The Short Answer
Newell Brands (NWL) is doubtful under this screen. Its household, writing, baby, kitchen and outdoor brands are broadly permissible, but the latest filing-backed debt/assets ratio is 45.72%, above the examined asset-based financial limits. The product-level business screen remains disclosure-limited rather than being assigned an invented prohibited-revenue percentage. This is a screening judgment, not a fatwa or personalized investment advice.
Current quantitative Sharia screen
Based on 10-Q figures for the period ended 2026-03-31; calculated 2026-07-13.
4,965 / 10,859
201 / 10,859
1,094 / 10,859
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets are 45.72%, above the examined 33.333% financial limit. Cash plus the identified securities proxy is 1.85% and receivables plus cash are 10.07%; interest income is unavailable. The debt failure drives the financial result.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets are 45.72%, above the examined MSCI total-assets limit. Liquidity is 1.85% and receivables plus cash are 10.07%; no separate interest-income numerator is disclosed. This is not an index-membership claim.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets are 45.72%, above the examined Malaysia SAC financial limit. Liquidity is 1.85%; this is a contextual calculation against SAC ratios, not an official classification of a U.S.-listed security.
- Financial
- Not calculated
- Overall
- Fails
A properly licensed historical market-cap series is not stored. The available asset-based calculation already fails on debt/assets, so no unsupported market-cap percentage is substituted.
Business-activity disclosure
Newell Brands reports Home and Commercial Solutions, Learning and Development, and Outdoor and Recreation segments selling household, commercial, writing, baby, kitchen, home-fragrance and outdoor products. The disclosed portfolio is broadly permissible consumer goods, but the filing does not allocate incidental ingredients, fragrance components or other school-specific categories into a prohibited-revenue numerator.
Limitation: The Form 10-Q reports product groupings and consolidated net sales, not a Sharia taxonomy for every product or ingredient. The absence of a disclosed prohibited-revenue amount is an evidence limitation, not proof that every product line has the same ruling across schools.
Purification
The filing reports $84 million of net interest expense but does not separately disclose interest income or a scholar-approved non-compliant-income numerator. No purification percentage is asserted; the debt failure and unresolved product taxonomy should be reviewed with a qualified adviser.
Inputs, assumptions and primary sources
- Inputs use Newell Brands' March 31, 2026 Form 10-Q; amounts are USD millions.
- Debt uses the filing's $4,965 million total debt: $425 million of short-term debt and current maturities plus $4,540 million of long-term debt. Operating lease liabilities and other obligations are excluded rather than silently treated as interest-bearing debt.
- Cash uses $201 million of cash and cash equivalents. The filing does not disclose a separate material portfolio of interest-bearing securities for this screen, so the securities input is zero rather than an inferred amount.
- Receivables use $893 million of accounts receivable, net. Inventories, prepaid assets and other current assets are excluded from the receivables proxy.
- Total quarterly net sales were $1,549 million. The filing reports $84 million of net interest expense but does not separately disclose interest income, so a non-compliant-income percentage is not calculated.
- The filing describes consumer-product segments and brands but does not provide a school-specific prohibited-revenue taxonomy. No unsupported percentage is invented for incidental ingredients, fragrance components or product adjacencies.
This is a reproducible financial screen, not a fatwa. A failed total-assets screen can coexist with a pass under a market-cap methodology. ZakatInvest keeps the qualitative assessment separate so numerical thresholds do not erase material context.
This is a reproducible ZakatInvest calculation from Newell Brands' first-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2026. It separates reported financial inputs from school-dependent qualitative conclusions and does not claim an official third-party index classification.
Current Quantitative Screen (March 31, 2026)
- Debt / assets: 45.72% — $4,965 million of total debt against $10,859 million of total assets
- Cash plus identified interest-bearing securities / assets: 1.85% — $201 million of cash; the filing does not disclose a separate material securities balance used in this proxy
- Receivables + cash / assets: 10.07% — $893 million of accounts receivable plus $201 million of cash
- Quarterly net sales: $1,549 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026
- Net interest expense: $84 million; interest income is not separately disclosed, so no non-compliant-income percentage is asserted
- Market-cap denominator methods: Not calculated because a licensed, reproducible historical market-cap series is not stored
Debt/assets fails the examined FTSE Yasaar, MSCI and Malaysia SAC asset-based financial limits. The liquidity and receivables proxies are below those limits, but they do not offset the debt failure. A missing interest-income numerator is reported as unavailable rather than guessed.
Newell's Business Activity
Newell Brands reports Home and Commercial Solutions, Learning and Development, and Outdoor and Recreation segments. Its brands include Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Paper Mate, Elmer's, Graco, Coleman, Yankee Candle and Oster. The Form 10-Q describes household and commercial goods, writing and learning products, baby products, kitchen and home-fragrance products, and outdoor recreation.
Those categories are broadly permissible consumer goods, and the filing does not disclose a dedicated gambling, alcohol, banking, insurance or adult-publishing segment. That is not the same as proving every ingredient or product variant has one universal ruling: the filing reports product groupings, not a school-specific halal taxonomy. The business screen is therefore marked incomplete rather than supported by an invented percentage.
Why NWL Is Doubtful — The Financial Screen
1. Debt/assets is above the examined limits
The company reported $4.965 billion of total debt against $10.859 billion of assets at March 31, 2026. That 45.72% ratio exceeds the 33%–33.333% debt limits used in the examined asset-based methods. This updates the older market-cap discussion without claiming a current market-cap percentage that has not been calculated from a licensed historical series.
2. Interest expense is material, but interest income is not isolated
Newell reported $84 million of net interest expense in the quarter, compared with $1.549 billion of net sales. The filing does not separately disclose interest income, so ZakatInvest does not turn the net expense line into a fabricated purification rate.
3. Deleveraging and liquidity remain important
Management describes deleveraging, working-capital improvement and productivity actions as continuing priorities. The filing also reports receivables factoring, tariff and macroeconomic exposure, restructuring costs and seasonal cash-flow swings. Those issues can change the ratios at the next filing and are included as review triggers.
4. Product-level questions remain qualitative
Home fragrance, kitchen and other formulations may require ingredient-level review under a particular school or adviser. The filing does not quantify those categories, so the responsible conclusion is a clearly stated evidence limitation rather than a made-up haram-revenue estimate.
How to Read the Result
NWL's current screen has two separate findings: the asset-based financial screen fails because debt/assets is 45.72%, while the broadly permissible consumer-product business screen remains incomplete because the filing does not classify every product and ingredient. The result is doubtful—not an official index label—and can change with debt reduction, refinancing or better product-mix disclosure.
Bottom Line
Newell Brands (NWL) is currently doubtful for Muslim investors under the retained quantitative and qualitative framework. The decisive reported issue is debt/assets above the examined limits; the product portfolio is broadly permissible but not fully classifiable from the filing alone. Investors should consult a qualified Sharia adviser for a school-specific conclusion.
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