UL Solutions Pricing Spineometer: 3 of 5 Vertebrae

UL Solutions, a global safety science provider of testing, inspection, and certification services, software, and advisory services, had a positive FY 2025. Revenue rose 6.4% to $3.1 billion, and operating profits rose 13% to $522 million over last year.

A review of UL Solutions’ 9 May 2026 earnings call and 2025 annual report provided insight regarding the importance of pricing on performance.

FACTS FROM EARNINGS CALL AND ANNUAL REPORT

Ryan Robinson, CFO of UL Solutions, attributed the revenue growth to improvements in both selling volume and price, and mentioned the importance of pricing, stating “We’re pleased with that organic revenue growth that there was fairly even contribution from both price and volume. We continue to make progress on our pricing initiatives”

Jenny Scanlon, CEO of UL Solutions, spoke briefly regarding the potential positive impact of 2025 tariffs on her business. She stated, “Tariffs or the threat of them may cause customers to redesign their products and/or move product manufacturing to a more favorable location. Should a product design or manufacturing location change, there is often a need for the product to be recertified, which can result in incremental new business for us.”

VALUE-BASED PRICING FRAMEWORK IMPLIED PRICE MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

Of the nearly 15,000 employees at UL Solutions, industry benchmarks suggest that 6 to 30 professionals would be dedicated to managing pricing decisions. UL Solutions has some factors that would increase the value of a larger management capability. Given the factors below, we recommend that the pricing team be positioned in the middle of this industry benchmark, between 12 and 24.

1. UL Solutions has a complex offering. They certify against over 4,000 global standards, have over 650 technical accreditations and 76 commercial software solutions, and are active in 1,200 standards panels and technical committees. A wide variety of offerings increases the demand for market-level price setting.
2. Software is sold as a service. Defining the unit to be priced, the role of Good-Better-Best Versioning and Price Bundling, and the overall price structure requires highly skilled pricing professionals with advanced knowledge of how price structures should fit customer segmentation, customer benefit delivery, cost, and competitive environment.
3. UL Solutions serves over 80,000 customers globally in a fragmented and competitive industry with long-selling cycles. This type of market environment increases the role of negotiations in determining price capture. Ensuring price discipline in price capture between relatively similar offerings sold to relatively similar customers requires strong price management.
4. UL Solutions is a global company operating in 110 countries. Management states a dependence on strong local management. This would likely lead to the need for a globally distributed price management team to connect local market conditions and pricing with the global price management protocols, as price management differences are expected to be large between North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
5. Macroeconomic and geopolitical issues can significantly impact performance. An expert in these areas might be of benefit.

OBSERVED PRICING CAPABILITY

1. The price management team size appears near the low end of expectations.
2. Pricing professional roles range from analyst and manager to head. No vice president of pricing was identified.
3. Responsibilities largely relate to the Value-Based Pricing Framework. Professionals in pricing strategy and price setting, in deal strategy and analysis related to commercial and price variance policy, and in proposal management and sales operations related to pricing execution were identified.
4. The pricing team was largely in the United States with some presence in Europe. No pricing professionals were identified in Asia or in China specifically. However, UL-CCIC, their Chinese operations, are partly owned by a Chinese state-owned enterprise, and few Chinese citizens have current profiles on LinkedIn, my data source.

Given the importance and capabilities of pricing at UL Solutions, as indicated in financial reports, management statements, and our pricing team’s research, we have reached the following conclusion as of July 2026.

UL Solutions Pricing Spineometer: 3 out of 5 Vertebrae. UL Solutions executives clearly have acknowledged the importance of value-based pricing and invested in this function, yet there remains significant opportunity for improvement.

ULS (UL Solutions Inc.) rose from 70 the day prior to their 19 February 2026 earnings release to 84 one week later. FY 2025 revenue of $3.1 billion with a 17% operating margin and a P/E ratio near 54.

For FY 2024, a 1% improvement in price would yield a 5.8% improvement in operating profits and a $1.6 billion (2.7%) improvement in market capitalization, holding all else constant at UL Solutions.