Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
APD
recently announced the increase in product pricing, surcharges and monthly service charges for merchant customers in North America. The price hike is effective as of Oct 1, 2020, or as contracts permit.
The company notified that these adjustments will include increase of monthly service charges of up to 20%, liquid carbon dioxide of up to 15% as well as up to 15% increase for liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen. Based on certain conditions, some adjustments may be outside of these ranges.
Further, the company will raise the prices of hydrogen, helium and argon based on supply-demand, customer-specific and cost situations.
Air Products is making these pricing adjustments to address increase in sourcing, production and delivery costs. This move will enable the company to support continued investments in security, reliability and safety.
Air Products’ shares have gained 33.2% in the past year compared with the
industry
’s 1.4% rise.
In July, Air Products stated that it will continue to generate value for shareholders over the long term and invest in world-scale, sustainability-focused projects, notwithstanding the challenging environment.
The company’s investments in high-return projects, project wins and productivity actions are likely to drive its fiscal 2020 results. The company is boosting productivity to improve its cost structure. It is seeing the positive impacts of its productivity actions and is expected to benefit from additional productivity and cost-improvement programs in fiscal 2020.
Zacks Rank & Key Picks
Air Products currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the basic materials space are Barrick Gold Corporation
GOLD
, Pretium Resources, Inc.
PVG
and Yamana Gold Inc.
AUY
, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here
.
Barrick has an expected earnings growth rate of 80.4% for 2020. The company’s shares have surged 51.2% in the past year.
Pretium Resources has an expected earnings growth rate of 20% for 2020. Its shares have returned 2.7% in the past year.
Yamana has an expected earnings growth rate of 76.9% for 2020. The company’s shares have gained 62.7% in the past year.
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