Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 42nd Annual Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference, both to everybody in the room and those joining us on the webcast. I'm delighted to be joined by the Air Products Senior team for a fireside chat. We have both Eduardo Menezes and Melissa Schaeffer on the stage with us today. I'm going to briefly introduce them before getting into the questions. Eduardo joined Air Products as CEO in February 2025. He's a 40-year veteran of the industrial gases industry, and prior to joining Air Products, Mr. Menezes held a variety of Senior Executive roles at Praxair pre-merger, and then the combined Linde entity. These included EVP and President of Linde EMEA after the merger, and at Praxair, he held positions including EVP, Asia, Europe, Mexico, and South America, Head of Global Hydrogen, and EVP, North America, Praxair Distribution.
Mr. Menezes holds an MBA from the State University of New York and a chemical engineering degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Melissa Schaeffer is the Executive Vice President and CFO. She joined Air Products in 2016 as Vice President, Chief Audit Executive, and subsequently progressed through the organization. In 2020, she was appointed VP, Finance, GEMTE, Americas, Middle East, and India, and appointed CFO in 2021. Prior to joining Air Products, Melissa held the position of Global Director, Internal Audit in Trinseo, and before Trinseo was at Ernst & Young and Siemens. A note to the audience. This is an event for you.
It's great spending time with the Air Products team, but I've got the Pigeonhole system, the iPad here, so if you do have any questions, please put them in the system and I'll do my best to ask them to the team.
With that, should we start from the macro perspective? The Iran war is still top of most investors' minds. I think it would be great if you could give us a round-the-world tour, and what you're seeing on the ground and what is the impact that you're seeing.
Okay. Well, it's still an ongoing event, if you want. Of course, the major effect on our business is on the energy side. Of course, we had the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Energy prices went a little higher in Europe, we had some effect on that. On the other hand, areas like the U.S., anything related to natural gas is pretty much running at 100%, our hydrogen pipeline in the U.S. is running very strongly. I don't think that affects, let's say, the overall picture of the U.S. I would say the rest of the market is pretty stable. Everyone is concerned with the inflation that the fuel prices can generate and the effects on the consumer. So far, we haven't felt any effects on the overall U.S. market.
In Europe, as I said, it's probably the region that is most affected by the events in the Middle East, after the Middle East, of course. We've seen some complicated situations in the chemical industry and refining behaving a little better. It's a region where Air Products is a little different. It's the only region where we have a packaged gas business, so we have a big component of the retail side. On that side, I think things are still stable and still okay. In Asia, different perspectives there. China is really the country that is holding most of the impact of the LNG crisis. They are regulating the market, if you want, replacing a lot of LNG with coal, and that's applying for power and also for chemicals. We have some business there.
I know we talk a lot externally about the coal gasification sites where we operate the coal gasifiers, but we also have a lot of oxygen plants that supply to third parties doing coal gasification. All these assets are running at both capacity today. People are delaying turnarounds and that kind of stuff. The rest of the market in China, I don't think it's a secret to anyone that it's a very difficult environment with price, with negative deflation, industrial prices. Continue to be no major effect, no difference caused by the conflict. In Asia, you have the electronic side, which of course is booming, but it's completely unrelated to all this, no effects on that. For our products, the impact in the Middle East, we are not seeing a lot of impact on the ground.
We have some our big projects, like Jazan, like NEOM, they are in the west coast of Saudi Arabia, so a little far from the areas of conflict. Our operations in the east side of Saudi Arabia, in the other countries of GCC, we've seen some impact on the ground at the beginning, but things are basically back to normal at this point. Of course, we have the impact on helium, but that's caused specifically by one company or one supplier, which is QatarEnergy. We are following that very closely. Still no clear dates for the assets to come back on stream. We rebalance our supply. We were working in a different way. We have this cavern in the U.S. that we were able to take some products.
Air Products is being able to supply our customers, and we are basically trying to avoid the effects at this point.
Yeah. Okay, I've got a few follow-ups to the start.
Yeah.
It's quite interesting you talk about the chemicals end- market.
It sounds like booming in the U.S., but operating rates holding up in China, and then Europe is a little bit affected by outages.
Yeah. No, I would say that Europe is in a strange point at this exact moment, right? We're seeing increasing prices on natural gas, so that goes against them. Of course, the biggest competitor for them is the Middle East. Prices went up on the other side, so there is this balance now. If you have to bet on which side is going to subside first, I think the prices will come down before the natural gas prices will. That's a challenge and, again, we are not a very large supplier of the chemical industry in Europe. Most of our business is on the retail side, the merchant side, and our large on-site plants are a combination between steel and some refining business. Not a lot of presence on the chemical side.
North America, to what extent do you think this is, it's been a common topic, any kind of cyclical recovery? Are you expecting operating rates to stay very high, or do you think once the crisis blows down, your hydrogen pipeline flows will slow?
No, I think the pipeline volumes, they will stay. I think hydrogen, the refining business is pretty stable.
As you know, there are no new refineries built in U.S. for decades now. You basically have this upgrade of existing refineries that create a lot of volume on the hydrogen side. A lot of talks about bringing more heavy crude from Venezuela and other places.
We haven't seen that yet. A little bit here, there, but I would say that there are other demands on the hydrogen side, a lot of demand on the renewable side, a lot of renewable diesel, biodiesel, so that is also pushing the demand as well on the hydrogen side.
Yeah. Helium, I'd like to talk through a little bit your approach.
Do you think that the investors are going to see any kind of, with the short market and you fulfilling contracts, any kind of shorter-term pricing, or are you intending to leverage your supply for longer contracts?
Well, the helium market was structurally long before this crisis, right? We have no doubt that we'll return to that position when the crisis stop or a few months or several months after. Depends on the amount of damage that were done in Qatar, right? We know the market will be back to be structurally long six months from now, a year from now. We don't know exactly when. Our strategy has been, we have this cavern, we have product in the cavern exactly because we were buying more product than we're selling, right? We have this imbalance for several years. We are using that to make sure that we solve that problem, we don't have this imbalance going forward. We're trying to do that, thinking about the long term, thinking about customers that can sign long-term agreements with us.
The electronic area is a very desirable area because not only they can provide you these long-term volumes, but they also have other demand for other products and other gases that the current helium crisis put us in a good position to also negotiate some of these deals. We are trying to do that, thinking about the long term. Every company, we're always going to have a little bit of product that we sell in the spot market for distributors. Of course, on that, we're doing the best we can on pricing, but that's not the main objective for us at this point.
Yeah. I understand your Qatari plant was actually down before the crisis started.
Yeah.
Is that back up and operating, or is it expected to be operating soon?
No. We know that plant was not damaged.
Basically, the difference between that one and the three plants there, the one that Air Products runs, or not run, but we buy product from, is connected to the local natural gas pipeline supply. It's connected to the supply to ammonia plants, to GTL, and et cetera. We understand there is some damages on the customer side, but not on the processing side, on the helium side. I would say that what is constraining that today is really the availability of resources to ship product out of Qatar. They have to finish the maintenance that they were working on. We expect that to be done mid-year now, very close. When we can resume shipments, that's the question.
Of course, we are all looking at alternatives and I think I was talking to people in Saudi Arabia this weekend, and I think the Jeddah Airport, it became one of the busiest cargo airports in the world.
Because everybody thought the same thing. Everybody trying to move cargo to the west side of Saudi Arabia. People are trying to rework the supply chains and find a way to move products out. On the helium side, not only Air Products, I would say our competitors. We were fortunate that because our plant was down, we didn't have a lot of empty containers sitting there.
Yeah.
The others, they had, and just to move the empty containers has been a difficulty.
Trucking it across to the Suez, not straightforward.
Yeah. Finding the ships.
Yeah
the insurance providers, and that kind of stuff.
Yeah. One last one from the high level. Do you think there's going to be any material long-term changes to the industry as a result of this crisis? Do you think memories will be short and in a year's time we'll have forgotten about it?
You're talking about the industry in general, the oil and gas industry, right?
Well, the industrial gas industry.
Yeah. Industrial gases, I think it's a different business, right? It's very local. At the same time, we're global companies.
Yeah
The business is very local. Of course, there is always a question of when people are going to feel comfortable again to invest, right? The same question you asked about Russia, right? When the crisis started, a lot of the industrial gas companies, they had businesses there. Let's say you are in this state of crisis for 10 years now. At one point, we'll win. If you ask me how long it will take for people to go back, you need to look at history to give you that answer with several years, probably, right?
Okay, great. We're going to move on to strategy. This is the Strategic Decisions Conference, we'll spend some time on your strategy. Eduardo, you joined almost 18 months ago, 40-year veteran. What were your first impressions of the company, and how did that form the strategy that you set?
I think the core of Air Products is a traditional industrial gas business, not very different from what I was used with, especially on the U.S. side. Capable organization with a lot of people with a lot of tenure. The core of the business is there. I think we diverted from the core of the business a little bit from going on these very large projects, and different things than industrial gases. When you talk about people in the industrial gas business, we are always comfortable in the gas phase of things. When you start to put liquids or solids, like coal gasification is always more complicated. The unit operations are more complicated to run. We went a little bit on that.
I think the main issue was we broke the model that we went on agreements on projects that we didn't have firm agreements with end customers, right? It's an easy thing to fix going forward, right? We still need to deal with these other projects that we came from the past. I think bringing back the business to the basics, and I think it's thinking about price, productivity, and improving our day-to-day operations. I think we are very close to where I want to be at this point. The other piece, solving the past problems, it will take the time it will take.
Yeah
to do that.
Just to pick up on that. You've mentioned in the past to the market, three plus three plus three plus one. Your price and productivity, your volume growth, your project growth.
Shareholder returns later down the line. Is this still the right framing for what you've been trying to do, and-
Yeah, I think we talked about that. Melissa can talk better than me about this.
Yeah.
This is more like an approximation, right?
Yeah.
Just to put the right numbers there. Of course, we're not going to get the same numbers every year, right?
Yeah.
On all these points. I would say that the market piece is the one that we have less control, right? Getting 3% there may be a little tough. One year is going to be a little more, a little less. Good year may get to that point. The price and productivity is something that we have more control.
Yeah.
I think in good years, we can do significantly better, and we need to do better to compensate when the market is not giving us the balance. The projects, it seems like an easy task, but it's a lot of hard work to be disciplined, to get the right projects, to make sure you get this contribution from the projects.
Right.
I think that's the math we do.
Yeah, no, I think that's spot on. One of the things that we do talk about, and as Eduardo said, is you don't always get that perfect match of three, right? If you're not getting prices, you got to go and identify productivity. There are levers that we could pull within that algorithm to be able to make sure that it sums to that high single digits, low double digits.
Melissa, in terms of the kind of pricing approach, has there been changes in KPI sales incentives to kind of unlock that price productivity side? Or were there new initiatives?
We have reframed our VPP around certain KPIs, but we've not changed from a pricing perspective, the KPIs, right. One of the things we've actually done quite well in Air Products is really go out and get pricing in volatile situations. If you remember after the Russian war with the natural gas and energy prices increase, we were able to go recapture that. The team went out, did what they needed to do, had the right conversations with the customers. We're doing the exact same thing now. It does usually take about a quarter delay to start to see the increases come through the market, but it's in their DNA. They know how to do this. This is a well-exercised muscle. They're out there, they're getting prices with the energy increases, and we should see that flow through.
On the productivity side, where are we in the journey there? Obviously, it looks like headcount is changing and that some of the unprofitable projects are coming out, but what's the next stage for that part of the element?
We started the productivity journey in 2023. We started to see that we had taken on probably too many headcounts as part of this mega project frame that the previous CEO had put into place, and so we started taking actions then. To- date, we've taken about a little more than 10% of the organization out. We still have room to continue to do so. We have a goal to be able to take out about $100 million this year alone. We have about $50 million for the first two quarters, so we're right on track. We do think that we will see that continue to flow through 2027, but that should really be the end of the productivity for this exercise. Obviously, we're always looking for productivity, whether it's headcount or efficiencies in the organization.
That's something that we will continue to do, but as part of this program, that will end in 2027.
It's not only headcount, right? We put a lot of attention on reducing our power consumption, reducing our natural gas consumption, and improving our distribution. We are rebuilding our global productivity organization. We have a global organization, not very big, but that really pushes these efficiency projects to the regions and makes sure that we are able to replicate projects that we do in one region in another region. There is a good effort in Air Products, not different from what I've seen before, on trying to get this productivity beyond headcount.
Okay, we'll change tack to a different part, growth. Let's start with the fun bit, space. Obviously, you're a core supplier to NASA's commercial space company.
Yeah.
Can you give our audience a little bit of background into what the space business does there, the market share, and what kind of growth you're seeing and expecting, and how you expect the business to progress?
Air Products is involved in the space program since the late '60s, so we were supplying liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen to NASA, and helium for the space program for many, many years. That part of the program didn't change that much, so still a significant supply on that side. Of course, the biggest change in the last few years is the commercial launches, right? This is an area that I would say is in flux right now. You've seen the size of the rockets, the amount of products that they use being changed very quickly, and it's not only the one that everybody talks about, but there are several others as well. I would say that where this is going to go, it's not very clear at this point, right?
If you look at one, a very large NASA rocket that would take 600 tons of liquid oxygen, and they were driven by liquid hydrogen and so forth. The rocket that we've seen being launched, I think, two weekends ago, that rocket, I think, carried, I think it was close to 5,000 tons of propylene, so it's like 80/20 oxygen to methane, right?
It's close to 4,000 tons of oxygen. When you get to these numbers and people say, at one point, I'm going to be large. NASA would launch, like, four rockets a year, right? These people are talking about launching one every.
One a day.
other day or one a day or whatever, right? You start to get into volumes that become impracticable to basically move product from, in trucks. Today, we do not do that for NASA, either. You don't come and bring a truck straight to the rocket, right? We have a tank that you fill the tank, and then you do the transfer with a few hours to fill the rocket. Now, when you talk about these kind of volumes, if you launch every other day, you need a truck every five minutes. It doesn't work like that. The entire industry is trying to understand how this is going to work. They have a tendency to build things by themselves, and not a normal commercial practices. We have our business with NASA. We have our business for the company.
I think this project we announced is like a token. We're putting the first project outside of Cape Canaveral. Very different building in Florida to building in Texas, for example, right?
Yeah.
Very regulated in Florida, difficult to find power and so forth, and permits. In Texas, a little different. It's a private-owned place. We see a lot of growth in both coasts, and we are trying to prepare for that. It is a different rationale, and it's a merchant business. It's not an on-site business.
Well, do you think it does start to, because in terms of the volume ramp-up you've described, do you think it starts to become an on-site business?
It will. At one point, you need that solution, right? I think they're doing that by themselves. They're building a plant by themselves.
in Texas as well. The other supply.
Yeah
building outside, but they're building one themselves. At one point, you're going to need to work on all that. Again, to do that in the Cape, and the safety regulations and the ability to get power, it will need some thought process behind that, and we'll need to see how that's going to evolve.
It almost sounds like your main competition is going to be whether they outsource or whether they insource.
That's always the case for our industry, right?
Yeah.
Our main customers, our steel customers are the same, our chemical customers are the same. They always have the option to build and operate, we need to do something better than they can do themselves, we need to convince them, right? That's always a challenge in our industry. I think the industry does a good job being able to get scale, that's why we convince customers to buy instead of for own, by building a larger scale and bringing some other credits to the projects. It's not going to be any different in this case.
Yeah. Last space question. What would you say to investors is the best way to track your space business? Should they be monitoring launches? Is it California?
Yeah.
Obviously, you're very strong because of your industrial footprint there more than other places.
Yeah. I think we made this announcement for a new plant there. As I said, a lot of our business today is hydrogen and helium, and hydrogen and helium is different because it's a product that travels more.
It's a question of, you can use hydrogen or you can use a lot of propellant on another fuel. We are working on all that. We're going to try to keep people informed, but I know it's a very interesting subject, but it's still a very small segment for the industry, right? We'll still have to work to see. How big it will be, it's really a question of how many launches you have at some point, right?
Okay.
How many planes you have?
Moving from a small business now to a bigger business, electronics.
Yes
17% of your revenues.
Yeah.
The question I often get with the semis business is that when's the next stage of growth coming? When do you think kind of Fab CapEx has been negative for a couple of, or down year-on-year for a couple of years, and you've got the customers performing very, very strongly. When do you think we start to see more renewed growth from this business?
You mean renewed growth in the sense of.
Yeah, acceleration.
I think we are in the middle of that, right? We're in the middle of the largest CapEx expenditure we've ever seen, right? On the Fab side and the demand for industrial gases, it's an interesting industry, right? Because the demand keeps growing, and they're using more gases, and they're using larger amount of gases. Right? I think we talked about this project we announced in Korea. It's probably the largest site globally for one company, for semiconductors. We built the plant for the first phase, and the plant we're going to build now for phase 5 is probably three times the size of phase 1. Three times the size. It gives you an idea, right? How much bigger these products are getting, and they are growing very fast.
I think that site, if you take the product from all the industrial gas companies supplying that site, is probably larger than the volume of nitrogen that's sold in the entire Gulf Coast of the U.S. It gives you an idea. It's really a completely different scale than we ever seen before.
Just to give the audience a sense, if I've done my math right, on the kind of five, six times bigger, that's probably close to $1 billion of CapEx from your perspective to get this.
Yeah, we need to go away from these things about talking.
Yeah
CapEx about specific products, we made the point that this is the largest project
we ever did in electronics. I think before we announced a project in Taiwan, also multi-phase project that was $900 million. This is larger than that project we did.
Yeah. Okay.
Again, it's a four-year project, right? People sometimes they go and say, oh, you have these projects in your capital allocation. If you think about this as a four-year project, it's not exactly 25%.
Phase 28, 29, 30.
When you look at the CapEx commitment for us, and you think about that we talk about we want to have close to $2 billion in products every year, this is not a very large or not even close to be the majority of our CapEx.
Yeah. Okay, we'll stay with large projects, and we'll talk about Louisiana Blue. The market's expecting an update. My understanding is that you've had construction bids to the board, since the market, we've had pretty much no communication since. It looks like you've asked the construction bids to go and do more homework. Would this be a kind of fair summary?
You're telling me things I don't know.
Okay.
We didn't talk to the-
Yeah
We didn't take to the Board yet.
Yeah.
We're working on the project. We're working with our suppliers, we're working with our customer. We are trying to finish everything for the next Board in July, and then we'll try to make a final decision on that.
Can you just talk a little bit about the decision, how you'll frame the decision? If it turns out that it's a more expensive project than you announced in December, would that mean that it won't go ahead, or could the other party involved in the project, could the terms change, perhaps?
Yeah, if we start speculating, we're never going to end, right? This project, the main issue of this project, like I said in the beginning, is the fact that we decided to build a plant without a customer, right? We decided to build an ammonia plant, and our products would be basically commercialized ammonia. That product is like that, so we're not going to do that. Right? The most difficult thing I think we did was to find a good partner that is willing to own and operate the ammonia plant. This becomes a regular hydrogen project for our product. We are trying to develop a regular hydrogen project. The difference here is that it's very large. Right. We need to make sure that we have the cost estimate and correct and have the assumptions correct.
It's being built in a time in the U.S. that is not the most easy one. Right? When you think about the construction of a project like that for the U.S. terms, I think the numbers that we have, I think peak construction would be something like 2,000-2,500 people, right, inside construction.
This is a very large project. The project we're building in Saudi Arabia, NEOM, at the peak construction at the three sites, because we have a solar, wind, and the hydrogen site, we have combined more than 20,000 people working. Right? You can have resources like that in Saudi Arabia because you can import people from South Asia and that kind of stuff. In U.S., it's very complex right now. We are doing all the homework we can to be sure that we have a feasible project. Our customer is doing the same on their side. I would say that at the current prices of ammonia, any project would be printing money today, but that's not how you need to think about that. We're working on all that.
It's a complex project. I think the right way to think about it is if it's a good project, we'll do it. If it's not a good project, we're not going to do it. That's the thought process.
I think that's very clear.
Yeah.
NEOM, the other major project that you referred to.
Yeah.
Can we just firstly get a quick update on the progress and still targeting first volumes next year?
Yeah. We are basically done with the power generation side. We have close to 4 GW of renewable power between wind and solar. This is basically done. We are energizing the substations, and that's part of the plan. The most challenging technical part is really the electrolyzers and the hydrogen plant. We need the power to start commissioning that. When you think about, we build a lot of hydrogen plants. We build a hydrogen plant sometimes to supply ammonia, and we have one SMR, one equipment that will generate hydrogen. In this case, we have 110 electrolyzers, right? You cannot commission 110 at the same time, so you need to go one by one, and you cannot start commissioning the ammonia loop before we have a certain amount of hydrogen running. The plan is in place.
Everything is going according to the plan. It is technically a very challenging project because it's the first time that we're building something like this. We are aware of the challenges, are working on them, and we are expecting to have first ammonia maybe at the beginning of next year. How fast we're going to be able to get to full production, that's where we are working on. We're going to be next year, for sure.
Just question from the audience on NEOM? What is the range of outcomes at NEOM? I think in terms of, probably in the context of the Yara, the deal that you've kind of preliminarily agreed with Yara in terms of marketing the volumes.
I think we already explained that to everyone, that this project only exists because our partners took the risk
of taking the product. We have a 30-year deal to buy the entire production of ammonia, at basically a fixed price because there is no variation on the raw material cost. The potential outcomes is the difference between the market and that, right? If I could have someone taking over that and paying a premium for that, it would be done at this point.
Today, of course, the ammonia prices are very high. That's the challenge that we have. I think with time, because there is not meaningful escalation from the prices we pay, the more the time goes on, the better this project will look like. Right? This project carries this ammonia risk price, which is exactly what we're trying to insulate ourselves from the [deal project.
All right. I'm going to stay with the audience because, and this is also a question I wanted to ask, and we're going to go to culture. This is for Melissa. What are the biggest changes that you've seen in terms of strategy or culture or even financial management since Eduardo joined?
You want me to answer that right in front of him? No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah.
Just kidding. I would say there are a couple things. First, we talked about productivity discipline, right? We talked about headcount, but it's really much more than headcount that Eduardo has us focused on. It's the energy management, supply chain efficiencies, that broader refocusing of the organization to efficiency. I do think it's at our core in our DNA, but he really brought that refocus to the organization. I think another piece, number two, would be really focusing on our core, right, our core business. I think the organization got distracted with these large projects that we just talked about, and it's really refocusing the organization on how to be competitive at what we do best, the core industrial gas. An example of that is Eduardo came in and actually restructured our engineering organization.
An example is our air separation unit and gasification technology is now centered under our Asian organization who do things on time, on budget religiously. They take it personal when there's a dollar overrun. We've now taken that organization and said, okay, here's where we're going to deploy our air separation product lines from and make that more competitive. I would say the final piece is a relentless focus on capital discipline. We have multiple conversations on projects and are fully focused on making sure that they meet our risk-return criteria. People know that there is a threshold that Eduardo will not go under, and they know that they've got to be able to have and structure the deals to meet those expectations.
I want to pick up a little bit on the reliability point as well, because that's always been a market complaint about Air Products, is that some of the projects that you've done before your tenure at Air Products were over budget, delayed, and you've seen that in the underperforming. How have you changed the organization to stop that from happening?
Yes. As Melissa said, on the traditional projects, when you look at our products, we really didn't have that problem in Asia, right?
I think our Asia organization was insulated from that. Air Products made a decision to move the fabrication of cold boxes to China 20 years ago. I can tell you that I've been in a lot of shops, and I think our shop is first class, is second to none. I never seen a best shop than the Air Products, the one that we run in Caojing, close to Shanghai. I think we have very good things that were done on that area. When we went to U.S. and Europe, because we took an engineering organization from 1,000 people to 5,000 people, right? We opened an office in India.
We had, at some point, more than 2,000 people in India doing projects for U.S. and in Europe, without really a deep knowledge of the culture of Air Products, the culture for industrial gases, that create issues on the business, right? We're simplifying everything. We have a gentleman from China now running all our industrial, our air separation engineering piece from China. The engineering, the cold boxes, everything will come from there. Reality is where volume is and creativity, innovation comes from volume, right? You need that. I think from that perspective, we're going to do very well. On the hydrogen side, we haven't built a lot of hydrogen plants, Air Products had alliances before for 20- 30 years. We have very active ways of partners to build that plant. We went away from that.
We are working on bringing that back and making the things simpler. We're lucky that we still have people in the organization that from the past, that they understand all that. We're making the changes and getting back to be very predictable and reliable in our capital projects. I'm talking about capital projects in the range that industrial gas company should be doing, right? When you talk about this project in Colombia, that we talk about being a billion dollars, right, if you pick a number, it's not one project, right? We're building seven to eight plants in four or five years. That's the size of projects we do. These very large projects is a completely different animal, and I don't see us doing a lot of these projects going forward, right?
Yeah.
I would say that Darrow is an exception because I already bought $2 billion in products. There's a different situation I'm trying to deal with. I see the size of products from Air Products will be different, to be smaller projects that we can execute reliably with a team that replicate that time after time and time again.
One more people question. I think you referred to it, I think perhaps earlier in that answer, is that the team below you, Eduardo, is very similar to before you took over, and the results in Air Products certainly has been better. The growth is accelerating. How have you been able to get the more performance? Is it just the institutional memory in that they remember how it was and you're unlocking that again?
Well, it's a combination of things, right? I think it's part of that. We have more changes than you believe, than you can see from the outside. We also have, and I think it's a question of a discipline approach to the business, right? Even if we have a great month and we don't have anything very exciting to talk about, we have full month reviews for every business one day a month, right? We have another day a month that we look at all the projects and their execution. We have another day a month that we look at new projects and capital proposals, right? This discipline of spending the time, and people understand that we're looking at the assumptions, and the reality is Air Products was probably approving these projects in a very small group of people.
Trust me, if I believe that the people in the business today were involved in some of these projects, they wouldn't be in the business anymore. Unfortunately, we have a very small group of people approving these projects and moving these things. The experienced people of Air Products were not involved in the decisions before.
Very clear. Okay. We're going to have to move to the current trading, and we have to ask this question as part of the job. The first quarter of your fiscal year 2026, 11% EPS growth. Second quarter, 19% EPS growth. The first half, 15% EPS growth. Pretty good first half. The third quarter guidance is 5%-8% EPS growth, and FY 2026, 8%-10% EPS growth.
Given what you've been saying earlier about we should expect to see more pricing or the volume progression seems to be pretty solid, can you put the context of the kind of guidance that you've given and what you've been saying today?
Yeah. I think you also need to remember that Air Products always have these issues that the first half was always much weaker than the second half of the year in Air Products. We are trying to put the discipline to try to eliminate these things. Of course, there is a lot of turmoil at this point. It's very difficult to predict what's going to happen in some of the areas. When we had to do the forecast for the balance of the year, we elected to keep the numbers that we had before. We need to see what the effects will be in helium and in other areas. We have a little bit of, as I said, some of the turnarounds in China were transferred to the second half that helped us in the first half, that will hurt us on the second half.
Hopefully we'll do better. We need to give a forecast that we feel we can comply with independently of the conditions of the market.
Yeah. No, I think that that's spot on. We had forecast a quite significant turnaround in Q2 that, again, as Eduardo said, did get pushed to Q3 and even over to Q4. Another piece is we're still cautious about the underlying in Asia, and I'm cautious about chemicals and the underlying in Europe. I think that hopefully we'll see upside on that. We need to be able to see that because in the first two quarters, the underlying was pretty flat versus prior year. One of the things that I also need to note is obviously on helium, we're maintaining our 4% headwind. We've been able to, as Eduardo had guided the team to do, is really shore up longer term supply. We won't see the large fluctuations that we've seen over the last couple of years.
At helium, it's really shoring up and getting more sustained growth on the volumes. That comes with some concessions on pricing. That's what you're seeing a little bit in that 4% headwind.
Yeah. A lot of the headwind comes from the renegotiations that we made even before the crisis.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That's part of the issue there. If you understand the business, our large customers can be NASA or the 20 guys, but we also sell to people that are distributors that will fill balloons. In a crisis like that, the first thing they do, they come to you, and they ask for more volume. Of course, we're being careful on that. We are working on all these aspects of the business. We are trying to manage that for the long term, but we'll try to see whatever position we can do in the short term to make a little more money. We'll do it, but the priority is the long term.
Yeah. Just to follow up on that, European and Asian, but it sounds like North American volumes should be pretty strong to offset this. Yes, you've got more difficult comps, the 5% to 8 % still sounds pretty conservative, given what you've-
Yeah. I understand the point, but I hope you understand all the balls we have in the air as well. As Melissa said, one bankruptcy in Europe is we have to count on that. We have the decision that we need to make in Darrow, that if we cancel the project, we have an effect on capitalized interest and other things that we have. We have all these balls in the air, and we try to make a judgment on the forecast that we believe is aggressive, but not over-aggressive.
Understood. Okay, I'm going to go back to the audience for our closing question. With all the activity around data centers and AI, what are the impact of APD on data center growth? I think we covered that one. Maybe more, how is AI being used and the opportunities at Air Products?
Melissa was just talking to me about a case, so I'm going to ask her to answer that one.
For AI. We've got AI largely across the organizations. People are using AI as part of their everyday productivity. That's kind of the table stakes. Eduardo made the decision to provide Copilot to the entire organization. That innovation from the ground up is fantastic. We are also seeing it in productivity. For example, I own shared business services for our organization. I was actually in Kuala Lumpur last week, and the innovation that those teams are bringing through the utilization of AI and automation is fantastic. We're seeing reductions in cost, but also improvements in productivity for those organizations. We're also utilizing AI, and this is just a few examples, power management, supply chain efficiencies, and so we're trying to really bring it from that grassroots that we started with to more of that transformational AI. We've got programs throughout the organization really focused on that.
Not only that we gave people the normal Copilot thing, but the agentic version. We have probably 6,000 licenses out of 20,000 employees. A third of our employees, they have this more sophisticated ability to create agents. We have training programs. We're trying to have a bottoms-up movement, and at the same time, we're taking very large pieces of the business, like power management, and we have structural corporate projects on that,
Yeah
on the other side.
Okay. Closing question for the last 34 seconds. The legacy, Eduardo. You've come in, made some changes, things are progressing. Where do you want to really be longer term? How do you want to be remembered towards the end of your tenure?
I went to a Jesuit school. When in Jesuit school, in the first grade, in a religion class, you ace the test.
Yeah
The priest will give a nine out of 10, and you ask them why, and say, 10 is only for God, son. You need to be humble, and you need to understand all we are here is trying to give a small contribution, and the company's here for 85 years, and none of us will matter 85 years from now. We all need to understand that.
Excellent. Well, a pleasure. Thank you everybody for joining, and thank you, Eduardo and Melissa. I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
Thank you, James.
Thank you.
Thank you.