AIQUF - L'Air Liquide S.A. (AIQUF) Q1 2024 Sales/Trading Statement Call Transcript
2024-04-24 12:47:08 ET
L'Air Liquide S.A. (AIQUF)
Q1 2024 Sales/ Trading Statement Conference Call
April 24, 2024 05:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Aude Rodriguez - Head, Investor Relations
François Jackow - Chief Executive Officer
Jérôme Pelletan - Chief Financial Officer
Pascal Vinet - Executive Vice President
Marcelo Fioranelli - Group Vice President & Chief Executive Officer, Airgas
Conference Call Participants
Alex Jones - Bank of America
Laurent Favre - BNP Paribas
Georgina Fraser - Goldman Sachs
Jean-Luc Romain - CIC Market Solutions
Geoff Haire - UBS
Andreas Heine - Stifel
Chetan Udeshi - JPMorgan
Jaideep Pandya - On Field Research
Presentation
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Air Liquide Q1 2024 Revenue 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.
Aude Rodriguez
Well thank you. Good morning everyone. This is Aude Rodriguez, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much for attending the call today. François Jackow and Jérôme Pelletan will present the first quarter revenue. For the Q&A session, they will be joined by Pascal Vinet Executive VP overseeing the Europe industries and the Africa Middle East hub, the Industrial Merchant activity and Group Safety. Marcelo Fioranelli Group VP CEO of Airgas is on the phone with us from the U.S.
In the agenda, our next announcement is on July 26 for our half year 2024 results. Let me now hand you over to François.
François Jackow
Thank you, Aude and good morning everyone. It is my pleasure to be with you today to share the highlights of the first quarter of 2024. In a few words, we delivered a strong operational performance, which puts us on the right track to deliver our 2024 guidance and 2025 objectives.
Market demand was globally a mixed bag. As you will see with Jérôme, no strong negatives, but no clear positive catalysts yet, in line with our anticipation. Our sales growth was resilient this quarter at plus 2%, which is a solid number given the context and the high comparison basis with plus 7% in Q1 last year.
The actions we are taking are bearing fruits. IM pricing kept increasing at plus 4% in Q1, coming on top of a plus 13% in Q1 2023 which is a clear strong performance in the context of energy cost sharp decrease and slowdown of inflation. The momentum on efficiencies is very positive with a plus 22% growth compared to Q1 last year. At €112 million, it marks a strong start of the year with a clear contribution to the margin....
L'Air Liquide S.A. (AIQUF) Q1 2024 Sales/Trading Statement Call Transcript