Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Another customer could be somebody that you bring the ammonia to a port, you crack it and then you put it in a pipeline and that goes into a chemical plant or some other kind of a plant, and they use all of that, then you don’t have to liquefy, you don’t have to build the infrastructure for trucks and so on. So because of that infrastructure is very much dependent on the exact kind of customers. Right now, our best estimate is that with the $2 billion, we will be able to build an office infrastructure to use the capacity of new. But that could be significantly less or it could be more depending on exact infrastructure. But if it is more than that means that the infrastructure needed for the trucking is obviously more expensive, which means that the price of hydrogen at the fund is a lot higher than the price of selling if we didn’t have to be qualified.

So it will all adjust for itself. Is that okay?

Mike Sison: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: We will take our next question from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

Steven Haynes: Hi. This is Steve Haynes on for Vincent. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask a quick one on the other cost line and your EPS bridge, it was about $0.11 of headwind in the quarter. How should we kind of be thinking about that going forward? Thank you.

Seifi Ghasemi: Well, the other costs, I’d like to have Melissa comment on that, Melissa?

Melissa Schaeffer: Yes, absolutely. So the other cost line, we had a number of components this quarter play into there. We had a sizable maintenance, both in the Americas as well as north India joint venture or India segment. So that added additional costs this quarter. We should see that go down in the next quarter. Fixed cost inflation, however, is a driver and at 11%, and that will be consistent throughout this fiscal year.

Steven Haynes: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. We will take our next question from Josh Spector with UBS.

Josh Spector: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the near-term, when I look at your next quarter guidance, and close based on your math, maybe to add $0.12 or so sequentially. I was thinking there’s maybe some merchant benefit as energy prices come down, maybe those volumes down a little bit, but December quarter wasn’t super strong from a demand perspective. So I guess why wouldn’t earnings be up sequentially given some of the tailwinds? What am I missing?

Seifi Ghasemi: I don’t think you’re missing anything. Your logic is very correct. The only thing is that when we make guidance, we have to kind of be cautious to make sure that we deliver it. The part that we are very concerned about, and we don’t have any visibility is what is going to happen in the Chinese and European economy. I don’t know how the Chinese economy is going to come out of the New Year holiday. And we don’t have much visibility currency and how energy prices are going to develop in Europe. That is why we are a little bit cautious, and you are very correct to kind of say, maybe you’re being conservative, maybe you are, but we just wanted to make sure that we don’t get ahead of ourselves.

Josh Spector: , appreciate that.

Josh Spector: Sure, absolutely. Thank you.

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