Amrize Ltd Ordinary Shares

Welcome to Holcim's first quarter 2025 trading update. My name is Bernd Pommerin, and I'm pleased to be here with our CEO, Miljan Gutovic, and our CFO, Stefan Kindler. After their presentations of our results, you will have the opportunity to ask your questions. If you want to ask a question, please click the button Request to Speak. We would encourage you to already now register for a question. And with this, I'll directly hand it over to Miljan. Miljan, please.

Thank you, Bernd. Good morning to all of you and welcome to Holcim's Q1 Trading Update. Stefan and I are pleased to be presenting our results to you today. And of course, there will be time afterwards for your questions. To start with, let me take you through the key highlights. We had a good start to the year in Q1. Our net sales were stable versus Q1 24, despite unfavorable weather conditions in North America. We achieved overproportional growth in recurring EBIT. This increased by 1.7% in local currency versus a year ago. As you can see, we continued with our strong M&A momentum with another five value accretive acquisitions. We are well positioned to navigate today's economic uncertainty, and I will speak more about this shortly. I can confirm the spin-off of MRISE is on track and expected to occur in June. We are confirming full year guidance 2025. Let's look at these highlights now in more details. First, let's look at the progression of our recurring EBIT and recurring EBIT margin on a rolling 12-month basis. This graph shows that we have further expanded our 12-month rolling recurring EBIT margin of 19.1% and rolling recurring EBIT above 5 billion Swiss francs. This is, of course, driven by our high-value strategy. From scaling up our advanced sustainable building solutions, accelerating decarbonisation and also circular initiatives to our value-accretive M&A strategy with focus on the most attractive markets and, of course, our empowered leadership with strong performance culture. This actually demonstrates the resilience of our business model across all market conditions and all economic cycles. We also made a good progress in growing our premium eco-brands in Q1, from eco-packed and eco-planet to eco-cycle. Last month, we were recognised as a global climate leader by CDP, ranking on their prestigious A-list for climate for the fourth time. To strengthen our local for local business model, we have begun constructing a new site in Tilbury in UK to serve the growing London market with a circular and sustainable building solutions to be commissioned by H126. In North America, we started the construction of our new Malaki advanced roofing plant in Indiana to expand into the Midwest and Eastern U.S. markets, with completion expected by H2 2026. Now, taking a closer look at Ecopact and Ecoplanet, with customer demand continuing to grow, net sales of Ecopact and Ecoplanet reached 32% and 29% of their respective categories, and you can see that progression there even from Q4 last year. And it is our sustainable building solutions like EcoPact and EcoPlanet that really make Holcim the partner of choice for our customers. Many of you are now familiar with our project slides. These show where we add value to our customers with our sustainable, with our circular, durable and, of course, energy-efficient building solution. The first project on this slide is a modern office building in Madrid, which is one of the city's most sustainable buildings built with Holcim's eco-packed concrete. In Texas and in some other parts of the world, we are building data centers. The one here for Meta incorporates our advanced solutions from foundation to rooftop with EcoPact and also Elevate. We are also supplying sustainable building solutions for Grand Egyptian Museum, Africa's first building to get IFC edge recognition and built with Holcim's EcoPact. With that, I would like to hand it over to Stefan, who will take you through some financial highlights. Stefan?

Thank you, Emilian. And a warm welcome to you also from my side. It's always a pleasure to be here with you today. Turning first to the net sales bridge, you can see that net acquisitions contributed a positive 0.4% in local currency to our net sales with a slight negative contribution from organic growth that leaves it broadly stable year on year. There was a minimal FX effect in what is our smallest quarter of the year. In the first quarter, we also delivered over-proportional growth in recurring EBIT, up 1.7%, with most of the contribution coming from the organic side. Looking at the next slide, I think it is important to note that some strong results from Latin America, Europe, and also from Asia, Middle East, and Africa are recorded in recurring EBIT. North America had a good start to the year, but being affected by unfavorable weather conditions. There were improved trading conditions in March and we completed the acquisition of the aggregates business in the quarter. Holcim has now secured more than 230 infrastructure projects down to 2028. Market fundamentals in North America remain strong in the mid and long term, driven, as you know, by infrastructure, modernization and the onshoring of manufacturing. next to Latin America, where profitable growth continued and we achieved an outstanding recurring EBIT margin of 35% in the first quarter. M&A is supporting our growth in this region as well, and there are some promising prospects where we're currently looking at. In terms of outlook, there's a robust project pipeline in Mexico, and we see the public and private sector driving infrastructure and commercial investments across the region in all of 2025. In Europe, there was a continuation of strong over-proportional recurring EBIT growth. There was continued margin expansion in the first quarter. Our M&A momentum was extended. We made three value-accretive acquisitions, one in Bulgaria, one in France, and one in Serbia. We expect continued demand for sustainable building solutions to drive profitable growth in this region. Asia, Middle East and Africa delivered double-digit recurring EBIT growth in local currency, led by North Africa. This was accompanied by an outstanding margin expansion of 250 basis points to a margin of 21.7%. A key driver of that was good momentum in eco-packed sales, which reached 29% of already mixed sales in the region in the first quarter. Our outlook is as before. We expect strong demand in North Africa, a positive outlook in Australia and price recovery in China. Our final business segment, solutions and products, saw net sales growth driven by roofing in North America. Roofing also saw some margin expansion this quarter. We made one acquisition during the first quarter to expand our specialty building solutions in Peru. For 2025, as we've previously said, expect a favorable outlook for both new construction and repair and refurbishment. And with that, I'm pleased to hand it back to you, Miljan.