Linde PLC (LIN), formerly Praxair Inc. (PX), will raise its quarterly dividend by 6.1 percent to $0.963 per share in the first quarter of 2019. Because the merged company follows the former Praxair dividend this marks the 26th consecutive year of dividend increases.

The next dividend is payable on March 22, 2019 to shareholders of record on March 8, 2019. Last year Praxair hiked its dividend by 4.8 percent.

Linde plc, formerly Praxair, Inc., is an industrial gases and engineering company. The company serves a variety of end markets including aerospace, chemicals, food and beverage, electronics, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and primary metals. Linde's industrial gases are used in countless applications, from life-saving oxygen for hospitals to high-purity & specialty gases for electronics manufacturing, hydrogen for clean fuels and much more. Linde also delivers state-of-the-art gas processing solutions to support customer expansion, efficiency improvements and emissions reductions. In 2018 Germany's Linde merged with Praxair, forming the new Linde plc.