With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

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Industries included in the sector are diversified and specialty chemical manufacturers.

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The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 200 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The 300 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-340-Air Products & Chemicals

The industrial gas company supplies chemicals and gases to markets around the globe, and even supplies NASA with critical gases needed for Space Shuttle use.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-354-Air-Products-and-Chemicals

The Pennsylvania-based manufacturer produces specialty gases and chemicals for manufacturing customers, as well as gas-related equipment for the energy industry.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Air Products &amp; Chemicals is a top global industrial gases company, supplying essential gases like hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and nitrogen to customers across industries. Those include energy, chemicals, metals, electronics, and food. Founded in 1940, the company has expanded its operations to over 50 countries, delivering gases through pipelines, on-site production, and bulk delivery systems. In 2024, Air Products completed the $1.81 billion sale of its liquefied natural gas process technology and equipment business to Honeywell International, aligning with its focus on core industrial gases and clean energy initiatives. The company is investing heavily in low-carbon hydrogen projects, including a 15-year agreement with TotalEnergies to supply 70,000 tons of green hydrogen annually starting in 2030. Air Products is also recognized as a dividend aristocrat, with over 35 consecutive years of dividend increases.

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Air Products & Chemicals (APD): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Air Products & Chemicals

air products & chemicals

Good morning, welcome to Air Products 2nd 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 2nd quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call for Air Products. Our prepared remarks today will be led by Seifi Ghasemi, Chief Executive Officer, and Melissa Schaeffer, 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 Air 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 expenditure, 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. 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 helium, with volumes better than expected due to aerospace.

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%-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. We anticipate a more favorable operating environment in the second half for improved volumes in several key end markets, including refining, electronics, and aerospace. On our second priority, we continue to make progress on optimizing our large project portfolio. On NEOM, negotiations on a marketing and distribution agreement with yara 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. Activities at NEOM 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 the reliable capital cost estimate and construction agreements that meet our project risk-adjusted return requirements. We are currently reviewing construction bids from EPC firms and remain committed to reaching a go, no-go 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 growth projects, and returning cash to 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 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 billion-$2 billion to the backlog in the next six months, including the project we announced yesterday to build on and operate multiple production facilities in bulk, specialty gas supply systems for a new advanced fab with Samsung in South Korea. We also have announced our intent to build on 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 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 helium supply from Qatar. Helium is an important product line for our products, with the largest end market sales in electronics, aerospace, and medical. Air Products' helium supply chain is very resilient with, one, multiple sources in the U.S., in addition to our long-term partnerships in Algeria with Sonatrach and in Qatar with QatarEnergy. two, a dedicated helium storage cavern in Texas, which has been operational for nearly five years. The cavern 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.

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, 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 six, 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 held 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 a 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 to 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 are working closely with our large long-term electronic customers on helium supply. Already, with the long-term agreements signed during the last six months, we expect our helium volumes to large electronic customers in Asia to more than double between 2026 and 2030. Finally, in aerospace, we'll 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 with both NASA and commercial launches. I'll turn the call over to Melissa to discuss our financial results in greater depth and review our 2026 outlook. Melissa?

Thank you, Eduardo. Hello, welcome to those joining our call today. Please move to slide seven 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 headwinds. With respect to volume, we saw growth from on-site, in part due to the increased production from our U.S. refinery asset and new assets coming on stream in Asia. We also lapped a major turnaround in our Europe segment. Merchant volume 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 grew 19% from the prior year and exceeded the top end of our guidance range due to stronger onsite 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 base business performance while we execute our project backlog. Moving now to slide eight. Our second quarter earnings per share of $3.20 increased $0.51 or 19% from prior year. We continue to see helium headwind driven by lower price.

In line with our guidance, currency was favorable at 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, Americas operating income growth of 2% was primarily driven by onsite 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 in 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 onsite 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. 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 cost 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 cost 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 $1 billion relative to the prior year. Additionally, through 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 will review our outlook. With a strong first half and outperformance in the market volume, we are raising our fiscal full-year guidance to $13.00-$13.25, or 8%-10% growth from the prior year. 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-helium pricing actions and progress on our productivity initiatives while new assets ramp up. We still expect helium to be a headwind due to lower price while we look to capture long-term volume commitment.

Specific to the third quarter, we expect to deliver earnings per share in the range of $3.25-$3.35, representing a 5%-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 one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to live signal through to our equipment. Again, press star one 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.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You know, since the last call, the Middle East conflict has hit a lot of kind of things that may have changed. I guess maybe we can start with one on the project. 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 changed all that much for your green ammonia project?

Good morning, John. Thank you for the call. I would say starting from NEOM, 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. In terms of the progress, we are basically done with the renewable power side. We just energized the substation using the grid power. The next step is to basically connect the solar park and start commissioning using our own renewable power.

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. I would say it's too early for us to, you know, understand the demand for green ammonia and the impact they're gonna have in prices in the long term. Again, this is, you know, we consider that a temporary, you know, effect that will go for a few months. 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.

The U.S. supply of natural gas will be a winner on that perspective. I think, you know, green ammonia produced by clean power in places like Saudi Arabia will also can benefit from that, but it's a little early to say that.

Got it. Okay. No, fair enough. Maybe just as the 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. Admittedly, we get like some of these are contracts that are multi-year and even the ones that reset last year, you know, were gonna be a drag. I guess we're a little bit surprised to not see some updraft in contracts that might be getting signed now or on the minimal part that you have that's tied to spot.

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, you know, to start, right, the helium market, it was structurally long before the war. Of course, with Qatar representing a third of the world's volume of helium, the market is short now. We all expect that we'll return to the original state in, you know, a few weeks or few months after the crisis is over. 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 in one of our sources like we're having today. It's designed basically for Air Products volumes, not for the entire market.

We may have a little more volume than we had before when we push our cavern, but it's not that significant and really doesn't allow us to, you know, to supply the volumes that are not present in the market today. Of course, we are trying to sign longer term agreements. That's the objective. I think we also made a comment that, you know, this didn't start with the conflict. It started before that. We were trying to sign these long-term agreements. We made the point to say that our volumes for helium in Asia for electronics will more than double in the next four years. In fact, I expect to be more than that.

We are focused on that, focused on signing these long-term agreements. We may have a little gain here and there on the spot market, but it's 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.

We'll take our next question from Jeffrey Zekauskas with JPMorgan.

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. We do not have exactly, you know, two trains for each process area. You know, we have one of the process areas that we have three trains, which makes it very difficult for us to only execute half of the project.

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. Secondly, year-over-year, your average prices were down 1%. 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.

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.

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

Okay. 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 downtime 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. In fact, we've seen, you know, significant increase in oxygen volumes for this type of plants in China.

We'll next to David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. Good morning. Eduardo, on Darrow, you mentioned the high bar for that project. Is the base case still it does not move forward? If it does not, do you have projects that you could pivot to in short order with that capital? That's my first question. Thank you.

Yeah. Maybe I could take that one. Absolutely.

From a Darrow perspective, I think Eduardo has said before that it is, in fact, our base case that we would not move forward. We need to review the economics as we get the bids in from the construction 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 gonna spend on Darrow. We continue to be very bullish on the electronic space over the next couple of years through this hyper cycle.

Again, we have a base case of Darrow of not moving forward at this point in time, but we're reviewing the economics. Again, we are very bullish on other growth opportunities if Darrow does not move forward.

Yeah. I just wanna make a point here. When I say base case that, you know for Darrow to move forward, we need to reach an agreement.

You know, until you reach an agreement, the base case is that you're not, you know, you don't have an agreement today. We're working on that, and we'll see what the result will be in the next three months. Today, we do not have an agreement yet to move that product forward, as you know.

Very good. Just on the Americas margins, they were, I think, the lowest in three years. You mentioned power cost, turnaround expenses. Would you expect margins to recover nicely in FQ 3 versus FQ 2, given those headwinds?

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? We've seen very strong contributions in our HyCO assets, which have an impact from an energy cost pass-through. We do expect once the energy costs to subside, 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.

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

Good morning, guys. Just a question on the coal gasification plants in China. one, in the quarter, how much was the benefit from the reduced D&A from moving it out of the segment? two, I think you've talked about those being collectively net breakeven 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. Can you just talk about how the economics of those plants have changed within your P&L? Does that continue to get better from here as long as oil stays, you know, above $100?

Duffy, thanks for the question. 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. Let's say around a 1-1.5% as far as the cancellation or the stop of the depreciation. 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. That collection is really about a 1%-1.5% tailwind for us as well. We are actively pursuing the sale of those assets, and we will continue to do so.

Great. Thanks. Eduardo, 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, you know, 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, you know, to bottom, you know, by the end of this year. We still expect that to be the case. You know, you need to remember that it's all a function of what you are comparing with, right? We started from a very high price level and, you know, we're working on signing these long-term agreements. Our agreements are on average between three and five years, more recently, we have been signing agreements even longer than that as people get more concerned with reliability of supply, right?

You know, the system that we have with, you know, the cavern that we can bring product to the cavern, store it 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? Just think about the, just an inventory. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in helium in our cavern. 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 right now, and that's what we are focusing on.

We'll go next to Christopher S. Parkinson with Wolfe 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, you know, is there something we should be monitoring in terms of turnarounds, you know, hydrogen demand, you already went over helium, baseline merchant pricing? Is that just, hey, we wanna see how the year turns out, the fiscal year turns out just based on the degree of uncertainty out of the Middle East? Thank you.

Yeah. Hi, Chris. Thanks for the question. We have raised our guide, increased about a 10% or $0.10 from the mid, right? 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. We do remain uncertain about the macroeconomic environment, especially in Asia and Europe. We're closely monitoring our customer supply chain conditions with impact on the Strait of Hormuz.

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. 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. Just, as a quick follow-up, in the Samsung release from yesterday, you used the phrase, you know, the greatest investment semiconductor, 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 multi-stages for Samsung would be in excess of that amount? Is there any more framework you could perhaps add? Also, just a quick, you know, 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.

I think the message is exactly how you described this. It is the largest investment we ever made in the electronic side. We're not gonna disclose the number, the reference that you made to a previous project is correct. 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 on the phase one. The phases are getting larger in terms of industrial gas consumption. This is I think the fifth phase of the site.

The volumes we're gonna supply under this agreement when it's completely built is approximately three times larger than what we did in phase one. That gives you an idea. It's a very significant project for us. We are very proud to have reached this point with Samsung and but it's just a start of the, you know, probably 4-year construction that we have to do on a multiple phase project like that. Thanks.

On your other question about the what we expect in terms of bid activity. As we said, there is a, 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. 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.

We'll go next to Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

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 sale of equipment project estimates. Can you just give a little detail on that? 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 in the run rate will sort of mean revert higher? That's my first question.

Thanks, Vincent Andrews. Speaking to our corporate and other segment, it is a bit of a mixed bag. You are correct that the vast majority of the improvement was the prior year cost increase that we saw on a sale of equipment project. Again, which is a percentage of completion project, increased costs go to the bottom line. 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. We will continue to see that flow through from a year-over-year perspective as we continue to reduce headcount and rightsize the organization.

Okay. Maybe you could just give us a little sense of what, what that number should look like in the back half. 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. Is this 18-ish%? Is that what we should be using for the back half?

Yeah. Thanks for the follow-up there. From, 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 of equipment headwinds. That comp will continue to flow through for the rest of the year. From a tax rate perspective, yes, 18 is the number that we should be forecasting. Again, we did have some U.S. investment tax credits and increased estimates for a Dutch investment incentive that reduced our ETR for this quarter. We should see that flow through the rest of the year.

We'll go next to James Hooper with Bernstein.

Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. First question, can you talk a little bit about the pricing dynamics?

For the non-helium gases, through the rest of the year. Obviously, you mentioned that, you know, +2 from Europe and Americas. Will the kind of coming inflation mean that your Asian pricing assumptions will need to change also?

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

The Asia. Asia is a little different. I think the dynamics there, it's in China is, you know, a hyper-competitive market. I think every Western company will tell you that, you know, the PPI, CPI is negative for the last several years, and it's a really difficult fight to keep your prices stable in China. Outside of that, I would say in Europe and the U.S., you know, we consider the pass-through a separate issue. I would say that out in pricing, we continue to make progress, and our goal is always to, you know, be able to pass inflation to, you know, that we experience in our business to pricing.

I expect that to continue to be the case in the near future. With helium, of course, subsiding the effects year-over-year, as I said, by the end of the year, we hope that the helium headwind in pricing will be done as well.

Thank you. Then just in terms of the follow-up slides, slide 6, can you. It was, I thought it 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 the first half? For example, in chemicals, do you see 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, you know, the absence of the Middle East supply in the market. In the other hand, they are suffering from, you know, cost inflation on oil and natural gas. It's a difficult dynamic. I don't think the European industry is, you know, structurally changing the issues that they have, the chemical industry. I think they will be back when the conflict is over. I think in this window now, we are basically seeing things, you know, a little stable, Air Products is not a very large supply of the chemical industry in Europe. You probably can find, get better answers from other companies on that.

I would say the segments in general, as I said, electronics is a big bright spot for us. We are working to capture that. Same thing with aerospace. Energy in U.S. because of our connection in the pipeline system in the Gulf Coast with refineries. This is running at record levels at this point, so our hydrogen volume never been so high as it is right now. That's going okay. You know, the other segments like food and medical, they are very stable, and they are less cyclical than other segments, yeah.

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? Appreciate you have, you know, a large inventory buffer and you're taking steps to maintain highly reliable supply. You know, in the scenario where we have a prolonged conflict, what are you doing differently? How much might you be able to increase, you know, sourcing arrangements and liquefaction? Maybe you could just kinda 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 the, in Kansas, you know, and in the, you know, 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 at our plant, but we have access to liquefaction capacity. Our project with the cavern was connected to that. The constraint that we have is really the ability to move the products from Texas to Kansas, and then the second constraint would be the liquefaction capacity that we have over there. We are working to maximize both points to eliminate these constraints.

It is not a, an easy supply chain because you have to, you know, from East Texas to Kansas is like 900 miles one way. We are working on that to maximize that. 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. We are able to replace that, but not much more than that.

I would say that, you know, the design was for, to cover our customers and, you know, if this thing gets prolonged for a long time, it will be a tough time for the market. 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. 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. It seems as though, you know, some of the impetus behind that is to do with the energy market changes, right? Refinery hydrogen and maybe.

Air Products & Chemicals (APD) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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