Amrize Ltd Ordinary Shares

Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here with our CEO, Mirjan Gutovic, and our CFO, Stefan Kinzer. They will provide an overview of our strong first half year 2025 results. Then we'll provide an update on our strategy. And last but not least, we'll give an outlook for the full year 2025. And with this very short intro, I'm already handing it over to Mirjan. Mirjan, please. Thank you, Ben.

Good morning to all of you and a warm welcome to Holcim's half-year results. Stefan and I are pleased to be presenting our earnings to you today. And, of course, there will be time afterwards for your questions. To start with, we will walk you through the business review, followed by a strategy update and, of course, as Ben mentioned, 2025 guidance. First, let's look at the first half business review. We had a really strong first half of 2025. Highlights include, as you can see, robust net sales growth, strong over-proportional recurring EBIT growth across all our regions, and of course, industry-leading margin of 18.3%. Our margin expansion was driven by our high value strategy. This includes scaling up our sustainable offering and also accelerating decarbonization and circular construction to drive profitable growth. Another key driver is value accretive M&A. Since the start of this year, we have closed a further 11 transactions focused on the most attractive markets and most attractive segments. Thanks to our deeply embedded performance culture and value creation, we are delivering superior performance, including more than 7% rise in earnings per share or EPS in Swiss francs. And yes, we are committed. We are committed to our strong investment-grade balance sheet, which gives us financial flexibility and also the ability to continue to invest in profitable growth and attractive shareholders' returns. Our guidance for full year 2025 is in line with our NextGen Growth 2030 targets. And this includes a recurring EBIT growth of 6 to 10% in local currency with a recurring EBIT margin of above 18%. I'll share more on our guidance later on. Turning to our regional highlights now. Europe once again delivered strong margin expansion driven by our high value strategy our sustainable offering, as well as decarbonization and circular construction. M&A momentum was excellent, with another eight value-accretive acquisitions closed since the start of the year in five countries. Demand for our sustainable offering is expected to continue to drive earnings momentum. On the outlook, the residential market is showing signs of recovery, and we also have a very robust infrastructure project pipeline in Europe, including projects like 17 kilometers long second Gotthard road tunnel here in Switzerland. In Latam, we had another strong performance with strong net sales and recurring EBIT growth. and we also completed two value accretive acquisitions in Peru and in Argentina. We are accelerating the expansion of Odisensa, which is the largest construction materials retail franchise in the region, with around 170 additional stores open in H1. And we expect the strong performance to continue with Ecuador and Central America and recently acquired businesses driving growth in H2. In Mexico, there is also a very strong pipeline of infrastructure projects. Moving to Asia, Middle East and Africa, this region delivered a double-digit increase in recurring EBIT and outstanding margin expansion of 200 basis points, led by strong domestic demand in North Africa. We expect continued demand there to continue to drive our earnings, along with positive outlook in Australia and expected positive price momentum in China. With that, I would like to hand it over to Stefan to talk through the financials in more detail.

Stefan, thank you, William, and a warm welcome to all of you from my side. It's a pleasure to be here with you today, as always. Looking first at the net sales bridge, you can see that organic growth of 1.4% was the main contributor. The contributions from acquisitions exceeded the impact of investments with net acquisitions adding another 0.4% for a total 1.8% rise in local currency. The foreign exchange effect was negative 330 million Swiss francs or 4.1%. In the first half, we delivered double-digit growth in recurring EBIT. The continued focus on a high-value strategy resulted in almost 11% growth in local currency and 3% growth in Swiss francs. The foreign exchange headwinds here were almost 110 million or 7.7%. Next, let's look at the progression of our recurring EBIT and recurring EBIT margin on the rolling 12-month spaces. This graph shows that we have consistently expanded both, our 12-month rolling recurring EBIT margin and our rolling recurring EBIT margin. We now well above 2.8 billion Swiss francs. As Miljan said earlier, this is driven by a high-value strategy. From scaling up our advanced sustainable offering, accelerating decarbonization and circularity initiatives, down to a value-accretive M&A with focus on the most attractive markets, and our empowered leadership with a strong performance culture. All of Wholesome's regions produced strong recurring EBIT growth in local currency in the first half, with Europe and Latin America up more than 6% each, and Asia, Middle East and Africa up double-digit. Both Mian and I have previously mentioned our deeply embedded performance culture and disciplined financial management. This is what ultimately drives our growth of our earnings per share, or EPS, which is up 7.4% in Swiss francs from 12 months ago. You can also see that by all the various different measures of the bottom line, we are producing strong profitable growth. Next, you can see the evolution of our free cash flow in the first half, which is on track to reach around 2 billion Swiss francs by the end of this year. Remember that cash flow is a very seasonal and depends to a certain degree on the timing of payments at the end of periods, as you can see here, for example, in working capital and in taxes paid. Our net debt leverage ratio was 1.2 times at the end of last year and we expect to close out 2025 at around 1.1 times. This is what we guided to at the investor day in March and we remain committed to a healthy balance sheet and a net debt leverage of below 1.5 times over the long term. This will provide Holcim with sufficient financial flexibility, the ability to navigate all economic cycles while continuing to invest in profitable growth and attractive shareholder remuneration. Now, I'd like to come back to something else we discussed at our investor day in March, and which has come up in almost every investor meeting since then. So, a short reminder. The execution of our next-gen growth 2030 strategy will provide Holcim with a total capital deployment capacity of up to 22 billion Swiss francs until the year 2030. In order to ignite further growth, we will deploy this capital strategically, focusing on growth as well as shareholder returns. Despite our growth investments, we remain committed to a rebased, progressive dividend and returning substantial value to our shareholders. Including this year, we will return a total of 7 billion Swiss francs until the year 2030, corresponding to a payout ratio of approximately 50% per year. An additional 4 to 6 billion Swiss francs coming from proceeds of larger divestments or available debt capacity could be deployed. These funds will be used for large strategic M&A opportunities or to opportunistically execute share buybacks in the case of excess cash. We believe that our growth-focused capital allocation will further accelerate profitable growth while delivering attractive shareholder returns. And with that, I'm now pleased to hand it back over to Mirjam.