“If they hold volumes to these levels, we'd actually see comps no longer being negative year-on-year for EMEA. However, no catalyst that would suggest a significant change in this trend just yet.”

In context

“that both gases and hardgoods sequentially were flat. Latin America was slightly positive in Q1 as well. Looking ahead, Americas largely flat to slightly positive in the second quarter. The good news is the hydrogen demand continues to be extremely strong in the U.S. Gulf Coast. We're really happy to see that pick up in refiners and pet chem, kind of customers are running largely at record levels. So feel good about where that stands. As far as EMEA is concerned, the trend over the last few quarters, largely unchanged. And in Q1, we saw a little bit of a pickup in on-site and package volumes, but merchant continued to lag and was negative year-on-year. We expect industrial customer volumes to flatten as we see developments there. So going forward, comps might look a little bit easier. If they hold volumes to these levels, we'd actually see comps no longer being negative year-on-year for EMEA. However, no catalyst that would suggest a significant change in this trend just yet. I know there's a lot of interest in APAC, so let me just give you China first, and then we'll talk about rest of Asia. Well, as far as China is concerned, in Q1, we were watching very carefully. Chemicals output was up, just under 10%, I'd say, but full year expectations moderated down to probably a range of 4% to 5%. Crude steel negative, not unexpected. We've been talking about this for a while. Well, exports for steel were up, almost 30%, but obviously, most of that, if not all of that was offset by lower pricing. So really, the overall industry didn't really impact -- get a major impact out of that. The good news; however, there is a shakeout in the industry and Tier 1 players who we tend to serve continue to benefit from that shakeout. Manufacturing, largely flat, traditional ma”