AIQUF - L'Air Liquide S.A. (AIQUF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-20 16:54:06 ET
L’Air Liquide S.A. (AIQUF)
Q4 2023 Results Conference Call
February 20, 2024 04:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Aude Rodriguez - Head of Investor Relations
François Jackow - Chief Executive Officer
Jérôme Pelletan - Chief Financial Officer
Pascal Vinet - EVP
Mike Graff - EVP
Conference Call Participants
Gunther Zechmann - Bernstein Autonomous
Alex Jones - Bank of America
Martin Roediger - Kepler Cheuvreux
Chetan Udeshi - JPMorgan
Peter Clark - Societe Generale
Laurent Favre - BNP
Geoff Haire - UBS
Presentation
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Air Liquide 2023 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Aude Rodriguez. Please begin your meeting, and I will be standing by.
Aude Rodriguez
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 performance of full year 2023. For the Q&A session, they will be joined by Mike Graff and Pascal Vinet, both Executive VP, overseas mainly respectively, Americas and Europe and Africa, Middle East.
In the agenda, our next announcement is on April 24 for our first quarter revenue. Let me now hand you over to Francois.
François Jackow
Thank you, Aude, and good morning, everyone. It is my great pleasure to be with you today to share the highlights of 2023, which was another year of strong performance for Air Liquide. Let's start first with the financial highlights of our performance on Slide 3. Building on the strengths of our model, all our performance KPIs are again very well oriented, especially given the macroeconomic and geopolitical context. On the top line, sales grew 4% on a comparable basis. OIR margin improved by 80 basis points, excluding energy pass-through, which is a remarkable performance in the current environment. This is now 150 basis points in the first two years of advance, almost 160 basis points set as the ambition for the full 4-year plan.
We also achieved plus 13% of recurring net profit growth at constant exchange rates, demonstrating a strong leverage on sales. This is also reflected in the cash flow, growing plus 13% at constant exchange rate. And last, but not least, the recurring ROCE improved again to reach 10.6%, fully aligned with the advanced objective of ROCE above 10%.
As you can see, we are steadfast in our commitment to deliver profitable growth regardless of the macroeconomic conditions. This is a strength of Air Liquide. Our efforts to deliver a significant margin improvement in 2023 are bearing fruit. Slide 4 highlights the reliance on two key operational levers for this achievement last year.
First, IM pricing, which increased again significantly at 8% in 2023, coming on top of the plus 15% delivered in 2022. This active pricing management is continuing and will continue in all regions in 2024....
L'Air Liquide S.A. (AIQUF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript