Air Liquide Half-Year Report 2024
François Jackow, Chief Executive Officer of the Air Liquide Group, stated:
“Air Liquide once again delivered a very solid financial performance in the first half of 2024 with a significant increase in its operating margin, supported by the acceleration of structural efficiencies. In a persistently subdued market environment, our Group recorded growth in sales on a comparable basis, reflecting the solidity of our business model. We are successfully continuing the rollout of our ADVANCE strategic plan, for which we raised the margin ambition at the beginning of the year. At a time when our Group has never had so many opportunities related to the energy transition and the growth of digital and artificial intelligence, we are also preparing for the future, simplifying our organization to improve our performance and developing major projects that will strengthen our long-term growth momentum.”
Highlights
- Corporate
- Governance changes within the Executive Committee
- Adam Peters, Chief Executive Officer of Air Liquide in North America, appointed member of the Group Executive Committee.
- As part of the simplification of the Group organization to meet growing needs of the market and increase its performance, an adjusted governance was announced with changes effective September 1, 2024.
- The divestiture of Air Liquide’s activities in 12 countries in Africa was finalized on July 22, 2024, in line with the agreement announced in March 2024, illustrating the Group’s strategy of regular review of its business portfolio.
- Industry and Decarbonization
- Air Liquide was selected for investment of up to 850 million US dollars in the largest low-carbon oxygen production in the Americas, as part of a long-term agreement with ExxonMobil for its low-carbon hydrogen project in Baytown, Texas.
- Support from the European Union for D’Artagnan through a grant of more than 160 million euros to enable Air Liquide and Dunkerque LNG to decarbonize the Dunkirk basin through a CO2 infrastructure project.
- Air Liquide’s innovative CO2 liquefaction technology, Cryocap™ LQ, was selected by Stockholm Exergi, an energy supplier in Sweden, to contribute to its bioenergy project.
- As part of the renewal of a long-term agreement with Dow, Air Liquide will invest nearly 40 million euros to increase the efficiency and reduce the CO2 emissions of its industrial gas production site in Stade, Germany.
- Electronics
- In the framework of a long-term contract, Air Liquide will invest more than 250 million US dollars to build a production unit in Idaho in the United States, which will supply Micron Technology, Inc with high purity industrial gases for the manufacture of memory chips, driven by the growth of Artificial Intelligence.
- Investment of more than 50 million euros to build an innovative nitrogen production unit in Singapore while transforming existing facilities in the United States to drive greater energy efficiency in the supply of ultra-pure gases to GlobalFoundries.