructurings and similar transactions that have the effect of altering the economic features of, and rights associated with, our common shares.

Though Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. is party to certain intercompany financing arrangements and is a guarantor of third party debt of certain of its indirect subsidiaries, our operations are conducted almost entirely through our subsidiaries and joint ventures and our ability to generate cash to meet our debt service obligations or to make future dividend payments, if any, or to fund any share repurchases, is highly dependent on the earnings and the receipt of funds from our subsidiaries and joint ventures in the form of intercompany distributions, loans or advances and through repayment of loans or advances from us. Payments to us by our subsidiaries and joint ventures will be contingent upon our subsidiaries' or joint ventures' earnings and other business considerations and may be subject to statutory or contractual restrictions. In addition, there may be significant tax and other legal restrictions on the ability of foreign subsidiaries or joint ventures to remit money to Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. Any payment of intercompany distributions, loans or advances to and from our subsidiaries and joint ventures could be subject to restrictions on, or taxation of, dividends or repatriation of earnings under applicable local law, monetary transfer restrictions, foreign currency exchange regulations in the jurisdictions in which our subsidiaries operate or other restrictions imposed by current or future agreements, including debt instruments, to which our non-U.S. subsidiaries may be a party. From time to time, we may engage in internal reorganizations to manage such restrictions and other limitations. However, any such reorganizations may, among other things, adversely affect our operating results and cash flows.

The price of our common shares has fluctuated, and may in the future fluctuate, significantly and you could lose all or part of your investment.

Volatility in the market price of our common shares may prevent you from being able to sell your common shares at or above the price you paid for your common shares. The market price of our common shares has in the past fluctuated, and could in the future fluctuate, significantly for various reasons, including the realization of any risks described under this "Risk Factors" section. This volatility may increase further during the pendency of the Merger.

In addition, over the past several years, the stock markets have experienced significant price and volume fluctuations. This volatility has had a significant impact on the market price of securities issued by many companies, including us and other companies in our industry. The changes frequently appear to occur without regard to the operating performance of the affected companies. Hence, the price of our common shares could fluctuate based upon factors that have little or nothing to do with our business, and these fluctuations could materially reduce our share price and cause you to lose all or part of your investment. Further, in the past, market fluctuations and price declines in a company's stock have led to securities class action litigation. If such a suit were to arise, it could have a substantial cost, adversely impact our business and divert our resources regardless of the outcome.

We do not expect to pay dividends on our common shares and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common shares.

We currently do not declare or pay dividends on our common shares. Therefore, the success of an investment in our common shares will depend upon any future appreciation in their value. There is no guarantee that our common shares will appreciate in value or even maintain the price at which our shareholders have purchased their shares. The payment of future dividends, if any, will be at the discretion of our Board and will depend on, among other things, our earnings, financial condition, capital requirements, level of indebtedness, statutory and contractual restrictions applying to the payment of dividends (including pursuant to the Merger Agreement during the pendency of the Merger) and other relevant considerations. The credit agreement governing our Senior Secured Credit Facilities and the indentures governing our Senior Notes also limit our ability to pay dividends. In addition, Bermuda law imposes requirements that may restrict our ability to pay dividends to holders of our common shares. As a consequence of these limitations and restrictions, we may not be able to make, or may have to reduce or eliminate, the payment of dividends on our common shares.

The Board has authorized a common share repurchase program of $700 million, of which $435 million remains available, though the Merger Agreement prohibits us from repurchasing shares, whether under the repurchase program or otherwise, without the prior written consent of AkzoNobel. Accordingly, there is no guarantee with respect to the timing or amount of any future share repurchases. Common share repurchases may reduce the liquidity available to the Company for other activities, including repayment of debt, working capital, capital expenditures, research and development, strategic acquisitions and other general corporate purposes.

Future sales of our common shares in the public market could lower our share price, and any additional capital raised by us through the sale of equity or convertible debt securities may dilute your ownership in us and may adversely affect the market price of our common shares.

We and our shareholders may sell additional common shares in subsequent offerings, subject to certain limitations, including those set forth in the Merger Agreement during the pendency of the Merger. We may also issue additional common shares or convertible debt securities. As of February 6, 2026, we had 1,000,000,000 common shares authorized and 213,373,942 common shares outstanding.

We cannot predict the size of future issuances or sales of our common shares or the effect, if any, that future issuances and sales of our common shares will have on the market price of our common shares. Sales of substantial amounts of our common shares (including sales by members of management and shares that may be issued in connection with an acquisition), or the perception that such sales could occur, may adversely affect prevailing market prices for our common shares. See Part III, Item 13, "Certain Relationships and Related Transactions and Director Independence."

We are a Bermuda company and it may be difficult for you to enforce judgments against us or our directors and executive officers.

We are a Bermuda exempted company. As a result, the rights of our shareholders are governed by Bermuda law and our memorandum of association and bye-laws. The rights of shareholders under Bermuda law may differ from the rights of shareholders of companies incorporated in another jurisdiction, and a substantial portion of our assets are located outside the U.S. As a result, it may be difficult for investors to effect service of process on those persons in the U.S. or to enforce in the U.S. judgments obtained in U.S. courts against us or those persons based on the civil liability provisions of the U.S. securities laws. It is questionable whether courts in Bermuda will enforce judgments obtained in other jurisdictions, including the United States, against us or our directors or officers under the securities laws of those jurisdictions or entertain actions in Bermuda against us or our directors or officers under the securities laws of other jurisdictions.

Bermuda law differs from the laws in effect in the U.S. and may afford less protection to our shareholders.

We are organized under the laws of Bermuda. As a result, our corporate affairs are governed by the Companies Act 1981, which differs in some material respects from laws typically applicable to U.S. corporations and shareholders, including the provisions relating to interested directors, amalgamations, mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, shareholder lawsuits and indemnification of directors. Generally, the duties of directors and officers of a Bermuda company are owed to the company only. Shareholders of Bermuda companies typically do not have rights to take action against directors or officers of the company and may only do so in limited circumstances. Shareholder class actions are not available under Bermuda law. The circumstances in which shareholder derivative actions may be available under Bermuda law are substantially more limited and less clear than they would be to shareholders of U.S. corporations. The Bermuda courts, however, would ordinarily be expected to permit a shareholder to commence an action in the name of a company to remedy a wrong to the company where the act complained of is alleged to be beyond the corporate power of the company or illegal, or would result in the violation of the company's memorandum of association or bye-laws. Furthermore, consideration would be given by a Bermuda court to acts that are alleged to constitute a fraud against the minority shareholders or, for instance, where an action requires the approval of a greater percentage of the company's shareholders than those who actually approved it.

When the affairs of a company are being conducted in a manner that is oppressive or prejudicial to the interests of some shareholders, one or more shareholders may apply to the Supreme Court of Bermuda, which may make such order as it sees fit, including an order regulating the conduct of the company's affairs in the future or ordering the purchase of the shares of any shareholders by other shareholders or by the company. Additionally, under our bye-laws and as permitted by Bermuda law, each shareholder has waived any claim or right of action against our directors or officers for any action taken by directors or officers in the performance of their duties, except for actions involving fraud or dishonesty. In addition, the rights of our shareholders and the fiduciary responsibilities of our directors under Bermuda law are not as clearly established as under statutes or judicial precedent in existence in jurisdictions in the U.S., particularly the State of Delaware. Therefore, our shareholders may have more difficulty protecting their interests than would shareholders of a corporation incorporated in a jurisdiction within the U.S.

We have anti-takeover provisions in our bye-laws that may discourage a change of control.

Our bye-laws contain provisions that could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us without the consent of our Board, including that directors may only be removed for cause and our Board can determine the powers, preferences and rights of our preference shares and issue the preference shares without shareholder approval.

These provisions could discourage, delay or prevent a transaction involving a change in control of our Company and may prevent our shareholders from receiving the benefit from any premium to the market price of our common shares offered by a bidder in a takeover context. Even in the absence of a takeover attempt, the existence of these provisions may adversely affect the prevailing market price of our common shares if the provisions are viewed as discouraging takeover attempts in the future. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests, make it more difficult for you and other shareholders to elect directors of your choosing and allow us to take corporate actions other than those you desire.

General Risk Factors

Interruption, interference with, or failure of our information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.

The availability of our products and services and fulfillment of our customer obligations depend on the continuing operation of our information technology and communications systems. Our systems are vulnerable to damage, interference, or interruption from modifications or upgrades, terrorist attacks, natural disasters or pandemics, power loss, telecommunications failures, user errors, computer viruses, ransomware attacks, computer denial of service attacks, phishing schemes, or other attempts to harm or access our systems, and we have in the past experienced, and may in the future experience, such events, though the effects have yet to have a material adverse effect on our business. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. Any such event relating to our systems (or the systems of third parties that we rely on) could result in theft, misuse, modification or destruction of information, including trade secrets and confidential business information, and cause business disruptions, including those that may disrupt production at our manufacturing facilities, reputational damage and third-party claims, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.

Since the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to systems, or to otherwise sabotage them, change frequently and are often not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. As these threats continue to evolve, particularly around cybersecurity, we may be required to expend significant resources to enhance our control environment, processes, practices, and other countermeasures. While we have designed and implemented controls to restrict access to our data and information technology infrastructure, it is still vulnerable to unauthorized access through cyber attacks, theft and other security breaches. These types of attacks have occurred against our systems from time to time, and we believe there have been no material adverse impacts to date. We expect these attacks to continue, and our protective measures may not be adequate to ensure that our operations will not be disrupted, should another such event occur in the future. In addition, these attacks may increase in frequency or intensity during the pendency of the Merger. Geopolitical tensions or conflicts may further heighten the risk of cyber attacks, and the emergence and maturation of artificial intelligence capabilities may also lead to more sophisticated methods of attack. Although we continually seek to improve our countermeasures to prevent such events, we may be unable to anticipate every scenario and it is possible that certain cyber threats or vulnerabilities will be undetected or unmitigated in time to prevent an attack on us and our customers, which risk is especially heightened when demands of management’s attention are heightened in other areas such as the Merger. We have in the past been, and may in the future be, vulnerable to the effects of cybersecurity incidents that occur at third parties such as our customers, suppliers or business partners, and a failure of a third party's safeguards, policies or procedures could compromise our own data or operations. While we maintain safeguards to mitigate the effects of such incidents, we cannot be certain that such safeguards would be effective. These safeguards are reviewed periodically and modified to enable greater mitigation of such risks. See Part I, Item 1C, “Cybersecurity”.

In addition, we rely extensively on information systems and technology to manage our business and summarize operating results. We are in the process of a multi-year implementation of a new ERP system, which will replace much of our existing core financial systems. We have in the past experienced temporary operational disruptions from our ERP system implementation and may in the future experience similar delays in any of the regions in which the new ERP system has not yet been implemented, which may result in increased costs and other difficulties, including the diversion of management from the day-to-day operation of the business. Failure to successfully implement the ERP system could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flow. Additionally, the ERP system is critical to our ability to provide important information to our management on a timely basis, obtain and deliver products to our customers, provide services and customer support, send invoices and track payments, fulfill contractual obligations, accurately maintain books and records, provide accurate, timely and reliable reports on our financial and operating results, improve our data management, and otherwise operate our business. Failure of the ERP system to perform adequately in any of these areas could harm our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows, and, in the case of functions that impact our customers, could result in harm to our customer relationships. Lastly, if we do not effectively implement the ERP system as planned or the ERP system does not operate as intended, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting could be negatively affected.

Uncertainty in the development, deployment, and use of artificial intelligence in our products and services, as well as our business more broadly, could adversely affect our business and reputation. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies may enable disruption in our industry and threaten our competitive positioning.

We use systems and tools that incorporate technologies based on AI, including systems and tools that may include generative AI for customers and our workforce. As with many new and emerging technologies, AI presents numerous risks and challenges that could adversely affect our business. AI continues to be an emerging technology, and ineffective or inadequate AI deployment, safeguards, controls or application practices by us or third parties could result in unintended consequences. For example, models, including large language models, underlying AI solutions that we use may be flawed or may be based on datasets that are biased or insufficient or of poor quality. There is also uncertainty around the validity and enforceability, as well as the nature, of our rights in intellectual property that is created in connection with our use, development, and deployment of AI, including the potential compromise of our rights in our intellectual property that is input into AI tools, whether done intentionally or by our employees or agents without permission to do so. In addition, our use of AI could unintentionally infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties. Developing, testing, and deploying resource-intensive AI systems may require additional investment and increase our costs. Certain of our competitors may deploy AI technologies that provide more value to customers than those deployed by us, which could affect customer demand for our products and services. Additionally, certain AI technologies may enable, or accelerate the pace of, disruption in our industry, including by allowing existing and future competitors to compete and/or outpace Axalta in areas that we have a competitive advantage in currently, including color-matching and certain application technologies. Any of the foregoing may result in decreased demand for our products or harm to our business, results of operations or reputation.

The legal and regulatory landscape surrounding AI technologies is rapidly evolving and uncertain, including in the areas of intellectual property, cybersecurity, and privacy and data protection. Compliance with new or changing laws, regulations or industry standards relating to AI may impose significant operational costs, limit or foreclose our ability to develop, deploy or use AI technologies or result in legal liability, regulatory action, or reputational harm.

Increased competition may adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

As described in greater detail in the "Performance Coatings Competition" section on page 7 and the "Mobility Coatings Competition" section on page 10, we face substantial competition from many international, national, regional and local competitors of various sizes in the manufacturing, distribution and sale of our coatings and related products. Our inability to compete successfully could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We take on credit risk exposure from our customers in the ordinary course of our business.

We routinely offer customers pre-bates, loans and other financial incentives to purchase our products. These arrangements generally obligate the customer to purchase products from us and/or repay us such incentives. In the event that a customer is unwilling or unable to fulfill its obligations under these arrangements, we have incurred, and may in the future incur, financial losses. In addition, in the ordinary course of our business, we guarantee certain of our customers' obligations to third parties. Any default by our customers on their obligations could force us to make payments to the applicable creditor. See Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further detail on guarantees of our customers’ obligations to third parties. It is possible that customer defaults on obligations owed to us and on third-party obligations that we have guaranteed could be significant, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Our level of credit risk exposure from our customers has remained stable in recent years.

Currency risk may adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We derive a significant portion of our net sales from outside the U.S. and conduct our business and incur costs in the local currency of most countries in which we operate. Because our financial statements are presented in U.S. dollars, we must translate our financial results as well as assets and liabilities into U.S. dollars at exchange rates in effect during or at the end of each reporting period, as applicable. Therefore, increases or decreases in the value of the U.S. dollar against currencies in such countries will affect our results of operations and the value of balance sheet items denominated in foreign currencies. In particular, we are exposed to the Euro, the Brazilian Real, the Chinese Yuan, the British Pound, the Australian Dollar, the Turkish Lira, the Mexican Peso, the Indian Rupee, the Swedish Krona, the Swiss Franc and the Argentinian Peso, among others. Furthermore, many of our local businesses import or buy raw materials in a currency other than their functional currency, which can impact the operating results for these operations if we are unable to mitigate the impact of the currency exchange fluctuations. We cannot accurately predict the effects of exchange rate fluctuations upon our future operating results because of the number of currencies involved, the variability of currency exposures and the potential volatility of currency exchange rates. Accordingly, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates may have an adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Terrorist acts, conflicts, wars, natural disasters, pandemics and other health crises, among other events beyond our control, may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

As a multinational company with a large international footprint, we are subject to increased risk of damage or disruption to us, our employees and other personnel, facilities, partners, suppliers, distributors, resellers or customers due to terrorist acts, conflicts, wars, adverse weather conditions, natural disasters, power outages, pandemics or other public health crises and environmental incidents, wherever located around the world. The potential for such events, the national and international responses to such events, or perceived threats or potential conflicts relating to or arising out of such events may create economic and political uncertainties and challenges for us, our customers, suppliers and logistic partners that could have a materially adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. Such events may compromise the safety of, and continued provision of services by, our employees and other personnel, including executive officers and other key personnel, and any resulting disruptions or loss of services could harm our business. A loss of the use of all or a portion of one of our key manufacturing facilities due to accident, labor issues, weather conditions, acts of war, political unrest, geopolitical risk, terrorist activity, pandemic or other public health crises, natural disaster or otherwise, whether short- or long-term, and any interruption in production capability, could require us to make substantial capital expenditures to remedy the situation, which could negatively affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Russia's conflict with Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East and the sanctions and other measures imposed by various governments in response to these conflicts have increased the level of economic and political uncertainty globally. A significant escalation or expansion of economic disruption, countries subject to sanctions or the scope of any of these conflicts could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows and could result in, among other things, supply chain disruptions, rising prices for oil and other commodities, volatility in capital markets and foreign exchange rates, rising interest rates or heightened cybersecurity risks, any of which may adversely affect the Company’s business.

The insurance we maintain may not cover all potential exposures.

Our product liability, property, business interruption, cybersecurity and casualty insurance coverages may not cover all risks associated with the operation of our business and may not be sufficient to offset the costs of any losses, lost sales or increased costs experienced during business interruptions. For some risks, we may elect not to obtain insurance. As a result of market conditions, premiums and deductibles for certain insurance policies can increase substantially and, in some instances, certain insurance policies may become unavailable or available only for reduced amounts of coverage. As a result, we may not be able to renew our insurance policies or procure other desirable insurance on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. Losses and liabilities from uninsured or underinsured events and delay in the payment of insurance proceeds could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We are subject to complex and evolving data privacy laws.

Our business is subject to complex and evolving U.S. and foreign laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection and other matters, including GDPR. We could be liable for loss or misuse of our customers' and/or our employees' personally-identifiable information if we fail to prevent or mitigate such misuse or loss. Although we have developed systems and processes that are designed to protect customer and employee information and prevent misuse of such information and other security breaches, failure to prevent or mitigate such misuse or breaches may affect our reputation and operating results negatively and may require significant management time and attention and could result in significant regulatory fines and/or other penalties.

We may be subject to changes in our tax rates, the adoption of tax legislation or additional tax liabilities, each of which may adversely affect our results of operations.

We are subject to taxes in the U.S. and non-U.S. jurisdictions where our subsidiaries are organized. Due to economic and political conditions, tax rates, tax laws and other non-tax legislation, such as economic substance regulations, in various jurisdictions may be subject to significant change. Our effective tax rates could be affected by changes in the mix of earnings in countries with differing statutory tax rates, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, changes in available tax credits or tax deductions and changes in tax and other non-tax laws or their interpretation, such as interpretations as to the legality of tax advantages granted under the EU state aid rules, impacts of the EU's Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive and local exit tax rules with respect to business restructurings. Our tax returns and other tax matters are subject to examination by local tax authorities and governmental bodies. Additionally, we and our subsidiaries are engaged in intercompany transactions across multiple tax jurisdictions. Although we believe we have clearly reflected the economics of these transactions and the proper local transfer pricing documentation is in place, tax authorities may propose and sustain adjustments.

We regularly assess the likelihood of an adverse outcome resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for taxes. There can be no assurance as to the outcome of these examinations. If our effective tax rates were to increase, or if the ultimate determination of the taxes owed by us is for an amount in excess of amounts previously accrued, our financial condition, operating results and cash flows could be adversely affected.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”), which represents a coalition of member countries globally, is supporting changes to numerous long-standing tax principles through its base erosion and profit shifting (“BEPS”) project. The BEPS project is focused on a number of issues, including the shifting of profits among affiliated entities located in jurisdictions with different tax rates and a global minimum corporate income tax under “Pillar Two.” The Pillar Two framework imposes, among other items, a minimum tax rate of 15% that has been implemented by several jurisdictions in which we operate, with effect from January 1, 2024. Many jurisdictions continue to announce changes in their tax laws and regulations based on the Pillar Two framework. While we continue to evaluate the impact of these legislative changes as additional guidance becomes available, uncertainty remains regarding the timing and interpretation by tax authorities in affected jurisdictions. The effect of Pillar Two rules did not have a significant impact on our condensed consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2025, but could have adverse impact on our effective tax rate, tax liabilities and cash tax in future years.

On July 4, 2025, the President of the U.S. signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (“OBBBA”). The OBBBA maintains the 21% corporate tax rate and makes permanent many of the beneficial expired and expiring provisions originally enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, including immediate expensing of domestic research and development expenditures, more favorable interest deductibility, and 100% business depreciation with effective dates in 2025. Revisions to the international tax framework are effective in 2026. The effect of the OBBBA did not have a material impact on the effective tax rate in our condensed consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2025. The OBBBA reduced cash paid for taxes during the year ended December 31, 2025.

Increasing scrutiny and evolving expectations from customers, regulators, investors, and other stakeholders with respect to our sustainability practices may impose additional costs on us or expose us to new or additional risks.

Companies are facing increasing scrutiny from customers, regulators, investors, and other stakeholders related to their ESG practices and disclosure. Recently adopted disclosure requirements related to sustainability, including the EU’s CSRD and CSDDD and the California Climate Laws, have already and will continue to increase our sustainability-related compliance costs, which could result in increases to our overall operational costs. New government regulations could also result in new or more stringent forms of sustainability oversight, including increased limitation on, or required reduction of, GHG emissions, and the expansion of mandatory and voluntary reporting, diligence, and disclosure regarding sustainability matters. In addition, we may be subject to heightened scrutiny, negative publicity, boycotts, lawsuits or demands from activists, politicians or other individuals or organizations opposed to sustainability, and the expectations of these individuals or organizations may conflict with regulatory requirements or stakeholder expectations. Failure to adapt to or comply with regulatory requirements or investor, employee, customer, or other stakeholder expectations, including any perceived failure, could negatively impact our reputation, ability to do business with certain customers, and our stock price.

Risk Management and Strategy

The availability of our products and services and fulfillment of our customer obligations depend on the continuing operation of our information technology and communications systems. Accordingly, cybersecurity represents a critical component of the Company’s overall approach to risk management. The Company’s cybersecurity policies, standards and practices are integrated into the Company’s enterprise risk management (“ERM”) approach, and cybersecurity risks are among the core enterprise risks that are subject to oversight by the Board, as described below, acting through the Audit Committee. The Company’s cybersecurity policies, standards and practices leverage recognized frameworks established by the International Organization for Standardization.

The Company generally approaches cybersecurity threats through a cross-functional, multilayered approach, with the goals of implementing and maintaining preventative controls, identifying and monitoring threats and maximizing chances of recovery in the case of a cybersecurity incident.

The Company periodically engages assessors, consultants, auditors and other third parties to assess our cybersecurity programs, including information security maturity assessments, audits and independent reviews of our information security control environment and operating effectiveness. The Company adjusts its cybersecurity policies, standards, processes and practices as necessary based on the information provided by the assessments, audits and reviews. In engaging with third-party providers that will have access to certain sensitive Company data, the Company performs a cross-functional due diligence review and attempts to identify risks posed by engaging such third-party providers, and, where feasible, seeks to obtain contractual commitments from such third parties with respect to such engagement. The Company maintains cybersecurity insurance with coverage for security incident response expenses, certain losses due to network security failures, investigation expenses, privacy liability and certain third-party liability, subject to certain deductibles, exclusions and policy limits.

Governance and Oversight

The Board and the Audit Committee are responsible for overseeing the Company’s ERM processes, with the Audit Committee being tasked with overseeing cybersecurity risks facing the Company. Throughout the year, the Audit Committee receives regular updates from management on cybersecurity matters, which address a wide range of topics including, for example, recent developments, evolving standards, vulnerability assessments, third-party and independent reviews, the overall threat environment, technological trends, global employee training and efforts to enhance the Company’s cybersecurity capabilities and preparedness. Relevant matters are also reviewed with the full Board on at least an annual basis.

The Company’s Global Director of Information Security & Compliance (the “GDISC”) is the member of the Company’s management that is principally responsible for overseeing the Company’s cybersecurity risk management programs, in partnership with business and functional leaders across the Company. The GDISC has 23 years of experience in the information technology and cybersecurity field, including previous roles in cybersecurity leadership, governance, and technology architecture and engineering. The GDISC reports to the Company’s Chief Information Officer (the “CIO”), who reports directly to the Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. The CIO has 25 years of experience in the information technology and cybersecurity field, including previous roles in security architecture, audit, compliance, and governance.

Under the oversight of the GDISC, members of the Company’s Information Technology and Compliance departments administer the Company’s cybersecurity response policies, including assessing cybersecurity incidents as they occur and determining the severity of any cybersecurity incidents. To facilitate the success of this program, multidisciplinary teams throughout the Company are deployed to address cybersecurity threats and to respond to cybersecurity incidents in accordance with the Company’s policies. These teams report to an incident response governance team, which is composed of members of the Company’s senior leadership team, including the CIO. These teams monitor the prevention, detection, mitigation and remediation of cybersecurity incidents in real time, and report incidents to the Audit Committee, as appropriate.

For additional information regarding how cybersecurity threats have affected or are reasonably likely to materially affect our business strategy, results of operations or financial condition, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—General Risk Factors—Interruption, interference with, or failure of our information technology and communications systems could hurt our ability to effectively provide our products and services, which could harm our reputation, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.”

Our extensive geographic footprint comprises 42 manufacturing facilities (including two manufacturing sites operated by our joint ventures), four major technology centers and 48 customer training centers supporting our global operations. The table below presents summary information regarding our facilities as of December 31, 2025.

34

(1) Subject to a mortgage under our Senior Secured Credit Facilities.

We own 27 of our manufacturing facilities, two of our technology centers, and 12 of our customer training centers, while the rest of the facilities and centers are leased. We believe that our properties as currently constituted are suitable, adequate and provide sufficient productive capacity for our current operations.

We are from time to time party to legal proceedings that arise in the ordinary course of business. We are not involved in any litigation other than that which has arisen in the ordinary course of business. We do not expect that any currently pending lawsuits will have a material adverse effect on us as discussed in Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

SEC regulations require disclosure of certain environmental matters when a governmental authority is a party to the proceedings and such proceedings involve potential monetary sanctions that the Company reasonably believes will exceed a specified threshold. Pursuant to recent SEC amendments to this requirement, the Company will be using a threshold of $1 million for such proceedings. The Company is not aware of any matters that exceed this threshold and that meet the other conditions for disclosure.

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

This discussion and analysis deals with comparisons of material changes in the consolidated financial statements for 2025 and 2024. For the comparison of 2024 and 2023, see Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations in Part II, Item 7 of our 2024 Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the SEC on February 13, 2025.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Many statements made in the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K that are not statements of historical fact, including statements about our beliefs and expectations, are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of federal securities laws and should be evaluated as such. Forward-looking statements include information concerning possible or assumed future results of operations, including descriptions of our business plan, strategies and capital structure. These statements often include words such as “anticipate”, “anticipates,” “anticipated,” “expect,” “expects,” “expected,” “believe,” “believes,” “intend,” “intended,” “estimate,” “estimated,” “projections,” “could,” “would,” “should,” “may,” “will,” “future,” “goals,” “targets,” “can,” “assumptions,” “plans,” “projected,” “proposed,” “potential,” “potentially,” “possible,” “strategy,” “threatened,” “seek” and “forecasts” and the negative of these words or other comparable or similar terminology. We base these forward-looking statements or projections on our current expectations, plans and assumptions that we have made in light of our experience in the industry, as well as our perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors we believe are appropriate under the circumstances and at such time. As you read and consider this Annual Report on Form 10-K, you should understand that these statements are not guarantees of performance or results. The forward-looking statements and projections are subject to and involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, economic, competitive, governmental, including related to any new or existing tariffs imposed by the U.S. and any retaliatory actions from other countries, geopolitical and technological factors outside of our control, as well as risks related to the proposed Merger with AkzoNobel (including our ability to consummate the proposed transaction and realize the anticipated benefits thereof), execution of, and assumptions underlying, our tariff mitigation strategies, the 2024 Transformation Initiative, and the 2026 A Plan, that may cause our business, industry, strategy, financing activities or actual results to differ materially. More information on potential factors that could affect our financial results is available in this “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” as well as “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and in other documents that we have filed with, or furnished to, the SEC, and you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements or projections. Although we believe that these forward-looking statements and projections are based on reasonable assumptions at the time they are made, you should be aware that many factors, including, but not limited to, those described in “Risk Factors,” could affect our actual financial results or results of operations and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements and projections.

These forward-looking statements should not be construed by you to be exhaustive and are made only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of the forward-looking statements contained herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

We use our investor relations page at ir.axalta.com as a means of disclosing material information to the public in a broad, non-exclusionary manner for purposes of the SEC’s Regulation Fair Disclosure (or Reg. FD). Investors should routinely monitor that site, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts, as information posted on that page could be deemed to be material information.

OVERVIEW

We are a leading global manufacturer, marketer and distributor of high-performance coatings systems and products. We have over a 150-year heritage in the coatings industry and are known for manufacturing high-quality products with well-recognized brands supported by market-leading technology and customer service. Our diverse global footprint of 42 manufacturing facilities, four technology centers, 48 customer training centers and approximately 12,300 team members allows us to meet the needs of customers in over 140 countries. We serve our customer base through an extensive sales force and technical support organization, as well as through over 5,000 independent, locally based distributors.

We operate our business in two operating segments, Performance Coatings and Mobility Coatings. Our segments are based on the type and concentration of customers served, service requirements, methods of distribution and major product lines.

Through our Performance Coatings segment, we provide high-quality sustainable liquid and powder coating solutions to both large regional and global customers and to a fragmented and local customer base. These customers comprise, among others, independent or multi-shop operator body shops as well as a wide variety of industrial manufacturers. We are one of only a few suppliers with the technology to provide precise color matching and highly durable coatings systems. The end-markets within this segment are refinish and industrial.

Through our Mobility Coatings segment, we provide coatings technologies for light vehicle and commercial vehicle OEMs. These global customers are faced with evolving megatrends in electrification, sustainability, personalization and autonomous driving that require a high level of technical expertise. These OEMs require efficient, environmentally responsible coatings systems that can be applied with a high degree of precision, consistency and speed. The end-markets within this segment are light vehicle and commercial vehicle.

BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS

General Business Highlights

Our net sales decreased 3.0%, including a 1.1% benefit from foreign currency translation, for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared with the year ended December 31, 2024. The decreased net sales were driven by lower volumes of 4.6%, partially offset by contributions of 0.5% from the acquisition of The CoverFlexx Group completed in July 2024 (the “CoverFlexx acquisition”). The following trends have impacted our segment net sales performance:

• Performance Coatings: Net sales decreased 5.2% for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared with the year ended December 31, 2024. The decreased net sales were driven by lower sales volumes of 5.8% and furthered by lower average selling prices and unfavorable product mix of 1.7%, partially offset by favorable foreign currency translation of 1.5% driven by the strengthening of the Euro and Swiss Franc, partially offset by unfavorable fluctuations of the Mexican Peso, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar, and contributions of 0.8% from the CoverFlexx acquisition.
• Mobility Coatings: Net sales increased 1.1% for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared with the year ended December 31, 2024. The increased net sales were driven by higher average selling prices and favorable product mix of 3.2%, and favorable foreign currency translation of 0.2% driven by the strengthening of the Euro, partially offset by unfavorable fluctuations of the Mexican Peso and Brazilian Real, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar, and lower sales volumes of 2.3%.

Our business serves four end-markets globally with net sales for the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024 as follows:

(In millions)

Proposed Merger with Akzo Nobel N.V.

During November 2025, we entered into a Merger Agreement with Akzo Nobel N.V., a public company with limited liability incorporated under the laws of the Netherlands (“AkzoNobel”) providing for the combination of the Company and AkzoNobel in an all-stock merger. See Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Leadership Transition

On January 23, 2025, the Company announced that Tim Bowes was appointed President, Global Industrial Coatings, effective January 27, 2025. Mr. Bowes succeeded Shelley Bausch who stepped down from the role and left the Company.

2024 Transformation Initiative

During February 2024, we announced the 2024 Transformation Initiative intended to simplify the Company’s organizational structure and enable us to be more proactive, responsive, and agile and to better serve our customers and to lower our cost base and improve financial performance and generate greater cash flows. See Part II, Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources” and Note 4 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Capital and Liquidity Highlights

During the year ended December 31, 2025, we repurchased 5.3 million shares of our common stock for total consideration of $165 million pursuant to our $700 million share repurchase program. We have $435 million remaining available under the authorization. The Merger Agreement prohibits us from repurchasing shares, whether under the repurchase program or otherwise, without the prior written consent of AkzoNobel.

During the year ended December 31, 2025, we prepaid $210 million of the outstanding principal amount of the 2029 Dollar Term Loans (as defined in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K). See Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

During October 2025, we entered into the Seventeenth Amendment to the Credit Agreement (as defined in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K) to permit the use of borrowings under the Credit Agreement to fund repurchases of our common shares subject to the conditions set forth therein.

FACTORS AFFECTING OUR OPERATING RESULTS

The following discussion sets forth certain components of our statements of operations as well as factors that impact those items.

Net sales

We generate revenue from the sale of our products and services across all major geographic areas. Our net sales include total sales less estimates for returns and price allowances. Price allowances include discounts for prompt payment as well as volume-based incentives. Our overall net sales are generally impacted by the following factors:

• fluctuations in overall economic activity within the geographic markets in which we operate;
• underlying growth (or lack thereof) in one or more of our end-markets, either worldwide or in particular geographies in which we operate;
• the type of products used within existing customer applications, or the development of new applications requiring products similar to ours;
• changes in product sales prices (including volume discounts, cash discounts for prompt payment and impacts from raw material indexing);
• changes in the level of competition faced by our products, including price competition, quality competition and the launch of new products by competitors;
• changes in the mix of products we offer and sell to our customers;
• our ability to successfully develop and launch new products and applications;
• changes in buying habits of our customers (including our distributors);
• overall vehicle repair costs; and
• fluctuations in foreign exchange rates.

While the factors described above impact net sales in each of our operating segments, the impact of these factors on our operating segments can differ, as described below. For more information about risks relating to our business, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—Risks Related to our Business.”

Cost of goods sold (“cost of sales”)

Our cost of sales consists principally of the following:

• Production materials costs. These include costs of the materials needed to manufacture products for distribution. These costs generally increase on an aggregate basis as production volumes increase, but materials prices are also influenced by changes in market dynamics. A significant amount of the materials used in production are purchased on a global lowest-cost basis.
• Employee costs. These include the compensation and benefit costs, including share-based compensation expense, for employees involved in our manufacturing operations and on-site technical support services. These costs generally increase on an aggregate basis as production volumes increase and may decline as a percent of net sales as a result of economies of scale associated with higher production volumes.
• Depreciation expense. Property, plant and equipment are stated at cost and depreciated or amortized on a straight-line basis over their estimated useful lives.
• Other. Our remaining cost of sales consists of freight costs, warehousing expenses, purchasing costs, costs associated with closing or idling of production facilities, functional costs supporting manufacturing, cost of poor quality, including product claims, and other general manufacturing expenses, such as expenses for utilities and energy consumption.

The main factors that influence our cost of sales as a percentage of net sales include:

• changes in the price of raw materials, including as a result of tariffs;
• changes in the costs of labor, logistics and energy;
• production volumes;
• the implementation of cost control measures aimed at improving productivity, including reduction of fixed production costs, refinements in inventory management and the coordination of purchasing within each subsidiary and at the business level;
• changes in sales volumes, average selling prices and product mix;
• inventory obsolescence, quality and yield loss from manufacturing; and
• fluctuations in foreign exchange rates.

Selling, general and administrative expenses (“SG&A”)

Our SG&A expenses consist of all expenditures incurred in connection with the sales and marketing of our products, as well as technical support for our customers and administrative overhead costs, including:

• compensation and benefit costs for management, sales personnel and administrative staff, including share-based compensation expense. Expenses relating to our sales personnel increase or decrease principally with changes in sales volume due to the need to increase or decrease sales personnel to meet changes in demand. Expenses relating to administrative personnel generally do not increase or decrease directly with changes in sales volume; and
• depreciation, advertising and other selling expenses, such as expenses incurred in connection with travel and communications.

Changes in SG&A expenses as a percentage of net sales have historically been impacted by a number of factors, including:

• changes in the costs of labor, including inflationary pressures;
• changes in sales volume, as higher volumes enable us to spread the fixed portion of our administrative expense over higher sales;
• changes in our customer base, as new customers may require different levels of sales and marketing attention;
• new product launches in existing and new markets, as these launches typically involve a more intense sales activity and technical support before they are integrated into customer applications;
• customer credit issues requiring increases to the allowance for doubtful accounts; and
• fluctuations in foreign exchange rates.

Other operating charges

Our other operating charges include termination benefits and other employee-related costs, acquisition, merger and divestiture-related costs, impairment charges, certain environmental charges, and gains or losses on sales of facilities, details of which are included in our reconciliations of segment operating performance to income before income taxes as shown in Note 20 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Research and development expenses

Research and development expenses represent costs incurred to develop new products, services, processes and technologies or to generate significant improvements to existing products, services or processes.

Interest expense, net

Interest expense, net consists primarily of interest expense on institutional borrowings and other financing obligations and changes in fair value of interest rate derivative instruments, net of capitalized interest expense. Interest expense, net also includes the amortization of debt issuance costs and debt discounts associated with our Senior Secured Credit Facilities, Senior Notes and other indebtedness.

Other expense, net

Other expense, net represents costs incurred on various non-operational items including costs incurred in conjunction with our debt refinancing and extinguishment transactions, interest income, as well as foreign exchange gains and losses and non-operational impairment losses unrelated to our core business.

Provision for income taxes

We and our subsidiaries are subject to income tax in the various jurisdictions in which we operate. While the extent of our future tax liability is uncertain, changes to the debt and equity capitalization of our subsidiaries, the realignment of the functions performed, and risks assumed by the various subsidiaries are among the factors that will determine the future book and taxable income of the Company and its subsidiaries.

RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion should be read in conjunction with the information contained in the accompanying financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Our historical results of operations summarized and analyzed below may not necessarily reflect what will occur in the future.

Net sales

Net sales decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower sales volumes driven primarily by Performance Coatings as a result of unfavorable macro trends in North America

Partially offset by:

n Favorable impacts of currency translation primarily due to the strengthening of the Euro and Swiss Franc, partially offset by unfavorable fluctuations of the Mexican Peso and Brazilian Real, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar

n Contributions from the CoverFlexx acquisition

43

Cost of sales

Cost of sales decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower sales volume in North America driven primarily by Performance Coatings

n Lower operating expenses, inclusive of lower incentive compensation and contributions from savings initiatives

n Decreased costs of $17 million related to our multi-year ERP system implementation and productivity programs

n Lower variable input costs

Partially offset by:

n Unfavorable impacts of currency translation of 3.7% primarily due to the strengthening of the Euro and Swiss Franc, partially offset by unfavorable fluctuations of the Mexican Peso and Brazilian Real, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar

Cost of sales as a percentage of net sales decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower operating expenses, inclusive of lower incentive compensation and contributions from savings initiatives

n Decreased costs of $17 million related to our multi-year ERP system implementation and productivity programs

n Lower variable input costs

Partially offset by:

n Less effective coverage of fixed costs as a result of lower sales volumes

Selling, general and administrative expenses

Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower operating expenses, inclusive of lower incentive compensation and contributions from savings initiatives

Partially offset by:

n Unfavorable impacts of currency translation of 6.5% due primarily to the strengthening of the Euro compared to the U.S. Dollar

n Increased expenses related to the CoverFlexx acquisition and various other immaterial acquisitions

Other operating charges

Other operating charges decreased primarily due to the following:

n Decrease of $44 million in termination benefits and other employee-related costs primarily as a result of higher costs associated with the 2024 Transformation Initiative in the prior year period

n Gains of $6 million from the sale of assets in 2025

Partially offset by:

n Increase of $22 million in merger and acquisition-related costs

Research and development expenses

Research and development expenses decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower operating expenses, inclusive of contributions from savings initiatives

n Impacts of currency translation were immaterial when compared to the prior year

44

Amortization of acquired intangibles

Amortization of acquired intangibles increased primarily due to the following:

n Increased amortization of $5 million associated with assets acquired in the past 18 months

n Impacts of currency translation were immaterial when compared to the prior year

Interest expense, net

Interest expense, net decreased primarily due to the following:

n Favorable impact of $24 million attributable to lower principal and decreased variable interest rate on our 2029 Dollar Term Loans

Other expense, net

Other expense, net increased primarily due to the following:

n Decreased miscellaneous income of $5 million compared to the prior year period

n Unfavorable impact of foreign exchange losses of $4 million compared to the prior year period

Partially offset by:

n Decreased debt extinguishment and refinancing-related costs of $3 million compared to the prior year due to the repricing, prepayment and amendment activity associated with our debt agreements explained in more detail in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information

45

Provision for income taxes

(1) The Government of Bermuda enacted the Bermuda Corporate Income Tax Act 2023 (“Bermuda CITA”), which imposes a 15% corporate income tax effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. Prior to January 1, 2025, the Government of Bermuda did not impose a corporate income tax rate. For the year ended December 31, 2025, the statutory income tax rate reflects the Bermuda statutory income tax rate. For the year ended December 31, 2024, the statutory income tax rate reflects the U.S. federal statutory income tax rate.

(2) For the year ended December 31, 2025, earnings generated in jurisdictions where the statutory rate is different from the Bermuda rate is primarily related to earnings in Brazil, China, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. For the year ended December 31, 2024, earnings generated in jurisdictions where the statutory rate is different from the U.S. federal rate is primarily related to earnings in Bermuda, Germany, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.

(3) For the year ended December 31, 2025, earnings generated in jurisdictions where the statutory rate is different from the statutory rate includes $16 million of foreign state and local income taxes generated in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States.

(4) Changes in valuation allowance primarily relates to operations in Luxembourg, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Bermuda, as discussed in item 7 below.

(5) For the year ended December 31, 2025, changes in unrecognized tax benefits is net of associated changes in valuation allowance.

(6) For the year ended December 31, 2025, the domestic state taxes represent Bermuda operations; Bermuda has no state corporate income tax. For the years ended December 31, 2024, the domestic state taxes represent U.S. operations.

(7) For the year ended December 31, 2024, the Company recorded adjustments to recognize the impacts of Bermuda CITA, effective January 1, 2025, resulting in a net deferred tax benefit of $27 million. For the year ended December 31, 2025, the Company recorded a valuation allowance of $19 million, offsetting a portion of the deferred tax benefit recognized in 2024 as a result of Bermuda CITA

(8) For the year ended December 31, 2024, the Company recorded tax expense of $26 million in the Netherlands related to the write off of an expired net operating loss carryforward, which was fully offset by tax benefit of $26 million for a decrease to the valuation allowance.

SEGMENT RESULTS

The Company’s products and operations are managed and reported in two operating segments: Performance Coatings and Mobility Coatings. See Note 20 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Performance Coatings Segment

Net sales decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower sales volume across both end-markets due primarily to unfavorable macro trends in North America, including lower body shop activity

n Unfavorable geographic and product mix, partially offset by positive price actions

Partially offset by:

n Favorable impacts of currency translation due primarily to the strengthening of the Euro and Swiss Franc, partially offset by unfavorable fluctuations of the Mexican Peso, in each case, compared to the U.S. Dollar

n Contributions from the CoverFlexx acquisition

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased primarily due to the following:

n Lower sales volume across both end-markets due primarily to unfavorable macro trends in North America, including lower body shop activity

n Unfavorable geographic and product mix, partially offset by positive price actions

Partially offset by:

n Decreased operating expenses, inclusive of lower incentive compensation and contributions from savings initiatives

n Decreased variable input costs

n Decreased costs of $11 million related to our multi-year ERP system implementation and productivity programs compared to the prior year

47

Mobility Coatings Segment

Net sales increased primarily due to the following:

n Higher average selling prices and favorable product mix across both end-markets

n Favorable impacts of currency translation driven by the strengthening of the Euro, partially offset by unfavorable fluctuations of the Mexican Peso and Brazilian Real, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar

Partially offset by:

n Lower sales volumes across both end-markets due primarily to unfavorable macro trends in North America

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin increased primarily due to the following:

n Higher average selling prices and favorable product mix across both end-markets

n Decreased operating expenses, inclusive of lower incentive compensation and contributions from savings initiatives

n Decreased variable input costs

n Decreased costs of $6 million related to our multi-year ERP system implementation and productivity programs compared to the prior year

Partially offset by:

n Lower sales volumes across both end-markets due primarily to unfavorable macro trends in North America

LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES

Our primary sources of liquidity are cash on hand, net cash provided by operating activities and available borrowing capacity under our Senior Secured Credit Facilities.

At December 31, 2025, availability under the Revolving Credit Facility was $770 million, net of $30 million of letters of credit outstanding. All such availability may be utilized without violating any covenants under the Credit Agreement or the indentures governing the Senior Notes. Our remaining available borrowing capacity under other lines of credit in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions totaled $63 million at December 31, 2025.

We have various supplier finance programs in place around the world. We partner with large banking institutions and utilize these programs to enhance our liquidity profile. Depending on the program, the liabilities under the program are classified either as accounts payable or current portion of borrowings on our consolidated balance sheets. Our supplier financing programs are more fully described in Note 17 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

During February 2024, we announced the 2024 Transformation Initiative intended to simplify the Company’s organizational structure and enable us to be more proactive, responsive, and agile and to better serve our customers and to lower our cost base and improve financial performance and generate greater cash flows. Total cash expenditures related to the 2024 Transformation Initiative are expected to be approximately $105-115 million. We estimate that, once fully executed, the 2024 Transformation Initiative will yield net savings, inclusive of non-labor savings and costs for backfilling certain roles, of approximately $90 million on an annualized basis. We have realized approximately $20 million and $50 million of the run-rate savings from the 2024 Transformation Initiative in 2024 and 2025, respectively and we expect approximately $20 million to be realized in 2026. See Note 4 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Cash Flows

Years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024

(In millions)

Year Ended December 31, 2025

Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities

Net cash provided by operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2025 was $649 million. Net income before deducting depreciation, amortization and other non-cash items generated cash of $776 million. This was partially offset by net uses of working capital of $127 million, for which the most significant drivers were increases in prepaid expenses and other assets of $129 million and decreases in accounts payable and other accrued liabilities of $77 million and $64 million, respectively. These outflows were driven primarily by timing of payments of Business Incentive Plan assets (“BIPs”) and payments to vendors. These outflows were partially offset by decreases in accounts and notes receivable and inventories of $97 million and $33 million, respectively, driven primarily by the timing of collections and decreased production.

Net Cash Used for Investing Activities

Net cash used for investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2025 was $212 million. The primary uses were $196 million for purchases of property, plant and equipment and $48 million for the acquisitions discussed in Note 3 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, net of cash acquired, partially offset by proceeds of $21 million from the sale of assets and $13 million from settlements and interest proceeds from swaps designated as net investment hedges, which are discussed further in Note 19 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Net Cash Used for Financing Activities

Net cash used for financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2025 was $401 million. The primary uses were prepayments of $210 million of the outstanding principal amounts of the 2029 Dollar Term Loans, purchases of our common stock of $165 million and contractual debt repayments of $20 million.

Other Impacts on Cash

Currency exchange impacts on cash for the year ended December 31, 2025 were favorable by $28 million, which was driven primarily by the fluctuations of the Euro, Chinese Renminbi and Mexican Peso, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar.

Year Ended December 31, 2024

Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities

Net cash provided by operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2024 was $576 million. Net income before deducting depreciation, amortization and other non-cash items generated cash of $699 million. This was partially offset by net uses of working capital of $123 million, for which the most significant drivers were increases in prepaid expenses and other assets of $130 million, and decreases in accounts payable of $49 million. These outflows were driven primarily by the timing of payments of BIPs, timing of purchasing and payments to vendors. These outflows were partially offset by increases in other accrued liabilities of $36 million largely driven by accruals related to the 2024 Transformation Initiative and customer rebates.

Net Cash Used for Investing Activities

Net cash used for investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2024 was $440 million. The primary uses were $301 million for acquisitions net of cash acquired, $140 million for purchases of property, plant and equipment and $22 million for the disbursements to customers for loans which primarily have a repayment period of five years, partially offset by proceeds of $15 million from settlements and interest proceeds from swaps designated as net investment hedges, which are discussed further in Note 19 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Net Cash Used for Financing Activities

Net cash used for financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2024 was $201 million. The primary uses were prepayments of $75 million for the 2029 Dollar Term Loans, purchases of our common stock of $100 million, contractual debt repayments of $17 million, payments of $6 million for fees associated with repricing our 2029 Dollar Term Loans in March 2024 and November 2024 and increasing borrowing capacity and extending the maturity date of our Revolving Credit Facility in June 2024 and payments totaling $6 million for deferred acquisition-related consideration. The two repricings of the 2029 Dollar Term Loans completed in 2024 resulted in an aggregate $148 million of constructive financing cash inflows and corresponding constructive financing cash outflows. The primary financing inflow was from borrowing $185 million against our Revolving Credit Facility, which had been repaid as of December 31, 2024.

Other Impacts on Cash

Currency exchange impacts on cash for the year ended December 31, 2024 were unfavorable by $42 million, which was driven primarily by the fluctuations of the Euro, Mexican Peso and Brazilian Real, in each case compared to the U.S. Dollar.

Financial Condition

We had cash and cash equivalents at December 31, 2025 and 2024 of $657 million and $593 million, respectively. Of these balances, $555 million and $497 million were maintained in non-U.S. jurisdictions as of December 31, 2025 and 2024, respectively. We believe at this time our organizational structure allows us the necessary flexibility to move funds throughout our subsidiaries to meet our operational and working capital needs.

Our business may not generate sufficient cash flow from operations and future borrowings may not be available under our Senior Secured Credit Facilities in an amount sufficient to enable us to pay our indebtedness, or to fund our other liquidity needs, including planned capital expenditures. In such circumstances, we may need to refinance all or a portion of our indebtedness on or before maturity. We may not be able to refinance any of our indebtedness on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If we cannot service our indebtedness, we may have to take actions such as selling assets, selling additional equity or reducing or delaying capital expenditures, strategic acquisitions, investments and alliances. Our primary sources of liquidity are cash on hand, cash flow from operations and available borrowing capacity under our Senior Secured Credit Facilities. Based on our forecasts, we believe that cash flow from operations, available cash on hand and available borrowing capacity under our Senior Secured Credit Facilities and other existing lines of credit will be adequate to service debt, fund our cost saving initiatives, meet liquidity needs and fund necessary capital expenditures for the next twelve months.

Our ability to make scheduled or pre-payments of principal or interest on, or to refinance, our indebtedness or to fund working capital requirements, capital expenditures and other current obligations will depend on our ability to generate cash from operations and is subject to restrictions in the Merger Agreement. Such cash generation is subject to general economic, financial, competitive, legislative, regulatory and other factors that are beyond our control.

If required, our ability to raise additional financing and our borrowing costs may be impacted by short and long-term debt ratings assigned by independent rating agencies, which are based, in significant part, on our performance as measured by certain credit metrics such as interest coverage and leverage ratios. Our highly leveraged nature may limit our ability to procure additional financing in the future and elevated interest rate environments may increase our interest expense and weaken our financial condition.

Our indebtedness, including the Senior Secured Credit Facilities, Senior Notes and short-term borrowings, is more fully described in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

We believe that we continue to maintain sufficient liquidity to meet our cash requirements, including our debt service obligations as well as our working capital needs. Availability under the Revolving Credit Facility was $770 million and $778 million at December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024, respectively, all of which may be borrowed by us without violating any covenants under the Credit Agreement or the indentures governing the Senior Notes.

During October 2025, we entered into the Seventeenth Amendment to the Credit Agreement (as defined in Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K) to permit the use of borrowings under the Credit Agreement to fund repurchases of our common shares. The Merger Agreement prohibits us from repurchasing shares, whether under the repurchase program or otherwise, without the prior written consent of AkzoNobel.

The following table details our borrowings outstanding, average effective interest rates and the associated interest expense for the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024. Interest expense is inclusive of the amortization of debt issuance costs, debt discounts, and the impact of derivative instruments for the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, respectively:

(In millions)

(1) The computation for Average Effective Interest Rate excludes undrawn revolver fees.

After giving effect to our cross-currency and interest rate hedges, our borrowings denominated in U.S. Dollars as of December 31, 2025 and 2024 were $2,184 million and $2,440 million, respectively, with weighted average interest rates of 5.2% and 5.5%, respectively. After giving effect to our cross-currency and interest rate hedges, borrowings denominated in Euros as of December 31, 2025 and 2024 were $1,041 million and $1,016 million with weighted average interest rates of 4.0% and 4.2%, respectively.

Contractual Obligations

See Note 6 and Note 18 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for disclosure of our material contractual obligations.

Off Balance Sheet Arrangements

See Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for disclosure of our guarantees of certain customers’ obligations to third parties.

Recent Accounting Guidance

See Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a summary of recent accounting guidance.

CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES

Our discussion and analysis of results of operations and financial condition are based upon our consolidated financial statements. These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP unless otherwise noted. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the amounts reported in the financial statements. We base our estimates and judgments on historical experiences and assumptions believed to be reasonable under the circumstances and re-evaluate them on an ongoing basis. Actual results could differ from our estimates under different assumptions or conditions. Our significant accounting policies, which may be affected by our estimates and assumptions, are more fully described in Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

An accounting policy is deemed to be critical if it requires an accounting estimate to be made based on assumptions about matters that are highly uncertain at the time the estimate is made, and if different estimates that reasonably could have been used, or changes in the accounting estimates that are reasonably likely to occur periodically, could materially impact the financial statements. Management believes the following critical accounting policies reflect its most significant estimates and assumptions used in the preparation of the financial statements.

Accounting for Business Combinations

Determining the fair value of assets acquired and liabilities assumed in business combinations requires management’s judgment and often involves the use of significant estimates and assumptions, including assumptions with respect to future cash inflows and outflows, discount rates, royalty rates, customer attrition rates, technology migration rates, asset lives and market multiples, among other items.

The fair values of intangible assets are estimated using an income approach, either the excess earnings method (customer relationships) or the relief from royalty method (technology and trademarks). Under the excess earnings method, an intangible asset’s fair value is equal to the present value of the incremental after-tax cash flows attributable solely to the intangible asset over its remaining useful life. With respect to customer relationships, fair values are calculated using the excess earnings method and customer attrition is a key input used to determine the applicable after-tax cash flows. Under the relief from royalty method, fair value is measured by estimating future revenue associated with the intangible asset over its useful life and applying a royalty rate to the revenue estimate. These intangible assets enable us to secure markets for our products, develop new products to meet evolving business needs and competitively produce our existing products.

The fair values of real properties acquired are based on the consideration of their highest and best use in the market. The fair values of property, plant and equipment, other than real properties, are based on the consideration that unless otherwise identified, they will continue to be used “as is” and as part of the ongoing business. In contemplation of the in-use premise and the nature of the assets, the fair value is developed primarily using a cost approach.

The fair value of noncontrolling interests, when applicable, are estimated by applying an income approach and is based on significant inputs that are not observable in the market. Key assumptions in the valuation of a noncontrolling interest include a discount rate, a terminal value based on a range of long-term sustainable growth rates and adjustments because of the lack of control that market participants would consider when measuring the fair value of the noncontrolling interests.

The fair value of contingent consideration liabilities is estimated by using a probability-weighted expected payment method that considers the timing of expected future cash flows and the probability of whether key elements of the contingent event are completed. The fair value measurements are based on significant inputs that are not observable in the market. Key assumptions in the valuation of contingent consideration liabilities include discount rates, expected terms, volatility rates and operating results as applicable based on the targets identified in the respective acquisition agreements.

See Notes 1 and 3 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Asset Impairments

Factors that could result in future impairment charges or changes in useful lives, among others, include changes in worldwide economic conditions, changes in technology, changes in competitive conditions and customer preferences, and fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. These risk factors are discussed in Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors,” included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets

The Company tests indefinite-lived intangible assets and goodwill for impairment annually by either performing a qualitative evaluation or a quantitative test. The qualitative evaluation is an assessment of factors to determine whether it is more likely than not that the fair values of a reporting unit or indefinite-lived intangible asset is less than its carrying amount. Fair values used under the quantitative impairment assessment are estimated using a combination of discounted projected future earnings or cash flow methods that are based on projections of the amounts and timing of future revenue and cash flows, and multiples of earnings in estimating fair value. In conjunction with our impairment assessments of indefinite-lived intangible assets, we also review the reasonableness of the indefinite useful lives associated with these assets, in which we evaluate whether indicators exist that future cash flows associated with these assets could be realized over a finite period.

In 2025, as a result of the time lapsed since our last quantitative evaluation in 2022, we bypassed the qualitative evaluation and tested for impairment of the goodwill of our reporting units and our indefinite-lived intangible assets by performing a quantitative evaluation. The quantitative analysis concluded that all reporting units and indefinite-lived intangible assets had fair values substantially in excess of their carrying values.

The inputs utilized in a quantitative analysis are classified as Level 3 inputs within the fair value hierarchy as defined in Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) 820, Fair Value Measurement. The process of evaluating the potential impairment of goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets is subjective because it requires the use of estimates and assumptions as to our future cash flows, discount rates commensurate with the risks involved in the assets, future economic and market conditions, as well as other key assumptions. We believe that the amounts recorded in the financial statements related to goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets are based on the best estimates and judgments of the appropriate Axalta management, although actual outcomes could differ from our estimates.

See Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.

Long-Lived Assets

Long-lived assets, which includes property, plant and equipment, and definite-lived intangible assets, such as technology, trademarks, customer relationships and non-compete agreements, are continually assessed for impairment at the asset group level whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying amount of the asset group may not be recoverable. Such impairment assessments involve comparing the carrying amount of the asset group, as defined within ASC 360, Property, Plant and Equipment, as the lowest level for which identifiable cash flows are largely independent of the cash flows of other groups of assets, to the forecasted undiscounted future cash flows generated by that asset group (i.e., a recoverability test). In the event the carrying amount of the asset group exceeds the undiscounted future cash flows generated by that asset group and the carrying amount is not considered recoverable, an impairment exists. An impairment loss is measured as the excess of the asset group’s carrying amount over its fair value.

Stock-Based Compensation

Compensation expense related to restricted stock units is equal to the grant-date fair value of the awards determined by the closing share price on the date of the grant. The related expense is recognized as compensation expense over the service period utilizing the graded vesting attribution method.

Compensation expense related to performance share units, which are determined to have a market condition, is determined at the grant-date of the awards using a valuation methodology (Monte Carlo simulation model) to account for the market conditions linked to these awards and is recognized over the service period utilizing the graded vesting attribution method.

Compensation expense related to performance share units, which are determined to have a performance condition, is determined by the closing share price on the date of the grant and is recognized over the service period utilizing the graded vesting attribution method. The expense is adjusted for shares expected to vest based on performance conditions at each reporting date.

We recognize compensation expense net of forfeitures, which we have elected to record at the time of occurrence. Awards that are modified are evaluated for the type of modification and, if necessary, the fair value is adjusted and expense is recorded over any remaining service period.

See Notes 1 and 8 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further detail on stock-based compensation.

Retirement Benefits

The amounts recognized in the consolidated financial statements related to pension benefits are determined from actuarial valuations. Inherent in these valuations are assumptions including expected return on plan assets, discount rates at which liabilities could have been settled, rate of increase in future compensations levels, and mortality rates. These assumptions are updated annually and are disclosed in Note 7 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In accordance with U.S. GAAP, actual results that differed from the assumptions are accumulated and amortized over future periods and therefore affect expense recognized in future periods.

The estimated impact of either a 100 basis point increase or decrease of the discount rate or the expected return on assets assumption to the net periodic benefit cost for 2026 would be immaterial.

Derivative Instruments

As dictated by ASC 820, Fair Value Measurement, the fair market value recognized in the consolidated financial statements related to derivative instruments is determined by using valuation models whose inputs are derived using market observable inputs, including interest rate yield curves, as well as foreign exchange and commodity spot and forward rates, and reflects the asset or liability position as of the end of each reporting period.

See Notes 1 and 19 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further detail on derivative instruments.

Income taxes

The provision for income taxes was determined using the asset and liability approach of accounting for income taxes. Under this approach, deferred taxes represent the future tax consequences expected to occur when the reported amounts of assets and liabilities are recovered or paid. The provision for income taxes represents income taxes paid or payable for the current year plus the change in deferred taxes during the period. Deferred taxes result from differences between the financial and tax basis of our assets and liabilities and are adjusted for changes in tax rates and tax laws when changes are enacted. Deferred tax assets and liabilities are measured using enacted tax rates applicable in the years in which they are expected to be recovered or settled. The effect on deferred tax assets and liabilities of a change in tax law is recognized in income in the period that includes the enactment date.

We evaluate the recoverability of deferred tax assets on a jurisdictional basis by assessing the adequacy of future expected taxable income from all sources, including the reversal of taxable temporary differences, forecasted core business earnings and available tax planning strategies. Our recorded deferred tax liability balance as of December 31, 2025 is $52 million, which is net of valuation allowances of $337 million. The Company records a valuation allowance if, based upon the weight of the available evidence, it is more likely than not that some or all of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. In instances where we are in a three-year cumulative loss, we assess all positive and negative factors, including any potential aberrational items that may be included within our taxable results. The aberrational items that have impacted our results include merger and acquisition, debt extinguishment, refinancing and certain global restructuring costs. We believe, and have assumed, these types of losses are not indicative of our core earnings for purposes of assessing the appropriateness of a valuation allowance. Assumptions around sources of taxable income inherently rely heavily on estimates. We use our historical experience and our short and long-range business forecasts to provide insight. While the Company believes that its judgments and estimations regarding deferred tax assets are appropriate, significant differences in actual experience may require the Company to adjust its valuation allowance and could materially affect the Company’s future financial results.

We provide for income and foreign withholding taxes, where applicable, on unremitted earnings of all subsidiaries and related companies to the extent that such earnings are not deemed to be permanently invested and cannot be repatriated in a tax-free manner. At December 31, 2025 and 2024, deferred income taxes of approximately $16 million and $14 million, respectively, have been provided on such subsidiary earnings. At December 31, 2025, and 2024, we have not recorded a deferred tax liability related to withholding taxes of approximately $147 million and $95 million, respectively, on unremitted earnings of subsidiaries that are permanently invested.

The breadth of our operations and the global complexity of tax regulations require assessments of uncertainties and judgments in estimating taxes we will ultimately pay. The final taxes paid are dependent upon many factors, including negotiations with taxing authorities in various jurisdictions, outcomes of tax litigation and resolution of disputes arising from federal, state and international tax audits in the normal course of business. Interest and penalties accrued related to unrecognized tax benefits are included in the provision for income taxes. At December 31, 2025 and 2024, the Company had gross unrecognized tax benefits, excluding interest and penalties, for both domestic and foreign operations of $99 million and $107 million, respectively.

See Note 10 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further detail on our accounting for income taxes.

Sales deductions

In our refinish end-market, our product sales are typically supplied through a network of distributors. Control transfers and revenue is recognized when our products are delivered to our distribution customers. Variable consideration in the form of price, less discounts and rebates, is estimated and recorded, as a reduction to net sales, upon the sale of our products based on our ability to make a reasonable estimate of the amounts expected to be received. The estimates of variable consideration involve significant assumptions based on the best estimates of inventory held by distributors, applicable pricing, as well as the use of historical actuals for sales, discounts and rebates, which may result in changes to estimates in the future.

The timing of payments associated with the above arrangements may differ from the timing associated with the satisfaction of our performance obligations. The period between the satisfaction of the performance obligation and the receipt of payment is dependent on terms and conditions specific to the customers. For transactions in which we expect, at contract inception, the period between the transfer of our products or services to our customer and when the customer pays for that good or service to be greater than one year, we adjust the promised amount of consideration for the effects of any significant financing components that materially changes the amount of revenue under the contract.

See Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further detail on our revenue.

Contingencies

Contingencies, by their nature, relate to uncertainties that require management to exercise judgment both in assessing the likelihood that a liability has been incurred as well as in estimating the amount of potential loss. The most important contingencies impacting our financial statements at this time are those related to the operational matter, as described in Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (the “Operational Matter”), environmental remediation, pending or threatened litigation against the Company and the resolution of matters related to open tax years as discussed in Note 10 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Insurance recoveries are recorded when probable to the extent they cover incurred or probable liabilities, while recoveries in excess of incurred or probable liabilities are recorded when collection is realizable.

Costs related to the Operational Matter are accrued when it is probable that a liability has been incurred and the amount can be reasonably estimated. Estimates of probable liabilities for the Operational Matter require assumptions pertaining to costs incurred by our customers to repair the impacted products. Assumptions include the ultimate number of impacted products that are repaired, re-use of damaged materials, labor rates and efficiency of individuals performing the repairs. A 10% decrease in the total number of products repaired would result in an approximately $2 million reduction in the estimated liability.

Environmental remediation costs are accrued when it is probable that a liability has been incurred and the amount can be reasonably estimated. Estimates of environmental reserves require evaluating the nature and extent of contamination, the outcome of discussions with regulatory agencies, available technology, site-specific information, remediation alternatives and, at multi-party sites, other PRPs and the number and financial viability of the other PRPs. We accrue an amount equal to our best estimate of the costs to remediate based upon the available information. The extent of environmental impacts may not be fully known, and the processes and costs of remediation may change as new information is obtained or technology for remediation improves. Adjustments to our estimates are made periodically as additional information is received and as remediation progresses. We do not believe that the amounts historically accrued for environmental remediation costs are material to our financial statements.

We are subject to legal proceedings, claims and potential claims arising out of our business operations. We routinely assess the likelihood of any adverse outcomes in these matters, as well as ranges of probable losses. A determination of the amount of the reserves required, if any, for these contingencies is made after analysis of each known matter. We have an active risk management program consisting of numerous insurance policies secured from many carriers. These policies often provide coverage that is intended to minimize the financial impact, if any, of the legal proceedings. The required reserves may change in the future due to new developments in each matter.

For more information on these matters, see Note 5 and Note 10 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

We are exposed to changes in interest rates and foreign currency exchange rates because we finance certain operations through fixed and variable rate debt instruments and denominate our transactions in a variety of foreign currencies. We are also exposed to changes in the prices of certain commodities that we use in production. Changes in these rates and commodity prices may have an impact on future cash flows and earnings.

We manage these risks through normal operating and financing activities and, when deemed appropriate, through the use of derivative financial instruments. We do not enter into derivative financial instruments for trading or speculative purposes.

By using derivative instruments, we are subject to credit and market risk. The fair market value of the derivative instruments is determined by using valuation models whose inputs are derived using market observable inputs, including interest rate yield curves, as well as foreign exchange and commodity spot and forward rates, and reflects the asset or liability position as of the end of each reporting period. When the fair value of a derivative contract is positive, the counterparty owes us, thus creating a receivable risk for us. We are exposed to counterparty credit risk in the event of non-performance by counterparties to our derivative agreements. We minimize counterparty credit (or repayment) risk by entering into transactions with major financial institutions of investment grade credit rating.

Our exposure to market risk is not hedged in a manner that completely eliminates the effects of changing market conditions on earnings or cash flow.

Interest rate risk

We are subject to interest rate market risk in connection with our borrowings. A one-eighth percent change in the applicable interest rate for borrowings under the Senior Secured Credit Facilities (assuming the Revolving Credit Facility is undrawn) would have an annual impact of approximately $1 million on cash interest expense considering the impact of our hedging positions currently in place.

For further detail on our use of derivative instruments, see Note 19 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Foreign exchange rates risk

We are exposed to foreign currency exchange risk by virtue of the translation of our international operations from local currencies into the U.S. Dollar. The majority of our net sales for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023 were from operations outside the United States. At December 31, 2025 and 2024, the accumulated other comprehensive loss account in the consolidated balance sheets included a cumulative translation loss of $312 million and $517 million, respectively. A hypothetical 10% increase in the value of the U.S. Dollar relative to all foreign currencies would have increased the cumulative translation loss in the current year by $355 million. This sensitivity analysis is inherently limited as it assumes that rates of multiple foreign currencies are moving in the same direction relative to the value of the U.S. Dollar.

Uncertainty in global market conditions has resulted in, and may continue to cause, significant volatility in foreign currency exchange rates which could increase these risks.

In the majority of our jurisdictions, we earn revenue and incur costs in the local currency of such jurisdiction. We earn significant revenues and incur significant costs in foreign currencies including the Euro, Swiss Franc, Mexican Peso, Brazilian Real, Chinese Yuan, Turkish Lira, Argentinian Peso and the British Pound. As a result, movements in exchange rates could cause our revenues and expenses to materially fluctuate, impacting our future profitability and cash flows. Our purchases of raw materials in Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific and future business operations and opportunities, including the continued expansion of our business outside North America, may further increase the risk that cash flows resulting from these activities may be adversely affected by changes in currency exchange rates. If and when appropriate, we intend to manage these risks through foreign currency hedges and/or by utilizing local currency funding of these expansions. We do not intend to hold financial instruments for trading or speculative purposes.

In certain instances, intercompany loans are used to fund our operations and they are denominated in currencies other than the functional currency of the affected subsidiaries. Where intercompany loans are not a component of permanently invested capital of the affected subsidiaries, increases or decreases in the value of the subsidiaries’ functional currency against other currencies will affect our results of operations.

Commodity price risk

While our raw material pricing fluctuates based on underlying feedstocks movements, we are also subject to supply and demand dynamics, or other macro-level factors, and also to changes in our cost of sales caused by movements in underlying commodity prices, such as oil and natural gas, among others, for energy spend and certain purchased raw materials, including monomers, resins and solvents. We try to manage these risks by ensuring we have strategic contracts in place on critical materials along with a balance of pricing mechanisms across categories, competitive sourcing options including low cost country sources, and utilizing our supplier relationship management program. While we attempt to limit the impact of fluctuations in the prices of raw materials by implementing raw material price adjustment mechanisms based on index pricing, such mechanisms may be ineffective and often lag market price changes. In addition, we attempt to mitigate raw material inflation by passing along price increases to our customers.

Treasury policy

Our treasury policy seeks to ensure that adequate financial resources are available for the development of our businesses while managing our currency and interest rate risks. Our policies with respect to the major areas of our treasury activity are set forth above.

Evaluation of disclosure controls and procedures

As required by Rules 13a-15(b) or 15d-15(b) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”), the Company carried out an evaluation, under the supervision and with the participation of management, including its Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, of the effectiveness of the design and operation of the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) or 15d-15(e) under Exchange Act) as of the end of the period covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K. There are inherent limitations to the effectiveness of any system of disclosure controls and procedures. No matter how well designed and operated, disclosure controls and procedures can provide only reasonable, rather than absolute, assurance of achieving the desired control objectives. Based on the foregoing, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures were effective at a reasonable assurance level as of December 31, 2025.

Management’s report on internal control over financial reporting

Management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act).

Management assessed the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting based on the criteria set forth by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission in Internal Control—Integrated Framework (2013). Based on this assessment, management concluded that, as of December 31, 2025, the Company’s internal control over financial reporting was effective.

The effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting has been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, as stated in its report which is included herein.

Changes in internal control over financial reporting

There were no changes in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the quarter ended December 31, 2025 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, the Company’s internal control over financial reporting.