Linde plc

Linde plc is the world's largest industrial gas company, producing atmospheric gases (oxygen, nitrogen, argon) and process gases (hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide) for customers across more than 80 countries, with $33,986 million in revenue and $6,898 million in net income in fiscal 2025. The company also designs and builds the plants that produce those gases — air separation units, hydrogen reformers, olefin plants — through its Engineering segment, creating a rare combination of process-technology ownership and operating-scale advantage.

This is a story about a business that combines utility-like revenue visibility with industrial cyclicality, wrapped in a capital-allocation discipline that has produced 33 consecutive years of dividend increases. The 2018 merger of Praxair and Linde AG created the industry's largest player by revenue and the most geographically balanced, with leading positions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Since then, the company has delivered on the merger's cost-synergy promises while building a $7.3 billion sale-of-gas project backlog that provides a multi-year growth tailwind largely independent of the macroeconomic cycle.

The central question is whether the current valuation — roughly 30 times trailing earnings and 18.5 times trailing EBITDA on our estimates — already discounts the best-case outcome: a steady compounding machine whose backlog, pricing power, and buyback keep EPS growing 8–12% regardless of the industrial cycle. The bull case adds a hydrogen-decarbonisation option that could make Linde a multi-decade beneficiary of the energy transition. The bear case asks whether the debt taken on to fund the buyback leaves the company exposed if the cycle turns, and whether the underperforming U.S. homecare business signals a limit to the "fix anything" narrative.