Linde plc

Linde plc is the world's largest industrial gas company, supplying atmospheric gases (oxygen, nitrogen, argon), process gases (hydrogen, carbon dioxide, helium, acetylene), and related engineering services to customers across more than 80 countries, generating $34.0 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. The company was formed by the 2018 merger of Germany's Linde AG and the American Praxair, Inc. — a combination that created an industrial franchise with unmatched supply density across the three major economic regions. Linde's gases are essential inputs to virtually every industrial process: steelmaking, refining, chemicals, electronics fabrication, food processing, healthcare, and increasingly, clean energy and commercial spaceflight.

This is a story about a compounder that spent the better part of a decade proving the merger thesis — widening margins from the low teens to 26% while returning north of $7 billion annually to shareholders — and now faces a more interesting set of questions about where the next leg of growth comes from. The industrial recovery that was supposed to arrive in 2024 and then 2025 has been uneven: the Americas are humming, EMEA is stuck, and APAC is a mixed bag. Meanwhile, the sale-of-gas project backlog — the company's most visible growth engine — is consuming itself faster than new wins replenish it, down from $7.3 billion at year-end 2025 to $7.1 billion after a heavy quarter of startups in Q1 2026. The file turns on a single question: whether Linde's positioning in electronics, clean hydrogen, and commercial space can offset what looks like a structurally challenged European industrial base and a Chinese market where deflation and overcapacity define the landscape.