Good morning and welcome to Air Products Second Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded at the request of Air Products. Please note that this presentation and the comments made on behalf of Air Products are subject to copyright by Air Products and all rights are reserved. Beginning today's call is Megan Britt. Hello and welcome to the Second

Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Conference Call for Air Products. Our prepared remarks today will be led by Eduardo Manessis, Chief Executive Officer, and Melissa Schaefer, Chief Financial Officer. We have prepared presentation slides to supplement our remarks during the call, which are posted on the Investor Relations section of the Aero Products website. During this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are our expectations about the future. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could materially differ from these statements due to these risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those discussed on this call and in the forward-looking statements and risk factors sections of our reports filed with or furnished to the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Please note in today's presentation, we will refer to various financial measures, including earnings per share, capital expenditures, operating income, operating margin, the effective tax rate, ROC, and net debt to EBITDA on a total company basis. Unless we specifically state otherwise, statements regarding these measures refer to our adjusted non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to our most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found on our investor website in the relevant earnings release section. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Eduardo.

Thank you, Megan. Hello, and thank you for joining our call today. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to express my appreciation to the entire Air Products team, especially the more than 3,000 employees of our direct operations and minority-owned joint ventures in the Middle East. During this period of uncertainty, our people have continued to show dedication, staying focused on safety, reliably serving our customers, and supporting critical projects and operations. Now please turn to slide three. Earlier today, we reported results for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. We delivered a broad-based operating income improvement across our reporting segments. Earnings per share of $3.20 increased 19% compared to the prior year quarter on improved volumes, productivity, and currency. We also experienced reduced headwinds from Eden with volumes better than expected to airspace. Our operating margin of 23.7% was also up compared to the prior year quarter, reflecting strong underlying volumes, particularly in our on-site business, as well as the continued benefit of cost productivity. Return on capital of 11.4% was in line with prior year and improved sequentially. Overall, we were able to improve our business performance during the first half of the fiscal year and effectively manage the market dynamics that have emerged due to the recent Middle East conflict. Moving to slide four, we remain focused on three key priorities for 2026 consistent with our strategic roadmap. On unlocking earnings growth, we are raising our full-year earnings guidance, which now implies an improvement of 8% to 10% at the midpoint of the full fiscal year. We expect EPS growth to be achieved primarily through our continued focus on pricing actions, productivity, and new asset contributions. Additionally, we anticipate a more favorable operating environment in the second half for improved volumes in several key end markets, including refining, electronics, and airspace. On our second priority, we continue to make progress in optimizing our large project portfolio. On NEON, negotiations on a marketing and distribution agreement with FIARA are progressing in line with expectations. The project continues to make progress and is ready to produce renewable power that will be used in the commissioning of the hydrogen and ammonia plants. Notably, activities at NEON have not been impacted by recent events in the Middle East. We continue to monitor the situation closely and prioritize safety. On the Louisiana project, we have set a high bar for moving forward where we require a reliable capital cost estimate and construction agreements that meet our project risk-adjusted return requirements. We are currently reviewing construction deeds from EPC firms and remain committed to reaching a goal-no-goal decision in conjunction with our partners by the middle of this calendar year. Finally, on our third priority, maintaining capital discipline, we are staying focused on our capital allocation, investing in growth projects, and returning cash through shareholders. As we have previously indicated, we expect to reduce our capital expenditure by approximately $1 billion in fiscal 2026 and remain on track to achieve that objective. We are focused on investing in our backlog of traditional industrial gas projects and have strengthened our project pipeline in electronics and aerospace. In the electronics area, we are currently executing approximately $1 billion in ASU and hydrogen projects in Asia for several multi-phase projects serving semiconductor and memory customers. We expect to add another $1.5 to $2 billion to the backlog in the next six months, including the project we announced yesterday to build, own, and operate multiple production facilities and bulk specialty gas supply systems for a new advanced fab with Samsung in South Korea. We also have announced our intent to build, own, and operate a new ASU in Florida to further enhance our support for our space launch customers. Lastly, we remain committed to disciplined capital allocations that ensures that we are well positioned to continue our strong track record of returning cash to our shareholders in the first half of fiscal 2026 we have returned 800 million dollars to shareholders in the form of dividends please turn to slide five as has been widely reported recent events in the middle east have resulted in curtailment of hidden supply from Heading is an important product line for Air Products, with the largest end market sales in electronics, aerospace, and medical. Air Products Heading supply chain is very resilient, with multiple sources in the U.S., in addition to our long-term partnerships in Algeria with Sonatrack and in Qatar with Qatar Energy. Two, a dedicated heating storage cabin in Texas, which has been operational for nearly five years. The cabin contains a significant volume, allowing us to provide high supply reliability to our customers when one of our sources is unable to produce as we are now experiencing. And three, a large helium-isocontainer fleet produced by our subsidiary Gardner Cryogenics, which provides flexibility and responsiveness in managing supply flows during periods of uncertainty. Since the beginning of the conflict, we have activated our contingency plans, drawing products from the cavern, and positioning our container fleet to bypass conflict-affected areas. We look forward to our partners in Qatar resuming normal production as soon as possible, but until that can be achieved, we are well positioned to enable supply chain resilience through this current supply disruption. We are working very closely with our customers to meet our commitments to them and capture long-term volume growth in critical end markets. Moving to slide 6, before Melissa shares detailed quarterly performance, I wanted to offer some additional context on end market conditions. Given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we are closely engaged with key customers in each end market. We are also working strategically beyond current events to fully participate in compelling end-market growth. Entering the fiscal year, we have a relatively conservative view, given muted outlooks for industrial production and manufacturing growth. Now, with our performance through the first half, we are more confident about a sustained level of industrial activity and the potential for continued volume growth in some areas. Though the ongoing conflict in the Middle East introduces some uncertainty, we expect a combination of favorable dynamics in core end markets and some new wins to support volume improvement. Looking at few highlights, we see strong run rates across our refining customer base, particularly in the U.S. Gulf Coast, where we serve a large number of complex refineries that can process heavy sour crudes and produce high-demand products, such as jet fuel. We expect U.S. refineries continue to run hard, which will support higher on-site volumes. Moving to chemicals, we are closely monitoring supply chain conditions that could impact volumes. In Europe, challenges securing feedstocks and high costs that customers cannot mitigate with pricing could have an impact on run rates. Beyond Europe, volumes are relatively stable. Additionally, we expect to see stronger oxygen demand from our coal gasification customers in China, where increased oil and LNG costs are supporting higher volumes. Electronics and aerospace continue to be bright spots. We have historically had a meaningful percentage of our sales in electronics and are benefiting from increased volumes in this end market due to a new asset on stream this year. The industry is in the midst of a historical super cycle period to satisfy AI demands with record CapEx expenditures projected between now and 2030. This expansion will generate expansion opportunities for industrial gas providers. Currently, we're working closely with our large, long-term electronic customers on heating supply. Already, with the long-term agreements signed during the last six months, we expect our heating volumes to large electronic customers in Asia to more than double between 2026 and 2030. Finally, in aerospace, we continue to see volume improvement in launches, engine testing, and manufacturing. We were very proud to be part of the recent NASA Artemis II mission, where our products supplied liquid hydrogen and liquid helium using our proprietary liquid helium pumps. We see a tremendous opportunity to continue to grow in the space area, and our recently announced Florida ASU investment is expected to increase our participation of both NASA and commercial launches. Now, I'll turn the call over to Melissa to discuss our financial results in greater debt and review our 2026 outlook.

Thank you, Eduardo. Hello, and welcome to those joining our call today. Please move to slide 7 for a high-level summary of our second quarter financial results. Sales were up 9%, while operating income grew 19% on volume, currency, and lower costs, partially offset by price headwind. With respect to volume, we saw growth from onsite in part due to the increased production from our U.S. refinery assets and new assets coming on stream in Asia. We also left a major turnaround in our Europe segment. Merchant volumes were stable, including a modest improvement in helium. On price, the headwind from helium was partially offset by pricing from non-helium merchant products, particularly in the Americas and Europe. The base business once again delivered this quarter, and operating margin expanded over 200 basis points to 23.7%, despite a 50 basis point headwind from higher energy pass-through. We have seen margin expansion in part due to our productivity initiatives. We have recognized approximately $50 million in savings year-to-date from headcount reduction, which is on track with our plan for the year. Earnings per share of $3.20 through 19% from the prior year and exceeded the top end of our guidance range due to stronger on-site volume and better-than-expected helium volume from space launches. Return on capital of 11.4% was in line with prior year and up 40 basis points sequentially on strong-based business performance while we execute our project backlog. Moving now to slide eight. Our second quarter earnings per share of $3.20 increased 51 cents, or 19%, from prior year. We continue to see helium headwinds driven by lower price. In line with our guidance, currency was favorable 3% as the U.S. dollar weakened against our key currencies. The base business remained resilient in an uncertain macroeconomic environment. The growth from our onsite volume, non-Helium pricing, continued progress on our productivity initiatives, and lower depreciation was partially offset by fixed cost inflation and planned maintenance outages in the Americas. In addition to the strong base business performance this quarter, we also saw improved equity affiliate income, primarily in Mexico. Moving now to slide nine, I'll provide an overview of our results by segment. You can find additional details of the quarterly segment results in the appendix. For the second quarter, America's operating income growth of 2% was primarily driven by on-site volume. Merchant volume was also up, including helium supplied for the space launches. Additionally, non-helium merchant price contributed to the results. This improvement was partially offset by prior year income from a one-time customer contract addendum, lower price and helium and higher power costs, and maintenance turnarounds in the quarter. Operating income grew 25% in our Asia segment, primarily due to continued productivity improvements and favorable on-site and helium volumes. We saw a modest contribution from our new assets as they continue to ramp up, which we expect to further contribute in the second half of our fiscal year. Additionally, reduced depreciation from certain gasification assets classified as held for sale also benefited our results. This improvement was partially offset by a headwind from helium pricing. Europe operating income increased 8% due to the favorable onsite volume, including a prior year turnaround, as well as favorable currency and non-Helium price. We saw higher costs in the segment, including depreciation and fixed cost inflation, as well as a Helium volume and pricing headwind. In our Middle East and India segment, operating income improved on lower costs, while equity affiliate income was slightly positive. Lastly, the corporate and other segment results improved due to lower sale of equipment cost headwinds, as well as continued strong productivity. Moving now to slide 10. Our base business continues to generate stable cash flow. As we execute on our project backlog for both energy transition and traditional industrial gas projects, we remain on track to reduce capital spend by more than a billion dollars relative to the prior year. Additionally, to the first half of the fiscal year, we returned $800 million in cash to our shareholders in the form of dividends. As it relates to our leverage, our net debt to EBITDA ratio is 2.2 times. We are committed to bringing the company back to an AA2 rating over the long term. Please turn to slide 11, where we We will review our outlook. With a strong first half and outperformance in the market volume, we are raising our fiscal full year guidance to $13 to $13.25, or 8% to 10% growth from the prior year. However, we remain cautious given uncertainty around the macroeconomic environment, especially in Europe and Asia. In the second half, we expect to see benefits from continued non-Helion pricing actions and progress on our productivity initiatives while new assets ramp up. We still expect Helion to be a headwind to lower price while we look to capture long-term volume commitments. Specific to the third quarter, we expect to deliver earnings per share in the range of $3.25 to $3.35, representing a 5% to 8% growth from the prior year. For capital expenditures, we are maintaining our guidance at approximately $4 billion for the fiscal year. Now we'll open the call up for questions. Operator? Thank you. If you'd like to ask

a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to lie or signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star 1 to ask a question. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll take our first question from John McNulty of BMO Capital Markets.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You know, since the last call, obviously the Middle East conflict has hit a lot of a lot of kind of things that may have changed I guess maybe we can start with one on the project so Neom can you give us an update on the progress there as well as you know at this point given the spike in gray ammonia prices concern about you know industries maybe being beholden to oil can you tell us if the demand environment has has changed all that much for your green ammonia project morning John thank you for the call yeah

Yeah, I would say starting from me on the project, as you know, is on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. So it has not been affected by the conflict at this point. Of course, we're taking a lot of precautions on the safety side. But, you know, we have all the materials in hand. We have the people on site and the project is continuing normally, I would say. And in terms of the progress, we are basically done with the renewable power side. We just energize the substation using the grid power. The next step is to basically connect the solar park and start commissioning using our own renewable power. So it's progressing as expected over there. I would say that in terms of the ammonia price, everyone can see what is happening in the ammonia market. I think prices are getting very close to $1,000 a ton. Of course, that creates some speculation on projects and so forth. But I would say it's too early for us to understand the demand for green ammonia and the impact they're going to have in prices in the long term. Again, we consider that a temporary effect that will go for a few months. But I think in the long term, it's clear that there is some advantage to be disconnected from natural gas from some areas of the planet. So the U.S. supply of natural gas will be a winner on that perspective. And I think, you know, green ammonia produced by clean power in places like South Arabia, we also can benefit from that. But it's a little early to say that.

Got it. Okay. No, fair enough. And then maybe just as a follow-up, I guess we were a little bit surprised, given what's going on in the helium markets, to see that you still expect about a 4% drag on EPS in 2026. um admittedly we get look some of the some of these are contracts that are multi-year and and even the ones that reset last year you know we're we're going to be a drag but i guess we're a little bit surprised to not see some updraft in in contracts that might be getting signed now or on the minimal part that you have that's tied to spot so i guess can you help us to think about what's going on in the helium markets and maybe why that's still pretty much the same drag you

expected it to be at the start of the year yeah i would say that uh you know to to start right the helium market it was structurally long before the war and uh and of course with qatar representing a third of the world's volume of helium uh the market is short now but uh we all expect that we'll return to to the regional state in you know a few weeks a few months after the the crisis is over. So this is a temporary period that we have here. As I described on the prepared remarks, Air Products has a very resilient system that was designed to basically be able to continue to supply our customers. In the case of interruption, one of our sources like we're having today, uh it's designed basically for products volumes not for the entire market so uh we we we may have a little more volume than we had before when we push our cavern but it's it's not that significant and really doesn't allow us to to you know to supply uh the volumes that are not present in the market today so uh of course we are trying to uh sign longer-term agreements that's the objective i i think we we also made the comment that you know this is this didn't start with the the conflict started before that we were trying to sign these long-term agreements uh we we made the point to say that our volumes uh for heating in in asia for electronics were more than double in the next four years. In fact, I expect to be more than that. And so we are focused on that, focused on signing these long-term agreements. We may have a little game here and there on the spot market, but at this point, it would be wrong for us to include that in the forecast, not knowing when the market will come back to normal conditions.

Great. Thanks very much for the caller.

We'll take our next question

from Jeff Zikakis with JP Morgan. Thanks very much. When you think about the Darrow project, you spoke about making a go or no-go decision. Is it possible that that project could be downsized? In other words, does it make sense to make half as much ammonia given that you've already invested in equipment that you may be able to use, and then what that may do is limit the inflationary factors in building a facility. Is that a possibility?

Morning, Jeff. Yeah, we look at all that, Jeff. It's a little more complicated than that. You know, this plant, I would say that it's like three different process units. you have the air separation plants you have the hydrogen generation units and you have the ammonia plants the ammonia trains and uh and uh we do not have exactly you know uh two trains for for each process area you know we we have one of the process areas that we have three trains which makes uh very difficult for us to only execute half of the project so i would say that this would increase the cost significantly because we would need to build a plant larger than the 50% and would make the economics even more challenging than it is to build the entire facility.

Okay. And then secondly, year over year, your average prices were down 1%. end. If we excluded helium, what would your prices have been? Would they have been up

1%, 2% for the company as a whole? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jeff. I'll take that question. So from a non-helium merchant perspective, pricing actually would have been up about 2%. Half of that we would have seen in the Americas and half of that in Europe. Asia and from a non-helium perspective was largely flat.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

We'll go next to John Roberts with Mizuho.

...issue here for the Yara discussions.

Are you and Yara basically on the same page with respect to the risks around CBAM so that it's not a key issue to getting closure on your discussions, or is that a key thing that we need to continue to watch here?

I think I mentioned that before. the cbm is not part of our agreement our agreement is a u.s agreement for hydrogen and nitrogen so it's uh it's more a question for yara but i i think you know we i mentioned that uh in the last question uh the crisis now is making clear to everyone that the big advantage that you have is is to be connected to the u.s natural gas supply and i think this is much bigger than the CBM discussion, but I believe from everything I heard from Yara that they understand what the possibilities are in terms of CBM, and that's not part of our discussions with them.

Okay, and then secondly, do you have any material customers in Asia that are down because of raw material supply constraints, either refineries or chemical plants that are taking down time because they can't get feedstock?

No, not really. Our biggest supply for these sectors are in China, and I would say that China is basically replacing a lot of LNG with, you know, the coal facilities that they have, and in fact we've seen a significant increase in oxygen volumes for this type of plants in China.

Great. Thank you.

We'll go next to David Beglater with Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. Good morning. Eduardo, on Darrow, I mentioned a high bar for that project. So it's a base case still. It does not move forward. And if it does not, do you have projects that you could pivot to in short order

with that capital um that's my first question thank you we we uh um yeah so so maybe i could

take that one absolutely so from from a darrow perspective i think eduardo has said before that it is in fact our base case that we would not move forward but we need to review the economics as we get the bids in from the construction uh parties that we're talking to and then we'll make an economic decision on if we move forward from that. From a capital perspective, you know, we just announced the Samsung project. That is one that we see a significant area of growth in electronics that could quickly replace that capital that we were going to spend on Daro. And we continue to be very bullish on the electronic space over the next couple of years through this hypercycle. So again, we have a base case of Daro of not moving forward at this point in time, but we're reviewing the economics and again we are very bullish on other growth opportunities if darrow does not

move yeah and i just want to make a point here when i say base case that you know we for darrow to move forward we need to reach an agreement so you know until you reach an agreement the base case is that you're not you know you don't have an agreement today but we're working on that and we'll see what the result will be in the next three months but today we do not have an agreement

yet to move that product forward as you know. Very good. And just on the America's margins, they were I think the lowest in three years. You mentioned power costs, turnaround expenses. Would you expect margins to recover nicely in FQ3 versus FQ2 given those headwinds?

Yeah, so when you think about margins in the Americas, one thing you obviously need to consider is the energy cost pass-through, which obviously affects margins, right? So So, we've seen very strong contributions in our HICO assets, which have an impact from an energy cost pass-through. But we do expect once the energy cost to subside, then yes, our margins would continue to improve. We are continuing to see strong productivity there, which obviously will also contribute to a healthy margin moving forward.

Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Duffy Fisher with Goldman Sachs.

Yeah, good morning, guys. Just a question on the coal gasification plants in China. So, one, in the quarter, how much was the benefit from the reduced DNA from moving it out of the segment? And then, two, I think you've talked about those being collectively net break-even on an income basis. Since they're ostensibly coal to oil or synthetic oil at the end of the day, I would imagine they're much more profitable now, and they're probably paying you the regulated percent where I think before you were saying that they were shorting you on paying. So can you just talk about how the economics of those plants have changed within your P&L, and does that continue to get better from here as long as oil stays, you know, above $100?

Yeah, Duffy, thanks for the question. And so, yes, we have put two of our coal gasification assets held for sale in China. The impact to the quarter is a little bit of twofold. So let's say around a one, one and a half percent as far as the cancellation or the stop of the depreciation. And then you're absolutely right. You know, coal to methanol, it has improved from an economic perspective. So, we are collecting on past dues that we did not have in our previous results because we are being prudent and fully reserving those items. And that collection is really about a one to one and a half percent tailwind for us But we are actively pursuing the sale of those assets and we will continue to do so.

Great. And then, Edward, if you could maybe just pontificate a little bit. When do you think, under two scenarios, that your helium pricing stops being negative? One, if there's a fairly quick resolution with Qatar, and two, if this stays semi-permanent, what do you think happens with your helium pricing? Basically, when do we see the inflection that helium stops being a negative on price?

Yeah, we were expecting helium to bottom by the end of this year. We still expect that to be the case. So, you know, you need to remember that it's all a function of what you are comparing with, right? So we started from a very high price level and, you know, we were working on signing these long-term agreements. Our agreements are on average between three and five years, but more recently we have been signing agreements even longer than that as people get more concerned with reliability of supply, right? So, you know, the system that we have with, you know, the cavern that we can bring product to the cavern, store as a gas and then take the gas as liquid and bring to one of our facilities to liquefy. It's very reliable, but it has a cost, right? So you just think about just an inventory. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in heating in our cavern. So this system has a cost. it is much harder to get value for that cost when the market is long. You know, the conversations are much, you know, it's not easy, but it's a little less difficult to get these long-term agreements by now, and that's what we are focusing on. Great. Thank you, guys.

We'll go next to Chris Parkinson with Wolf Research.

Thank you so much. Melissa or Eduardo, just the way your second half guidance kind of just works out, it implies a fairly low single-digit growth rate in terms of EPS for the fourth quarter. Is there something else going on there? Is there something we should be monitoring in terms of turnarounds, hydrogen demand, you already won over helium, baseline merchant pricing, or is that just, hey, we want to see how the year turns out, the fiscal year turns out, just based on the degree of uncertainty out of the Middle East?

Yeah, hi, Chris. Thanks for the question. So, we have raised our guide increase about a 10 percent or 10 cents from the mid, right? And so, if you think about the strong first half that we had, if we build on that, first we look at market volumes, right? We do expect some continued market volume improvement, largely in the Americas, like we saw in the first half. We also have new asset contributions that we look to continue to increase, both in the Asia and Americas, that we'll see some contributions continue to increase in the second half. However, we do remain uncertain about the macroeconomic environment, especially in Asia and Europe. Additionally, we're closely monitoring our customer supply chain conditions with impact on the Strait of Hormuz. And finally, you know, we do have a turnaround that we moved from Q2, we're expecting in Q2, that will move and spread between Q3 and Q4, so that will have a bit of a headwind for us as well. So we do have some green shoots in the Americas from a volume perspective, new asset contributions, but we do want to make sure that we're monitoring closely on the macroeconomic environment in Asia and Europe, as well as, again, additional turnarounds.

Got it. Thank you. And just as a quick follow-up, in the Samsung release from yesterday, you used the phrase, you know, the greatest investment, you know, the largest investment in the semiconductor industry, I believe to date or something along those lines. Is that, just to confirm a definition here, considering you, I believe, did $900 million to build something in TSMC, does that imply that the multistages for Samsung would be in excess of that amount? Is there any more framework you could perhaps add? And also, just a quick kind of side note, is this something you expect to be more consistent in terms of bidding activity over the next 12 months or so? Thank you.

Yeah, I think the message is exactly how you described this. It is the largest investment we ever made in the electronic side, and we're not going to disclose the number, but the reference that you made to a previous project is correct. So that's all I can say about that. This is probably the largest site for electronics in the world today. Air Products was the first supplier for that site under phase one. And the phases are getting larger in terms of industrial gas consumption. So this is the fifth phase of the site, and the volumes we're going to supply under this agreement when it's completely built is approximately three times larger than what we did in phase one. So that gives you an idea. So it's a very significant project for us. we are very proud to to have reached this point with uh samsung and but it's just a i start of the uh you know probably a four-year uh construction that we we have to do in a multiple phase a project like that things thank you and we are you know you're all the question about i'm sorry there are other questions about the the what we expect in terms of beat activity As we said, there is, you know, I've seen numbers, you know, in excess of, you know, half a trillion dollars in CapEx being spent by semiconductor and memory manufacturers. And, of course, there is a lot of products in industrial gases. They are growing in volume. And, you know, we're working hard to get our fair share of that.

Thank you.

We'll go next to Vincent Andrew with Morgan's family.

Thank you. Just looking at slide 17, corporate and other, the operating income hit was a lot less year over year, and sequentially, you call out lower changes to sales equipment project estimates. Can you just give a little detail on that and then also help us understand whether this is a good run rate for the rest of the year, or is there just some lumpiness, and maybe the back half will be a little bit higher uh in the in the run rate um uh will sort of mean revert

higher uh that's my first question yeah thanks so um speaking to our corporate and other segment it is a bit of a mixed bag uh but you are correct that the vast majority of the improvement was the prior year um cost increase that we saw on a sale of equipment project again which is a percentage of completion projects, so increased costs go to the bottom line, so it was a bit of a function of a prior year aspect. However, we do continue to have strong productivity in our corporate and other segment as well, so we will continue to see that flow through from a year-on-year perspective as we continue to reduce headcount and right-size the organization. Okay, maybe you could just give

us a little sense of what that number should look like in the back half, and then I'd also ask on the tax rate, it came in a bit lower than we thought for the quarter. It was down about a point year over year and about half a point sequentially. So is this 18-ish percent? Is

that what we should be using for the back half? So, yes. Thanks for the follow-up there. So from a ongoing perspective, I think that the run rate that we had this quarter should be consistent with what we see in corporate for the rest of the year, as we should not have any more sale equipment headwinds so that comp will continue to flow through for the rest of the year from a tax rate perspective uh yes 18 is the number that we should be forecasting against we we did have some u.s investment tax credits um and increased estimates for a dutch investment incentive that reduced our etr for this quarter but we should see that flow through the rest of the year

thank you we'll go next to james hopper with bernstein i thank you very much for taking my questions um first question can can you talk about a little bit about the pricing dynamics um for the non-helium gases um through the rest of the year obviously you mentioned that the plus two from from um europe and americas but will the kind of common inflation mean that But your Asian pricing assumption needs change also.

I'm sorry, I didn't get the last part.

What assumptions?

The Asia assumption.

Yeah, Asia is a little different. I think the dynamics there in China is a hyper-competitive market. I think every Western company will tell you that the PPI, CPI is negative for the last several years and it's a it's a really difficult fight to keep your prices stable in uh in uh in china uh outside of uh of that i would say in europe and uh in the u.s uh you know we consider that the pass through a separate issue uh i would say that uh out in pricing we we continue to make progress and our goal is always to uh you know be able to pass inflation to you know that we experience in in in our business to to pricing so i expect that to continue to be the case in in the near future and uh and uh with uh heating of course subsiding the the effects uh year over year as i said by by the end of the year we hope that uh the hidden headwind in pricing will be

done as well thank you and then just in terms of the the follow-up um slides slide six can you it was i thought was very useful can you just give us a few indications of where you expect the biggest kind of shifts in your end markets to come from the second half versus versus the the first For example, in chemicals, are you seeing any European volume improvements based on some of the kind of Asian supply outages?

Yeah, in Europe, as you know, they benefit in terms of pricing from the absence of the Middle East supply in the market. But on the other hand, they are suffering from cost inflation on oil and natural gas. So it's a difficult dynamic. I don't think the European industry is structurally changing the issues that they have, the chemical industry. I think they will be back when the conflict is over. But I think in this window now, we are basically seeing things a little stable, but the product is not a very large supply of the chemical industry in Europe. so uh you probably can find get better answers from other companies on that i would say the the the segments in general as i said electronics is a big uh uh bright spot for us we are working to capture that same thing with aerospace uh energy in uh in us because of our connection in the in pipeline system in the Gulf Coast with refineries. This is running at record levels at this point, so our hydrogen volume never being so high as it is right now, so that's going okay. And the other segments like food and medical, they are very stable and they are less cyclical

than other segments here. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners.

Yes, thank you and good morning. Can you speak to your degrees of freedom on the supply side of the helium market? I appreciate you have a large inventory buffer and you're taking steps to maintain highly reliable supply, but in the scenario where we have a prolonged conflict, what are you doing differently? How much might you be able to increase sourcing arrangements and liquefaction? Maybe you could just kind of frame out how you're operating today versus two or three months ago.

Yeah, I would say, Kevin, most of our flexibility comes from the position that historically we have in Kansas and the Amarillo area that we were connected with the BLM. we're still connected but we get very low volumes there we have some other private volumes that we are able to liquefy in our plant but we have access liquefaction capacity and uh and uh our our project with the cavern was connected to that so uh the constraint that we have is really the ability to uh move the product from texas to kansas and then the second constraint would be the liquefaction capacity that we have over there. So we are working to maximize both points to eliminate these constraints. It is not an easy supply chain because you have to, you know, from East Texas to Kansas, like 900 miles one way. But we are working on that to maximize that. But, you know, we can probably cover one of our sources being down. You know, as you know, in Qatar, we are connected to Qatar 3, which is a different source. It's not the LNG source. It's the local natural gas grid there. So we are able to replace that, but not much more than that. So I would say that, you know, the design was for, took over our customers. And, you know, if this thing gets prolonged for a long time, it will be a tough time for the market. But I would say that at the end, the customers that need the product the most, I think the market will find a way to keep them supplied. That's my guess at this point. But I can only talk about products in our supply.

Very helpful. If I may, as a second question, can you speak to what you're baking into your financial guidance for volume growth in the back half of the year? I think your 4% number in the fiscal second quarter was the best in three years. And it seems as though some of the impetus behind that is to do with the energy market changes, right? Refinery hydrogen and maybe some gasification as well. But I think PMIs have been broadening and improving. So how are you approaching the back half in terms of, call it non-energy related demand trajectory?

Yeah, Kevin, we had a lot of debate on that, on how to set our guidance. And as you imagine, it's not an easy situation, right? We, you know, the conflict, we are in the middle of this conflict. What we have now is a ceasefire, right? So no one can tell you what, you know, the situation will be a month from now, two months from now, what the oil prices will be, you know, what will happen in the LNG market, what will be the energy prices in Europe and so forth. So in the absence of clarity on these points, what we did was basically we adjusted the guidance based on the beat that we have in the second quarter, and at this point would be premature for us to change what we forecast before for the second half of the year. You know, I hope that will be better. But again, anything can happen, right? We didn't expect this conflict to happen. I don't think anyone did. And when the impact we've seen in helium, for example, was not one of the scenarios we expected. We had a scenario of one of the Qatar plants being down for technical reasons. That can always happen. But we never had a scenario that three plants would be down at the same time because the strait is closed or because one of these facilities is impacted by the war. We understand that one of these facilities, they're trying to bring it back to production. the one that we are connected is supposed to come back in the next few months of course there is the issue of how you move that product considering the logistic issues that you have right now but there is a lot of uncertainty in the market and based on this uncertainty we decided that the prudent thing to do was to keep our second half of the year guidance that we had before

Thank you so much

We'll go next to Patrick Cunningham with Citi.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just on Helium, just additional follow-ups there. If this supply disruption persists, would you need to put customers on allocation? How long does it take alternative supply sources to get qualified with some of the larger semiconductor customers?

Again, from the products perspective, we have the inventory and we're working to replace the volumes that we were taking from Qatar. In fact, the plan that supplies in Qatar was down since December, so we were not taking product from Qatar since December. So it didn't change the conflict, didn't change that much, the situation that we have. and we have enough product to supply our customers, and that will be our position going forward.

Understood. And could you provide an update on the Alberta project in terms of offtakes, timing, and any update to costs?

There are no updates on the project. We continue to find a way to improve the conditions. On the regulatory side, there are things that are moving in Canada. We're trying to understand exactly what the final legislation will be and the impact that we have in the project. We have been working with the government of Canada and the government of Alberta to try to improve the conditions the best we can for this project.

Thank you so much.

We'll go next to Josh Spector with UBS.

Hey, good morning. I was wondering if you could give us a size of what your backlog is now for profit-contributing projects, considering you've signed a few more versus where you were at six months ago. Can you help us think about what comes online over the next few years or just a total number for us to be thinking about?

We look at our backlog in a pretty consistent way, right? so this is things that i'd be contributing um have been approved by the board um but one thing obviously we have talked about is the neon project that is a bit of variability in in the impact of that um as we lead up to the 2030 when cbam and rfnbo is fully in ramp but right now again the the backlog is 9 billion i do feel positive about the growth in the electronic space that we'll see continued uh contributions and winning our fair share of projects in that space and we've given the five-year forecast um previously that shows our you know mid to high single-digit growth from an eps perspective both from contributions on the the base and market growth as well as new assets coming on stream and as i mentioned previously we have two new assets that will be contributing to the back half of this year. And we see that continuing as far as contributions similar throughout the rest of the next five years. Okay. I appreciate that. I maybe should have

qualified and said, excluding NEOM, DARO, and all the projects that you guys have highlighted as nonprofit contributing. What does that trim that $9 billion down to?

So we have a little over two and a half in our, what we would call our traditional industrial gas backlog, a significant portion of that is in the electronic space.

Okay. Thank you very much.

We'll go next to Mike Sisson with Wells Fargo.

Hey, good morning. Nice start to the year. You know, there's a relatively sizable IPO coming at the summer in space. Just curious if you could give us, you know, your thoughts on your business in that sector. How big is it, and where are you positioned?

Yeah, it's a segment that is growing very fast, as you know from the news. The situation basically changes every week or every day with the commercial launchers. Air products has a very traditional business in aerospace. We work with NASA since the 60s, and we are a large supplier of liquid hydrogen, liquid heating to the traditional space program. And we are working now to increase our share with the commercial launchers. You know, you see forecasts that are, you know, go from, you know, extremely high to out of this world volumes in the segment. And I think like everyone else, we'll need to see how this will develop and, you know, if they're going to really get to the point that they will launch a rocket every day. So we are trying to make some investments on the area, try to grow our participation in the traditional air separation gases for the segment. But I cannot give you more specific information than that at this point.

Thank you. And at this time, there are no further questions.

Thank you. So I would like to thank everyone for joining our call today. We appreciate your interest in their products, and we look forward to discussing our results with you again next quarter. Have a safe day.

This does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.