These appear to be a very solid, if not impressive set of results for the soon to be supplanted Linde Group, ahead of its mega-merger with Praxair in the New Year.
The underlying numbers are very strong indeed; the application to IFRS 15, a new revenue accounting standard that came into effect on 1st January, naturally skews some of these figures a little but on closer reading there are very healthy indicators such as operating margin (25%) for Linde to reflect upon.
Greatly encouraging is the performance in the group’s Gases Division, with revenue rising 4.5% after adjusting for exchange rate effects and the impact of that first-time application of IFRS 15. Even after adjusting for changes in the price of natural gas, which can be something of a moving target, revenue growth was 4.2% – a good underlying indicator for the health of the industry.
Linde will perhaps be happiest with its various figures related to operating profit and margins, given how demonstrative this is of its well-documented efficiency programme of the last few years, LIFT.
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