L'Air Liquide Ord

Good morning, everyone. This is Aude Rodriguez, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much for attending the call today. Francois Jacob and Jérôme Pelton will present the performance of the full year 2025. For the Q&A session, they will be joined by Émilie Morem-Renoir and Adam Peters, both GroupGP, overseeing respectively EMEA and North America. Adam is on the phone with us from the U.S. In the agenda, our next announcement is on April 28th for our first quarter revenue.

Let me now send you over to Francois. Thank you, Aude, and good morning to all of you.

It is a real pleasure to be with you today for this earnings call. This past year, Eliteed has reached new heights in both operational excellence and financial performance. The inherent strengths of our operating model, coupled with the transformation momentum driven by our teams, has delivered robust performance across all key metrics. This is particularly significant given the ongoing microeconomic and geopolitical headwinds. Let's look at the specifics. Sales grew plus 2% on a comparable basis. This proves our ability to capture growth even in a complex environment. Our focus on operating discipline is delivering clear results. It reflects more and more the visible contribution of the transformation momentum throughout the organization. We achieved a record gas and services OIR margin improvement of 130 base points, excluding energy pathways. At the group level, the 100-base point improvement keeps us firmly on track to meet our 2026 commitment of plus 460 base points in five years. This operational leverage translated directly to the bottom line, with recurring net profit growing by plus 10%, excluding currency impact. Our recurring ROCE continues to rise above 11%. Sustaining this momentum while simultaneously scaling up our investments is a testament to our disciplined capital allocation and, of course, improved performance. Our ability to generate cash has again improved. Cash flow is growing at plus 8%, excluding currency impacts, providing us with significant strategic flexibility. Our performance is equally strong on extra financial fronts. We achieved record safety levels. We also further decoupled growth from carbon with CO2 emissions now 13% below our 2020 baseline and the carbon intensity being reduced by 46% in 10 years. Finally, our investment backlog remained at a record high of nearly 5 billion euros in spite of the exit of the ExxonMobil Payton project. This is more than 15% above last year. These are committed, signed projects already under construction, effectively locking in our future growth. Our investment portfolio of 12-month opportunities is also at a record high level of 4.6 billion euros. As these results demonstrate, Air Liquide is steadfast not only in delivering profitable growth regardless of the macroeconomic conditions, but also preparing for the next phase of growth. This is the structural strength of the group. 2025 marks the end of the four-year strategic advance plan. You see on slide four that we have successfully delivered on all three objectives of our advanced strategy plan. Growth, first, with over 6% average annual sales growth on a comparable basis versus 2021, we have exceeded our midterm ambitions. Returns, our recurring ROCE has remained consistently above 10% since 2022, hitting this target a full year ahead of schedule. Decarbonization, finally, with three consecutive years of absolute CO2 emissions reduction, our emissions are now 13% below 2020 level. We have officially reached the infection point we projected for 2025. In summary, The advanced plan has met its objective across all horizons. In the current, versatile environment, this track record demonstrates our ability to deliver consistent results. It is the foundation upon which we build our next chapter with confidence.