65 orders valued at over $1m, 84 new customers and 28 first-of-a-kind orders all contributed to the company’s fourth record order quarter of the past five quarters.
Adding to this success, Q1 sales of $354.1m were Chart’s highest Q1 sales in its history and increased 22.7% when compared to Q1 2021.
Q1 reported gross margin as a percentage of sales of 23.6% was the highest in a year for Chart and in-line with the expected trend of increasing sequential gross margin and operating income as a percent of sales improvement for the remainder of 2022.
Jill Evanko, President and CEO of Chart Industries, said, “We are pleased with our pricing and cost reduction progress, reflected in our improving gross margin as a percent of sales and expected to continue throughout the remainder of the year.”
“In addition, we continue to hit key milestones of one-year acquisition integrations on schedule while completing capacity and productivity projects throughout 2021 and 2022.”
“These activities also support our ability to deliver our solutions on-time to our customers as we continue to see record demand, including the first quarter of 2022 being our sixth consecutive quarter of setting a new historical backlog record and our highest order quarter ever.”
Highlights
Specialty Products orders continued to demonstrate consistency and strength, with Q1 2022 being Chart’s fifth consecutive quarter of Specialty Products orders above $100m.
As well as this, Chart said it is also witnessing numerous synergy sales opportunities across its Nexus of Clean™ newly acquired companies – ranging from cross-selling water treatment solutions to food and beverage customers to cross selling carbon capture processes to water customers.
Gas By Rail™, carbon capture and space exploration orders each grew over 20% compared to the first quarter of 2021, while water treatment grew over 500%.
Food and beverage orders grew 14% for that same period, driven by Q1 2022 new restaurant starts and distributor activity significantly (20%) over plan.
As we expected, Chart did not book any hydrogen or helium liquefier orders in the first quarter, yet demand for its hydrogen equipment continued, with $30m of hydrogen-related equipment orders.
Video:
Chart 2022 Q1 results
2022 outlook
Chart’s anticipated 2022 full year sales outlook is in the range of $1.72bn to $1.85bn with associated non-diluted adjusted EPS of $5.35 to $6.50, both revised from its prior guidance.