L'Air Liquide Ord

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ERLI-KIT 2021 results conference call. All participants are currently in listen mode only until we conduct a question and answer session and instructions will be given at that time. I will now hand over to the ERLI-KIT team. Please begin your meeting and I will be standing by.

Good morning, everyone. This is Aude Rodrigues, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much to be with us today. Benoit Pottier and Jérôme Pelleton will present the full year 2021 performance. For the Q&A session, they will be joined by François Jacob, Executive VP, supervising Europe, Africa, Middle East, and healthcare hubs, and on the phone from Houston, Mike Graf, Executive VP, supervising Americas and Asian hubs, and the electronics business line. In the agenda, our next events are on March 22nd, our capital market day, and on April 27th, our first quarter revenue announcement. Let me now hand you over to Benoit.

Thank you, Aude, and good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for attending this call. I'll start immediately with page three of our presentation. As you can see, 2021 has been a year of strong profitable growth in a record inflationary environment, especially in the second half of the year. In terms of performance, we ticked all boxes in 2021, being able to deliver on growth, efficiency, pricing, and signing. We will come back on each item. As we previously communicated to all of you over 2021, it has also been a year of key achievements in energy transition. I'll come back to that later. And importantly, it's another year of very active business development with high level of signing and strong backlog, which positions us very well for future growth. On page four, starting with performance on the left, we recall the main characteristics of the environment in 2021. We faced an unprecedented spike in energy prices in second half of the year with, for example, in Europe, natural gas price being multiplied by five between the 1st of July and the peak in December. Inflation has been firming up as well in all regions and COVID-19 pandemic has remained present in the background in all countries, lingering local lockdowns, disturbing operations and the overall business environment. In such a context, we've managed to deliver strong results across all performance criteria. After resilient sales in 2020, they increased by plus 14% and plus 8% on a comparable basis in 2021, and were plus 6% above 2019. Despite the inflationary context, the operating income recurring margin improved again by 70 basis points, excluding energy pass-through impact, with a strong leverage on net profit growing at plus 13% on a recurring basis excluding foreign exchange. Investment decisions have been high again, about 3 billion euros for the fourth consecutive year, notably thanks to a strong cash flow at 24% on sales. And Jérôme will come back later on the details of the performance. On slide five, we highlight important key achievements in 2021, which position us well for the future. First, of course, the strong involvement of the team to supply medical oxygen to COVID-19 patients. Liquid medical oxygen volumes increased by plus 50% in 2021 compared to 2019. Second is the announcement in March of ambitious sustainability objectives, first of its kind in our industry, including carbon neutrality by 2050 with key milestones, one of them being to reduce by one-third our CO2 emissions in absolute value by 2035. We also announced social and societal objectives on which Jérôme will come back at the end of the presentation. The takeover of the 16 ASUs of Sassol at its second site in South Africa in June is another key achievement of the year. This takeover is combined with a joint commitment with the customer to reduce the CO2 emissions of these assets by 30 to 40% within the next 10 years, and it is progressing very well. Innovation has been supporting business development, especially focusing on energy transition, by adapting our ASU to the use of renewable energy, for example, or working on new technologies to produce low-carbon hydrogen. This has been possible thanks to the outstanding commitment of the teams worldwide facing the challenges of COVID-19 and spike in energy prices. If we now turn to page six, and focus on energy transition in particular. We went through major steps and took major business positions in 2021. You have on the slide many examples of either signed projects or MOUs or partnerships on this slide, and I won't come back to each of them. But as you know, Europe clearly is leading the way, especially for industrial projects, and this is the region where we have been able to achieve the most. This is the upper part of the slide. The U.S. are quickly catching up, but they are still not there on the map, and we are winning many projects in hydrogen mobility in Asia. This is the yellow color on the slide. We've been awarded fundings among numerous projects, and these fundings will contribute to the development of these ambitious projects to reduce our carbon footprint as well as the one of our customers. All these achievements demonstrate that Air Liquide is taking key positions, and this is essential for climate, and this is also key to prepare for future growth. We are engaging with key players, you have all the names on the slides, and partnering with market leaders. We will be pleased to explain in more detail all these opportunities during our next CMD on March 22nd. On slide seven, we propose for 2022 a dividend per share of 2.9 euros, representing an increase of 5.5% in line with the recurring net profit growth, which would lead to a payout ratio above 50%, as you can see on the slide, and plus compounded annual grace rate of the dividend over 20 years. I think the number, what is it? 7.7. Okay, thank you. In addition to that, the Board of Directors has decided to consider a new free share allocation for June 2022, all of which demonstrating our steadfast commitment to our shareholders. And I'll let Jérôme explain the 2021 performance. Jérôme?