Crown Holdings Inc (CCK)

How it makes money

Crown sells physical units — cans, ends, closures, strapping — under supply contracts with large beverage and industrial customers, so revenue is essentially volume multiplied by price per unit. The economics hinge on metal: in 2025 aluminium and steel alone were 47% and 8% of consolidated cost of products sold excluding depreciation and amortisation, and many contracts pass those raw-material costs through to the customer, which means reported sales rise and fall with metal prices without that movement necessarily touching profit. The filing notes that pass-through provisions can include annual price adjustments tied to a producer price index, which in some years is negative and forces Crown to cut its selling price even if its own costs went up. Growth therefore comes from unit volume and from adding production lines close to customers' filling plants, not from raising prices.

Revenue by segment

A beverage can is a commodity, but shipping empty cans is expensive relative to their value, so plants are built close to the customer's filling lines and each regional market ends up served by a handful of very large producers. Crown's 179 plants in 39 countries, its multi-year aluminium supply contracts and its position with the world's biggest brewers and bottlers give it a cost and proximity advantage that a new entrant would need heavy capital and a committed customer to replicate. The limits are visible in the same filing: Crown itself lists overcapacity and intense competition, substitution by other packaging formats, and the loss or consolidation of a major customer among its risk factors, and its top ten customers are large enough to negotiate hard on price.

Most of the company is tied to packaged drinks, which people keep buying through a downturn: beer and soft drinks are staples, and the filing describes beverage can volumes growing in North America on new products packaged in cans, in Europe on a shift away from other formats, and in Brazil and Mexico on rising per-capita incomes and consumption. That makes the beverage side closer to defensive than cyclical. Two things pull the other way. Transit Packaging, about a sixth of sales, serves metals, construction, agriculture and general industry, whose spending swings with the industrial cycle — it was one of the two segments whose volumes fell in 2025. And the company states that its business is seasonal and that weather can reduce net sales, so a cool summer costs volume regardless of the economy. Reported revenue also moves with pass-through of aluminium and steel costs, which is a price effect rather than a demand one.

Key risks

• Raw material and energy prices, and tariffs — Crown states that profits will decline if aluminium, steel, resin or energy prices rise and it cannot raise its own prices. Aluminium and steel were 47% and 8% of 2025 cost of products sold excluding depreciation and amortisation. The filing describes US tariffs imposed on aluminium, steel and imports during 2025, notes that a February 2026 Supreme Court ruling found many of those tariffs unlawful, and says the scope and practical effect of that decision remain uncertain and could be material.
• Loss of a major customer or further customer consolidation — The company lists the loss of a major customer and customer consolidation as a risk that could reduce net sales and profitability. It notes that consolidation among beverage marketers has already produced a concentrated customer base.
• Overcapacity, competition and substitute packaging — Crown warns that its principal markets may be subject to overcapacity and intense competition, and separately that it faces competition from substitute products — packaging made of paper, plastic, wood, glass and other metals — and from declines in demand for its products, either of which could lower profits and cash flow.
• Indebtedness — The filing states that the company's indebtedness could prevent it from meeting its obligations under its debt agreements. At 31 December 2025 Crown and its subsidiaries had approximately $6 billion of indebtedness excluding unamortised discounts and issuance costs, with term loan maturities of $32 million in 2026 and $1,730 million in 2027, and it flags that part of that debt carries floating rates.
• Asbestos litigation — Crown Cork & Seal Company, a wholly owned subsidiary, is one of many defendants in a large number of US lawsuits alleging bodily injury from asbestos exposure, stemming from a business acquired in 1963 that is alleged to have made asbestos-containing insulation. The company says pending and future asbestos litigation and settlement payments could reduce its cash flow and hurt its financial condition.
• International exposure and currency — The majority of Crown's sales come from outside the United States, which the filing identifies as a source of risk, particularly in emerging markets. It also discloses that a 10% move in the average exchange rates used to translate 2025 income and expense would have reduced net income by roughly $20 million, with the Mexican peso, the euro and the Thai baht the main exposures.
• Seasonality and weather — The company discloses that its business is seasonal and that weather conditions could reduce net sales — beverage can demand concentrates in the warmer months and a poor summer hurts volumes.
• Regulation of food and beverage packaging, and climate rules — Crown flags that demand for its products could be affected by changes in laws and regulations applicable to food and beverages and by shifts in consumer preferences, and separately that climate change and the laws, regulations and market trends responding to it could hurt its business. It also discloses a French Competition Authority decision of December 2023 imposing a €4 million fine over alleged anti-competitive behaviour linked to the removal of bisphenol-A from metal packaging, which it has appealed.

Top customers account for 48% of revenue

The filing states that Crown's top ten global customers represented in aggregate approximately 48% of 2025 consolidated net sales. Two individual customers stand out: one accounted for about 12% of consolidated net sales in 2025 (12% in 2024, 11% in 2023) and another for about 11% (12% in both 2024 and 2023). Both are global beverage companies served across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Named large customers include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Keurig Dr Pepper, Molson Coors, Pepsi-Cola and Refresco, and Crown also supplies independent Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola bottlers. Every reportable segment except Transit Packaging has major customers of this kind, and the company attributes the concentration to consolidation among beverage marketers.