Regulatory News:
Air Liquide (Paris:AI) presents ADVANCE, its new
strategic plan for 2025. It places Sustainable Development at the
heart of its strategy and combines financial and extra-financial
performance. With a strong business model which has proven its
resilience, with its innovation capacity and its technological
knowhow, the Group is particularly well positioned to continue its
growth trajectory while contributing to respond efficiently to
major economic, environmental and societal challenges.
Benoît Potier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
the Air Liquide group, stated : “ In a world transformed by the
covid epidemic, and marked by a geopolitical crisis whose dimension
of humanitarian disaster is overwhelming, we have to act today but
also keep preparing the future. With ADVANCE, financial performance
as well as environmental and societal performances are combined in
our objectives. For Air Liquide, building the future means
delivering strong financial results, as it is a condition to our
durability and our ability to invest for the future ; but it also
means to act as a leader in decarbonization of the industry, to
promote progress through technological innovation and to act for
all. With ADVANCE, Air Liquide is opening a new chapter of its
history by linking inseparably growth and sustainable future
“.
To achieve a comprehensive performance, ADVANCE is structured
around four priorities :
1 - To deliver a strong financial
performance
With ADVANCE, Air Liquide is taking action today while
preparing the future. It is rising up to an ambitious challenge :
maintain its growth momentum while pursuing its CO2 emission
reduction targets and investing in the markets of the
future.
Three objectives define our ambition when it comes to
performance :
- An acceleration in sales growth
reaching a pace of 5 to 6% on average per year1.
- A return on capital employed (ROCE)
of more than >10 % starting from 2023.
- A reduction of our CO2 emissions in
absolute terms starting around 2025.
To achieve this, we will rely on the optimization of our
capital resources and on the improvement of our operating
margin. The latter will improve by more than +160 bps
over 4 years (2022-2025)2, by acting on several levers: a dynamic
pricing policy, regular efficiencies and an active management of
our portfolio of activities.
At the same time, investment decisions will be increased
to a record level, to reach about 16 billion euros over the
2022-2025 period, half of the industrial investments being
dedicated to the energy transition3. On average, the annual amount
of industrial decisions increases by + 45 %4.
2 - To decarbonize the
planet
With ADVANCE, Air Liquide confirms its leadership in the
decarbonization of the industry and in the emergence of a
low-carbon society in which hydrogen plays a decisive part.
The reduction of CO2 emissions is a major challenge for the
large players of the industry and for heavy duty mobility.
This represents a pool of opportunities for Air Liquide. To
address this huge market and to accompany its Large Industry
customers in their path to decarbonization, the Group has a large
portfolio of technological solutions and services. It notably
includes the supply of low-carbon gases, CO2 capture and
management, as well as solutions to transform our customers’
industrial processes. The Group is committed to decarbonizing its
own assets - with the objective to start reducing its CO2 emissions
in absolute terms around 2025. Within the context of its
Sustainable Development objectives, Air Liquide aims to reduce by a
third its emissions by 2035 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050
while supporting its customers in their decarbonization
process.
3 - Technological innovation to open
new markets
With ADVANCE, Air Liquide aims to contribute to the
development of key sectors for the future, where it intends to
reinforce its positions, leveraging on innovation and technology,
two major assets of the Group.
The Group will focus on 5 new markets :
- hydrogen mobility, and notably heavy
duty mobility: a very high potential market, where we have a
leading position and in which low-carbon hydrogen will play a key
role,
- electronics, where the digital
revolution represents a real development opportunity and will
strengthen our leadership position,
- healthcare, in which our value-based
approach, which improves quality of life for the patient at the
best cost for the health system, responds to major societal
issues,
- Industrial Merchant whose growth is
driven by environmental challenges and by new usages, notably
digital.
- and high technologies, including
space, deep cryogenics and the quantum industry.
4 - Acting for all
In the context of ADVANCE, Air Liquide aims to include the
perspective of its direct stakeholders, as well as those of Society
at large.
Concretely, this means :
- fostering employee engagement and
the development of their skills through the implementation of new
ways of working in a safe, inclusive and collaborative
environment,
- reinforcing our customer centric
culture, to better acknowledge, anticipate and support their
needs, and by continuing the profound transformation already
underway to better serve our patients,
- always going further in the quality of the
privileged relationship we nurture with our Shareholders,
with a regular and attractive remuneration that rewards
loyalty.
- acting as a committed corporate citizen
concerned with the general interest, where the Group's
contribution can make a difference, in particular by taking action
in communities, or for example by developing initiatives to promote
access to medical oxygen.
ADVANCE IN FIGURES
PILLAR 1 - A STRONG FINANCIAL
PERFORMANCE
➢ 3 objectives
○ Sales growth of 5 to 6 %
on average per year5.
○ A return on capital employed
(ROCE) of >10 % by 2023 and forward.
○ CO2 emissions reduction in absolute
terms starting around 2025, in line with the Group’s
Sustainable Development objectives.
➢ 2 enablers
○ Capital Efficiency
○ Operating margin improvement by >+
160 pbs over 4 years (2022-2025)6
Investment decisions will be
increased to a record level, to reach 16 billion euros over the
2022-2025 period, half of the industrial investments being
dedicated to the energy transition7.
PILLAR 2 - DECARBONIZING THE
PLANET
➢ Within the context of its Sustainable
Development objectives presented in March 2021, Air Liquide is
committed to reaching CARBON NEUTRALITY BY 2050, with two
key intermediary milestones in 2025 and 2035:
○ to start REDUCING its ABSOLUTE CO2
emissions around 2025
○ to reach a 33% DECREASE of its Scope
1 & 2 CO2 emissions by 20358 compared to 2020
Within this context, the Group also
maintains its existing objective to reduce by -30% its carbon
intensity in kg CO2/€ Ebitda9 in 2025, compared to 2015.
➢ The plan also notably includes an
acceleration in hydrogen development
○ to at least triple its turnover in order
to reach more than 6 billion euros by 2035
○ The Group will reach that goal by
investing approximately 8 billion euros in the low-carbon hydrogen
supply chain by 2035
○ Air Liquide aims at bringing its total
electrolysis capacity to 3 GW by 2030.
PILLAR 3 - FOSTERING PROGRESS THROUGH
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION
➢ 5 new markets : hydrogen mobility,
Electronics, Healthcare, Industry, Space
➢ About 50% of innovation
spending dedicated to the energy transition and to digital
technology
PILLAR 4 - ACTING FOR ALL
➢ 35% of women among our engineers and
professionals by 2025
➢ 100% of our 66,400 employees to benefit
from a common basis of care coverage by 2025
➢ 100% of our employees will have the
opportunity to engage in local initiatives to support communities
by 2025
A world leader in gases, technologies and services for Industry
and Health, Air Liquide is present in 75 countries with
approximately 66,400 employees and serves more than 3.8 million
customers and patients. Oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are essential
small molecules for life, matter and energy. They embody Air
Liquide’s scientific territory and have been at the core of the
company’s activities since its creation in 1902.
Air Liquide’s ambition is to be a leader in its industry,
deliver long term performance and contribute to sustainability -
with a strong commitment to climate change and energy transition at
the heart of its strategy. The company’s customer-centric
transformation strategy aims at profitable, regular and responsible
growth over the long term. It relies on operational excellence,
selective investments, open innovation and a network organization
implemented by the Group worldwide. Through the commitment and
inventiveness of its people, Air Liquide leverages energy and
environment transition, changes in healthcare and digitization, and
delivers greater value to all its stakeholders.
Air Liquide’s revenue amounted to more than 23 billion euros in
2021. Air Liquide is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange
(compartment A) and belongs to the CAC 40, CAC 40 ESG, EURO STOXX
50 and FTSE4Good indexes.
1
Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of
sales on a comparable basis over the 2021-2025 period
2
Sum of annual operating margin
improvements in basis points, excluding energy passthrough
impact
3
Industrial investment decisions above 5
million euros
4
Annual average of industrial investments
over the 2022-2025 period compared to the annual average over
2016-2019
5
Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of
sales on a comparable basis over the 2021-2025 period
6
Sum of annual operating margin
improvements in basis points, excluding energy passthrough
impact
7
Industrial investment decisions above 5
million euros
8
From 2020 Market based emissions of 32.5
million tonnes CO2 eq (Scope 1+2)
9
Compared to 2015 emissions, at 2015
exchange rate and excluding IFRS16 for greenhouse gas emissions
scopes 1 and 2
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