L'Air Liquide Ord

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Air Liquide first half 2026 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 Air Liquide team. Please begin your meeting and I will be standing by.

Good morning everyone, this is Aude Rodriguez, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much for attending the call today. Francois Jackow and Jérôme Pelletan will present the first half 2026 performance. For the Q&A session, we will be joined by Emilie Moren-Venoir and Adam Peters, both VP overseeing respectively ENEA and North America. Adam is on the phone with us from the U.S. For our next event, We look forward to welcoming you to our Digital Capital Markets Day on October 6th. Let me now hand you over to Francois.

Thank you, Aude, and good morning, everyone. It is my pleasure to share Air Liquide's operational highlights for the first half of 2026. Again, it demonstrates its resilience. delivering sustained growth and strong financial performance. Crucially, while driving robust execution today, we continue to secure our long-term growth trajectory through a record volume of new project signings. Let's start with slide three. Our first half results clearly reaffirm the structural strengths of our business model. Comparable sales growth increased to 3.5% in the second quarter, landing above expectations and representing a pickup compared to the 1.9% in the first quarter. This positive momentum was primarily driven by strong underlying performance across both booming electronics and improving industrial merchants. Overall, sales growth in the second quarter reached 5.2%, excluding effects and energy, bolstered by the successful and speedy integration of DIG Airgas in January. This strong top-line performance validates our proven ability to drive growth both organically and through highly disciplined acquisitions in core geographies. At plus 110 basis points, margin progression is well on track, with all levers of our transformation program contributing. Recurring net profit reached double-digit growth of 10%. Cash flow remains strong, up plus 8%, both excluding currency impact. Our recurring ROCE stands at plus 11% in spite of increased investments, which demonstrates our disciplined capital allocation and improved performance. Our strong cash flow and balance sheet give us the firepower to continue to invest in the long term. Indeed, the first half of 2026 is marked by record high signings, driven by an exceptional momentum in electronics and several major projects in large industries. This drives our backlog of signed projects under execution to another record of €6 billion up versus €5.5 billion in Q1 26. Combined with our active M&A strategy, this directly secures our future growth. Our ESG KPIs remain firmly on track with a few noticeable progresses this semester. One is a startup of two renewable electricity sourcing contracts in Segunda in South Africa. As of now, close to 50% of these contracted sourcing has already started up, aligned with the objective to reduce the group CO2 emissions by more than 30% in one of the largest industrial gases production sites in the world by 2031. So, in summary, In the first half of 2026, despite the macroeconomic conditions, we have not only successfully delivered simultaneously on growth and profitability, but also prepared the next phase of growth. This is truly the inherent strength of Air Liquide.