Holcim Ltd

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Holcim Half Year 2025 Results Analyst and Investor Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listed only mode and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone or on the virtual HD web phone keypad on your screen. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Bernd Pondrem, Group Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here with our CEO, Miljan Gutovic, and our CFO, Stefan Kindler. 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 Miljan. Miljan, please. Thank you, Ben.

Good morning to all of you and 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 decarbonisation and circular construction to drive profitable growth. Another key driver is Value Accretive M&A. Since the start of this year, we have closed our 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 next-gen 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 decarbonisation 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 kilometres 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 details. Stefan.

Thank you, Miljan. 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 divestments 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 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 are now well above 2.8 billion Swiss francs. As Miljan said earlier, this is driven by our high-value strategy, from scaling up our advanced sustainable offering, accelerating decarbonization and circularity initiatives, down to our 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 Miljan 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 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.

Thank you. Thank you, Stefan. As you know, we launched our next-gen growth strategy in March, to be precise, 28th of March. Let's take this opportunity to look more closely at what Holcim is today. After the spin-off of North America, we are still one of the leading building materials companies in the world. As you can see here, we are in 45 highly attractive markets split between three regions. We are market leaders where we operate and well diversify geographically across our regions. And Holcim is indeed best positioned to benefit from the powerful megatrends shaping the future of construction, from investment in sustainability and local infrastructure packages like in Germany, to population growth and urbanization, all the way to increasing demand for energy-efficient refurbishment. With our next-gen growth 2030, we will be delivering superior performance and margin expansion centered on five key drivers. We are scaling up our sustainable offering powered by premium brands. We are accelerating initiatives for decarbonization and circular construction, driving profitable growth. A key part of NextGen Growth 2030 is expanding high-value building solutions. As you are aware, we do have an impeccable track record of value-accretive M&A with a focus on the most attractive markets and most attractive business segments. And all of this is driven by our deeply embedded performance culture with more than 450 empowered and engaged P&L leaders. Let's look more closely at some of these drivers. Customer demand for our premium brands, Ecopact and Ecoplanet, continues to grow, as you can see on this slide. These are being used across all our footprint in large-scale projects like Zuha Islands in the UAE, which is an artificial island with 2.5 kilometers of beachfront housing that is using Ecopact. and also the HS2 rail network infrastructure project in U to connect Birmingham and London which is using EcoPlanet. The same is the case with our EcoCycle, our circular technology that is being used to recycle construction demolition materials and put it back into our products. It's being used, for example, at Woodworth in London, a large urban regeneration project that took concrete from a decommissioned marine dock and recycled it in improving the sustainability profile by 30% versus traditional concrete. As well as our building materials brands, we provide tailor-made and fully integrated end-to-end high-value building solutions. We are offering solutions from foundation and flooring to walling and roofing right across the building value chain. And this is what it means to be the leading partner for sustainable construction, from low carbon and circular construction to energy efficiency across a building's life cycle, with our system and specification selling and premium brands. We can see this in action in Europe's largest urban regeneration project, the Elinikon in Athens. This is a massive project of around 8 billion euros where Holcim has the world's first EPD certified ready-mix concrete plant right in the middle of this site. and where we are delivering the full range of Holcim's premium brands from eco-packed all the way to Zinco green roofing system. Another key driver of our next-gen growth strategy is our highly effective M&A strategy. We closed another 10 value-accretive acquisitions since the start of the year four to strengthen in building materials and six in high value building solution. As you can see from this slide, the pace actually accelerated in Q2. We also closed the divestment of Karbala, our plant in Iraq. So now what about the guidance for the full year 2025? We will deliver net sales and recurring EBIT growth in line with our next-gen growth 2030 targets, which we presented to you in March. This includes 3% to 5% net sales growth in local currency, over-proportional growth in EBIT from 6% to 10%, also in local currency. I should say this excludes large M&A in both cases. Also recurring EBIT margin of above 18% and free cash flow before leases of around 2 billion. We also committing to 20 plus percent growth in recycled construction and demolition materials. As we turn now to the question, we will leave you this slide up as a reminder of our next-gen growth 2030 targets. Ben, please open up the floor to questions.

Thank you, Miljan. Operator, can you please repeat the technical instructions? Thank you.

Yes, I will. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone or on the virtual HD web phone keypad on your screen. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing by the relative field. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time.

Perfect. Thank you so much. The first one on the line is Luis Prieto from Kepler Chevrolet. Good morning, Luis.

Good morning. Thank you, Burnham. Thanks, everyone, for taking our questions. I had two related questions. The first one is if you would be able to break down the organic growth building block of your H1 recurring EBIT bridge between price over cost and volume. And the second question, again, related to this, within this price over cost, what roughly could be the split between price increases, cost inflation moderation, and the increase in the share of sustainable products within your mix? Thank you.

Good morning, Louis. Thank you for joining. And of course, thank you for your question. I'll ask Stefan to go in depth, but just want to make a statement when it comes to price of the cost. We are very, very proud of our achievements on this front. Q2 this year will be the 14th quarter, consecutive quarter of a positive price over cost. Stefan, would you like to go into the details?

Yeah, so look, Lewis, the impact, we usually don't break this out. We don't talk about volumes and sales separately. But just to give you a bit of a feeling of how this shaped out in the first half. So volumes overall had a bit of a negative impact. Pricing had a positive impact. way over setting the volume. Now we have still positive price over cost, driven by low to mid single digit pricing, rather low single digit on average in the first half. But then also on the cost side, we have made good progress on some of our cost items, for example, distribution, or we've made good progress in support process costs. So this has helped to drive price over cost. Another impactor on the margin and on the EBIT in the first half year was the FX headwinds, as you have seen. We had stronger FX headwinds in the higher profit countries. And so I would say all this altogether led to a very, very positive double-digit increase in recurring EBIT, driven by price and very good management of costs with a bit of a headwind on our FX side.

Thanks for that.

Thank you, Stephan. The next one in the line is Pujarini Ghosh from Bernstein. Good morning, Pujarini.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. So just to confirm on the pricing, could you give us an indication of how we should expect it to progress in the second half? And in terms of your full year guidance for the year, the EBIT price you know, growth range of 6% to 10% looks a bit wide. So could you talk about the different moving parts and uncertainties that could swing the results to either end? And, you know, my second question is on the premiumization that you've talked about and the move to the low-carbon products. And in the CMD also, you had highlighted the excellent price premium that you can get from these products. So what are you seeing on the ground at the moment in terms of the price premium potential for these products?

Good morning, Puccherini, and thank you for your question. Thank you for joining. On pricing, this year we will see between low to mid single digits, and we are not expecting anything in H2. What we will start doing in October and November, we will start preparing for 2026 price increases. Regarding the full year guidance, well, whatever we do in this business, we want to overachieve. So if our net sales growth is 3%, we want to achieve overproportional growth in our EBIT of 6%. And this is why we have this range between 6% and 10%. And I can assure you that we are always aiming to go one step ahead. On the premium pricing, I did talk, I think, even with you during our capital market day. We do have a modest price premium on these products, Ecoplanet, Ecopact. However, due to our production know-how, due to our formulation know-how, these products, we are able to reduce the cost. And that's why you are seeing this nice margin expansion, especially this is the case in Europe, where we are making significant penetration in this area.

Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, Gujarati. The next one on the line is Efrem Ravi from Citigroup. Good morning, Efrem.

Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions. First, you have recently entered a few new markets like in LATAM, Peru and Guatemala. As a strategy, would you want to be top two in these markets in building products as you have been in other markets? For example, in Peru, now you're there, would you want to have a cement or aggregate capacity? I think Peru is about 15 million tons and probably too large to be supplied just by imports. So that's the first question. Secondly, it looks like the growth in EcoCycle and EcoPact is much faster than EcoPlanet. Is there something that we should read into that? Like, are you preparing... ground for zero carbon cement when it comes online after the CCUS projects start in a few quarters and hence focusing more on downstream products in the cement value chain than pure cement. Thank you.

Good morning, Efrem. Thank you for joining. Thank you for your questions. I'll start on the Latam. Of course, yes, you're right. We entered Guatemala and Peru. Guatemala is a very attractive market, one of the largest construction spends in Latin America. And with this acquisition, we are able to provide foundation for the future growth. And to answer simply, Efrem, we will be looking at all the opportunities, from building materials to building solutions, including the sense of what I believe can accelerate our growth in these new markets. We have entered, as I said, Guatemala and Peru. We have concluded another acquisition in Peru this year in H1. So we will be scaling these markets as we see great opportunities for overproportional growth. And also keep in mind these markets have very high EBIT margins. On your question regarding Ecoplanet, I wouldn't read into it. We are getting great momentum. Obviously, Ecoplanet, we are talking about larger size. It's low-carbon cement. What you will see in the next six to 12 months, we will see a scaling up production footprint in these new and innovative supplementary cementitious materials. We have started, for instance, Calcine Clay already four years ago in France and Spain. Now we are doing the same in North Africa, in Latam and some other parts of Europe. For instance, last week I was on my road trip visiting some of our markets and I visited the Czech Republic. This is a great example where we are commissioning a new building, a new calcined clay plant that will be commissioned in H1. This will provide the boost in our eco-planet sales in these markets.

Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, Emilian. The next question comes from Yacine Touari from On Field Investment Research.

Good morning, Yacine.

You're online. Yacine, your line is open. May I ask a question? I think we try with the next one. The next one is Tom Zhang from Barclays. Good morning, Tom.

Yeah, morning. Hi, thanks for taking our questions. Two as well from me. Maybe the first one just on Mexico. I suppose it's a little bit of a slowdown in the market. I understand there's been some delays in infrastructure projects. Maybe you could just talk through the dynamics in that market and how confident you are that that can kind of come back in the second half. And then the second question, maybe for you, Stefan, just looking at the balance sheet, If we assume at least another $1.8 billion of free cash in the second half in line with your guidance, maybe a little bit of leases, I'm still getting net debt well below the $4 billion mark, so with a comfortable amount of headroom below even the $4.4 billion that you're guiding to. Can you just remind us if there's any other moving parts or does that $4.4 billion number just reflect a lot of conservatism? And does that extra headroom potentially mean there's some space for additional shareholder returns already this year? Thank you.

Good morning, Tom. Thank you for joining and thank you for your question. I'll focus on Mexico, then Stefan can take over the second question. So, Tom, as you know, we had a new administration in In Mexico, they've been in power more than a year now. They have a very clear and comprehensive roadmap regarding the future of Mexico in the next five years. The President, Claudia, wants to make Mexico in top 10 economies globally. As a result of that, they will heavily invest in the more than 100 technical hubs. They are making heavy investments in infrastructure, especially focusing on energy, water, and rail and road. And I don't think there was a slowdown delay in the projects. Last year, some of these main projects have finished, and now the next set of the project is about to start, and some of these have started. Just to name, we are currently working on supplying the water viaduct in T1. We are looking at a few massive projects that will start in H2 on the rail side. Just one example is the government wants to build 5,000 kilometres of rail network in the next five years. And Switzerland currently, the whole, and you know Switzerland is well connected when it comes to rail. The network is 6,000 kilometers. So I think pipeline is full. And we will see this accelerating in end of Q3 and then forward in Q4. Just one more topic on Mexico. There is a significant shortage of residential in Mexico. Part of this roadmap for Mexico in five years is to reduce this shortage by building 1.2 to 1.5 million homes. We have seen construction has started on 180,000 homes. This will further boost or accelerate our sales in H2. I'll stop here and hand it over to Stefano.

Hey, Tom, good morning. Thanks for your question. So first of all, look, we remind you we guided this debt leverage and the net financial debt exactly at these marks at the capital market stay. Now we improve by saying it's going to be below. And please note, it is without major M&A. So this is before bolons and major divestments. But if you do the math, if you go down the math a little bit, we had 5.6 billion net financial debt in the first half. You assume, as you did, you said you assume 1.8 billion for free cash flow. That's good. And you have some further leakage with Jupiter, dividends to minorities. the lease additions, some foreign exchange, some other items, which will get you comfortably, I agree with you, comfortably to the range that we guided here. And we leave ourselves also a little bit of flexibility for further bold on acquisitions in the second half of this year.

Okay, that's clear. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you, Tom. The next one in the line is Elodie Rawl from JP Morgan. Good morning, Elodie.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Sorry to come back on guidance, but just wanted to follow up there on your expectation for H2. You've delivered 10.8% recurring local currency growth in H1. You're guiding for 6% to 10% for the year. Does that mean you expect a slowdown in H2 growth in recurring local currency? uh and why and where would that come from and if you could give us a bit of color on that with regard to the exit rate uh so the performance at the end of q2 and in particular july trans we can have a bit of flavor and my second question is on volumes in europe um i presume they were still negative in h1 do you see them turning positive in h2 And my last question is on this Nigeria divestment. So if you could give us an update, given that we haven't heard much on that, I believe. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Elodie. Good morning. Thank you for your question. Regarding the guidance, Elodie, we already provided the guidance in March, end of March, so we wanted to leave it as it is. We are very positive about outlook in H2, and we believe that it will be equally or even better than H1. So we decided to leave the guidance as it was presented to you in March. I can assure you we are always aiming to do the best and overachieve. Regarding the Nigeria question, the process is running. We have some positive news last few weeks. We expect to close this in H2. At the moment, I can't tell you if it's going to be end of Q3 or end of Q4, but so far, no negative surprises. And the teams have been really working hard on this deal. On the volumes in Europe, I would like to remain modest. I would predict that H2 will be more or less flattish, or there could be some upsides. We are seeing recovery in some markets, especially in West Europe, that have been softer. But our outlook is more or less flattish for H2. I would be conservative.

Perfect. Thank you, Elodie. The next one in the line is Martin Hüseler from ZKB, Zürcher Kandonalbank. Good morning, Martin.

Good morning, Bernd and gentlemen. I have two questions. Maybe first on the growth guidance of 3-5%. What should we expect for the second half? Is the improvement against the first half or the acceleration rather driven by organic or Will we expect higher bolt-on contributions? That's the first question.

Good morning, Martin. Thank you for joining and thank you for the question. Regarding the growth 3% to 5%, I would expect accelerated momentum in H2 versus H1 and on M&A side we are expecting more or less a similar trend in H2. We do have a very healthy pipeline of projects across all our geographies and we will be able in position to close some of these projects by the end of the year.

Okay, thank you. Any additional question, Martin?

Yes, the second one made an add-on on the European question just asked before. If I look at Q2 standalone versus Q1, it looks like the EBIT growth came down a bit, even though, let's say, the building season really kicked in. And I was just wondering what was the driver of this trend, and maybe if you could also share the biggest country trends within Europe maybe H1, but also outlook for the second half of the year. Thank you.

Yes, certainly, Martin. I think more or less Q1 and Q2 were pretty much close. What we saw in Q2 is significant expansion in our margins in Europe. And as I said in my presentation, this is clearly driven by our focus on sustainable offering, by accelerating our initiatives in decarbonisation, in circular construction and also all these value accretive M&As. So if I look at the Europe, the trend, I think Germany has been soft this year when it comes to construction activity, but our team is still managing to improve the bottom line. I would expect more accelerated momentum in Germany In 2026 and probably more flattish performance in H2. What is doing really well is Eastern Europe and countries like Spain, Italy, Greece. This is where we are seeing a really, really strong momentum. I mean, you saw from our presentation this project in Athens, Salinicon. This is great. We are doing not one cell, but many cells where we are supplying a full range of end-to-end solutions from basement all the way now to Zinco green roofing systems. So momentum in Europe, I believe, if I compare it to H1N1, I'm more optimistic about H2. Let me put it this way.

Okay, thanks a lot and good luck.

Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Martin. The next one on the line is Sida Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Good morning, Sida.

Good morning. Thanks very much, everyone. I've just got a follow-up question on your M&A landscape and agenda. If I look at the bolt-ons that you did, eight of them are in Europe. And you've spoken quite a lot about the opportunity in LATAM and how you want to grow DeSense, etc. But it does look like, at least for now, that you are sort of spending more in Europe or at least doing more deals in Europe. So I'd just like to hear a little bit about how you think about capital allocation and bolt-on opportunities between the various regions. Some investors I've talked to sort of doubt the opportunity in LATAM and worry that the market backdrop there is a little bit less certain. Maybe you could just talk about your perspective on LATAM relative to Europe. And then the other question is just around the potential for larger deals. Obviously, when you looked at the U.S. market in Wholesome's previous form, there were lots of sort of single big-ticket deals that could be done of countrywide businesses. And when we look at the landscape today with your current portfolio, you have maybe country champions in specific regions, but you don't necessarily have some obvious big inter-regional champions like a big target in Europe or a big target in LATAM. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you think about larger M&A and how deep the list of targets there might be. what kind of assets you would be looking at. I think that would be helpful because clearly there's a lot of cash being thrown off from this business and it can't all be allocated through bolt-ons.

Thank you. Good morning, Cedar. Thank you for your question. Regarding the M&A, I'll just make a general statement and then I'll go into details on LATAM Europe. Regarding M&A, here we are exercising strict discipline when it comes to the deal. we are buying the companies that make sense to us strategically and also the companies that are good fit to our strategy. I can assure you that we have a very healthy pipeline of the projects, equally good pipeline in LATAM, also in Europe, but also in some other parts of our scope in Asia, Middle East and Africa. The only difference why you are seeing more momentum in Europe is because we really started focusing on bolt-ons in Latam as of last year. Remember, at the end of December last year, we bought 11 companies in Latin America, five we bought in 2024. So I'm very happy with the with the momentum we have and we will see some of these deals in H2 coming through. Regarding your question on the large acquisitions, obviously we are constantly screening our landscape from walling and flooring solution companies all the way to roofing and we believe there are some very attractive markets they are regional champions as you said but these companies would be a very nice fit to our existing portfolio and they would be a very nice add-on to our next-gen growth 2030 strategy. So regarding capital allocation on bolt-ons between LATAM and Europe, we will always do what's the best for the company, what makes the best financial sense, regardless of the country, region. So that would be our starting point. But I'm confident that we will have a strong momentum on M&A front in second half of this year.

Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Cedar. The next one in the line is Harry Dow from Rothschild. Good morning, Harry.

Morning, yeah, thank you. I think I've got three questions, if possible. Firstly, just on the sales growth by product line, I noticed in the building material segment, so cement and aquifers, that was really providing the growth, whereas building solutions still saw some negative organic. I wonder if you could give us some clue on the moving parts there. Is that just ready mix concrete volumes down, which I know is in the building solutions, or is that something to do with pricing in other building products? And then on Latin America, you obviously mentioned the dissensus store network increasing by 170 stores in the first half. I wonder if you could help us on the contribution that that's brought in the first half to top line growth. And obviously maybe a bit more around what you think the contribution might be as you get towards that 2030 target. It's quite a lot higher than today. And then just finally, a bit longer term on, you mentioned net zero growth. cement and the projects there. There's quite a lot of projects that are slated to start sort of capturing around 2030. There's some other industry participants kind of calling out maybe permitting challenges and negotiating with governments, etc. Are you still committed to the original timeline of all those projects to start capturing kind of in the late 2020s, early 2030s? Thank you.

Good morning, Harry. Thank you for your question. I'll talk about LATAM, the sensor net zero, and then I'll hand it over to Stefan to talk about sales growth between building solutions and building materials. Regarding the sensor, we are not reporting this, but if you remember at the Capital Market Day, We said we have more than 2,000 shops. We want to double, even more than double that in the next five years. And just to give you a little bit history on this, this was designed by very smart people. I give them a credit already 30 years ago. They wanted to ensure that we have a secure sales channel of our cement bags. And this was the purpose of the sensor for years, for decades I should say. Today we see this as a great opportunity to accelerate the growth in our building solutions. And Harry, if you see the scope of the M&As we did in LATAM in the last year and a half, We are buying companies that are producing waterproofing, flooring, sealing products, companies that are active in construction chemicals. And for us, this is an easy synergy because with the sensor, we have a well-established sales channel. And buying these companies, we are immediately having sales channel for these newly acquired businesses. I always liked to, when I was in Argentina last year, actually, we bought, we signed a company that specializes in mortar, something else. And we closed the deal today. The next morning, These products were available in more than 30 Desensa stores in Argentina. This is the momentum we can achieve with Desensa rollout. So, as I said, this is more about commercial approach, about sales approach. And you saw our margins in Latam. We are talking about 30-plus percent consistently. The census plays a major part in this. Regarding net zero, you might have seen we had a groundbreaking ceremony in Milaki. I attended. We had even a prime minister coming. We are committed to this. We are going through the process. There are always some potential risks, but from our side, we will be doing what needs to be done to make it happen in the next year. for five years. Now we are seeing momentum on the other side, push from EU to develop transport infrastructure for CO2, to develop additional storage field and obviously all of this will have a significant impact on accelerating these projects.

Hey, Harry, for your question between the materials and the solutions growth, it's really a mixed topic, right? When you look at the countries where we have a higher share of building solutions in our sales, those were the countries that were rather softer in the first half, and other countries that we explained had very, very good development, were stronger, were those with a lower share of building solutions. So this really explains this diversion we're seeing here. We think this will return to a certain degree as Miljan explained before. Our outlook for the second half is a bit of a recovery also on the top line side. So this will also impact here and will also impact the mix. What I would also like to remind is that in building solutions, we had a very, very good growth of EBIT of 27% in the second quarter. We grew margin in almost every country here. So the EBIT development here is again very, very good, which makes us confident that we're on the right track.

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Stefan. The next one is John Bell from Deutsche Bank. He sent us two questions, probably for Emilian. The first one, you refer to signs of recovery in European residential markets. Can you give us more color on the lead indicators you use most and which countries are seeing the best improvement? That's the first question. And the second one is, can you spell out the benefits of the Dezenza network and the targets you have for new stores?

Thank you, John. Thank you for your question. I think on DeSensa I have already answered pretty much. I gave a comprehensive overview how does it work and how does it fit in our long-term strategy. So now for DeSensa, for me, it's all about accelerating. I would like to see hundreds of these stores opening every half a year. and at the same time with our boost on M&A front, especially in building solutions, we will be able to provide one-stop-shop solution to our customers through Desensa. John, regarding We are seeing in our business, we do have, we operate, we do have in some countries product systems that we supply in residential. Eastern Europe is looking strong. We are seeing good signs in Southern Europe. Probably in Germany... the number of permitting is becoming more and more healthier but I think more will come in H1 next year. So France still remains soft as well as UK but in UK there has been announcements by the government they are committing to put additional funding to accelerate to reduce the shortage of the residential housing.

Perfect. Thank you, Miljan. Then Paul Roger from BNP Paribas is also on the road. He also sent us two questions. The first one is on LATAM. It looks like you are strongly outperforming peers in the region. I can confirm this. Is this because of countries like Ecuador and Argentina where others aren't present? Or are you also outperforming in Mexico? Leading to that, can you put some numbers on how you did in Mexico specifically in the second quarter?

Thank you, Paul, for your question. We do not report Mexico individually, but I can assure you that we are seeing margins in Mexico which are well above average of LATAM. H1, Mexico, was a good market for us. We have seen margin improvement and EBIT growth. So very, very happy with Mexico. and i believe h2 will even be stronger i mentioned already all these projects in energy in water in rail and road that are coming are up and also the residential recovery driven by government incentives to reduce the shortage of housing in in mexico so i i don't want to go into details report the margins but Maybe the starting point is that in Mexico, our margins are well above the average with what we have in Latin America.

Perfect. And the second question from Paul is regarding building envelope solutions. That's slide 22. So here, there he's asking, there's still quite a lot of gray, so untouched applications so far. Is the ambition to plug the gaps and offer the full range of solutions in all your major markets, or will you be very selective?

Well, Paul, there are opportunities, and this is the whole point of us focusing as a key priority in our next-gen growth strategy to accelerate momentum and growth in high-value building solutions. And, yes, there are opportunities. We are looking at them. At the end of the day, as I said, our goal is to be end-to-end supplier to our customers on these – big projects. As I mentioned at Linicon, we started with Ecopact, where we have secured probably more than 2 million cubic meters in the next few years. And then we are moving to other solutions, media solutions, architectural solutions and more recently we are supplying zinco green green roofing on this mega project in athens so we will continue to work on this the goal is indeed as i said end-to-end solution Instead of selling one product on the job site, we want to sell five, ten products. And this is the key component of our strategy to accelerate high value building solutions.

Perfect, Miljan. We have again one analyst in the line. It's Markus Kohl from UBS. Good morning, Markus.

Morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I've got two as well. The first one is just to be clear on the 25 sales guide. Are you implying volume growth will accelerate in H2 outside of Europe? And the second one is just on any color you can give on regional price cost in the second half. Thank you.

I'll hand it over to Stefan regarding the price over cost. Regarding volumes, we do not report volumes, Marcus, but thank you for the question. In fact, we expect a much better momentum in H2 in Europe. And I have already discussed some of the points, what we are seeing, infrastructure pipeline recovery in residential and so on.

Thanks, Milan. Hey, good morning. Look, for price over cost, when you look at price over cost on a group level, you will see that we still have quite a significant price over cost as we had in the previous quarters and years. The impact of pricing is probably low to mid single digit. But what we also do always here at Holcim, we work on our efficiencies. So big cost bucket is, for example, distribution, where we made good progress. Support process cost rather than the fixed cost area where we made good progress. So this is true for all the regions. Now, regionally, there are slight differences you ask per region. There are regions where we have a bit of higher pricing. I would mention EMEA and regions where pricing is not as high, maybe in Western Europe. But overall, the algorithm is true for all our regions. There's positive price over cost in all the regions that we operate.

Perfect. Thank you, Stefan. Thank you, Markus. We tried again with Yacine Touari from Onfield. Yacine, can you hear us?

Yes. Sorry for the technical issue earlier. And thank you very much for taking my question. I think I would have one question. Have you started to think about the magnitude of price increases that you will announce in 2026 in Europe? And I think the background of my question is that it looks like independent importers could create a little bit of a risk on pricing, given the limited protection from the carbon border adjustment mechanism, at least in 2026. It's already visible in the UK where we can see salmon prices a little bit under pressure. But at the same time, I understand that you've got an introduction of a new historical activity level and stricter emission baseline for the cement plant, which should bring down the level of free allowance. So in this context, do you see bigger price increase in Europe than in 2026, than in 2025? I would love to understand how you're thinking about it.

Thank you for the question, Yasin. Look, maybe it's too early to talk about price increases at this stage. Yes, you are 100% correct. We will have the revision of EU ETS. We are entering into this phase four, which means there will be adjustments on the benchmark, and also they will be phasing out of the allowances, starting with in 2026 with two point something percent but and all of this obviously the teams are working on this but at the moment we really do not know what the new benchmark will be that will come later in the year so if you're asking me today i believe prices price increases next year will be higher than this year but yasin it's really too early to discuss this until

we understand the full impact of the new eu ets phase four thank you very much for your answer thank you perfect all right so this was our last question for today thank you so much for joining again if you have any further questions please don't hesitate to reach out to the investor relations team we are more than happy to help and with this i turn it back to milian for some closing remarks

So once again, thank you all. Thank you very much for joining us today. We are very happy to share these results with you. H1 was strong. We achieved strong results, and we are looking forward to H2 with what's going on in the industry, what we have in the pipeline. I can tell you Team Holcim is very excited about H2. Thank you.