Holcim Ltd

Good morning and welcome to First Quarter 2024 Trade-In Update. I'm Nesrine Garbi and I'll be your host today. I'm pleased to be joined by our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Jan Jenisch, our CEO-designate, Mr. Miljan Gutovic, and our CFO, Mr. Stefan Kindler. After their presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. If you're joining us by phone, press star one four to ask a question. Press star one five to drop out of the queue. And if you're joining by webcast, click on the Q&A button and follow the instructions. And with this, I hand it over to you. Jan, the floor is yours.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining our Q1 update. Very happy to start to give you some details on our very good start of the year. And then we have Stefan, our CFO, will go into more detail and then William will conclude with the outlook for 2024. So I'm very pleased with the first quarter. We have done very well with our growth strategy. We have more than 3% growth in local currency. I think you are aware there were a bit less invoicing days and some adverse weather effect in North America. But overall, we are very well on track here to deliver our above 6% of sales growth, what we target for 2024. Very important for us that we continue with our strong margins, our industry-leading margins and our further increasing margin. So in the Q1, we had an overproportional EBIT growth, more than 17% in local currency. And despite the strong Swiss franc, plus 7.8% in Swiss franc. So very reassuring for our full year guidance for the 18% EBIT margin. We have then a very strong contribution from solutions and products. I'm very glad now to officially declare the stocking and destocking effect to be over in roofing. You see our roofing sales are up 67% in the first quarter. That's quite a record number if you consider that that's going to be a $4 billion business this year. But it's simply part of this is from the acquisition of Duralust, this very successful completion of our roofing range. We closed last year in April, but also organically we had 38% sales growth in Q1 in roofing. One big driver of our growth is our M&A execution. So very happy that we had another five acquisitions, five family businesses we could take over in the first three months of the year. So as you see, we are fully on track to deliver our growth by M&A. Also strengthening our positioning in the markets, we closed for divestments. So we are very confident for the guidance for 2024 and Miljan is going to talk about this later. Before looking into more details with Stefan, let me just share a few details with you. First, very important that we continue with our strong margin increase you see here that q1 basically continues where we ended in 2023 very strong over proportional ebit development here in local currency but also in swiss franc that is very important you see the margin expansion is another 0.9 percentage points in q1 alone so we are well on track here for our guidance of 18 for this year Our M&A machine, we talked about this for the full year results. Very important, continuous here at full speed. Very happy that we acquired five family-owned businesses to strengthen solutions and products. We bought a fantastic company in Germany, the leader in green roofing systems, Zinko, something we're going to roll out now beyond Germany very successfully. We also strengthened our business in Argentina with a fantastic precast company. And then in the aggregate business, we could reinforce here in Germany with Mendiger Basalt, a very successful family company. In Switzerland, we are accelerating our construction demolition, material recycling, and we could take over also here family business. And then in Mexico, we strengthened our already mixed business by also taking over a family-owned company. Very happy to see all that. On the other side of the chart, you see four divestments closed. Very happy here. There are better owners for these countries than Holcim. So very happy we could also successfully close here those four divestments. Overall, very positive effect. We have more than 3% net contribution from our M&A. And you can expect this to continue also for the full year. One part of our big success in this growth and the margin increase is our sustainability and our increase in selling advanced branding solutions. You see here the latest update, EcoPact and EcoPlanet, our low carbon solutions for the customers are accelerating from 16% of respective sales in their segments last year to already 26% in Q1. So we are well on track here to develop these billion-dollar brands further successfully for our customers and for Holcim. Good expansion. We talked about this in the past, how we expand in solutions and products, not only by M&A, but also by very smart investments. And here we have now our new Salt Lake City plant in full operation. increasing our capacity for insulation, which is an important part of our system selling for roofing in this business. Third time we have the climate report, fully integrated now in the annual report. Also here we try to lead the field, very important, so this will be up for vote at the General Assembly. On decarbonization, very important, our KPI of CO2 per net cells further reducing by 5% in Q1. Very happy with that number. And this is something we obviously want to see also for the full year. We had a groundbreaking project in the last days in North Germany, where we inaugurated the first carbon capture and utilization project and will be the first project in Germany to come online in 2029. So very happy to see all these foundations for our success growing from solutions and products to our leading billion dollar brands to the decarbonization and to M&A being also an engine for growth and increasing

margins with this i'm happy to hand over to stefan for more details on the results good morning everybody also from my side happy to present these results to you actually i would like to pick up on the on the theme that jan introduced before the continuing momentum from the fourth quarter into the first quarter here you see our our ebit growth quarter by quarter and you see that the momentum continues with over proportional ebit growth over our sales growth Of course, with an increasing margin again this quarter, we increased margin by almost one percentage point, which bodes well also for our guidance on margin for the full year. Sales, as you can see here, our sales organically are flat and in local currency up 3.4%. We had a headwind, of course, from the Swiss franc of about 6% that drove the overall sales. But mind you, the first quarter was a bit specific. We had Ramadan, we had Easter, we had all these things. So we're down by probably a bit more than one trading day on average. And we had some adverse weather. in the US mainly and also in the UK and Europe, which are major geographies for us. The margin. We said that before, very good progress on margin, not only in local currency and in organic, but also in absolute. So we overcame the Swiss franc, the strong headwinds from the Swiss franc with an absolute margin growth. that you can see here and we think this is almost eight percent we think this is absolutely proof of how a momentum continues into the year how is that possible well of course we maintained our commercial strength but we always also had very very good progress on the cost side energy for example that helped us improve our margin and of course we had the rebound of the roofing business The growth was broad based across all regions. All regions delivered strong over proportional EBIT growth, good cost performance, good commercial management and again the significant progress on roofing that we alluded to since about six months and that you can now really see in numbers printed as well. let me take you to a quick tour around the world as we usually do so we start again in north america it wouldn't show in the numbers so much but we still have strong underlying demand we were impacted really here by weather and by the trading days the underlying demand remains to be strong The expansion at our flagship plants in Genevieve, which is very important for de-bottlenecking, for creating new capacity, is well on track. And we expect a very strong performance from our team in the U.S. for 2024. Gets us over to Latin America. Here we had a record Q1 net sales and recurring EBIT. Strong margin of above 36%. What drives the business here, of course, the nearshoring trend accelerates in Mexico and we have a very strong pipeline of infrastructure projects across the continent. Continuing with Europe, record Q1 recurring EBIT, margin expansion of almost 1.5 percentage points. That's now the sixth consecutive quarter of margin expansion. We had two acquisitions in aggregates and construction and demolition materials. Strong results also here expected to continue throughout the year. gets us to a region, Africa, Middle East, EMEA. Profitable growth in local currency, margin expansion of almost two percentage points, which is a significant step up. Significant increase also in alternative fuels usage, which shows that we can also do decarbonization in this part of the world. And as we said before, divestments of our business of Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa, which closed in this quarter. Solutions and products, roofing sales are up 67% in local currency. We showed profitable growth with margin expansion of two percentage points. We had two acquisitions in Europe, we unset before in Germany. And we have a very strong outlook for the year here, obviously, with this good momentum starting. And this will continue through the year. A few words here about the roofing systems, because we had that theme throughout last year. We said we retire the chart on the roofing, destocking, but one more time just to really make a point and say this is done. The normalization of demand after destocking of organic sales is 38%. Then of course we have the contribution of Duralast with 22%. Now you're going to make the math. Something's missing, right? This is FDT in Germany and some smaller businesses. Then profitable growth, margin expansion of 2.2%. And also a very good and interesting story that our new Salt Lake City plant with the state-of-the-art insulation board production is going well. This is a chart that every CFO is proud to show. Since 2018, we returned more than 11 billion cash to our shareholders. And by the end of this year, you can see that this is a split between share buyback and dividend. We're going to have a dividend increase for the third consecutive year. We're going up 12% to 2.8 Swiss franc per dividend. That's going to be proposed to the AGM. And we told you at the full year results announcement that we're going to launch a new share buyback program that has been launched on March 18th. We're in full swing. We're on track to buy back the shares. And those shares will be canceled at the AGM in 2025. And what's always important for us to mention in this context, we remain committed to a strong investment grade rating. We're executing this share buyback from cash on the balance sheet. With that, I would now love to go over to Miljan for the outlook.

Good morning to all of you and a special warm welcome from my side. What a great start of the year. Holcim is off a strong start. We continue to push our advanced brands, providing sustainable solutions to our customers. We have such a great momentum in M&A. with such a strong 28 acquisitions in 2023 and another five acquisitions in Q1 this year, plus four divestments. And especially proud of the momentum in our solutions and products, with roofing growing 67% in local currency. That's why I'm happy to confirm our outlook. We will continue to deliver and overdeliver. We are guiding for organic next sales growth of more than 4% plus another 2% from M&A. This will help us achieve overproportional growth in our EBIT and we are aiming at 18% EBIT margin. Free cash flow, we delivered over the years, it will be well above 3 billion this year. And especially proud on construction and demolition materials, we are aiming to reach 10 million tonnes in 2024. Thank you.

Thank you, Myliane. And with this, we open the floor for questions. The first question is coming from Paul Roger, Exxon. Hi, Paul.

Good morning, everyone. Hope you're well. Thanks for taking my question earlier, Nathalie. So maybe I'll have two to start then, please. Firstly, could you quantify the price-cost benefit in Q1? And also maybe how you expect that to evolve through 2024? And then secondly, can you also speak a bit more about that M&A pipeline? It sounds like it's quite healthy. Just wondering whether deals this year will continue to focus on bolt-ons or if we can expect something a bit more substantial. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. I will start with your M&A question and then I think Stefan can talk about the margin development. Yes, look, the M&A, we have constantly integrated M&A into our strategy, but especially into our country's strategy. So you have seen over the year how numbers of those bolt-ons have increased step by step. Last year with a new high of 28 transactions, now also this year has started on a high number. So you can expect this to continue. We have a full pipeline. You recall the chart we shared for the full year results, how the M&A machine is working at Holcim. We have empowered people. We have a clear process for evaluation, for decision making, for business plans. And we have a record time between signing and closing of an average of only four months. So that's all key for us. And you can expect many more transactions for us to come. We specialize in the Boldons here on the family businesses. And this will continue here with a high number of transactions going forward.

All right. Paul, I'll gladly try to answer your questions on margins. On the commercial side, we're very resilient. We've got the clear customer focus here and we're very well able to hold our good performance there. On the cost side, we do make advances now. I'll give you an example. Our energy costs are are down pending by country between mid and high single digits this is without volume effects mind you this is just price effects also on other cost items where we've seen strong inflation over the last let's say two years we're now seeing a good normalization we're getting back in raw materials we're getting back in in maintenance materials we're getting back to savings mode soon also in distribution costs so these things coming together really help us drive our margin so it's a very natural natural way to run the business at this point in time thank you very much paul next next question is coming is coming from elodie jp morgan good morning elodie

Elodie, I believe you're muted. Could you unmute yourself? You need to unmute yourself from the webcast. Let's take another question. Elodie tried to call back. Next question coming from Louise Prieto, Kepler Chevreux. Good morning, Louise. Can you hear us?

Good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me. I had three questions, if I may, super quickly. The first one is if you could provide us with any idea on pricing and volume developments within the context of flat organic growth that you have reported this first quarter. My second question is, would be if you have any updated views on the flowback risk of wholesome North America due to funds mandate limitations that could restrict the ownership of wholesome by non-US investors, wholesome North America. And any chance that wholesome North America could be or could have a secondary listing in Europe to solve this problem. And the third question is with regards to asset divestments in regions that are potentially less strategic for the Remain Co., Should we expect anything ahead of the spin-off? Any obvious candidates that would be first in the disposals line?

Good morning, Luis. Thanks for the question. Very happy to answer. I think, first of all, for the volumes and the pricing, you saw our development over the recent years, how we constantly improve, increase the margins to now 18% this year on the EBIT level. We're obviously very confident about this. I think our margin is Increase is not linked to two volumes or input costs like it was in the past. Our margin development is put on providing value adding systems for the customer, be it a sustainable solution, be it a branded solution where we make big Inroads now, EcoPlanet, EcoPact, Elevate for roofing. And this is clearly our road going forward. And you can expect this to continue. And you see now already in the Q1, we have another quarter of lower volumes, for example, in Europe. Nevertheless, we are able to deliver record results because of this growth. strong profile we have created over recent years and this will continue so for the outlook we are actually we're not reporting strongly on volumes anymore because the volumes are not important how we run the company we run the company on pnl on sales on margins on cash flow and returns for the shareholder and that's really key and that's uh most key in solutions and products but this is also key for our traditional cement products where we look for our KPIs, and they are not linked to volumes anymore. So you can be very confident, I think, for 2024 that we deliver what we promise, and this is another increase in margins. You talked about the US listing and if there's a flow back. I think, first of all, I'm very happy to see that our project, which has been announced January 28, to make North American an independent, publicly listed company in the US has been off to a very successful start. I talked to all our key investors. They are all very pleased with the step. You have seen the share price development. So we have, I think, a very strong consensus that this is the right step now to create two champion companies and allow both companies to set their own strategic priorities. And not to forget that we have the scale to do that. We closed last year with more than $11.5 billion in sales in North America alone. while Holcim still will be a 17 billion Swiss franc plus company. So we have to scale to make these champion stories work. And I think highly appreciated from the market. I have been personally speaking to many investors, current investors and future investors, and I don't believe that the flow back. That's, of course, something we consider, but this is not holding us back. And you see from I think the current share price development that this is not really a concern for current and future investors. You talked about divestments. I have a big smile when I talk about our acquisitions and we talk about to welcome new members to the Holcim family. It's obviously a bit of sadness to divest and to find a better owner for our business in South Africa, Tanzania or Uganda. have to let go colleagues we have worked many years with. But nevertheless, this is a part of our strategy. And you have seen we have done, exited basically more than 20 countries over the past five years and all for the right reasons. to make this new profile for Holcim, to develop a company more focused on mature markets, a company focused on sophisticated construction markets, and a company developing the most sustainable and the highest performance building material solutions for the customer. And with this, we have done the steps, and you can expect that we will have a few more steps to go, which we will do, of course, fully responsible and also having... the company and all stakeholders in mind.

Thank you very much, Luis.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Let me remind everyone, please press star one four to join the Q&A and ask your question. Next question coming from Gregor Kublic, UBS. Good morning, Gregor.

Oh, hi, good morning. A few questions as well. Could I just probe on the solutions and product performance? So there was obviously a A nice rebound, but at a very sort of simple level, it's still roughly half the profit from two years ago. So I want to understand, I guess, obviously Q1 is small, but what you're thinking in terms of the recovery potential against the 22 baseline, right? Which is sort of the peak year, I guess. So what you think, I guess, on that going forward. The second question, could you just give us a little bit more color on the pricing

have realized in your sort of main geographies uh what we're talking about in terms of let's say mostly north america europe i guess is what i'm interested in the price realization so far this year thank you hey gregor good morning um look we have higher margins in solutions and products for the full year you have a bit of a more seasonal effect now because the obviously our offerings and solutions and products has changed drastically with all the roofing systems coming in. And I think we have on one slide we share with you that the margins in roofing has increased another two full percentage points. So nothing to worry for solutions and products. Keep in mind, this is, of course, a low season here the first three months of the year, and we expect very rich contributions from solutions and products going forward and very happy that we can report these positive numbers for the year. On the pricing, obviously, we are doing well. More important than the pricing is really this change the market positions Holcim having today by investing in solutions and products, but also by investing in sustainability for our traditional segments by offering sustainable products. building brands, and all this pays off at the end in value selling to the customers. So you can expect that we have a good pricing in place for this year, which is ahead of last year, and this is fully sustainable for the year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gregor. Next question coming from Arnaud Lehmann, B of A. Good morning, Arnaud.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. I have two questions, if I may. Coming back on roofing and solution and products, you mentioned that roofing sales are up 67%. However, solution and products is up, I think, 24% in local currency. That would imply that the non-roofing activities were down in Q1, if I'm not mistaken. Is that a seasonal effect or is there anything? And my second question is on the currency effect. The Swiss francs have gone down relative to the dollar year-to-date. Obviously, that's a positive for translation effects, but could you maybe comment on the implications for your cost base going forward? And also, maybe at spot rate, where do you see the currency effect for the full year? Thank you.

Good morning, Arno. Let me just give a bit of background on the currencies and then I think our CFO can take over the first part of your questions. Look, you have seen the waterfall charts we offered on the sales and EBIT. And of course, we had a a higher appreciation of the swiss franc in the q in the first quarter and now well if you take the the current rates you would expect a less of an impact for the second quarter i would agree to this um however we all have to keep in mind that whole sim is very naturally leveraged on currencies from the balance sheet the financing to also the sales and the cost So we don't have a big headquarter in Switzerland. We have 63,000 employees globally and we have about 430 corporate positions in Switzerland. So we are not suffering really from the Swiss franc on the cost side. Very important. Second part for me is important. I personally prefer the Swiss franc always as a consolidation currency, because that has the constant pressure on management to be efficient and aware that corporate and also other functions cannot go inside in the sky. Right. So I like a strong currency. It also helps us on very low financing costs and other things has a lot of positive effect. So you never hear myself complaining about the Swiss franc. I'm a huge fan. And I believe the reason why you have some of the strongest industrialized companies based in Switzerland, the reason is the Swiss franc keeps us fit on a daily basis. But for your second question, I think at current exchange rates, we're going to have less Swiss franc appreciation for the second quarter and maybe for the full year. But again, we are not planning for that. We are very naturally hedged and we'll see how the currency markets develop over the year.

I know on your question on solutions and products, remember this segment also contains our mortars, asphalt and precast business. The main geographies where these business are is North America, UK and New Zealand. And we alluded to before that we had... less trading days and especially weather impacts in North America and the UK. So in this set of business, we're overall down mid single digits for the quarter. You know, Q1 is such a small quarter. And for these businesses in this quarter, weather makes a big impact. We expect this to normalize throughout the year. And what I also want to mention that in this part of the business, we did grow margin and we did improve absolute EBIT over last year as well. So on the EBIT side, all good. Q1 sales slightly impacted. This is how these numbers relate to each other. And then on FX, yeah, absolutely what Jan said. We don't expect a very strong impact from last year. We expect that to moderate a little bit, but we don't guide on FX. So the first quarter versus the end of last year, the Swiss franc was a bit down. But quarter over quarter, we still have the inflation.

Very clear. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Arnaud. We will take the next question from Bridgesh from HSBC. Good morning, Bridgesh.

Hi, good morning, Jens. I have two. The first one is on Asia-Africa-Middle East. If you could give a little more flavor about how, between those two regions, how Asia has performed and Africa-Middle East has performed in Q1. And the second one is on Latin America, a very strong margin, 36%, which is probably a record one if you go back in history. But if you can just give us a little more flavor about whether this margin can be sustainable or anything one-off happened in Q1 about the price-cost dynamics, how it is looking in the rest of the year.

Good morning, Brijesh. I think you noticed that we did a good start of the year. In EMEA, so Asia, Middle East and Africa, and it's a wide span of countries in the region. And of course, you are all aware that in China is a bit tougher market at the moment. However, we could counterbalance that more. more than needed with the other countries. So we have in many countries a very good situation on growth and on margin delivering these results. It's fully sustainable. We have done a lot of homework in those markets and you can expect us to finish the year very strongly in Asia, Middle East and Africa. Latin America is a success story, of course, of Holcim and will continue to be one. We have all aware that Mexico is a country which is our biggest market in Latin America, nevertheless continues to grow strongly. We have all this on-shoring. At the same time, so all the factories which are built for this trade-free zone to supply the U.S. market for electronics, for automotive, for alternative products, this goes very strongly. We have big infrastructure projects run by the government. And maybe most importantly, the private consumption is increasing very fast. These jobs created in Mexico are well-paid, and we have also a big private household. house building trend in Mexico, though this all comes together very nicely. The currency is strong. The Mexican pesos has, it's one of the few currencies which I think has increased against the Swiss franc. So we're very happy. with that. We have our other portfolio. We are in Colombia, we are in Ecuador, in Argentina, very strong positions. And you see the overall results are strong and they will continue strong. Also here, we make big inroads to grow our solutions and products business, to grow our aggregates business. So we have many, many growth drivers here for Latin America, and we will keep this strong profitable growth also going forward.

Thank you, Brijesh. We will take the next question from Yacine Douari on field research. Good morning, Yacine.

Yes, good morning. A couple of questions. First, on Latin America, you're publishing a currency effect, a positive currency effect of plus 2% despite a collapse in the currency in Argentina. Is it fair to assume that you've overstated the currency and prices increase in Argentina for hyperinflation. My second question would be, you mentioned that you had a bit of a weather impact in the first quarter. Can you give us a little bit of a color about the trends in the first few weeks of April? Do you see better trends in terms of organic growth at the group level and the catch-up? And then, last question, when we look at your development in roofing and solution in North America, Do you see opportunity to move into other products in your insulation business? Or could you move into adhesives or sealants to complete the building envelope?

Hey, good morning. Good morning, Yasin. No, thank you. I will take your last two questions and then maybe our CFO can talk a bit about currencies and why we have a gain in Latin America. Look in the US, that was the region. We have full order books. We are sold out in many product lines. We have all the big orders coming in from the infrastructure investment, but also from all the onshoring. projects for new factories, new industrial facilities. So we are very confident going forward. Remember, the first three months is a high seasonality in North America. We also have the business in Canada to consider. There were a bit harsher conditions regarding the weather compared to last year. I think two less invoicing days. And, you know, we don't like to talk about this, but you can assume that we're going to have very healthy growth coming in in the next nine months already starting in April. So we're very confident, like we always were confident about the strong demand and the strong order books we are having in North America. This is all there. And we are very confident now for the next nine months in North America. In solutions and products, I think, first of all, we're very happy where we are. We really made our position three in the North American roofing market, number two in the flat roofing commercial side, number five in the residential side, so very happy. You have seen we have been able to add the Dualas business and now you will see that we're going to have a lot of organic investment going on. We think having the presentation deck, the opening of the new insulation board factory in Salt Lake City. And you will see many more organic investments going on because we have a big market. That roofing market we are targeting is a $40 billion market in the US and Canada alone. And we are targeting strongly to grow and outperform the market there. So a lot of things to be done. And then, of course, we can go in the building envelope, we can go in the facade, we can go in the adhesives. We actually entered already the adhesives we took over from ITW. We took over the adhesive part for the roofing to complete our system selling approach. So, there are many, I think, technologies and applications we can enter and we look at them, obviously, very much in detail. So, you can expect more transactions coming from Holcim in North America.

On Latin America in general and on FX, look, number one, it's important to understand Latin America, the performance in this quarter was very much driven by Mexico. We see a very strong performance from Mexico. Now, in countries with hyperinflation, of course, we apply hyperinflation accounting, as we also note in our annual report. And when you ask for inflation and FX effects on margin, well, you have it in both, right? You have it in the top line and in the bottom line. So margin is is relatively clean because the inflation sits in the top and the bottom line. And as I said, in the translation over to Switzerland, we apply hyperinflation accounting, usually with the strictest exchange rate.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Yassine. We will take the next question from Harry Goad, Berenberg. Good morning, Harry.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I got two, please. I appreciate your comments, Anne, about not giving specifics on volume trends, but could you at least give us maybe some perspectives of where you think we're at in the broader European construction cycle? Do you think we're close to the trough of the cycle? That's the first question, please. And then the second one is, Interesting, the comment you made about the carbon capture facility that will be online in 2029 in Germany. Are you able to give us some indication of what you expect the total capex of that project to be? And actually, what's interesting is the total capex, but I appreciate you might not be, or Holsten might not be funding the whole project, but what do you expect the total cost of that project to be? Thank you.

Hey, Harry, good morning. And luckily, we have the current head of Europe with us, Miljan, for another week. So I'm very happy to pass your questions over to Miljan.

Harry, thank you for the question. So on the volume side, we are seeing a very good momentum on infrastructure projects in Europe. from wind farms, solar, LNG terminals, road bridges, tunnels, a lot of in the pipeline. To give you one concrete example, we've just secured a full Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland. We have very interesting infrastructure projects in UK, and the list goes on and on. I'm expecting a good H2. H1 will be softer, mainly in residential sector. But for the full year, I'm expecting more balance volume in Europe. On the carbon capture projects, I mean, as you know, we have six projects that are partially funded by EU. We are very proud of this. All of these projects have a high return. We are talking about paybacks less than seven years. We are very thankful to EU for supporting us. And in addition to these six, we have another eight in the pipeline. I would like to refer to our decarbonisation day, which we did in November last year, where we gave a more comprehensive overview on these projects and also on the CAPEX related to that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Harry. Next question coming from Ebrahim Omani, CMC. Good morning, Ebrahim.

Hello, thank you for taking my question. I have two, if I may. The first one is about Europe. The margin proves at a higher level than in 2022. Do you consider that this trend will remain in the next quarter? And my second question is about your divestment strategy. on which region and which segment you may focus on, and do you adapt this M&A strategy to your spin-off project in 2025?

Hey Prem, good morning. Let me talk about the M&A strategy and then we pass over to the head of Europe for your first question. No, look, I think our M&A strategy has been very clear. We are focusing on the big acquisitions where we made inroads for solutions and products. So we were able to start with the acquisition of Firestone. in 2021 then complemented by the malaki acquisition complemented by the dual last acquisition last year so we made some bigger acquisitions to enter this new application field for whole cement that was i think very very successful and then the majority of transactions is focused on the boulder acquisition strategy we have in place to also strengthen solutions and products where we had a um various acquisitions but also to strengthen our ready mix and especially our aggregates operations by welcoming family-owned businesses to wholesale and you can expect this m a strategy to continue also into this years and the years to come you saw already the first quarter we had five acquisitions to strengthen solutions and products to strengthen aggregates and to strengthen ready mix. The pipeline is well filled of projects. We have a very disciplined project, so we cannot say if at the end of the year we have 20 acquisitions or 25 or 30, but you can expect these bolt-on acquisitions to continue with the speed we have demonstrated last year.

As I mentioned on the volume development in Europe, I'm more positive on H2 and I'm very pleased with the momentum we have in infrastructure sector with several big projects across the whole Europe. So I expect H2 to be much stronger. And for us, to a less extent, volume topic is irrelevant. Our focus is on our advanced brands providing sustainable solutions to our customers. You saw in the presentation the momentum we have achieved with our multi-billion dollar brands, Ecopact and Ecoplanet. A year and something ago, we launched our technology platform, EcoCycle, and this is something we want to make equally big in the next few years. That's why the focus, and even in our outlook, we have confirmed that we want to reach 10 million tons of recycling and construction and demolition materials this year. And to add on the M&A, You will probably see in the Q2 and Q3 especially that we will be signing some acquisitions in the construction, demolition, material recycling sector. For us, this will be a big growth driver in the future.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ebrahim. Next question coming from Tobias Werner from Stifel. Good morning, Tobias. Good morning, Tobias. Can you hear us? Well, we'll take the next question from Remo Rosenau, Helvetisch Bank. Good morning, Remo. Can you hear us?

Yes, hi. Can you hear me?

Loud and clear.

Go ahead. Okay, great. Jan, morning. Since four years old, you certainly spoke to many U.S. investors. Due to the planned spin-off, these US investors now need to take a closer look to a sector which so far was rather insignificant in the US domestic market. During that process, they certainly also stumbled over the very low valuations of the European cement companies versus US peers. In your discussions with them, was there any reaction of these US investors in view of that rather huge valuation gap to the disadvantage of the European peers? I mean... Did they think that this was always on unmerited or probably an investment opportunity or whatever?

Remo, good morning. Look, I think I'm very pleased that we have announced the US listing about two and a half months ago, and I think we are very pleased with the results. I have personally talked to many, many investors, current investors of Holcim, but also future investors, especially in the US. They're all very excited. And while we talked a lot about the strategic rationale of creating two champions, both companies then being able to set their specific strategic priorities in their markets. It's also creating two investor profiles. So we have the North American focused growth profile for US investors. And then we have a very strong whole SIM with all the decarbonization with all the circular construction and with a significant increase in margins year after year. So you have two very strong and specific investor profiles. And from all my discussions, I only get very, very positive feedback. And I personally believe these two champions are going to be real investment success stories. And you can see that also from the share price, which was around 63, 64 when we announced the U.S. listing. It's now significantly higher. I'm very happy, of course, to see that support from the investment community. And we have huge interest, of course, from U.S. investors now. And I'm not worried about backflows or inflows. I'm very convinced this is going to be a super success stories on both sides of the Atlantic.

Okay, so you rather expect having opened up a very huge new investment pool basically?

Of course, I think the U.S. investment community is waiting for Holcim to be listed in the U.S. That's a unique opportunity to participate in the largest pure play North American billing solutions company. And what the track record we have established, doubling the company in the last three years in North America, I think everyone wants to participate in that success story going forward.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you, Remo. We will take the last question. Tobias is connected again. Good morning, Tobias. Can you hear us?

Yes, good morning, Holcim team. Thanks for taking my question again to two questions, actually. Number one, unless I've missed it, when you look at pricing in Q1 at the top level, should we assume that you've seen low single-digit to mid-single-digit pricing improvement? And if so, How do you expect that to develop throughout the year with possibly more challenging comps? That's question number one. And number two is a more general question. We have some estimates here, but it'd be nice to get some more understanding or insight. What do you perceive your group exposure to be by sub-sector and especially to housing if you were to include, obviously,

potentially back cement into the housing bucket thank you very much um hi good morning tobias um look i think on the pricing we talked already about it throughout the conference call we are very satisfied i think all our efforts to position holds him as the chosen supplier for the builder works well for the low carbon building solutions to our branding to the new solutions and product segment to uh now growing uh the circular construction by 20 percent now this business every year so um so we make very good inroads we have a pricing it's about what you just mentioned uh um we have a good pricing and start of the year and we expect that pricing to go uh full uh forward for the full year so That's our outlook on there. I think exposure is, we are super positioned in each of our markets. It's always a mix, as you know, from new build to repair and refurbishment, from infrastructure to industrial to residential. Our people position every market very well. We have, of course, made big improvement or increase of the market. repair and refurbishment segment over the last years by developing also solutions focused on repair, refurbishment, also making existing buildings more sustainable. And this is, of course, very profitable and very much growing also for the future. So we could talk about every market. And of course, we have the exposure question you have by detail. But overall, we are very confident that we have the right positioning and especially that we have developed the right solutions to grow in each segment, no matter where the market is at.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tobias. Thank you, everyone, for connecting. And with this, I hand it over to Jan for the final words.

Thank you again for joining. I'm very happy we could talk today about the strong start of the year and all the background why we're going to look forward to have a record 2024 with Holcim this year. I wish you a good week and look forward to seeing you very soon in person again. Thank you.