Amrize Ltd Ordinary Shares

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the half-year 2022 Results Analyst and Investor Conference Call. I am Sandra, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Svetlana Jotko, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Madam.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Holcim's first half results call. As usual, we will start with the opening remarks done by our CEO, Jan Jenisch, and follow with more financial details afterwards by our CFO, Geraldine Picot. After that, we'll take some time for your questions, as usual. Without any further ado, I would like to hand over right now to our CEO, Jan. Go ahead, please.

Hey, good morning, everyone, and thank you for making time to join our half-year call. I'm very excited to share more details with you on the results. You can imagine we are very pleased that we continued this profitable growth also in the quarter two. You remember we have already reported profitable growth in Q1, and we even have a better momentum in the second quarter of the year. So I think that's very satisfying to see. Moreover, the growth you're seeing from us is very broad-based. Basically, we have a good demand and strong pricing in all our regions. Then we have some additional push from the launch of our green products. So EcoPact, the green concrete solution, is already 10% of our concrete sales. Then EcoPlanet, our CO2 reduced cement solution, is on the same track. And that's very, very fulfilling to see. And of course, the building up of our fourth segment, solutions and products, is really shaping up now. We have, based on our four acquisitions for roofing systems, Firestone, Malachi, and lately SES insulation solutions. We have built a stronger base for roofing system already with pro forma sales of 3.5 billion Swiss francs for 2022. We have done an additional platform for insulation and facade and mortar systems with the acquisition of four companies in Europe, accounting already for 600 million of performer sales in 2022. So in total, we are now in a situation that for this year, solutions and products will already be 24% of entire wholesale group. So that's a big step. You remember two years ago, we were at 8%. So we could accelerate here successfully and looks like the target we set for 2025 with 30% of sales in solutions and products is of course very, very achievable. And hopefully we have the opportunity to go beyond this original target. So very happy to see that. We have then in the second quarter, as I think we discussed with you previously, was the steepest challenge for us regarding cost inflation. We still had comparatively low cost base in 2021 in the second quarter, and now we have this very high cost inflation, of course, starting with energy, I think with around 40% cost inflation for H1 alone, but also all the other costs from logistics, maintenance, spare parts, and so on. We have high cost inflation, and I'm more than happy to report that we could... balance off here, this cost inflation and even coming back with a positive price over cost for Q2 and for the first half 2022. Very, very fulfilling and puts us, I think, in a great position now. You have seen a little bit our scorecard in the slides, record performance in H1 from net sales to EBIT to net income earnings per share. We have reached new highs and all double-digit growth, I think is a very nice, good position for us, I think, for the second half of the year and also for next year. I think with this, we have Geraldine telling us a bit more on the regions and on the financial results, and then I will return back with the outlook for the year.

Thank you, Jan, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to share with you more details on our results for this first half and second quarter of 2022. The pricing has continued to be very strong. Consequently, net sales have grown organically by 13.6% in the second quarter, leading to a like-for-like growth of 12.7% in H1. EBIT growth has reached 7% like-for-like in Q2, driven by the excellent performance of the roofing systems, In respect of cement aggregates and ready mix, the price of a cost has been positive in Q2, demonstrating here our ability to contain cost inflation and offset it with pricing power. Earnings per share before impairment and divestments ended at 2.14 Swiss francs per share for the half year. That's 50% above H1 2021. Free cash flow amounts to 275 million Swiss francs for H1 below the same period last year, reflecting strong activity, which implies more inventories and more capex. Let's now go to the slide 12. On ed sales, NH1 reached 14.7 billion Swiss francs. That's up 17% compared to the same period last year. Cement aggregates in ready-mix sales recorded a total growth of 10%. This is primarily attributable to the strong price increase, which stood at 12.1% over H1 on average. The negative scope effect mainly comes from Russia and from the divestments closed in H2 2021. These scope-outs were partly offset by bolt-ons. Solutions and product segment recorded a huge growth of 1.2 billion Swiss francs. This was comprised of two main drivers. Firstly, the scope effect of 0.8 billion Swiss francs includes the net sales of Malarkey and PRB, which have been consolidated from March and May respectively. It also includes the sales of Elevate, formerly known as Firestone, for Q1 2022. Secondly, the like-for-like growth of all 0.4 billion Swiss francs is primarily attributable to the excellent performance of our wolfing business in Q2. And then currency translation had a negative impact of 1% only. This effect primarily stemmed from the euro. Let's now move on to recurring EBIT. Recurring EBIT showed a total growth of 10%. The EBIT of cement aggregates and redimits ready-mix segments decreased by 44 million Swiss francs, mainly due to the scope-out and the decline of washing. The volume effect has been slightly positive at 19 million Swiss francs, benefiting from a favorable geographic mix. Please note that the price-over cost is positive in H1 due to strong pricing and effective energy sourcing. Solutions and product segments recorded a strong growth of 245 million Swiss francs, attributable to the acquisition and the outstanding performance of the roofing business. Forex was small at only minus 11 million Swiss francs. Now let me focus on Q2, the slide 14, which really highlights the current trends. With regards to cement, aggregates, and ready mix, the price of a cost has been strongly positive. The price increase of 13.2% in Q2 has more than offset the cost inflation, and in particular the energy, which has recorded a 39% increase for Q2. Solutions and products, Q2 was marked by the excellent performance of our roofing business. Let's now look at the results by business line. Cement sales grew by 12.2% like for like, mainly driven by the price impact of 12.4%. Recurring EBIT slightly declined by 2% like for like due to inflationary pressure. Aggregates price increased by 7.4% in H1, allowing an increase in the recurring EBIT margin by 0.3 percentage points. The ready mix volume grew by 4.7% and priced by 9.1%. The recurring margin also grew here by 0.3 percentage points. And the solutions and products business segment is now the second largest contributor to the group recurring EBIT. It fully plays its role of a growth engine with like-for-like growth above 25% in sales and above 140% in recurring EBIT. So before getting into more detail, the slide 16 here provides you another view of the regional performance. All regions grew in recurring EBIT except Asia-Pac, which has been less successful in mitigating inflation. So let's begin with North America. The region delivered an outstanding performance in the quarter. We saw tall market demand across the region. Our traditional businesses benefited from the favorable market environment, an excellent price momentum, leading to positive price over cost and recurring EBIT margin improvement in Q2. Additionally, our roofing system strongly contributed to the performance of the region with double-digit net sales growth and increased profitability. The recurring EBIT margin reached 19% in H1. Going forward, we continue to see robust demand in all our markets, and we have a full order book for 2022. If we turn now to Latin America, the region delivered another quarter of strong profitable growth. We observed a good level of demand despite very high comparison in the prior year. Argentina and Colombia in particular experienced even higher activity compared to 2021. Price momentum remains strong across the board. As a result, the region achieved a positive price over cost in the quarter. We continue to accelerate the expansion of our aggregates business with new production facilities in Colombia, Ecuador, and El Salvador. Finally, the region further progressed on our sustainability journey by significantly increasing the use of alternative fuels. Let's now move on to Europe. The region has again delivered a good performance. Price dynamics remained strong and further accelerated in Q2. Price over cost was positive in the quarter, clearly demonstrating our ability to offset cost inflation. The region has advanced well in the execution of green capex, notably driving the increase of the usage of alternative fuels. A significant milestone has been achieved with two major carbon capture projects selected for a grant from the EU Innovation Fund, accelerating our green growth strategy and strengthening our leadership in sustainability. Additionally, we continue to accelerate growth by signing numerous bolt-on acquisitions and further expanding our specialty building solutions. Let's turn next to Middle East and Africa, where the region recorded a strong performance in the quarter. Market growth remained solid in Nigeria, while cement demand was a bit softer in Egypt. Driven by strong pricing momentum, the region managed to deliver positive price over cost. Driven by price increases, especially in Egypt and in Nigeria. The region recorded a margin increase of 60 basis points in Q2, a clear achievement in the current inflationary context. Finally, moving to APAC. The region continued to be challenged by the inflationary environment. While we saw volume recovery in India, demand in the Philippines and China remained soft, both impacted by the pandemic. Price increases were insufficient to offset high-cost inflation, resulting in significant negative price over cost. Recurring EBIT margin declined by 10 percentage points in Q2. Good order book in Australia and continued expansion of aggregates and ready-mix businesses in China should provide additional growth in H2. Let's move on to our P&L. And this table, slide 22, shows the income statement for the half year. As usual, it excludes impairment and the capital gains or losses on the divestments. The increase of the recurring EBIT amounted to 190 million Swiss francs or 10% as presented earlier. Restructuring, litigation, and other non-recurring costs have decreased by 157 million Swiss francs mainly due to one-off litigation cost incurred in H1 2021. Despite the acquisitions and the macroeconomic background, our financial expenses have continued to reduce and our effective tax rate has remained stable at 26%. Finally, our subsidiaries with minority shareholders have contributed less to earnings than in H1 2021, especially in India. So consequently, the net income attributable to non-controlling interest has decreased. All these factors allowed the earning per share to record an outstanding increase of 50%, reaching 2.14 Swiss francs per share for the H1. Moving now to the cash, we report a free cash flow of 275 million Swiss francs generated in H1. In H1 2022, we have invested in development and in green capex consistently with a high level of activity. Some key projects in India and in Europe have generated increased spending in H1 by 227 million Swiss francs. With regards to working capital, the month of June has been particularly strong and our operations have created more inventories to serve the high demand this summer. Consequently, the working capital requirement has increased by 681 million Swiss francs. On the contrary, in H1 2021, last year, we incurred some non-recurring costs, as I mentioned before, and expense 117 million Swiss francs more than this current year. Overall, the free cash flow should reach 3 billion Swiss francs on a four-year basis, excluding the impact of the Indian divestment. Let's now move on to the debt. Our net debt amounted to 13.4 billion Swiss francs at the end of June 2022. That's 1 billion Swiss francs above June 2021. And you can see here on this waterfall that over the last 12 months, we have recorded a total free cash flow of 2.7 billion Swiss francs. Merger and acquisition represented a net spending of 2 billion Swiss francs. And within this envelope, cash paid for Malarkey and PRB amounted to 1.7 billion Swiss francs. We have also spent 0.5 billion Swiss francs on Bolton acquisitions. The divestment of Zambia, the Indian Ocean, and Austin, Ireland brought 0.2 billion Swiss. We paid dividends for 1.55 billion Swiss francs. And the bucket Others mainly contains the cash spent on Treasury shares, largely offset by the positive translation effect on our debt in foreign currencies. With this, I hand over now to Jan.

Yes, thank you. So I think we can look with quite a bit of confidence into the second half of this year. You have seen our growth is very broad-based. Basically, in all our key markets, we have good demand. We have very good order books. We don't see a slowdown. You see our strong Q2 results. There's no slowdown for us. We have good order books, so we're very confident with our business. We keep pushing with our green products. We expect here a further acceleration here in the second half of the year and, of course, in also the years to come. And then we have our growth engine of solutions and products, which – is now already starting to be a quarter of the whole SIM business. You see our guidance of above $5 billion. I think we'll be rather around $6 billion for the full year already with all the incoming acquisitions we are closing around this year. So that gave us the confidence to upgrade our guidance. We upgrade the guidance now to double-digit. both like-for-like and also in Swiss francs, and I look forward to have here another record result in the second half of the year. I think you will see further speed in our sustainability program. We just received two grants from the European Union Innovation Fund for two of our carbon capture projects, very sizable funding of a couple hundred million euros, so a This will help us here to further accelerate here all our efforts to decarbonize the business. I think on the bottom line side, I believe Q2 was probably the steepest challenge we have for the year when we look at cost inflation. I think now we are on a very good level when you look at our price over cost. I think our pricing is very sharp already for the second half of the year. Cost inflation, I personally don't think we will see a worsening. I think we will rather have a higher comparison base of last year. So I think we are in a very good position now for the second half of the year when it comes to the margin, when it comes to the EBIT growth, which I also expect here to further grow in the second half of the year. Very good progress, I think, on all levels of our strategy. And now I think I'm happy to have your questions and comments.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to only two questions. Thank you. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Elodie Rall from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, Jan and Jalene. Congratulations for the very good results. So I'll keep my questions to two then. The first one would be on natural gas. So you have previously mentioned that you're not exposed to Russian natural gas, but you're exposed indirectly. So have you seen any adverse impact on your operation so far, and what do you envisage will happen should Russian gas supply come to a halt? That's my first question. And the second question is, whether you could provide us an update on the CIA investigation, and particularly as it relates to the DOJ, because there seems to be an additional comment in the H1 report that we haven't seen before where you're talking about potential actions that could impact the business financially and the reputation as well. So if you could just comment on that. Thanks very much.

Hey, good morning, Elodie. Thank you for the questions. I think on the natural gas side, we are not using natural gas ourselves. We are basically exposed to the inflation coming from the utility companies, where, of course, some of them are using gas or other sources of high energy inflation. I think we managed this very well. We had in the first half of the year a record of 40% energy cost rise, can you imagine? And that was... I think, well planned for us. I think even if you look at the spot prices, they are, of course, even higher, which is normal because we have a lot longer term contracts and so on. But I think we did this very well. We don't know how this war in the Ukraine curves, how this conflict will further influence the energy prices. I think we at Holcim, we have a secure supply chain when it comes to energy. You also see that we have a new record, of course, in alternative fuel, especially in Europe. We are close to two-thirds of alternative fuel usage now in Europe with a super big increase. So energy costs, we feel rather secure here, and I think we have proven that we can fully mitigate those costs also by efficiencies and, of course, by price adaptations to the customers. Regarding the Syria investigation, I think we have, with the DOJ, I think we have updated a bit under the country risks, what's going on at the moment, and we are in continue to have the discussions with the DOJ about a potential resolution of the matter. Discussions are ongoing at this point in time. I cannot comment any further. We put some A RISC CLAIMER HERE ON THE RISC DECLAIMER HERE IN THE HALF-YEAR REPORT THAT THERE ARE POTENTIAL ACTIONS OR SORRY, SORRY, POTENTIAL OUTCOMES HERE WHICH CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A LEGAL CLAIM OR DISCLAIM OR SOMETHING. SO I LOOK FORWARD TO RESOLVE THE ISSUES. AS WE HAVE STATED IN THE PAST, WE ARE fully responsible and transparent with resolving the Syrian matter, both in the court investigation in Paris, but also with the DOJ discussions which we are having.

The next question comes from Paul Roger from BNP Bariba. Please go ahead.

Hi, Ed. Good morning, Jan. Morning, Geraldine and team. And likewise, congratulations on the results. Yeah, so two questions then. I think Firstly, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of talk about macro headwinds and recession and everything else. You're obviously not seeing it yet. But I was wondering if there were any warning signs like project cancellations, anything like that in any of your markets. And then the second one, maybe a bit of a cheeky one on M&A. Obviously, you mentioned before some of the verticals like roofing and insulation you'd be interested in. Just wondering how radical you could prepare to be. Is there a maximum deal size you'd consider to expand in those verticals? Thank you.

Hey, good morning, Paul. Yes, thank you for the question. I think, you know, on the outlook of the economy, I cannot make a general comment, but just what we see at Holcim, we have full order books, and especially in North America, also in Latin America, Also in Europe, we see in principle no cancellation of projects. In some cases, you have some delays, but which is normal, especially in those times, not only cost inflation, you also have disruptions in resources, right? You have shortages on some materials. We have shortages on construction, labor, on drivers and so on. But I think it's all still in a very healthy shape. And on top of that, good order books we have right now, we should also remember that all the infrastructure measures which were announced by many, many countries, like in the U.S., Build Back Better, or this whole new investments in infrastructure, this has not been reflected in our order books yet, right? So under normal circumstances, we expect this to start influencing our business very positively next year. So At this point in time, we can only give a confident outlook because that's what we see happening with our customers and in all our key markets. You're asking about the further expansion of solutions and products, and maybe first of all, I'm super happy we entered the roofing and insulation system business. You have to imagine we now say we have about 3.5 billion Swiss francs performer sales already through the acquisitions and a super high organic growth rate at the moment, which puts us already in the number three, number four position globally in roofing systems. At the same time, these are large markets. In the U.S. alone, we are operating in a $25 billion plus market with those products. And then you have similar volumes, of course, in Europe, and you have some volumes in Latin America. So we entered an extremely large market segment, and I'm just talking about roofing. We also entered into insulation, so we can talk about the whole building envelope where we can offer systems in the future. So we have a lot to do, Paul, and our number one priority is to further build, grow, and further acquire in this space of roofing and insulation systems. Having said that, we at the same time, we put together a nice new platform, which is also for insulating facades, mortars, tile adhesives in Europe, where we did four acquisitions, giving us already a base of 600 million Swiss francs in sales. And you see here, that gives us quite some market share in Europe. The market segment itself is smaller than roofing. Nevertheless, we have just started, so plenty to grow. So to be transparent with you, we entered two segment solutions and products, which gives us plenty of room to grow. Already now making up 24% of the group sales and making it now very achievable, the 30%, and hopefully we can go beyond the 30%. If something exciting comes up in a, In a related market segment, we will look at it and we will not say no if it's attractive. But we have plenty of space to grow with the two platforms we just established. That's great. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Matthias Peisenberger from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Two questions from my side. Firstly, on the S&P segment, the strong like-for-like growth, more than 25%. Could you segment a bit in pricing and volume terms and what's really driving the increase, especially in North America? And then 140% like-for-like on the EBIT. Why is this such a big operating leverage? And then also, taking a couple of steps back, you seem... happy with the pricing or are you launching more price increases, especially on the salmon side? And is there in the end scope to maintain margins on a year-on-year basis for the group? Thanks.

Yes, and good morning. I'm very excited, of course, that when you acquire a business, it's fantastic to have such a rocket start, as you mentioned, both in growth and then even in in in margins and uh um i can share with you when we say we now reached already 3.5 billion in roofing systems alone we have basically doubled the profitability of those 3.5 billion in in just the last one and a half years where we started to acquire those businesses i think we have very dedicated management you you have to imagine the firestone business For example, it was carved out of the biggest tire manufacturer, Bridgestone. And I think it's natural to be in a building materials home now that we have a full passion. We're also investing in the business. We had a couple of de-bottlenecks or bottlenecks. We could de-bottleneck. So very excited to do that. And the market is good. You have to see these roofing systems. We are selling... more than two-thirds of the sales comes from repair and refurbishment. So we don't depend largely on new build, and that's a very stable and profitable market, and the market has been very good. To the growth, we do about half the growth in volume, half the growth in pricing, and that's not a bad mix. And, of course, the pricing here was above the cost inflation, so helping us to increase the profitability as mentioned by you. A very exciting start and gives us, I think, now a lot of confidence that strategy has started to not only work, but already delivering such strong results. And it gives us a bit confidence now to go ahead here. I think on the price increase, your second question, I'm super happy. You know, when you see this, you know, 40%, energy cost increase in the first half of the year. You know, we are talking a couple hundred millions alone, and then we have 250 million increase in logistics, and I could just go on. So we're talking like a billion-plus in cost inflation in the first half of the year, and that was a challenge for us to target that. the right price adaptations to make the price over cost work, and I'm really proud our people could make it. I think we have seen the steepest cost challenge in Q2. That doesn't mean the costs go down now, but I think for Holcim, we are in a sweet spot on the margin side. We don't need further price increases, I believe, at the moment. It doesn't mean we don't have some, but I think we have done our homework now in the first half of the year to a very, very good level.

Yeah. Thank you. Very helpful.

The next question comes from from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. I have two as well. So the first one is on the gas situation. I agree that you're not using gas directly, but looking at EU's target of kind of voluntary reduction of 15% in the next 10 months, do you think the overall construction industry will also kind of be falling that level because your other ancillary products like chemicals and other stocks or steel are not available because of the reduction in gas consumption? That's the first one. And the second one is on the hedging. If you could just give us an update of where your power hedging in Europe is for the second half and into 2023, please.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think you all are experts in the influence of gas. I think it's used not only as an energy source, it's used for production, it's used as a feedstock for chemical industry and so on. And again, I cannot forecast here something, and no one can forecast how this will turn out, but I can just tell you that we have a good situation for Holcim. We have secured our energy. We are not depending directly on gas. We have also alternatives. We had a huge increase of alternative fuels. We are close to two-thirds of the energy we need in our plants coming from alternative fuels with a huge increase. So that also has actually a positive effect. A lot of people complain when the cost increases, but if you handle this well, it helps you to make your company more robust and more efficient. So, for example, increase in CO2 pricing, but also increase in energy cost has helped us to accelerate our transformation. And when you look at our numbers, we have done this, I think, in quite an impressive manner. So there's nothing I can be worried now at this point in time. I think we are on a very safe grounds here. On the hedging, I let Geraldine speak in a moment just as a general rule. And I said this before, you know, you have to be careful in hedging because hedging doesn't come free of charge. And then hedging sometimes makes your operational people slower in the reaction time. I honestly prefer to have a cost reality as soon as it's there so our people can react accordingly and cannot rely on, oh, no problem with the energy cost. I'm hedged for the next three months or six months, and then I'm just too slow to react. So we try, we hedge a bit on the corporate side, But we keep this away from the countries because the country needs to be very proactive and adjust immediately and not be slow because they believe something is hedged.

Thank you, Jan. And to complement, we are very agile and we are really trying to have an optimized sourcing strategy. Yes, it includes hedging, but it's all about contracting hedging. and agile buying behavior that we want to maintain. And we are also reinforcing all green power contracts, mitigating here the increase. We have also an owned wind farm in Germany. So all of this is part of the plan for us to mitigate the power cost that I effectively linked potentially to what's happening in the gas industry.

Okay, would you be able to put a number around it?

The number is not that easy because, you know, you're hedging. We believe in longer-term contracts. So we love to have multi-year contracts with the power or the utility companies. We love to have green energy contracts. I most love to have alternative fuel increasing by 10% a year. So we do this as number one for us. And a pure financial hedge on some indices, we do this sometimes, but that's not the focus for us.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

But you can make another calculation if you like. So we shared with you that our energy costs globally went up 40% in the first half year. And when you look at the different energy markets, I don't know if the costs are up 60% or 70% or 80%, but you see already this gap there that, and this is not a miracle. We are not saying we are genius with this, but we have long-term contracts, and this is what we like to do, and that gives you quite a buffer when it comes to these price hikes.

Okay, good. Thanks.

The next question comes from Martin Hüseler from ZKB. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning and thank you for taking my question. First one, you had a very strong recurring EBIT growth in the first half. and you say something like that in h2 probably um comparison comparables will be more or kind of easier for you i just wonder why don't you give a guidance on ebit growth for this year and if you don't give is it fair to assume that in the second quarter the recurring ebit dynamic should be higher than in the first half. So in the second half, higher than the first half. That's the first question. Then after, I will ask my second.

Hey, Martin, good morning. And yeah, what a question you are having. Let me say, you know, we took quite a confident outlook beginning of the year. If you call back, we have this, that we're going to have an EBIT growth We came out, I think, with the full year results, and that was quite a statement at that point in time. And I'm very happy we could deliver this in the first half year because, you know, we had a lot of negative sentiments around different sectors and people and so on. So we delivered in the first half of the year. Now, if you make your math, my guidance is still the right guidance. We're going to have a positive growth. in EBIT, both in Swiss francs and like for like. So I think we are there right now. If you want to have an exact number, we will not be able to give that to you today. I shared already with you that I believe we are quite in a sweet spot regarding margins, regarding pricing, regarding cost mitigation. But we have very volatile times, and that's why I think it's not the right time for us to be more precise than that. But obviously you can see that we are confident that we will continue with the profitable growth also in the second half of the year. And hopefully we can give you a more precise target maybe in the upcoming months.

Okay, thanks a lot. Fair enough. And the second question is turning around this rebranding of Firestone into Elevate. Can you give a bit more of background? Why did you do that? Did you have to do that because of some branding topics? And why is Malarkey not part of the Elevate kind of brand?

Okay. Yeah, no, great, Martin. Look, I think we made extremely great progress with the branding. You see the new Holcim brand is a big success throughout the world, gives the The company, I think the writer, also a base for reputation, quality, service, and so on. This is also what we did with Firestone. So we're using now the Holcim Group brand also for the acquired companies. And then for the particular Firestone, which is kind of our industrial roofing brand, we have only a limited time spent. We can use the brand because Bridgestone is actually using that brand also for certain tire brands. And we made the change now much earlier than we needed to because we have a good market situation and we have the Holcim brand is strong also in the U.S. We are doing now in U.S., Canada, about one-third of Holcim is North America. So we are very happy now to put Holcim right in front of the roofing customers. And then we're using Elevate for the industrial roofing solutions. We're using Malaki, a brand which we own. for the residential roofing, and that's how we plan to go forward.

Okay, thank you. Very helpful. All the best for the second half.

Thank you, Martin.

The next question comes from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Please, go ahead.

Thanks very much. Hi, guys. I've got a question on your premium pricing for your green cement and concrete products. We've seen... a lot of peers over the last couple of quarters starting to launch products onto the market. Can you give us a little bit of color in terms of how you're seeing the premium of your products deliver? And then just on the excess of assets, we know that you had guided to the Indian exit in the second half, so that still seems on track. But on the Brazil business, it seems like that one's dragging a little bit and it is a sizable potential cash inflow. So could you give us a little bit more understanding of what is delaying the closing of that transaction. And then, sorry, just a follow-up, Jan. Just on your comments there on the roofing brand in the U.S., does that mean that some of your products in roofing now are now wholesome branded? So you've sort of split the Firestone product offering into two, the Elevate product, the sort of most technology advanced, and then the more or less innovative products. I just didn't really understand that. on the branding.

Thank you. Hi Sarah, good morning. Yes, Holcim is the group brand, so we also operate now Firestone, Malarkey, SES, insulation foams. We operate them within the Holcim family, but then they're using specific brands for these different areas of roofing for industrial customers, for residential customers, and also for the insulation system. I think that's all really very well done and very look forward here to also freshen up this whole branding if you see now that Elevate, you know, that looks fresh, modern, that is connected to solar roofs, to cool roofs, to green roofs compared to a rather old-fashioned Firestone logo. So I'm very happy we made that move and it's always important to make these moves at the right time. So we selected to make it early because obviously... We have a great growth. We have a great feedback from the customers, so we make it in times of strength. We still have time to do it later, but we decided to make this early to use now our strength here to start a new era of growth in roofing and dissolutions and products. On the premium for the green products, we have a premium on the green products, and you can see that, obviously, It has an effect if you look at our concrete or other areas where obviously our margins are going in the positive direction, even so we have this unprecedented inflation trends. We have to cover them. So this is very good. It's just that from my personal view, I don't want to have necessarily the highest possible premiums on those products because we want to make those products our mainstream, our volume products. So we want to transform the whole same product range into sustainability fully. So our target is not to have an eco-packed and leave it at 10% of sales in concrete and get like 30% extra margin. We want to instead have a margin extra and then convert the whole concrete range to EcoPact and the same for our cement range where we go into EcoPlanet. On the margin side, it varies a little bit from country to country. We have some countries set out there due to the use of, for example, construction demolition waste, which is kind of a free raw material for us. If you do it right, we have even highly increased margins to other markets where A green solution has extra costs for us. So it varies a bit from country to country. But for now, I just want to share with you. So we have an increased margin, but it's in the, I would say, low single-digit range. And it's good this way because we want to transform our whole product range to sustainability. On the divestments, we shared with you, I think we had one slide in the deck where we are waiting now for the closing of Brazil, Zimbabwe, and India. And you are right, Brazil has been signed already last September. We got the green light from the regulator already. There was one competitor interfering also a second time. We expect now to get the final green light soon. maybe in September or October, and then we can close this transaction, which, if you recall, was for an enterprise value of a little bit over $1 billion. So I very much look forward to have this cash finally in the bank. On the India transaction, that goes, at the moment, very smooth. We have the only condition now is also the regulator. So the Indian Competition Commission has to approve it. We expect this to come in the next four weeks, and then the deal will be closed in the following four weeks. So you can expect that we close India already end of August or end of September.

Thanks very much. That's helpful.

The next question comes from Gregor Kugli from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I've got two questions, please. So firstly, if I could just come back on the sort of price-cost spread. So you've done a good job in Q2 where it turned positive on the sort of legacy heavy side business. I just want to understand if your comments around the comp easing, the pricing, whether you think that continues to be positive in the second half. I think that's what I kind of infer from that. The second question is on the free cash flow generation. So I think looking at your slides, you're trailing 12 months. Free cash generation has dropped a little bit. I think it's $2.7 billion, if I'm not mistaken, obviously working capital being the sort of culprit there. I want to understand whether there's something sort of going on around timing or anything else you should consider as to why that's sort of dropped a little bit compared to the over $3 billion mark that you've achieved over the last few years. Thank you.

Good morning, Gregor. Look, I think if the conditions continue as they are at the moment, I think we're going to have a positive price over cost for the second half of the year. I mentioned we are in a good situation. We have done, I think, sufficient price adaptations. We have done very sufficient cost mitigations. So we are in a very good spot. I think Q2 is probably the steepest challenge for us in this year. when it comes to cost inflation, because we still had significant lower energy costs and other costs in Q2 last year. So I think in the second half of the year, the comparison will be much closer to the current cost situation. And we should see, I think, very positive results. So our target for sure is to be positive price over cost. And again, the first half of the year gives me quite a strong confidence because that was really challenging, to be honest with you. It was very challenging. So expect this also to happen the second half of the year. And then, of course, we have our turbo booster with the roofing, but also the mortar business where we have more sales coming online with the newly acquired SES business. But also we have significant growth from the Firestone, but also Malaki. We just closed in May. It's also on a very high growth trend at the moment and for the rest of the year it's sold out. So we have, I think, quite some excitement left for the second half of the year. On the free cash flow, as we all know, the first half of the year is always a bit difficult with the cash flow. It's on a much lower level than the second half of the year. Nevertheless, we were cash flow positive. Here, we didn't compromise for the customer. You can imagine with all the disruption in the markets, our first priority was to serve the customer. So we had to sometimes, we had to take a bit more inventory in on certain minerals. We had to even take on spare parts and other things. We took inventory in because we have the disruption in the supply chain, the global supply chain is increasing. one thing, but to also get it delivered is another one. You have lead times which are two or three times higher now than before, and we didn't want to take any risk to disrupt our customers. That's why we didn't optimize inventory or cash flow in the first half, because we wanted to fully benefit from the growth which is possible for us. and also, I think, to serve our customers well here. We have, of course, then the increased activity and also the increased pricing leads to higher valuation of inventories and all of that, so you know all that. So for me, the cash flow is a bit delayed this year because of these circumstances, and we still stick to our guidance of $3 billion free cash flow for the full year, and I think we're going to have a strong cash flow in now in the second half of the year.

Excellent. Thank you.

The next question comes from Yasin Touari from Onfield Investment Research. Please go ahead.

My first question would be on your roofing and institution business. You're expecting to generate 3.5 billion of sales in 2022 pro forma. What kind of margin would you hope to achieve on those 3.5 billion of sales? And my second question would be, if there is a recession in 2023 or 2024, how confident are you in your ability to keep margin and to keep the pricing at its current very high level?

Hey, Yacine. Thank you for the questions. And I think we indicated in the presentation that our roofing business is at a 19% EBIT margin. which I think is already a very healthy level. We discussed this already earlier that we basically doubled the profitability. I think the 19% is a super level. I think it can go to 20% or beyond. But nevertheless, we are quite happy with the 19%. We still have a lot of efficiencies and economies of scale coming. We have very exciting deep bottlenecking projects in our plans. You can imagine we have now In roofing and insulation, we have now a backbone of 18 manufacturing facilities. That is really fantastic. And now we have a lot of effort to de-bottleneck, make them faster, a bit more efficient. So I think we have a lot of positive news coming from the roofing and insulation segment going forward. If you go in a bit recession environment, which what you mentioned for next year. Just maybe two comments from my side. Of course, if this will come, we'll have a volume effect on our business. I think on the margin side, I'm rather positive because we have proven in the last crisis that we can rather improve the percentage margin in such a scenario because the sales prices will be more stable compared to the lowering of the input costs. And, you know, Holcim has, what, 75% of the cost is with third parties. So we, and this is something we did in the pandemic, the first part of the pandemic in 2020, when volumes dropped drastically in April, in May, in June, we were able to even increase the margin because we had a decrease in costs. And compared to that, we... we could hold up the prices. So we had a very positive pricing over cost. So I think for these scenarios, we are very positive that we will have a positive price over cost. The volume effect, of course, we will have like others, but we will be quite, I think, resilient. You also note that with our new product lounges, with the roofing and these businesses, We are much more geared now towards refurbishment and repair market segments, and those segments are very resilient in the crisis. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Luis Prieto from Kepler-Chevreux. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Just one question from my side. If I recall correctly, in the first quarter, you pointed to 40% to 45% energy cost inflation for the full year. around 9% to 10% cost inflation for the other costs bucket. Would this still be the case at present, or do these figures, in the context of what you were describing earlier, the 40% for the first half, do these figures look a bit high now?

Thank you. Okay. So basically, we are at the lower range of the energy cost inflation. We are at 40% for the first half. You mentioned we were guiding 40% to 45%. That's quite accurate. And I think for the full year, I would say our own internal planning is still in that range. So you can be assured that we are not planning for any lower energy costs. I think that would be very irresponsible at this point in time. So we plan for high level of energy costs around the first half, or it can go a bit higher. We are well prepared for that. And we have all the necessary mitigations and the pricing is in place.

Excellent.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Nabil Ahmed from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. One of your competitors has set new standards in terms of carbon emission reduction for 2030 by significantly accelerating on carbon capture and storage. Do you see an opportunity for HOSIM to follow a similar path and maybe come up with more aggressive 2030 objectives? And my second question was actually about Russia. Could you please update on the disposal process? What's the environmental transaction looking like? Did you receive interest from potential buyers? And when do you expect to be able to effectively sell your operations? Thank you.

Hi, Nabil. Good morning. Yes, I think on the carbon capture, this is one important element. of our decarbonization strategy. And you can see also from our latest press release, we have received very significant commitments from the European Union Innovation Fund, a couple hundred million for two projects, one in Germany, one in Poland. So I think we are fully on track also for carbon capture and carbon capture and utilization. are fully on track there it's it's very important in my view that you have a whole string of decarbonization initiatives from alternative raw materials to alternative fuel to new minerals being used to replace cement and then to make the whole circular construction a reality and further increase the use of construction demolition rates and of course as you mentioned to finally to capture the carbon. So we are fully on track. We have over 20 projects here, and you will see also an acceleration here from our side. Your second question was on Russia. Well, I think I'm very happy we made such an early announcement to exit or divest our Russian business. We have now very active discussions with various interested parties, and we do this very diligently. It's handled by our actually legal department here because you have to make sure that you're talking to the right people, and this is what we are doing, and I think we're going to have a solution in the coming months. Brilliant. Thank you.

The next question comes from Arno Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, Charlene, Svetlana and Jan. My first question is just to follow up on India, please. Could you remind us of the strategic reasons for selling India? And related to that, could we please have the book value of the assets in your balance sheet at the moment? And can you confirm that the deal is going to be tax-free? That's my first question. My second question is on Asia-Pacific. Once you sell India, there's not going to be that much left in this particular region. Would you consider, I guess, selling eventually the Philippines, the JV in China, or the operations in Bangladesh? Thank you very much.

Good morning, Arnold. Yes, look, India is about the same reason why we divested Indonesia or Malaysia or why we divest Zimbabwe now. or we divest Indian oceans, they're not bad markets. They are growing very early emerging markets. And you see from the Holstein strategy now, we want to focus on markets where we can sell from cement aggregates to the new lines of concrete and then to solutions and products. And the sophisticated systems we are now having in solutions and products, they are focused on the developed construction markets in North America, in Europe, and also partly in Latin America. And this is the key focus for the Holcim Group. We're not departing cement or something. We are decarbonizing cement, but we will continue to sell cement in our key markets. But we have to shape the portfolio a bit, and that means we are divesting a handful of emerging markets. Now India is a great market for someone who wants to build a one or two new cement plants every year. It's for us as a Swiss company not so satisfying from a cash repatriation viewpoint. And many of you have asked this question many, many times. What are you going to do with this low cash repatriation? That was always a fair comment you made because the cash repatriation has been very, very low from India due to taxes. due to minority shareholders and so on, and also due to the fact that we had to reinvest a lot of money to make the operations increasing their capacity, but also increasing their efficiency. So we believe there are better owners than us, and this is what we did. And it all comes, of course, with evaluation. You know, if you want to divest India, you know, there's a certain valuation you want to have. So we We didn't divest India for 3 billion or 4 billion Swiss franc. We divested for 6.4 billion. If I put that in relation to my cash repatriation, my previous yield was below 1%. So I think we did the right thing. And maybe also the timing now is quite good. And I'm very happy we could make the step. And we do this very responsibly to divest something. That's not a joy like when you acquire something. So we... We always have a bit of a sad moment because, you know, it's our long-term employees and our people, our customers. So we take very good care to select the new owner. And I think in the India case, we have with Miss Dandani or the Dandani Group, we have a perfect buyer who has synergies from his logistics and energy operations and at the same time is new to cement. So he will be a very good home for our employees and customers. To the next question, so we have quite some money coming in. So if we have Brazil, India, and Zimbabwe closing, we are talking more than $7 billion cash in the bank in Switzerland. We don't expect taxes to come, maybe some small risk of some small amounts, but basically we believe these proceeds will come net here. through the headquarter to Holcim Group. And this is, of course, then very exciting. And then we have to see how we use the money. We have, of course, also spent $5 billion to build up solutions and products just in the last 18 months. So we have proven that we can use the money worthwhile. And we have a couple of targets we are working on at the moment. So you can expect also here maybe some attractive deals coming along. And that's what we plan to do. Further divestments, you were asking. So we are not in any pressure or something. I think we made a very good portfolio transformation. I think I see it in some of your reports, always very smartly pointing out that we actually are divesting for higher multiples than we are paying for this solutions and product segment where we are buying or also the boulder neck position. So we make, I think, a very good changeover in the portfolio. And this also you can see finally in all our numbers from balance sheet to P&L that we make this very result accretive from the first moment. So very happy with that. Further divestments, I think we have a few countries we maybe think about divesting at this point in time. I have no formal announcement to make, but there are a few markets maybe we could divest in the future. But again, there is no rush for us because we are, I think, in a very good situation with the balance sheet and also closing now these rather big divestments we have signed.

Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Raymond Rosenau from Helvetische Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. About India again, I went back into the annual reports in 2006, 2007, when Holcim bought in Bujo and ACC, and I saw that the purchase prices were pretty low. I mean, talk about $3 billion or something. Of course, there were some additional shares bought later, but also the goodwill was pretty low. So there will be a pretty significant book gain, I presume, in the tune of some billions. Is that a correct assumption?

Remo, this is also the information I have. You can ask the CFO if she wants to share some secrets or more information here.

Okay, yes. Hi, Remo. Look, it obviously depends on the timing because you have also a currency impact, a Forex impact to take into consideration, but we can count on a capital gain that's going to be between 1 to 2 billion at least, yeah.

Yeah, rather 2 than 1, I think. Okay, great. Then the other question, I mean, Jan, you said that you think that you're in a very sweet spot in terms of margins looking into the second half because you did your homework in terms of pricing. Would this comment also be valid for the Asia-Pacific region, a region where pricing could not be increased as needed and where margins have decreased by a very steep 10 percentage points in the second quarter? Could we also be looking forward to an improving margin in the Asia-Pacific, assuming that India would still be there as a performer? And adjacent to that, has there also been kind of a special impact in the first half due to the lockdowns in China, or did that not have a big impact?

Great. Yes, Remo, I think first of all that it's key that in all key markets except for Asia-Pacific, we were able to be price over cost positive. So we made from Europe, North America, Latin America, also Middle East, Africa, really outstanding results and very proud of our people, how they really hit the situation here or how they faced the situation so successfully. There are three key markets. We were not able to fully offset the inflation and pointed out by you that was india philippines and china and situation for all three a little bit different so in india to start with it's always a bit quite a volatile market depending on the current situation even with monthly weather and so on and we were able to to get some price adaptations but not to the full extent which was needed and also considering that you have the biggest cost inflation in india simply by the fact that the alternative fuel rate is very low in India. So you are very depending on traditional fuels. And at the same time, the labor costs are relatively low. So you have a very big impact on this cost inflation in India, the biggest of all our key markets. And we were not able to fully offset. And that was the Indian situation. China was different. China actually we have very good margins. And here we were influenced by these lockdowns. So even on the volume side, we had, especially in April, we almost had a volume drop in China, like the beginning of the pandemic. I think in China was around 20, more than 20% volume decrease in April. Volumes are back now on last year, but nevertheless, China was influenced by this, uh, lockdowns that's actually the only key market for us which is in the lockdown situation and that influenced also here the volumes and the pricing but this will come back so the india market is intact that will come back in the philippines we had difficulties to adjust the prices it happened in the meantime but we had some uh how to say um some struggles in the quarter two and only towards the end of the quarter. Actually, June was the first month where we had the margins on the right level, but not before. But, you know, overall, it's an amazing result that we had all the key markets in a success. And these are the three markets, as pointed out by you, where we had a little bit of a headwind. But this will not stop us in the second half. As I mentioned, China will come back. Philippines is back already, and India will be with a new owner, so this will not affect us in the second half of the year.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Tavia Werner from Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Hi. Yes, good morning, Jan Gerhardin and ladies from the IR team. Two questions from my side. Number one, Jan, you mentioned in previous calls post-COVID or during and post-COVID that bagged cement sales in emerging markets did particularly well. The question now is, are you seeing this slow down in terms of the impacts falling away and also given the cost of living crisis In emerging markets, there's probably a question of putting food on the table as opposed to making some capital investments, i.e. buying a bag of cement. Does that have any impact? And then the second question relates to us analysts, really. We're starting to cut our numbers for 23, some more, some less. What do you think of that? Are we premature in doing so despite some of the lead indicators coming off, like the NHAB in the U.S., et cetera? Thank you.

Hi, Tobias. No, yes, you recall that rightly that in the first year of the pandemic, we had an increase of back cement sales in many of the emerging markets. So that was a good counterbalance for maybe less volumes for bigger projects. And this is rebalancing now off. So this is nothing negative or so. But so at the moment, we see now bigger projects and bulk sales increasing. more dominantly, and the back is rebalanced to normal levels. So just, I think, normal course of business. I think for the future, you all, of course, have to make your own models and assumptions, but I think what you can take away from our results today that I think we are above expectations and that our success, both in sales and in margins, are very broadly based in basically... All regions, all key markets are successful mitigation. Growth is based on a number of end markets. It's based on solutions and products, increased refurbishment and repair sales. So our order books are full. We have more excitement to come with infrastructure programs. So there's no reason for me to be pessimistic about the outlook for 2023. That's good to hear, Jan.

Thank you very much for these answers.

The next question comes from Jean-Christophe Lefebvre-Moulin from CIC. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, everyone. Good morning. I have two questions from my side. I know that you like to share some secrets. First one, to come back to the Poor Bill, can you give us some flavor on the share of hedged and long-term contracts and maybe the durations? Secondly, regarding the two CCUS investment projects co-financed by the European Union, Could we have maybe the order of magnitude of the necessary capex for implementing this? Many thanks. Hi, Joachim Christoph. Good morning.

Look, we talked already a little bit about the hedging and everything. And just for our side, our policy is important that we have rather long-term contracts. So basically, we like to have multi-year contracts with utility companies for power and We like to have more and more contracts for renewable energies. So this is our best way to hatch and have a proper base. Pure hatching, we hardly do. We do a bit at the headquarter. Geraldine likes to do that sometimes. But we try to keep that away from the countries because they need to feel the reality immediately and make the necessary adaptations in sourcing decisions. but also in decisions to price adaptations. So that is, I think, very, very important. I don't know, Géraldine, if you want to make any extra comment.

No, I think that you, Jean-Christophe, you can feel assured and that we have really secured our power prices for H2 as well. So as Jan mentioned, we are in a good position and a sweet spot for 2022.

And we feel we have the question also with where we land. Let's say energy costs, we have this super steep 40% increase in energy costs on the first half of the year. We believe the second half of the year will be in a similar magnitude. We're also prepared if it goes a bit beyond that. And that doesn't scare us. We have, I think, the right measures, the right pricing is in place. So we believe that. we're going to have very good margins in the second half of the year. You had an interesting question on the carbon capture project. So I think for the moment it's fair to assume that such grants we are getting from the Innovation Fund of the European Union maybe cover up to 80% of the CAPEX, which is a good number. And you see now how our CAPEX is moving towards green capex more and more, and we also provide that number, and this is what we like to do more in the future, to decarbonize our business and always to remember that the investments in sustainability actually have the highest return for Holcim. So all the investments we did on alternative fuel, I wish they were bigger and faster. We had a program three and a half years ago in Europe to further reduce the CO2 by 15% in our plants. And those investments were calculated at 20 euros per ton of CO2. And now we are at four times that level. You can imagine how profitable these investments are. And this is how we see it. We're going to see that we have very high yields in these sustainability investments, and we will be very excited to further accelerate here.

Excellent. Many thanks. Vielen Dank.

The next question comes from from Redburn. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi. Good morning. Can I just press you on the demand outlook or volume outlook again? You made quite a lot of comments already, but I just want to get a bit more clarity if possible. So you're saying that you don't see any slowdown in volumes, the order books are full. On the other hand, your volume growth in cement and aggregates in the first half was negative. So I wonder how you correlate those two facts and what you see for the second half and what sort of volume growth you are assuming in your numbers when you give us your guidance. Thank you.

Yes. Hi, Juri. Good morning. No, again, I think we feel in a good spot. The demand or the capacity utilization depends a little bit on the markets. But again, we have many of the European markets, the North American markets, we are sold out at the moment. And so we cannot say anything else. We go into the second half of the year. with very strong sales. You see we had a volume increase in North America, I think it was double digit in the first half of the year. So really nothing more to say. We have full order books. We have all the right demand trends going forward. You see we have the double digit sales growth plus EBIT growth. So that's what we have at Holcim at this point in time. And I have no indication that this will slow down.

I'm sorry, the numbers have already slowed down. You had negative numbers overall for the company in the first half and you sound as if volumes will be positive in the second half. Is that the right read? Are you telling us that the volumes actually will perform better in the second half?

You have to look a bit region by region. We had a bit lower volumes maybe in central Europe if you want to scrutinize the numbers. That is correct. Now, in Central Europe, we had... I don't even want to go there unless working days, some weather impacts, but let's not talk about this. So, we had a comparison. So, we had in Central Europe, we had lower volumes than maybe we wish for, but this is not a strange indication. I was just traveling around Europe. I was in France, in the UK. in Germany, Austria, and other markets. And we are slightly down in the second quarter. You are totally right. But it's nothing frightening. There's no breakdown of demand. We have an Eastern Europe with strong demand. We are sold out, basically, in our operations from Poland, Romania, over to ex-Yugoslavia. We have high growth in North America. The real volume drops we have seen was in the Philippines and China. We talked about Latin America, a very stable situation. And actually, this is a bit where we want to be, because we also want to save the higher value products, like our green product range for concrete, for cement. And then on top, we have solutions and products, which is our turbocharger for now and also for the future. So really nothing really negative to report. And you can see already when we discuss a bit these different markets, I think you see the ability that we can handle different demand patterns successfully.

Okay. And actually related this clarification to this, I mean, the volumes, again, you're talking very positively, although the overall numbers are suggesting a drop in volumes in the first half. But your inventory went up significantly. Why was that? I mean, you're talking about strong demand, but the numbers are not showing that. And also, inventory, is that finished goods or is this raw materials?

But you have to look on the sales side. I know in the past we talked a lot about volumes, but we go now into value selling. We have our solutions and product sales are not in the volume numbers. EcoPact, EcoPlanet, much higher value products. They don't reflect in the volume. So in the future, I'm not so concerned with the volumes at all. We want to go into higher value systems and not evaluate also by the tons. But nevertheless, even you look at tons, the system, it's very different country to country. And I just start to explain a little bit where we are below, where we are above. And as a sum, it adds up positively. So I'm not really concerned here.

Okay. Just the second question, and this should be short. Energy. So at Q1, and we were talking back in April, I think, you said that for the full year you see energy going up by 40 to 45 percent. We discussed this on this call already. And you're confirming that the estimate remains in the same range. But since April, energy costs, energy prices across the world have gone further up. What is the reason why your estimate remains the same? Is that because you have changed the way that you do the buying of the energy or you have some super good contracts? What is helping you preserve the estimate?

The difference is, remember, we had the big energy hike coming in the quarter three last year. So the comparison base for Q2 was still at much lower energy prices, and then it really hiked in the second half of the year. So if we are saying we're going to have another 40% price increase in energy costs for H2, that means significant higher prices in energy. So we're actually reflecting the market situation fully. And again, we are not scared if the energy costs hike up a further level or something, you know. We have a lot of long-term contracts in place, but nevertheless, even we gave the guidance 40 to 45 percent, this would give me a margin of even 50 percent energy cost inflation for the second half, and we still would be in the sweet spot of our yearly performance.

Okay, thank you. The last question for today's call is from Harry Goat from Bernberg. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You've referenced infrastructure spending a couple of times in this call, and I guess in the US we have some pretty good visibility on that with the highway spending program. But can you provide us a little bit more detail in Europe, maybe by country, maybe by sort of specific types of project, and I guess the thoughts on the materiality of impact that makes to volumes in 2023? Thanks.

Yes, hi, Harry. Yeah, I think, look, we have this announcement of infrastructure, I think, across the key markets in the billions, in the trillions. As I mentioned before, they are in the planning stage, in preparation phase, so they have not hit our order books yet. And that's for now maybe all I can say. I think if these announcements come in place as planned, we're going to see in 2023 quite... a good demand coming from those infrastructure projects, which were announced most prominently in the U.S. I think you're all following closely from Build Back Better to already the past highway bills. So I think the highway bills, they will be fully in effect. They will be very rewarding for us. The Build Back Better plans, I'm not sure how they will pass. You know the situation. There's a lot of debate. But nevertheless, I think this is a positive element for next year to look forward to. I think even if you have a more pessimistic scenario for the markets next year, I think this will be a situation which will rather accelerate those government programs. Okay. Thank you. Wow. Good. That was an intense session. And again, thank you so much. you're spending the time. That means a lot to us. You know how much we appreciate the conversations and discussions with you. So very much hope we can all connect in the near future in person again. And for now, I wish you happy reporting and I wish you a good summer season and hope I see you soon after the summer. Thank you very much for joining.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Coral School and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.