Sherwin-Williams makes and sells paint, coatings, and related supplies to professional painters, builders, factories, and everyday homeowners. It runs three separate businesses: Paint Stores Group, which operates 4,853 company-owned stores across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean; Consumer Brands Group, which manufactures dozens of brand-name paints like Valspar, Krylon, Dutch Boy, and Minwax and sells them through retailers; and Performance Coatings Group, which makes specialty industrial coatings for car manufacturers, furniture makers, packaging companies, and shipbuilders in more than 110 countries. Paint is a consumable product, meaning customers use it up and come back to buy more, which creates a repeating stream of purchases. The stores are the engine: they serve professional painters who buy constantly, not just once. The diagram below traces where the money goes.
Five years of financial data tell a clear story about how this business has moved. Revenue climbed steadily from $19.9 billion in 2021 to $23.6 billion in 2025. That is real growth, but it has slowed sharply. Revenue was essentially flat between 2023 and 2024, both at $23.1 billion, before nudging up to $23.6 billion in 2025. The company itself describes demand as 'softer for longer' and expects that pressure to continue through 2026.
The more encouraging trend is in gross margin, which measures how much money is left after paying to make the product. Gross margin dropped slightly in 2022 to 42.1%, likely as raw material costs spiked. Then it jumped to 46.7% in 2023, 48.5% in 2024, and reached 48.8% in 2025. That is a meaningful improvement. It suggests the company is getting better at managing ingredient costs, or passing price increases to customers, or both. Operating cash followed a similar pattern, recovering from $1.9 billion in 2022 to $3.5 billion in both 2023 and 2025.
The debt picture is harder to ignore. Net debt sat at $9.4 billion in 2021 and has not come down. It stood at $10.7 billion at the end of 2025, after rising to fund the October 2025 acquisition of Suvinil, a Latin American paint brand. Total debt outstanding reached $10.9 billion. The company targets net debt of 2.0 to 2.5 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (a measure called EBITDA, which strips out non-cash items to show raw cash-generating power). At the end of 2025 that ratio sat at 2.4 times, right at the upper edge of its own target range.
The company returned $2.4 billion to shareholders in 2025 through dividends and share repurchases, and raised its quarterly dividend for the 47th consecutive year. That consistency is notable, but it also means cash is flowing out even as debt stays high and revenue growth has slowed.
Several documented threats could put pressure on this trajectory. Raw materials including resins, solvents, and titanium dioxide come from unstable regions such as the Middle East and South America. Wars or supply chain problems could make those inputs expensive or hard to get. The company is also mid-way through a major computer system upgrade. If that project runs into trouble, it could disrupt operations and financial reporting. On top of those operational risks, the company's own filing notes that high interest rates and inflation are suppressing demand in construction and housing, the two sectors that drive the most paint purchases, and that those conditions are expected to continue through 2026.
There is also a regulatory pressure building in the background. New environmental rules in the European Union, California, and other places are forcing changes to products, packaging, and factory operations. If compliance costs rise faster than the company can pass them on to customers, margins could shrink. And then there is the legacy of lead paint litigation. A 2019 settlement cost $305 million. Additional lawsuits in Pennsylvania were still being litigated as of the source data, and environmental pollution claims in New Jersey have also been filed. These are not new risks, but they are unresolved ones.
The store expansion strategy is central to how the company plans to grow. It opened 83 new stores in 2025 and plans to open 80 to 100 more in the United States and Canada in 2026. Each new store adds a physical location that serves professional painters year after year. But the logic only works if those contractors keep painting at a pace that fills the stores. Right now, volume is falling even as prices rise.