WD-40 Company Profile: Revenue, Business Model & Strategy

Fiscal 2025, ended August 31, 2025, brought net sales of $620.0 million, up 5%. Gross margin rose to 55.1% from 53.4%. Net income was $91.0 million, which includes an $11.9 million one-time tax benefit from releasing an uncertain tax position. Momentum picked up in fiscal 2026. In the third quarter, ended May 31, 2026, net sales rose 24% to $195.1 million, gross margin was 56.6% and net income reached $30.2 million. For the first nine months, net sales totalled $511.2 million, against $456.5 million a year earlier. WD-40 Company is a highly iconic American manufacturer of household and industrial chemicals, operating as an incredibly stable, high-margin public company with a valuation typically over $3 billion.

The WD-40 Company is an absolute anomaly in modern capitalism: a publicly traded, highly lucrative corporation that essentially relies entirely on a single chemical formula invented in 1953. Originally designed for the military to prevent rust on nuclear missiles, WD-40 was so incredibly useful that workers kept sneaking it home. Today, WD-40 possesses an absolutely unassailable, cult-like global monopoly; it is found in roughly 80% of all American households. Because the brand equity is so incredibly powerful, WD-40 has immense pricing power, allowing it to generate massive, incredibly stable profit margins. Instead of diversifying into random products, its absolute core strategy is 'geographic expansion' (putting a blue and yellow can in every garage in China and India) and launching highly specialized, premium variants for professional mechanics.