Slowly but surely, Johnson Matthey is turning itself into a business entirely built around sustainability. Known for its catalytic converters, which remove harmful emissions such as carbon monoxide from car exhaust gases, it has been making big strides in a world of environmentally viable products, most importantly developing a game-changing cathode for the batteries of electric vehicles.
The rub for shareholders of this FTSE 100 group is that its battery technology, Elno, is in development and will not go into production until 2024, so until then they need to be reassured existing revenues are, at the very least, reliable.
Johnson Matthey began life in 1817 as a collection of assayers testing the purity of precious metals, including gold, but it expanded rapidly into other