2021 marked a historical year for Chart Industries, with the cryogenic equipment manufacturer today (24th Feb) reporting record-breaking fourth quarter (Q4) orders of $460.9m and full-year orders of $1.7bn, contributing to a record backlog of $1.2bn.
Recording-breaking sales of $378.9m were also achieved by Chart in Q4, which contributed to record full-year sales of $1.3bn. The company’s historical achievements still remain with or without large-scale LNG included in the results.
“Mega orders” help to drive the above figured, with the US-based company receiving over 70 orders valued above the $1m mark in Q4, contributing to a total of 226 “mega orders” for the full-year.
In addition to capital growth, Chart also witnessed huge customer growth, representing lots of new business. For Q4 alone, Chart welcomed the addition of 99 new customers, bringing its total number of new customers for the year to 402. The majority of the customer base (37%) came from EMEA & India.
Q4 also saw Chart report non-diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.34, including one-time items related to acquisition deal-related costs integration costs, cost of refinancing the company’s revolving credit facility start-up costs at new facilities and benefits from the mark-to-market and gain on company investments.
When excluding the above items Q4 2021 adjusted non-diluted EPS was $0.73, contirbuted to Chart’s full year 2021 reported non-diluted EPS of $1.66 and record high adjusted non-diluted full year 2021 of $2.84.
Jill Evanko, President and CEO of Chart, said, “We expect broad-based demand for our products to continue throughout 2022, and when coupled with the anticipated Big LNG cycle kicking off in early 2022, we expect meaningful growth for our business.”
“Coupling that growth in our higher margin businesses with our pricing and cost reduction activities results in a clear path to our targeted margins in the second half 2022 even when considering the inflationary environment in which we are operating.”
“We continue to aggressively manage cost and supply chain pressures through permanent and temporary pricing actions and have over 150 cost reduction, productivity, automation and capacity projects in flight.”
Highlights
When focusing on specific business segments, Chart’s end market applications within the Specialty Products segment has full-year 2021 order growth above 15% compared to 2020, reflected in full-year orders of $648.6m.
Q4 2021 Specialty Products orders of $182.3m included hydrogen and helium orders of $85.4m, including a 15 tonne per day hydrogen liquefier and 19 hydrogen trailers with five of these sold for use in South Korea.
Food and beverage full year 2021 orders were 49.2% higher than the full year 2020, and Q4 2021 food and beverage sales hit record highs. Chart said it continues to see record-breaking order levels in the sector within 2022, with ongoing footprint growth.
2022 Outlook
Taking into consideration its record-breaking year in 2021, record Q4 2021 and record backlog as of December 31, 2021, Chart anticipates its full-year sales outlook range of $1.7bn to $1.9bn, excluding large-scale LNG projects.
