Linde plc (NASDAQ:LIN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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So, that’s a good ratio I think to just kind of if you were looking for a ratio that’s the ration I would give to you as a pointing in the direction of saying that’s where we think the retrofits will be, that’s where the conversions are likely to happen and the new projects will obviously come alongside that, the decarbonization happening where we are helping our customers decarbonize but also new markets opening up such as blue ammonia et cetera.

Steven Byrne: Thank you.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Mike Sison with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Mike Sison : Hey, cheers. Nice quarter and outlook. I am just curious when you mentioned that at the midpoint looking for a much economic growth in 2024. I get to look at your global end-market trends you have sort of for greens and yellow, so, you are sort of runrating above that midpoint and I mean, are you seeing more growth now than maybe the midpoint in terms of economic growth?

Matt White : Hey, Mike, this is Matt. So a couple things, I think, first referencing that end-markets to your point. As you know, that includes the backlog price and base volume. So, all three of those will influence the growth. As Sanjiv mentioned earlier, the backlog we’d expect 1% to 2% based on the cadence and that we feel very confident on given our contractual terms and conditions. Pricing, I’ll hold off separately, right, that we say is based on globally weighted inflation and so whatever your assumptions are there we should be able to deliver on it. And the remaining being base volumes and that base volume is where we are taking basically an overall type assumption in this guidance, the way we are structuring it.

Very similar to how we’ve been approaching the last nearly 4 to 5 years. So we will see how it plays out. but right now that is the sort of underpinnings of what this zero growth assumption means and it’s really around the base volumes as they correlate to an industrial production type metric.

Mike Sison : Got it. Thank you.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Good morning. It’s [Indiscernible] on for Laurence. Thank you for taking my question. I am just wondering, you mentioned that China is relatively small part of your business but you didn’t mention opportunities in India. I was wondering if you could just talk with India has more of a growth opportunity than what people usually look at which is obviously China?

Sanjiv Lamba: Well, India is an important market for us. We’ve been in the market for about 90 years. So well positioned. We kind of lead with strong network density all of that provides us in many ways a unique position to be able to kind of win more than our fair share of the opportunity that we see. India will be an important opportunity for our industry and for Linde in particular. But again, the scale at which China is in terms of the deployed assets on the ground, the capacities that have been built up there. It’s a market that obviously will continue to be important, as well. So, we will be looking to winning more than our fair share in India which we’ve been doing in ’23 as well. And we look forward to doing that going forward. But we also continue to kind of track what happened in China and make sure that we are getting our fair share as well.

Unidentified Analyst: Thank you very much.

Operator: We will now take our final question from John Roberts with Mizuho. Your line is open.

John Roberts: Thank you. Slide 16 shows food and beverage up 9% year-over-year. Almost all processed food companies are showing down volume. But could you parse the volume and price in the food and beverage market? And in CO2 seeing any price impact from the 45Q?

Sanjiv Lamba: The CO2 market really is what drives that food and beverage market, in particular I think the food and beverage as you can imagine has broken up into food freezing and into beverage carbonization. The CO2 pricing obviously helping and supporting that. There has been a lot of innovation done around food freezing. Linde leads the end-market in there. We won more than our fair share and again, some of that benefit comes through in the growth that we see on that line and in the sales line that you see over there for food and beverage. So, I’d say to you that, again strong performance across food. My expectation is it is a secular growth trend we call it a resilient market for a reason. My expectation remains and we will see continued strong growth in that space innovation around application development and use of gases for food freezing in particular I think are continuing to be a very important part of that growth story.

But beverage carbonization and CO2 pricing obviously helping as well. I think that we don’t see at the moment any linkage between 45Q and CO2 pricing. Longer term, you could add pieces around that but for now, there is no apparent linkage.

Operator: And I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. Juan Pelaez for any additional or closing remarks.

Juan Pelaez: Thanks guys for all your questions. Thank you everyone, for participating in today’s call. Have a great rest of day. Stay safe.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today’s conference call. We thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.

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