Holcim Ltd

Good morning and welcome to the analyst and investor video conference for Holcim's first half year 2024 results. I'm Bernd Pommerin, head of investor relations, and it's a pleasure to welcome also our CEO, Miljan Gutovic, and our CFO, Stefan Kindler, for the presentation today. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask your questions. To have a smooth flow, we ask you please to either join by phone or by webcast in order to ask your questions. If you join by webcast, please simply press the Q&A button and then follow the instructions to put your question to us. If you join by phone, please press star 14 to queue up for the line. If you want to cancel your question, please press star 15. With this, I hand over to Miljan. Miljan, please.

Thank you, Bernd. good morning to all of you and thank you very much for joining us for our h1 update we are very pleased to share with you that we have achieved a record profitable growth in h1 of 2024. as you can see our ebit is up 12.7 percent in local currency and also 8.1 percent in swiss francs We achieved net sales growth of 1.6%, and we are very pleased with our margin expansion. We achieved record recurring EBIT margin of 23.2%. We also grow our earnings per share by 10%, and we continue with our highly synergetic M&A activities. Because of all of this, because of our strong financial performance, from our absolute EBIT growth to our margin expansions, we are confident to upgrade our EBIT margin from 18% to above 18.5% for the full year. On the next slide, you can see probably the most exciting slide in my deck, new record Q2 recurring EBIT margin. We have grown 210 basis points of recurring EBIT margin in Q2. This was driven by our disciplined execution of strategic priorities. We are scaling up our sustainable building solutions. we are investing in decarbonisation and circularity as a profitable growth drivers. We continue with our value accretive M&A with focus on the most attractive markets and also the most attractive segments. And we continuously work on improving our operational efficiency and also exercising strong cost discipline. On the M&A side, very pleased to share with you that we completed 11 acquisitions in H1 and four divestments. We bought four companies that are active in construction and demolition material recycling, in UK, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, some of the most attractive markets when it comes to circular construction. We also expand our activities in solutions and products with three new acquisitions. And we are constantly enhancing our footprint in aggregates and ready mix with acquisitions in US, Mexico, Poland, Germany and Switzerland. Very pleased to make significant progress on CO2 per net sales reduction of 7%. We are leading in sustainability from sustainable building solutions to circular constructions. And we want to have the best in class transparency about our initiatives. That's why we published our third climate report, which was fully supported by our shareholders in the recent AGM. On the circularity side, we are very excited about the progress we are making. We have bought four highly accretive acquisitions. These acquisitions will add another million tons of construction and demolition materials that we will recycle. And also, this will give us more than 100 recycling platforms in Europe and also another 40 outside the Europe. The demand for sustainable building solution continuously increases. As you can see from this slide, our EcoPact, the low carbon concrete, has reached 28% of the total sales in ReadyMix. And our low carbon cement, EcoPlanet, has reached 26% of the total sales in cement. And we are very pleased that we are scaling up sustainable building solutions across the world, advancing the energy transition, empowering AI, and of course, modernizing infrastructure. As you can see from this slide, we are supplying some high-profile projects like a wind farm in Belgium, We are working with Amazon to supply our low carbon offering to data centers. There are 90 more of data centers that will be built in the next four years, half in US and the rest in Europe and Australia. And Holcim is well positioned to capture this opportunity. And of course, we are working on the key infrastructure projects. Example is of Metro Tunnel in Melbourne, Australia. I will stop here and I'll hand it over to Stefan for financial highlights.

Good morning. Thank you very much, Milan. Good morning, everybody. Pleasure to be here today with you and present our financial highlights of the first half year of 2024. We grew sales in local currency by 1.6%. The organic sales growth was flat. We experienced a bit softer volumes, but our portfolio of premium branded solutions driven by decarbonization and also driven by solutions and products helped us to continue with our approach to favor value over volume. What you see also here is that we had a contribution of net M&A of 1.9% and the FX headwind was at 3.5%, much less than last year where we had a headwind of 6.8%, so this moderated. When we look at the EBIT bridge, we reached 2.2 billion Swiss francs in EBIT in the first half. This is the highest we've ever had. We grew in local currency of 12.7%. But what is really important also in a world of appreciating Swiss franc, we grew in absolute by 8%. This is very important for us because it also helps us for the free cash flow later on. The FX moderated again here to 4.6% from the highs of last year. Our margin in the first half was at 17.2%, up 160 base points in the second quarter, as Miljan said, even up by 210 base points to 23.2%. Our margin is driven by our premium branded portfolio. by a value over volume strategy, by decarbonization and by solutions and products. This helps us to win on the commercial side and then strong focus on the cost side also where we look at from distribution cost over raw materials down to fixed cost. We control the controllables and keep those costs under control in order to drive margin. When we go and look at the regions, you see that we have over-proportional EBIT growth across all segments, from North America, Latin America, Europe, over to solutions and products. Every one of our regions grew margins in the first half of this year. I quickly run through the regions with you to give you a bit of a flavor of where we are. North America reached a new level of profitability. We still got strong fundamentals in the market. We hear about weather, we hear about a short-term softness in volumes. We still believe in the strong fundamentals. We have 100-plus infrastructure projects already secured. And in the first half, we reached a margin expansion of recurring EBIT by 240 basis points, so 19.4%. So we expect a strong performance to continue for 2024. Latin America, 16th consecutive quarter of profitable growth. We have an outstanding H1 recurring EBIT of 35.6%, up 120 basis points. I always remind that this is not just one country that's carrying, it's all our countries in Latin America that have this level of profitability. So it's a very good result here in the region. We have the most advanced distribution network with more than 2,000 retail stores, our Desensa branded stores network. This helps us to drive innovation into the market. Also, when we do acquisitions, we have an immediate leverage to drive volume of these products through our store network. And of course, nearshoring is driving infrastructure and commercial investments in the region that also drives our growth. Europe, fantastic story in Europe, the seventh consecutive quarter of profitable growth. We have an expansion of recurring EBIT margin by 240 basis point to over 16%. We did six bold on acquisitions in the areas of aggregates, ready mix, construction, demolition materials, and recycling solutions. And we are convinced that the strong earnings momentum will continue going forward. Asia, Middle East, Africa, very good market dynamics in Northern Africa. Morocco and Algeria particularly. We have an expansion of the recurring EBIT margin by 240 basis points to 23.5%. We continued with our evolution of the portfolio and we closed three divestments in the first half of this year. And also here, we expect the earnings momentum to continue. Lastly, solutions and products. Strong net sales increase driven by the roofing systems. The margin expansion is based on that sales growth driven by the scale of 100 basis points. We did three acquisitions in this segment in Europe and in Latin America, and therefore also a strong outlook for the rest of the year. If we look into the financials, the good results on the profitability are also reflected in the earnings per share. Our earnings per share before impairments and divestments are up by 10%, of course, driven by the record recurring EBIT in the first half and very tight control of all the cost items between EBIT and net profit. Free cash flow, nice expansion of our EBITDA by almost 170 million. This is what I mentioned before, important for us that we can grow in absolute, so nice expansion here. Working capital almost flat, some timing issues in financial payments and other payments down here, but mainly then capex. We spent a bit more capex in the first half this year than we did in the last half. So with a 48 million positive free cash flow, right around where we've been in the last years. This is seasonally the number where we usually are for the half-year mark, and we therefore feel that we're well on track to achieve our guidance for 2024. Lastly, I want to give a quick look at the debt level. Also here on the level that we usually are at this time of the year, you see last year we were at 11 billion. This year we are at 10.9 billion. The free cash flow that came in, net M&A, but then also very important, almost 2 billion Swiss francs returned to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks, and then some other items that are usually affecting our net debt level at this time of the year. Last but not least, the share buyback program. You might remember at the full year results conference, we announced a 1 billion Swiss franc share buyback program to be finished by the end of this year. As of yesterday, we had bought back shares worth 516 million. So we're halfway through the program, which is the right timing, we feel. So we're on good track to finish that program by year's end. This is in terms of an update on that. With that, I'm happy to give it back to Miljan for the outlook and the guidance.

Thank you, Stefan. So in the nutshell, Holcim has achieved record profitable growth. And based on that, we are confident that in H2, we will continue with our margin expansion. That's why we are guiding margin expansion above 18.5%. We will continue with our strong free cash flow generation above 3 billion, and we will also achieve over-proportional growth in absolute EBIT. Let's not forget construction and demolition materials recycling. We are committed to 10 million tons this year, which is an increase of 20% versus last year. And at the end, I would like to mention that our progress towards US listing is progressing well and we will list in H1 next year. I will stop here and hand it over to Bernd.

Thank you so much, Miljan. Thank you so much, Stefan. With this, we are open for your questions. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one four on your telephone keypad. The first question is already coming in. It's Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Good morning, Cedar.

Thanks very much. Two questions from me. Can you talk a little bit more about solutions and products? There's a notable deceleration in the organic growth in the business in the second quarter. I think we'll understand that some of that is down to less restocking tailwind. But how do we think about growth in that business into the second half? Can you deliver double digits organic growth. That's the first question. And then the second question, can you talk about your intentions around price increases for your heavy size businesses in Europe and in the US as we move through the second half of the year? Thank you.

Thank you, Cedar. I'll start with the pricing. Pricing is resilient across all our market. As you know, a few years ago, we have moved to dynamic pricing, which means more frequent prices increases, and we see a potential to increase the prices in selective markets in a certain country. So I'm very happy and pleased with the progress we have made in pricing so far. And I think the next big wave will come in Q1 next year. Solutions and products, specifically our roofing business, continues to grow. We are sold out in some of our factories in the US. We have seen a significant increase in net sales, but also in recurring EBIT. And I'm very optimistic for the second half of the year for roofing in US and also in Europe.

Could you put some numbers around growth for roofing in the second half? Because the deceleration in organic... Q1 was double-digit, Q2 only sort of 3%. It would be helpful to understand how we think about growth in 2H. Are we looking more like the growth we saw in Q2, or is there a reason why we can have an accelerating growth profile in the second quarter?

We have many projects in the pipeline, so we will see accelerated growth in H2 in roofing in U.S.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cedar.

Thank you, Emilian. The next question is from Efrem Ravi from Citi. Good morning, Efrem.

Thank you. A couple of questions on the demolition materials, 10 million tons target. I'm trying to get a sense of the revenue and margin opportunity. In the last decarbonization day, when we had 11 million tons of demolition materials by 2025, it also indicated on the chart that the revenue of about 400 million Swiss francs, roughly 35 euros per ton, Is that roughly the kind of revenue we're seeing with the 10 million tons one year earlier, or is there a change in the mix? And does the 20 million ton by 2030, 800 million revenue still stand, or is there a scope for upgrade? And also, is this actually incremental revenues, or are you cannibalizing some revenues that could come from ready mix or aggregates? Thank you.

Thanks, Efrem. So circularity is probably the biggest opportunity we have at the moment. By recycling construction and demolition materials, we are preserving natural resources. And at Holcim, we do this because it's the right thing to do, but also it makes good business sense. So yes, our EBIT margins on these products are currently higher than 15%. but we are upcycling. We are using recycled construction and demolition materials now in cement, in ready mix, in asphalt, and also to replace primary aggregates in certain locations. So yes, what we presented in November last year in decarbonization day is correct, and the margins will continue to increase driven simply by upcycling of these products. So these four acquisitions that we acquired in H1, their EBITDA margins are greater than 25%. So it's a highly profitable business opportunity for us.

Thank you. And whether you are kind of having any sales offset from where they mix our aggregates for these decarbonization products?

No, you are referring to aggregates. No, this is in addition to the growth we are having in our aggregate business.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Efrem. Okay, the next question is from Arno Lehmann from Bank of America. Arno, good morning.

Thank you very much, and good morning, gentlemen. My first question is on your full-year sales guidance that you seem to have reduced. I appreciate there was, I think, a headwind from bad weather in the second quarter. I guess there is probably an effect of that. But are you disappointed by underlying volume trends across your markets, or is it something else? It's just a company focused on pricing, and you don't mind losing market share? That's my first question.

First of all, Arnold, we are not losing market share. We had some softer conditions due to the weather in US and some of our other markets, but our main focus is actually on our sustainable building solutions where we are getting a pricing premium. and we continue to grow in these products. As you saw, Ecopect, our low carbon concrete, now represents 28% of our total sales in ReadyMix. So I'm very optimistic for H2 to continue with margin expansion. Once again, this margin expansion is driven by our leading sustainable building solutions from Ecopack to Elevate, delivering superior value to our customers. We are continuously accelerating initiatives in decarbonization and circularity. These two areas are profitable growth drivers for us. And the margin expansion and margin growth is also coming from a very attractive M&A strategy we have with 11 acquisitions in H1 this year plus another 28 last year.

Okay, thank you. And my second question is on slide six, you still communicate on CO2 emissions per net cell. That will mechanically go back up after the spin-off of North America because U.S. roofing will be in a different entity. What is your plan to improve this metric again post-spin-off Obviously, you have all the decarbonization effort in place, but do you also plan to do acquisition and re-diversify Holcim after the spin-off away from cement? Thank you.

Yes, Arnaud, you're correct. We will continue to reduce our CO2 ProNet sales today and also after the spin-off. As you know, we are developing solutions and products business segment in Europe, in Latin America, and also some parts of Asia, Middle East, and Africa. And we will continue to do this. For instance, in Europe, we have a strong roofing business. We have a well-established motor business. We have completed... a few acquisitions in France, in Belgium, in Germany, and UK. And we will continue to expand in this sector. Thank you so much. Thank you, Arno.

All right. The next in the line is Gregor Kuglic from UBS. Good morning, Gregor.

Hi, good morning. So I've got a few questions. Can I come back to roofing? Can you actually tell us what the growth was in Q2, please, for roofing? I guess it's part of that segment. And then did you say an acceleration in the second half? Just clarify, please, on the roofing trends. And the second question is on margins. So you did over 200 basis point increase in quarter two on a year-over-year basis. I guess my question to you is, do you think that will slow down in the second half, or can you hold that? Is there a comparison basis issue we need to take into account? A little bit more color on the margin outlook for half two, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Gregor. So yes, we are very optimistic about H2 in roofing and we already achieved excellent results with the growth of 30 plus percent. We do have a full pipeline of projects that we have already secured for H2. And I'm confident that this trend will continue to grow in H2. And on the margin expansion, of course, we want to continue with the excellent margin expansion we have seen in Q2. I don't want to be precise about H2, what exactly increase will be in basis points, but we will continue to over deliver in the growth in absolute EBIT and also in EBIT margin expansion. Thank you. Thank you, Gregory.

The next question comes from the line of Elodie Wall from JP Morgan. Good morning, Elodie.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. So I was wondering about capex. So you said capex has increased in H1. Does that mean that we should expect some increase as well in H2? Second, U.S. sales are down 2.5% on a like-for-like basis. Obviously, there's been some weather impact, but would you expect that to coach up generally during the remaining of the year? And lastly, I was wondering if you could update us on FX expectations for the year. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Elodie. I'll start with the US, and then I'll hand it over to Stefan. So yes, sales were slightly down in H1 in US, and this was mainly driven by weather. We are currently working on more than 100 large-scale projects in US with our strong presence. We are number one in cement, number three in roofing, and number five in aggregates and ready mix. we are able to capture all these projects. And I'm confident about H2 in US. Stefan?

Yeah, look for CapEx. We're 90 million up in the first half versus last year. On a full year basis, we're also going to be slightly up. These are investments into growth projects. These are investments into CCUS, into green projects. They all have a very good payback. You know, we hold a very tight control over our CapEx envelope. And we do all the projects with the best paybacks. And this, of course, is part of our overall free cash flow guidance. So no major increase in CapEx, rather a seasonal shift from H1 to H2. On FX, Elodie, we don't really dare to guide on FX for the full year. We had softer... we had software fx headwinds in the first half as the swiss franc did not appreciate or appreciate or rather depreciated to certain currencies you also see that on the balance sheet for example um but i don't i don't like to guide on fx we're now seeing a little bit more appreciation of the swiss franc i'd leave that up to you great thanks very much

So the next question comes from Luis Prieto from Kepler Chevro. Hola Luis, how can we help you?

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I had a couple of them, if I could. The first one is, is there any color you could provide on what the drivers behind the significant margin expansion in Q2 have been? I'm referring to a very rough split between pricing power, lower cost inflation pressures and OPEX management. The second question, thinking about next year's recurring EBIT, is it fair to assume that in order to match this year's potential high single-digit growth in actual terms, you're going to have to see a reasonable degree of positive volume growth? I'm assuming that price over cost would be less pronounced than in 2024, leave alone 2023, but I could be perfectly wrong. Thanks.

Hey, thanks, Luis. I'll hand it over to Stefan to comment on the cost I now will take care of the recurring EBIT margin expansions. Stefan?

Yeah, but look, Luis, as I explained before, our margin expansion is driven, one, by the commercial side that Miljan will talk to. On the cost side, we need to control what we can control. This is the raw materials, but also in distribution cost. Coming out of COVID and coming out of the restricted supply chains, we now can go back into global bidding. We can go back into competitive bidding with our suppliers. This concerns distribution itself, but this also contains the reach of how we source maintenance materials, how we source raw materials, and also we can go look back at our fixed cost structure and how we optimize the maintenance structure in the factory. So it's all of these things that we're looking up. in order to manage the cost side always with a long-term view we're never doing anything abrupt or or not sustainable but cost management has come back on the on the agenda after it was maybe a bit deprioritized out of copy uh louis pricing definitely helps but

The margin expansion is driven by our scaling up sustainable building solutions. As you have heard before, our roofing business is growing very strongly. We are scaling up eco-pact and eco-planet product range where we are getting pricing premium. We are scaling up initiatives in decarbonization and circularity which is driving profitable growth. And our M&A strategy is obviously helping. We are buying the companies in the most attractive markets and also in the most attractive business segments. So I'm confident that this margin expansion will continue and we will finish this year with, once again, superior earnings profile from our absolute EBIT growth our industry leading ebit margin and also strength balance sheet and a strong cash free cash flow generation so thanks a lot so the next one in the line is martin husla from zgb good morning martin yes good morning and thank you for taking my questions uh first one about uh

Ready Mix Concrete, where I think the margin came down in H1 a bit. I was just wondering why this margin did not pick up due to, let's say, EcoPact. This is a cost allocation thing. So that's my first question.

So Martin, thanks for the question. ReadyMix is the business segment that is the most affected by weather conditions. So nothing to worry about this. We are well on track to achieve our targets in ReadyMix. And of course, we want to do much, much more in eco-packed product range.

Okay, and then maybe the second one, a bit more broad-based, but if you compare your outlook today for volumes in the specific regions, and you compare it to what you detected, let's say, in May, so where are you now a bit more cautious in terms of volume recovery in the second half?

Martin, you know we don't comment on the volume, so I will comment on the market conditions. Market conditions fundamentals are still in the place, same fundamentals today as they were in May. So we talk about really strong growth in construction industry, which is driven by government infrastructure spend, by urbanization and population, which is driving growth. growth in commercial and residential sector. And of course, we want to build more sustainable cities. And therefore, Holcim is well positioned to capture these opportunities today, but also in the future. So more or less, market conditions have remained the same. We still have some booming markets like Mexico, and some markets have been softer, mainly due to the weather impact.

And just maybe an add-on. I think so far you kind of expected a certain improvement in the second half, for example, in Europe, also in residential. Do you still see that or are you more cautious on Europe in general?

Pretty much the same view. As you know, we have softer market conditions in residential in Europe. But to us, if you see our performance in Europe, last year Europe had the highest growth in EBIT. And even this year in H1, Europe is growing above group average in Europe. So for me, fundamentals are in place in Europe. We will continue to invest. or to supply our customers on the big infrastructure projects from roads, tunnels to the wind farms, as we have shown one of the projects in Belgium, which is where we supply large quantities of EcoPact.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Martin. Very clear. So the next one on the line is Ross Harvey from Davie. Ross, how is life in Dublin?

Hi, morning. Millian, morning. Stefan, two questions for me. Firstly, obviously it appears that overall cement pricing is solid in Europe. I'm wondering, can you discuss if there are any differences between traditional cement products from Holcim and EcoPlanet, just how those trends have maybe differed or if they have? And secondly, just more of a long-term question, but I just wanted to ask about the additional eight CCUS projects that you mentioned previously. I'm wondering how they're progressing as the change in European Parliament, change our outlook in any way.

Hey, thanks, Ross, for the question. So regarding the EU latest election, nothing has changed. EU Green Deal is still top priority for EU. And yes, Ross, we are very pleased with the progress we are making on CCUS front. We do have six projects in execution stage. Maybe you have noticed in Q2, we had two groundbreaking ceremonies in Germany and also in Belgium. As you know, these projects have been partially funded by EU and we are very happy with the progress we are making. On the pricing, pricing in Europe has been resilient. We are very pleased with the pricing momentum. We have moved to dynamic pricing, so probably there are opportunities in Q3 to increase the prices in certain markets, in certain business segments. But we are driving value. We are delivering superior value for our customers with our eco-packed, eco-planet. And here we are getting some pricing premium because this is a next generation of building products.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ross. Okay, so the next one on the line is Tobias Werner from Stifel. Good morning, Tobias. Tobias, can you hear us? Maybe you have... Hello, can you hear me now? Yes, clear and loud. Hello? Go ahead, yes, go ahead, Tobias.

Okay, yes, thank you, Ben, and thanks to me and the team. Three questions, if I may. Number one, when you dig into this solutions and products segment, the historical businesses, i.e. outside commercial roofing or roofing generally, can you give us a sense of what happened there in H1 and where you see this going in H2 in terms of potential outlook? And then secondly, When you look at Mexico, Mia, you mentioned quickly in passing that you had a booming market in Mexico. Maybe give us a bit of a flavor of what is actually happening there. Is it the vaccine driving things again? And then just lastly, in terms of the updates around the U.S. listing, again, can you give us some flavor of where... what you're doing, where the work is, separating the businesses and so on. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Tobias. The US listing is progressing well. We are on track and it will happen in H1. Maybe some administrative points from Stefan. Look, Tobias, nothing new.

As Miljan said, we're progressing very well. We have a dedicated team that's working on that. And we will finalize the project in the first half of next year. And we're engaging step by step. But we're actually quite pleased with the progress we're making at this point in time.

Going back to roofing and to solutions and products, Tobias said the key... key product range is roofing in solutions and products. We also have a presence in motor, specifically in Europe, and we do have precast businesses across the globe. On Mexico, I had the opportunity to visit Mexico, and it's very exciting to see that this country is going through construction boom. This is driven by niche shoring and also by government spending. When talking to my team in Mexico, they are currently discussing our advanced building solutions with Amazon, Tesla, BMW. Apparently, there is 100 Asian companies that want to build the factories in Mexico. so the infrastructure is booming knee shoring is booming and also the our descenser is doing extremely well and through the sensor we are selling back products so our story on mexico is very exciting in the next few years okay if i may just follow up on the precast side of the s p side of the equation what what happened there in h1 and what do you think will happen there going forward So basically precast is correlated to ready mix and cement. So the market dynamics can vary. Also, this business is affected by weather patterns, but I believe that there was nothing extraordinary in precast business. And I must admit, this is not a big portion of our business in solutions and products.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tobias. So the next one in the line is Yacine Touari from Onfield. Good morning, Yacine.

Yeah, so maybe another follow-up question on solution and product. So when I'm trying to look at the acquisition that you've done and the historical data that you published, I come to the conclusion that roofing is about 40, 50% of your revenue. and you got another 40, 50% of the revenue in precast, mortar, construction services, building products. Is it fair to assume that in the first part of the year, you had maybe double-digit growth, organic growth in commercial roofing, and a decline in the rest of the business? I'm a little bit surprised, and I think a few investors are a little bit surprised at the difference in organic growth published by Carlyle. I think it was plus 20% organic growth. and the organic growth that you yourself published in the first half would be great if we could get some clarity on the split between commercial roofing, which I understand is maybe 40, 50%, and the legacy product. My second question would be, if I look at the future of this business, I think you've done a great stride in North America with Firestone. and a few other Bolton. Do you see an opportunity in the coming years to develop this business similarly in Mexico or in Europe? Do you see the opportunity to do a platform deal like Firestone?

Thanks for the question, Yasin. Yes, you're pretty much right. Roofing will be more than 50% and this will continue to grow. And yes, on the other side, some other business segments under solutions and products, markets have been softer. We did talk about precast, which is not a big business, but it was not growing as much as roofing. So roofing is still the key focus and we will continue to grow in roofing. I think regarding the Europe, we do have a roofing business already in Europe. and the potential is enormous to increase our market share and increase our geographical footprint across the europe and also probably outside europe you did mention mexico and just follow up on the roofing for the second part of the year i think carlisle mentioned that the base effect is going to be more challenging in the second part of the year because

there is no gross taxing benefit. Do you also see potentially a bit less organic growth for your commercial roofing business in H2 2024?

So I'm confident that we will continue with a strong double-digit growth in roofing in H2. So is it going to be 20%, 30%, or more percent? We will see. But the outlook is very positive. We have many projects in the pipeline, and we continue to deliver the advanced roofing systems across the US and also in Europe.

Thank you.

All right. So the next one in the line is Harry Goat from Bernberg. Good morning, Harry.

Yeah. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two on Europe, please. I appreciate your earlier comments about the diversity of your end market exposures across Europe and also the issue around margins. But can you give us a little bit of insight about how you see residential cycle and residential demand In Europe, I appreciate probably lots of different moving parts across different countries. But do you feel like we're getting close to the trough of overall residential declines in Europe? And then the second one, different point, but around carbon capture and the upgrading of production capacity in Europe. Can you remind us if you have closed or plan to close any cement capacity in Europe in the last year or the year ahead? Thanks.

Hey, thanks, Harry. First of all, on the cement capacity, we didn't close any plants in the last 12 months. What I'm predicting, and we have very good plans, is that some of our existing production facilities where we are producing clinker will be converted to produce something else, something like calcined clay. And we do have a plan in place that in the next few years that we... change or swap from clinker production to calcined clay production. Regarding the market in Europe, not much has changed since last year. Once again, Europe is a region for Holcim which had the highest growth in EBIT. uh last year and also this year so residential market might be softer but we see a good pipeline of projects in infrastructure and especially we are focusing more and more on renewable energy transitions by building the wind farms and solar parks across the europe okay thank you thank you harry

So the next one in the line is Brijesh from HSBC. Good morning, Brijesh.

Good morning. I have three questions. The first one is on the guidance. You talk about low single-digit increase. Could you please split that into what's the scope impact within that low single-digit number? Then the second one is on the construction demolition. The fact that it's making good margin and you're making good progress in acquisitions. Can I understand from you what drives your acquisition there? Is it because you need technology or you need the market presence of those small players? So whether you have existing technology or you're just looking for new technology, hence you're acquiring. And that would be great. And then the last one is on the cost savings. Is there a specific program, anything you have launched since your volumes are going to be weaker or remains weak? Is there something specifically you have launched this year or it's a continuous progress you're making on that?

Thanks, Brijesh. Thanks for the question. I will tackle the circularity a bit and then I'll hand it over to Stefan for the other two questions. As I said, the circularity is the biggest growth opportunity for us. By recycling of construction and demolition materials, we are preserving resources. It's a right thing to do, but it also makes good business sense for us. This market is highly fragmented and we want to operate recycling plants in all the metropolitan cities where we are operating, where we have our established ready mix and aggregates positions. So the opportunities are endless here. Last year we increased 23% the amount of construction and demolition materials and we want to reach another 20% this year. Stefan?

Yeah, for your question on guidance between scope and OG, we're expecting a positive OG for the end of the year, a good split between scope and OG for our guidance, maybe a bit more from M&A than from organic. And then on your second question, have we launched any cost savings program? No, it's ongoing business. Cost saving is part of what we do every day. Cost focus is the same as we focus on the commercial area on our portfolio. bring value at the same time we focus on our cost base and as i explained before we now see opportunities again especially in competitive bidding and leveraging our global supply chains in order to drive cost savings there but there's no there's no program or anything like that can i just follow up with you on the recycling bit so when you do the recycling

the products you are going to kind of put it into the cement and all the products. So in terms of capacity, what you have right now, you're alluding to the fact that it's 10 million for this year. But can you tell us with the current acquisitions where you are at this point in time?

Maybe to give you a few examples, if we talk about City of London, today City of London is probably the biggest urban mine in Europe. It's tens and tens of millions tons of construction and demolition materials have been generated each year and all of this or majority of this ends up at landfills. So landfilling is becoming very costly. Governments are pushing new legislations to reduce landfilling and to promote recycling. So opportunities are endless here. We are talking about hundreds of millions of tons of construction and demolition materials generated every year. So what has changed? We have deployed advanced technology platforms. So we are not only recycling these materials, we are upcycling it. By upcycling it, we are using it in, let's say, cement production to reduce the cost, but also to reduce the CO2. We are using it in ready mix, or we are simply using it to replace the primary aggregates. On the cost side, just to add, our focus is on our value-added propositions. We are delivering profitable growth across all our markets because we are advancing sustainable building solutions, including EcoCycle, which is our technology platform for circular building products.

Very helpful. Thank you very much.

So the next one in the line is Ibrahim Humani from CMCIC. Ibrahim, please go ahead.

Hello Emilian, Stefan and Bernd. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, if I may. The first one is about Mexico. Is the margin at its highest level or do you consider that it is possible to continue to improve it? And my second, just to be sure to understand why is it so important to control the waste management business and not just have a partnership with your co-player in this sector?

Thanks, Ibrahim. When we talk about waste, in this case, we talk about construction and demolition materials, which is different than the normal waste. So what is happening today is that landfilling, which is what happens to construction and demolition materials today, landfilling costs are skyrocketing. So it's becoming very costly to landfill. Governments are pushing new legislation to promote and accelerate recycling of construction demolition materials. And this is opportunity for us. On the Mexico side, I think the country has entered golden era of construction growth. and construction will continue. And we are seeing, as we are talking to the big developers, big owners, that knee-shoring will drive the construction growth in the next several years. And also government has committed to continue to spend on infrastructure, to build the new roads, new tunnels, new bridges, new LNG plants, and the list goes on and on.

Thank you very much.

So the next question is from Harry Dow from Redburn. Harry, please go ahead.

Thank you. Morning, everybody. Just two questions from me. Firstly, on North America in the second quarter, I think the year-on-year growth rate deteriorated. Is that purely a weather-related issue or is there something happening there? And is there any sort of further colour you can give on what's happening in the segments in North America and the Heaviside business? And then secondly, just again on the lower carbon products, you've highlighted the penetration rise in those products. I think you've already exceeded the targets for 2025. What is the main barriers to that increasing further? And do you think those products are actually taking share from other players that don't offer those products or mainly just swapping out sort of normal carbon products for lower ones in your own portfolio? Thanks.

Thanks, Larry. I'm really not concerned about U.S. Yes, the softness in the market was driven by weather. We are currently working on more than 100 large-scale infrastructure projects in U.S., and we are ready to supply these projects in H2 and in 2025. On the low carbon formulations, we are making, as you have seen, a great progress there. We continue to scale up these sustainable building solutions. And as you saw, Ecopack now is 28% of our total ready mix sales. But for me, what's exciting part is that this opens the door for innovation. So today I'm talking to you about EcoPact. I can assure you the next year I will be talking about EcoPact 2.0 where we are using new and innovative supplementary cementitious materials in cement and also to produce concrete. So I think opportunities are endless and we wanna be the fastest And we want to capture this growth.

Great. Thank you. Very clear message. Thank you, Miljan. So this was the last question for today. Thank you, everyone, for joining. We really appreciate that. If you have further questions, please reach out to the investor relations team. We are more than happy to help. And with this, I hand back to Miljan for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Bern. So thank you all for joining us today. As you have seen, we have achieved record H1 performance in profitability. We are delivering profitable growth across all our markets, and we will continue to do this. That's why we are confident that our EBIT margin will exceed above 18.5%. And once again, it is... we are looking to finish this year with another superior earnings profile from our absolute EBIT growth, EBIT margin expansion, strong balance sheet, and of course, strong free cash flow generation. Once again, thank you for joining us this morning.