L'Air Liquide Ord (AIQUF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. This is Aude Rodriguez, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much for attending the call today. Francois Jacob and Jérôme Pelton will present the performance of the full year 2025. For the Q&A session, they will be joined by Émilie Morem-Renoir and Adam Peters, both GroupGP, overseeing respectively EMEA and North America. Adam is on the phone with us from the U.S. In the agenda, our next announcement is on April 28th for our first quarter revenue. Let me now send you over to Francois. Thank you, Aude, and good morning to all of you. It is a real pleasure to be with you today for this earnings call. This past year, Eliteed has reached new heights in both operational excellence and financial performance. The inherent strengths of our operating model, coupled with the transformation momentum driven by our teams, has delivered robust performance across all key metrics. This is particularly significant given the ongoing microeconomic and geopolitical headwinds. Let's look at the specifics. Sales grew plus 2% on a comparable basis. This proves our ability to capture growth even in a complex environment. Our focus on operating discipline is delivering clear results. It reflects more and more the visible contribution of the transformation momentum throughout the organization. We achieved a record gas and services OIR margin improvement of 130 base points, excluding energy pathways. At the group level, the 100-base point improvement keeps us firmly on track to meet our 2026 commitment of plus 460 base points in five years. This operational leverage translated directly to the bottom line, with recurring net profit growing by plus 10%, excluding currency impact. Our recurring ROCE continues to rise above 11%. Sustaining this momentum while simultan...