Holcim Ltd

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Holcim Q3 2025 Trading Update 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 listened only mode and the conference is being 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 by 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 Pomrem, Group Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sandra. And good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here with our CEO, Miljan Gutovic, and our CFO, Stefan Kindler. They will provide an update on our strong nine months, 25 results. Afterwards, they will provide an update on our strategy. And finally, obviously, they will give an outlook for the current year. And with this very short introduction, I directly hand it over to Miljan. Miljan, please.

Thank you, Bernd. Good morning to all of you and a warm welcome to Holcim's third quarter results. Stefan and I are pleased to be presenting our earnings to you today. And of course, there will be a time afterwards for your questions. We delivered strong profitable growth in the first nine months of 2025. Highlights, as you can see, include accelerating net sales growth in Q3 of almost 5%, also strong over-proportional recurring EBIT growth across all our regions, and an industry-leading margin above 19%. Our margin expansion was driven by our high-value strategy. This includes scaling up our sustainable offering and accelerating decarbonization and circular construction to drive profitable growth. Earlier this week, we announced that Holcim signed a binding agreement to acquire Xela, a European leader in sustainable and innovative walling systems. The acquisition is a milestone in our vision to be the leading partner for sustainable construction, and it will also accelerate the expansion of our high-value building solution segment in line with our strategy. With Xela, we have a growth platform in the highly attractive 12 billion euro walling market, and I will talk more about this later on. Elsewhere, we have continued our disciplined execution of Value Accretive M&A. Since the start of the year, we have closed a further 14 transactions focused on the most attractive markets. With these strong results, we are confirming our full year guidance for 2025. I'll talk about the guidance in full at the end of this presentation. Turning to the regional highlights now, Europe continues to deliver strong margin expansion driven by our high value strategy, our sustainable offering as well as decarbonisation and circular construction. Demand for sustainable offering is expected to drive continued earnings momentum and here in Switzerland, our lighthouse market for innovation where we introduced the world's first circular cement, we have just launched EcoPlanet with EcoCycle, cement with at least 10 to 100% of recycled construction and demolition materials inside. In Europe, more broadly, the residential market is showing signs of recovery and we also have a robust project pipeline. In Latam, we delivered double-digit net sales growth for the first nine months with a recurring EBIT margin above 30%. We have also completed three value-accretive acquisitions in Mexico, Peru, and Argentina since the start of the year. These acquisitions will help us further accelerate the expansion of Desensa, the largest construction material retail franchise in the region. Desensa is growing strongly and we have opened around 290 additional Desensa stores in the first nine months. We expect strong performance in LATAM to continue with Central America and recently acquired businesses driving growth. In Mexico, there is a very strong pipeline of infrastructure projects to accelerate growth from 2026. Asia, Middle East and Africa delivered a double-digit increase in recurring EBIT and outstanding margin expansion of 200 basis points. We saw a strong demand in North Africa and in Australia, where our joint venture business, Cement Australia, also recently closed the acquisition of a division of BGC. Further out, there is a positive outlook in Australia, and we do expect the strong demand in North Africa to continue this year and also in the years to come. With that, I would like to hand it over to Stefan to talk through the financials in more detail.

Stefan. Thank you, Miljan, and a warm welcome to all of you also from my side. It's a pleasure to be with you today for a nine-month trading update. Looking first at the net sales bridge, you can see that organic growth was the main contributor. The contribution from acquisitions exceeded the impact of divestments for a total 2.9% rise in local currency, excluding large M&A. This keeps us nicely within reach of our full-year guidance. The foreign exchange effect on sales was negative 600 million Swiss francs, or 5%. In the first nine months, we delivered 9.8% growth in recurring EBIT in local currency, again excluding large M&A. With this performance, we are still at the upper end of our full-year guidance. Despite FX headwinds of 160 million or above 7%, we managed to grow our absolute EBIT in Swiss francs by almost 2%. Now let's look at the progression of our recurring EBIT and recurring EBIT margin on a rolling 12-month basis. This graph shows that we have consistently expanded both our 12-month rolling recurring EBIT margin and our rolling recurring EBIT, 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 to our value-accretive M&A with focus on the most attractive markets and our empowered leadership with a strong performance culture. We saw strong recurring EBIT contributions from all the regions, more than 1 billion Swiss francs in Europe and more than 700 million in each of Latam and EMEA. Net sales growth was double-digit in Latin America and we maintained a recurring EBIT margin of above 30%. One quick comment on our Q3 margin in Latam. On the efficiency side, we had some phasing of maintenance shutdown in Mexico, where three plants, almost half of our plants in the country, which we created comparatively higher maintenance costs and an impact on inventory movement. The timing has been good, as we believe, as we can now transition into the next phase of infrastructure projects with two large rail projects just starting. There were also some scope effects connected with the integration of our most regent acquisitions in Peru and Guatemala that impacted the Q3 margins. We expect the margin in LATAM to be above 30% again in Q4 and for the full year. In Asia, Middle East and Africa, there was a double-digit recurring growth in EBIT at 14.7%. We had an especially strong Q3 in North Africa markets, and Australia was also strong, showing the benefits of a regional diversification playing out. And with that short update, I'm pleased to hand it to you back over, Miljan.

Thank you, thank you, Stefan. So... To return to our big news from the start of this week, the acquisition of Xela. Let's walk through the rationale first of all. As I said, this is a growth platform in the highly attractive European walling market and a business that both has a scale in terms of top line and that is also high performing with margin of around 20%. It brings us sustainable and energy-efficient solutions powered by premium brands that are actually a great fit with Holdsim's portfolio, with more than 900 salespeople dedicated to provide commercial support to the customers and also high-value specification selling. It also accelerates the expansion of Holcim's high-value building solution, which is in line with next-gen growth 2030. The financials are very attractive. The transaction is priced at 6.9 times EV EBITDA multiple after synergies of approximately 60 million in year three. It is also EPS and free cash flow accretive in year one, and ROIC are creative in year three. Here you can see that Xela gives us new capabilities in markets where we are largely already present, which is beneficial in terms of vertical integration. There has been a significant investment in Xela's production facility in the recent years, making them truly state of the art. and its sustainable offering is powered by the premium brands you see listed here. As noted, this is absolutely in line with our strategy. I've talked about points one to three in the previous slides, but for four, performance culture and value creation, it is also worth noting that Xela is a pioneer in digitally supported construction and smart design tools and processes with its platforms BlueSprint and Building Companions. Aside from Xela for NextGenGrowth 2030 as a whole, we are delivering superior performance and margin expansion focused on five drivers. Firstly, we are scaling up our sustainable offering powered by premium brands from Ecoplanet and Exxon. eco-pack to eco-cycle. We are accelerating initiatives for decarbonization and circular construction, which is driving profitable growth. A key part of next-gen growth 2030 is expanding high-value building solutions. And with our impeccable track record of value-accretive M&A to focus on the most attractive markets. And all of this is driven by our deeply embedded performance culture. Let's look more closely at some of these drivers. Customer demand for our premium brands Ecopact and Ecoplanet continues to grow. These products are being used at the scale in large-scale projects like Metroline in Colombia, which is actually built with Ecopact inside, and Nautical Bays in France, built with Ecoplanet that is even more sustainable due to its use of calcined clay instead of more energy-intensive clinker. We are also seeing a strong growth in EcoCycle, our circular technology that is being used to recycle construction demolition material and put it back into our products. A recent large-scale project using EcoPact and EcoCycle was this secondary school in Germany, which you can see on this slide. Next, M&A. Well, we have closed 14 value-accretive transactions since the start of the year, with five to strengthen in building materials and seven in high-value building solution. We also closed the divestment of our Nigerian business and we sold Karbala cement manufacturing in Iraq. Now about our outlook. Well, with these strong results, we are confirming our full year 2025 guidance with the following. Net sales and recurring EBIT growth in line with next-gen growth 2030 targets, 3% to 5% net sales growth in local currency, 6% to 10% recurring EBIT growth in local currency, recurring EBIT margin of above 18%, Free cash flow before lease is of around 2 billion and we will continue to grow in recycled construction and demolition materials more than 20%. We'll now turn to the questions. Ben, please open up the line.

Thank you so much, Mirjam. Zandra, can you please repeat the instructions for the Q&A? Thank you.

I will. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their telephone or on the virtual HD weapon 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 2. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing by the relative field. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time.

Andra, the fastest one this morning was Tom Zhang from Barclays. Good morning, Tom.

Hi, morning. Thanks very much for taking our questions. Maybe two for me, please. The first one, look, it's a little early, but I think the big question from everyone is going to be into 2026. Can you maybe give us any early color around pricing strategy, how kind of expectations around the ETS changes fits into that, especially in Europe? And then the second one, just on Latin America, you mentioned, I guess, Stefan, that you already expect Latin margins back above 30% from Q4. There was a bit of weakness in Peru and Guatemala. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more color into what drove a little bit of the margin compression this quarter? What gives you confidence that that already picks up next quarter? I mean, is that more sort of market recovery? Is that cost control? Is that kind of integration of M&A? Any color there would be very interesting. Thank you.

Good morning, Tom. Thank you for joining and of course, thank you for your question. So I think I will start with the pricing and then Stefan will add a few points on LATAM. Regarding pricing, Tom, you said it yourself, it's a bit too early, but where we stand today, I would expect strong pricing momentum in 2026. We are seeing significant changes on EU ETS front end. kicking in in January next year and automatically this will open opportunities for healthy momentum on the pricing front. Outside Europe I think so far the indications are good. Obviously in the markets where we will have a high inflation we will be aiming for double digit price increases but so far so good i'm not expecting any major setbacks when it comes to pricing momentum in 2026. On the Latin front, I might start, obviously, and Stefan already mentioned it. Yes, we have seen a slightly lower EBIT in Q3, but I'm very optimistic about the full year and also next year. Maybe just from my side comment, We have seen some delays on these projects in Mexico. However, just this week and last week, we have managed to secure the first tranche of these big projects. There is Mexico City to Cuetaro. It's a train, a rail project, approximately 200 kilometers. and the other one that goes from mexico city airport to pachuca approximately 100 kilometers so just a message from my side here it's coming it's probably has been delayed for a couple of months but we are seeing at least the first wave of the of these projects coming through stefan yeah exactly million uh hey tom good morning also from my side um so to your question look

As Milian just said, we had a great run of infrastructure projects in Mexico and we're now preparing for the next wave of infrastructure projects. This was a good time to take some of our factories into maintenance. Actually, we took three of our seven factories in Mexico into maintenance. which had impacts on the cost and had impacts on the stock level variations. This was one driver for Q3. And then a driver also that we had with the two larger acquisitions with Guatemala and Peru. This is very common in our company when we acquire companies When we acquire new companies, we bring them up to wholesome standards in terms of health and safety, in terms of accounting, in terms of compliance. So this has some startup cost, which is, of course, part of our business plans. These business perform according to the plan. We're absolutely satisfied with that. But these startup costs are always part of our expectations. And this is what hit Q3. This is why, and again, together with Miljan, what Miljan just described, we're quite... Quite confident that Q4 will be above 30% and absolutely confident that the full year will also be above 30%. So high level of confidence that this was a Q3 limited short trough.

Okay, thank you. And I guess maybe just very briefly to follow up the sort of startup costs. maybe that sort of integration happens over several quarters, but the big delta, I guess, is factories coming back online after maintenance and projects restarting in Mexico for Q4, and you wouldn't sort of rule out the further margin progression into 26 as the acquisition integration completes.

Absolutely. You nailed it. I could not add anything to this. And plus the synergies. Plus the synergies, yeah.

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you, Tom. The next one on the line is Julian Radlinger from UBS. Good morning, Julian.

Yeah, good morning, guys. Thanks very much. So two questions from you, please. The first one is on the EMEA segment. So it seems like pro forma, excluding Nigeria, EMEA accelerated on a like-for-like basis in terms of EBITDA growth in Q3 versus the first half, if my math is right. We know, of course, North Africa has been quite strong for some time, but would you agree with that characterization? Am I reading that right? That earnings accelerated in Q3, and if so, what or which countries are driving that? And then secondly, on the German pricing or the European pricing point, I think a big debate amongst investors right now is... of course, the timing of all these regulatory steps and specifically the publication of the benchmark. And I'm just wondering, is there any risk you see or could you help us in thinking about the risk The relationship of the timing of the benchmark, if that happens rather in Q1 at some point, rather than before the end of the year, would that have any impact on kind of annual price discussions, you think, like a delay or something like that? How should we think about that? Thank you.

Good morning, Julian. Thank you for joining and thank you for your question. Yes, I'll start on the pricing, Mia, and then maybe if you would like to add, Stefan, a few points on it, Mia. So on the pricing, yes, we need to know what's the benchmark. It will be published probably, I was hoping, end of this year, but it looks like it's going to be in Q1 next year. For us, it won't make any difference. We will make our assumptions accordingly. And Julian, if you recall, our pricing for full year takes effect from January to April. So depending on the contract obligations we have with the customers, it will happen in the few steps. And we also have a room for dynamic pricing, which we have executed for years successfully, especially in Europe. So I would not expect any delays. It will take its natural course. Of course, we would prefer to have this benchmark published earlier than later, but we will deal with it. On the EMEA side, I'll start, and then Stefan can add. North Africa momentum is really strong. I had the opportunity to visit Algeria just recently, and I had exposure to this country for years. I have never seen such activity on construction site. And we are seeing similar trends in all our big markets, Egypt and Morocco. Also, Australia, if you recall, I did say in the last call, Australia was softer in Q1. It started recovering slightly in Q2, but the momentum now is on a very good level. And I think... EMEA momentum will continue, and it will be driven by North Africa, what is, we told, these huge investments on infrastructure side, but also on residential, plus countries like Australia and Seoul. They will contribute to overproportional growth.

stefan yeah miriam thanks there's there's really not much to add to what you said maybe maybe just one one small comment that australia developed positive momentum again and also in the philippines we've reached a bit of a new plateau in terms of performance this is not a straight line but we had a good good reset in the third quarter there as well so the whole region seems to be doing very well and i want to echo what million said We also expect a strong fourth quarter. Just keep in mind, Nigeria also performed well in the third quarter, which is now divested. But the region will continue to perform very, very well.

Thank you both very much. That's incredibly helpful. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you, Julian. The next one on the line is Ben Radamartin from Goldman Sachs. Good morning, Ben.

Good morning. Thanks a million, Stefan and Bernd. Thanks for the questions this morning. I just had three, please. My first was on the European clinker asset base. I wonder, we've seen some of the peers close assets in the last few years and talk to kind of an outlook of closures as well. Is this likely to be a theme for your business in 2026? The second one was just on carbon capture. I noticed that it wasn't too much of a focus in the presentation today. Could you give us an update on the timelines of the seven plants in Europe that you've received innovation funding for? And are they likely to still become operational in 27 and 28? And then finally, we'll just be on price costs. Stefan, would you be able to talk to the price cost dynamics by region for this last quarter? Thank you.

Good morning, Ben. Thank you for joining. Thank you for the question. I'll start and then I'll hand it over to Stefan. Basically, the first question was on the footprint. We did optimize our footprint already in 2021-22 with some modifications. If you are asking me what do I expect in the next two to three years, I do see some of our existing plants that are currently producing clinker they will be converted to produce something else. These are usually small to mid-sized plants in selective locations, and what they will be producing, probably calcined clay. We see this shift will happen in the next few years. On CCUS, so Ben, you know that we do have seven projects in Europe. These projects were partially funded by EU Innovation Fund. We talk approximately close to a billion funding. They are progressing. Our commitment is actually 2030. I just came back last night from Belgium. where I was there with the board. We visited Go4Zero, one of our lighthouse plants in Belgium that will be also carbon capture. The first phase of the project has already started. We are building a new state-of-the-art plant that will be even without carbon capture, the best in class, the most efficient on the cost side, but also on the CO2 footprint, and we expect commissioning early in H1 2027. Once the plant is commissioned, we will move to the next phase, which is CCS. On this particular plant, we got around 230 million euros to support the second phase of the carbon capture. So I expect that there could be some delays, but I'm not talking about years, I'm talking about months, because we know what has to be done in our plants. But you need to think about the whole value chain. We need to have transport in place, we need to have ports in place, and of course you need to have a sink, a storage in place. So this is work in progress. At the same time, execution of these projects includes collaboration with different parties. We are dealing with all the relevant stakeholders in the whole value chain to make this happen by 2030.

Price over cost. Hey, good morning, Ben. Welcome to the group. Look, price over cost has been positive across all regions. I would say the leading regions are Europe and Middle East, Africa. It's driven by pricing still. We have positive price across the board, but it's also very much driven by all the initiatives we do on our structure and on our cost side, from supply chain distribution costs, where we now work with AI tools to optimize our forecasting, to maintenance, where we again use AI tools to predict our maintenance. This shows very, very nice progress on the cost. We told you before that after the spin-off, we slowly look to reduce our headquarters structures, which we're making very good progress on. So all of these things on the cost side, all the actions we do there also contribute very much to a positive price over cost. And as you know, at Holcim, we don't announce large cost-saving programs and don't give it names. We do this every day. For us, this is a continuous activity to increase the prices and to watch the cost base. So positive price over cost in every region. This is a key for us also in every review we do with our businesses.

Excellent. Thanks very much.

Thank you so much, Ben. For your questions, the next one on the line is Pujarini Ghosh from Bernstein. Good morning, Pujarini.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. So going back to the topic of Latin American margins, so thinking about it slightly on the medium to long term, we are seeing you move slightly away from just selling cement in bags to a more integrated approach with higher proportion of building solutions in the mix. So in that context, how do you expect the margins and also the returns to evolve in LATAM? And my second question is on... on pricing again, but specifically on some of the regions where you've struggled with pricing, for example, Germany. So we've heard from you as well as some of your smaller peers that you've already started talking to your customers in terms of raising prices next year. What are you seeing on the ground and what Basically, what are the expectations for pricing in difficult markets like Germany, but also if there are other such markets in 2026?

Good morning, Pujarini. Thank you for the question and thank you for joining us on the LATAM. Yes, we will be moving more into the building solution, but at the end, you have to think about the whole margin value. with the full vertical integration. We want to scale up building solutions. Yes, margins in building solutions are slightly lower than in the building materials, but looking at the whole picture, we are still seeing potential for, of course, for margin expansion. Our commitment for LATAM remains the same. Our margins have to be above 30%. And we will continue at the same time to invest in building solutions, M&A, organic, and our key driver of expansion in LATAM will be Desensa, which is the largest franchise company. construction retail network that will help us maintain our market share, increase our penetration into the markets, and also maintain a very, very healthy EBIT margins across the LATAM. If you recall at our next-gen growth strategy in March, we said we have 200 of these shops around the whole Latin America. Our goal is to reach 5,000. This year, so far, we have added approximately 300, and we believe this trend will continue to accelerate. On the pricing, maybe if you want to add anything. On the pricing, yes, Germany this year, it was the market, the pricing momentum wasn't great. But for us, once again, pricing is one aspect. But our initiatives, our value over volume strategy, this is what's driving significantly margin expansion in Europe. And Puggerini, if you saw that expansion, margin expansion in Europe this year, year to date, was 130 basis points. And this is our focus on our sustainable offering, our premium brand, our investments in decarbonization and circular construction, and of course M&A. value accretive m a strategy where we are investing in the most attractive markets and most attractive business segments i believe as i said previously pricing momentum in europe so far is looking promising it will kick off in january probably by april we will have the full picture i just spent last two weeks of uh conducting a comprehensive strategy reviews with the countries it's part of our midterm planning cycle and what i have seen is positive okay thank you

Thank you, Poggiarini. Just again, Latin America, the expansion of the Desenza stores from 2,000 beginning of the year to above 5,000. Obviously, this is a very strong driver of our business in Latin America. The next question comes from Luis Prieto from Kepler Chevrolet. Good morning, Luis.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, a couple of them. Should we consider Zelle as a platform to which you will synergistically add new small businesses, or should we expect other sizeable M&A to achieve critical mass in the wallet solution space? And my second question goes back to your example of the use of sustainable products in Colombia. In the absence of meaningful environmental motivations, what explains the client choosing them over your regular offering, again, in the particular case of Colombia? Thank you.

Good morning, Luis. Thank you for joining and thank you for the question. On Xela, yes, Luis, this is exactly, and I think the slide is on, you can see the slide. For us, this is a new growth platform, a platform that is highly attractive and also very profitable. And you would expect expansion in this sector. expansion either through M&As or even organically. We see a great potential where Holcim has a very strong position to actually expand where Xela is not producing. So there could be expansion, will be a mix of organic growth and also value accretive M&A deals. On Colombia, so LATAM has embarked on the journey for sustainable offering early in the piece. We are not getting significant premiums on these products in Colombia, for instance, Luis. Don't get me wrong. We talk about modest pricing premium. But these products, they are also, with these products, we are able to reduce the cost because we are replacing very expensive raw materials with the cheaper, more environmentally friendly options. And this is what is driving margin increase. In LATAM, we are also talking to all the different stakeholders, highlighting the advantages of our solutions from the mechanical and physical properties, but also on the sustainability footprint. And we are managing to achieve the great penetration.

Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Louis. The next question is from the line of Sida Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Good morning, Sida.

Good morning. Thanks very much. Two questions. On Zela, the margins of the business have been under pressure and the business is exposed to residential as an end market in Europe. So I think we can understand why that might be. But I think there has been some debate in the market since the acquisition around the quality of the assets and whether your ambition for the 2026 EBITDA of that business is credible and plausible. So I'd just like to hear your sort of rebuttal to some of the more skeptical views out there that that is not a good asset. Maybe you could tell us why you think it is. And then secondly, on consolidation in Europe, In the last quarter, you spoke about there maybe being the potential for some heavy side assets to be consolidated in Europe. I don't know if you could give us an update on your position there. Thank you.

Good morning, Sidra. Thank you for joining and thank you for your question. Regarding Xela's assets, so we did conduct a very comprehensive due diligence, which was not only desk due diligence. In fact, we spent a lot of time in the field visiting plants, including myself. I had the opportunity to see some plants, our technical people. they had a chance to do a comprehensive on-site due diligence on all the key Xela assets. From what we have seen and what we have concluded, they really have a very strong production efficiencies already in place. They did some sort of footprint optimization in the last two, three years. And at the same time, they invested heavily in the production facilities where they want to stay and expand. And we have seen high level of automation. We have seen a very efficient production cycles. We have seen even very good logistics efficiency, how they are servicing their clients. So all in all, I believe one of the greatest assets of this company are actually the production assets. So we were very, very pleased with that. So on the Xela side, so I did say, so basically we talk about this huge rolling market. We talk about 12 billion. And this market is growing and this market is profitable and it is expected to reach 16 plus billion by 2030. So what is driving this? First of all, there is a significant shortage in housing across the Europe. We talk about deficit of around 10 million homes. We are already seeing recovery in some of our main markets, because as you know, Cedar, Holcim is present also in residential sector. This will drive growth. In addition to this, we are seeing a very strong momentum in repair and refurbishment. For instance, 80% of the buildings where we live and operate today will exist in the next 20-30 years. So we need to ensure they are suitable for use. So repair and refurbishment momentum will continue to grow. And what's very important that the EU regulations will mandate energy efficient repair and refurbishment. And Xela's product range, product offering, is best positioned to capture this in in long term so when it comes to the financial performance of the company i am not worried i am very excited that we close this transaction that we can start accelerating our synergies as you saw we talk about 60 million euros in year three i believe that the Potential is even higher after that, from the cost synergies all the way to the commercial synergies. In the presentation, we have given an example of one of the projects. This project has been completed. We have supplied Ecopact. We have supplied Zinco roof, our green roofing system, and Xela has supplied a sustainable walling system. And this is what I'm talking about, this potential for the cross synergies, for specification selling, and also vertical integration. In addition to their, I believe, really very good assets, Xela has 900 commercial people. Out of these 900, 200 are purely dedicated to specification selling. So these people, their everyday job is to go and talk to architects, engineers, project managers, builders, key owners to specify Xela's products. Once we close these very exciting acquisitions, they will be specifying Holtzim's products. This will accelerate our synergies on the commercial side. Consolidation. I think it started, I mean, I mentioned this several times, we did buy some assets already, grinding stations, terminals, ports, and I honestly believe we will see some consolidation already starting in 26 and this will be simply driven by the the whole eu eu ets phase four sebum and so on so if you are asking me yes depending on the market depending on the financials halcyon will be happy to participate in this

Perfect. Thank you so much, Cedar. Now we've got two questions from John Bell from Deutsche Bank. He sent us two questions. First one, can you tell us how long have you been looking at Xela? How competitive was the process? What was the genesis of the deal? That's the first question. The second question regarding currency movements. That's one question for you, Stefan. Currency movements such as the weakness of the euro, will they have a positive impact on your year-end net debt figure 25?

why don't you start yeah okay uh hey john thanks for your question so we guided uh net financial debt of 4.1 billion at the year end with the debt leverage of 1.1 or below um The currency headwinds currently with above 7% on EBIT are not a detriment to achieving any of our financial KPIs that include FX, free cash flow, EPS. We maintain guidance and we're well able to deal with that. On the net financial debt basis... We now completed the deal for Nigeria. We received the cash. So I would say the last guidance on that financial debt is probably conservative at this point of time. We're probably going to be right around $4 billion, depending on how free cash flow pans out, maybe even a little bit below.

On the Xela, thank you, John, for the question. Look, we've known Xela for forever. You know, when we are supplying big projects, I personally like to visit construction sites. When I go on the construction sites, I do see Xela's products. It's a very powerful brand name in most of our key markets, from Romania, Poland to Germany, Belgium. Even here in Switzerland, we do have Xela's construction sites. in fact, around the head office. For us, we knew the company in some markets. Actually, we have been supplying our products to Zella for years now. It was a bilateral process. Due diligence lasted for a few months. I think we did spend time a proper time, energy, and resources to conduct comprehensive due diligence. If you had a chance to hear Cedar's question, for us it was very important that we understand the asset base, that we understand the commercial approach to the market, and this has taken a few months. But it was a one-on-one discussion for the past several months, and yes, very happy that

after due diligence we have managed to sign this deal this week perfect the next question comes from the line of elodie roll of jp morgan good morning elodie hi good morning um so my remaining questions would be uh first of all on nigeria i was wondering if you could give us how much did nigeria contribute to organic growth in q3 in terms of revenue and EBIT, or if you want to give us what would have been the like-for-like growth in Q3, excluding Nigeria. So that's my first question. Second, on Gvela, it seems like the DNA is quite high, which is bringing EBIT margins down closer to the 12% mark. So Is that the correct starting point? And what is driving this high DNA? And how should we think about EBIT margins going forward? And then a bit of a housekeeping, but corporate line, my last question, is broadly 100 million a quarter, it seems. So is that the right number going forward now?

Thanks. I think most of these questions are for you, Mr. CFO. Elodie, tonight, today, you are not asking me anything. So why don't you start? Maybe on Nigeria, just to clarify. Sorry, Elodie. So on Nigeria, so just for the... It was the consolidated end of August, so September was completely out. On Xela DNA, I'm very happy what I saw when it comes to the investments into maintenance, into the operational efficiency, and obviously that was the main driver behind DNA. I expect significant margin improvement that will come from recovery of the market, but also that will come from our highly attractive synergies that we committed in the plan. I'll stop here and hand it over to Stefan.

Yeah, look, Nigeria was about a third of the growth in EMEA. But also remember, please, that negative effects is also driven by Nigeria. The Naira depreciated by 20 percent. What's very important is looking forward, AMIA, the region, will continue to perform strongly because the performance was so broad based. We said this before, northern Africa, the Middle East. new dynamics in Australia and a bit of a level reset in Philippines. This all came together. So we will still see very, very strong results from EMEA into the fourth quarter and into next year, even after the divestment of Nigeria. I think this is the key message. Although Nigeria contributed positively. And then there was a last question on corporate. Could you repeat that? I didn't fully understand that, please.

It seems like it's now 100 million in terms of impact per quarter. I mean, it used to be a lot higher. So I was wondering if this is the right number to have going forward.

Yeah, 100 million corporate to the corporate line, 100 million corporate costs per quarter.

Yeah, that seems about right. Let me remind you, Elodie, We said that as part of the spin-off, we said that we here at Holcim, we had a bit of a larger structure after that, but also we have divestments ongoing. So we're in a permanent process to always look at our structures. We're in a permanent process to optimize. what we're doing in distribution, what we're doing in maintenance, with the use of AI, with the leverage of our shared service centers. So there's always a glide path of how we optimize our structure. Always not with one big program or with one shot that has disruptive effects. We always do this over time and always in line with our employees' interests. But yes, this is a good way to look at it.

I always like to look at that as a percentage of net sales.

Our overhead cost has been 2.2% over the long time in terms of net sales. After the spin, we shot to above 3% for a moment, and we will be back to around 2% at the end of 2026. So this is the glide path I was talking about. that we slowly work our structure back down to there. Again, we give us enough time while the company keeps performing.

Thank you very much. And regarding your last question regarding depreciation, because obviously it's not just depreciation, it's also amortization. And obviously Xela has one incredibly strong brand, which is Etong. And obviously they already had some other intangible assets before we acquire them, which we continue to amortize. But we can discuss this bilaterally with the investor relations team and will obviously help you to model that. Now we are going to Switzerland. The next question comes from Martin Huesler from ZKB. Good morning, Martin.

Yes, good morning, everyone. I have actually just two questions left, maybe to stick to Onxela. Again, can you talk about the current utilization rate and what maintenance and growth capex do you foresee to do the growth of more than 5% you expect And also, am I right that it's mainly a new construction product? Can you maybe share a bit your thoughts on what percentage of sales you see for refurbishment on Xela?

Good morning, Martin. Thank you for the question and thank you for joining us. Xela is active in both new construction and also refurbishment. Maybe the ratio is now 80-70 to 20-30, but we expect this to continue to grow and this is driven because Xela solutions, they are nice combined with whole sims. For instance, walling, the whole walling is a perfect fit for a highly growing repair and refurbishment market. On Xela, capacity utilization, so what they did, as I said, in the last few years, they optimized their production heavily. They actually invested in the facilities and upgraded where they have been, where they want to stay in the long term. The small, inefficient facilities, they shut down. Now we are talking about 50-plus production sites across 21 countries. And when it comes to capacity utilization, we talk about 50%, 60%. It depends really from market to market. So we see our potential. We see this wide space where we can grow. From this map, if you look at the map that is on the slide, on the – screen, you can see that we can expand in some very attractive markets where Holcim has a leading position. If you look at Spain, if you look at Greece, Switzerland, for instance, Martin, currently Xela is not producing in Switzerland. Products are coming from southern Germany. The question will be how do we tackle Switzerland in the future. Then the huge market is UK, where Exela is currently servicing. They have a commercial logistics setup. So I see opportunities, huge opportunities of inorganic growth. At the same time, we have already identified a few potential M&As. think i answered did i miss okay yeah in capex do you think capex or what is the range of two to three percent or is it higher i would i would i would say it's slightly higher this capex is between light and heavy side so it could stabilize around three four percent in long term

I'm making an add-on because you referred before on a question on conversion of plants into calcined clay, obviously early stage. But I mean, this must come with a cost tag, right? I mean, to convert, to depreciate the clinker. Can you give us some probably high-level numbers, what we should expect there?

Well, obviously, Martin, we are producing already calcined clay in some of our plants. In some plants, we have phases where for a certain period of time we would produce clinker, then we would produce calcined clay and so on and so on. From the cost point of view, we don't need massive, massive... upgrades in our existing plants. It's pretty much straightforward. And then on the DNA side, I mean, we will still continue to produce the products. So probably too early to say, but I do not expect any significant impact when we are converting existing clinker line to calcined clay line.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Perfect, Martin. The next one is Arno Lehmann, Bank of America. Welcome back, Arno, and congratulations on what you have achieved.

Thank you very much. It was hard work, but it's a fantastic result. A couple of questions on my side, if I may. Just on Xela, could we have an indication of the share of Germany in the sales relative to Eastern Europe? Is it 50-50 or is it very different from that? And the second question on M&A, post-Xela acquisition, which I guess will take about a year to complete, all seems to be pretty close to the... 1.5 times net debt to EBITDA ratio. And I think at the capital markets there, you kept yourself at 1.5. Does that limit your ability to do other larger acquisitions in the next year? And related to that, are you still interested in the insulation segment or now that you've done Xela, the platform deal, you've moved on from insulation? Thank you.

Good morning, Arnold. Thank you for the question and thank you for joining. It's interesting, I did get a lot that question about Xela's net sales split, Germany versus the rest of the world. In fact, I would expect that this year, next year, Germany represents probably 25% to 28% of the total net sales. The other big markets for Xela, it's Poland, it's Romania, it's Belgium, it's Italy, and this is where Holcim is in a very, very strong position. And as I said earlier to Martin, I do expect potential to expand. Greece, I mean, we are market leader in cement, in aggregates, in ready mix in Greece. Greece is a great market for these products. Another great market, Spain, and of course, UK. So Germany is no longer a dominant in Xelos world. And with the

momentum happening around germany i think other countries will will grow their portion of the pie um what was the second question financial debt financial why don't you yeah okay hey i know good morning on the net financial debt i alluded before that our balance sheet remains an excellent condition uh we look at net financial debt of about four billion towards the year end with a leverage ratio of about one With the XCLA acquisition to complete next year, remember, we're not only spending the money, we're also acquiring EBITDA. So it's the denominator and the numerator. I expect purely from the XCLA deal to stay at or below 1.5 times. And then also what I would like to add, at the capital markets day, we said this is our long-term objective in order to be comfortably in BBB+. But we also said if opportunity arises, if there's another deal on the table, we still have enough firepower to go up to below two times for a limited period of time and still remain in our credit rating. So the 1.5 is a long-term ambition. We could go above that for a period of 12 to 18 months. So we still have ample firepower to do more M&A if we find equally attractive opportunities as Xalyze.

Going back to your last question, Arnold, on insulation, I mean, interest is high. I mean, this is part of our whole offering. If you recall, I mean, we are already producing PRR products in Germany. This is part of our roofing system. system we have a production facilities for insulation in poland in france and recently we did acquire a stone wool company in poland so for us this is a complementary product range and It is needed. Our goal is to be a leader in sustainable construction with full high end to end approach from the basement and the foundation to the walling and of course roofing solution. So we did in the deck, we did one of these projects which I already mentioned. When it comes to the construction project, we don't want to sell one product. We want to sell a system. Selling system means we want to sell five, six, ten products. And with Tekzela, with our roofing systems, with our walling systems, plus with Holcim's existing sustainable portfolio, we are really now able to offer these high end-to-end solutions to our customers and at the same time ensure maximum penetration on the construction site.

Perfect. Thank you, Emilian. The next question comes from Paul Rogers from BNP Paribas. If I understand it correctly, he's currently on the road doing some field research. So hopefully the line works. Paul, are you there?

Hi, it's Anna Schumacher on for Paul Rogers. So thank you for taking my questions. I have one left. We're wondering what is the latest on CBAM free allowances and the benchmark in Europe for next year?

Thank you for your question. Regards to Paul. Look, it is happening. First of January is a new EU ETS phase four scheme, which includes implementation of CBAM. When it comes to CBAM, I would not expect anything major next year. It's all going to be about auditing, monitoring and so on. And financial impact will come in 2027.

Very clear, Julian. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. Unfortunately, it's already the last question we can take. The last question comes from Harry Dow from Rothschild. Harry, good morning.

Yeah, morning. Thank you. Yeah, I think I've got maybe two questions, but part A and B to the first. Firstly, just on Europe, it continues to grow EBIT like the like at a fairly robust rate, despite the top line of the organics still being negative and prices themselves are also relatively subdued. So it feels as though cost is maybe the main driver. And I wondered whether you'd be able to cut down how much of that is to do with the penetration of these lower clinker cements, lower carbon cements. So how much of that 5% to 6% like-to-like EVIC growth that we've seen is from the penetration of these lower clinker cements. And I wonder whether you can give some color on the economics of that kind of substitution in Europe. What is the average cost of some of these supplementary materials, the SCMs versus traditional clinker in the mix? And then related to that, I just wonder how you feel about the supply of those supplementary materials going forward. I don't know if it's something you've got sort of a number of years of stock of. And then just finally, related to Exela and again future M&A. I think in the mix there's some more sort of adhesives, I suppose products that you would traditionally kind of put in maybe the construction chemicals bucket. Is that an area of expansion more significantly into that market or is it still more focused on the more traditional building materials? Thank you.

Good morning, Harry. Thank you for joining us and thank you for the question. Start with the second question. So the focus is on the motors, the focus is on the roofing, waterproofing. This is what we believe for Holcim is the best fit and the rest are probably not high on the agenda. Regarding your question on EU, we can share it with you, but these are the facts. From 2021 to 2024, our net sales in Europe have increased 30%, our EBIT has increased 60%, and our EBIT margin expansion was around 300 basis points. You see in 2025, we continue with the EBIT margin expansion despite softer construction activities, mainly in Western Europe. very simple henry this is driven by our value over volume strategy and there are three key factors here and i really would like to say they're contributing equally there are no first one yes we are scaling our sustainable building solutions from ecopec to ecoplanet and now eco cycle on these products we do get a small premium but we also have the cost advantage second pillar is that our investments in decarbonization and circular constructions are actually driving margin expansion are actually in driving profitable growth and whatever whenever we invest in our business on the carbonization side and on circular construction we do have uh high paybacks and very attractive returns. It's either formulation with, as you mentioned, with MIG development or it's investment in alternative fuels or something else. And the third pillar is actually M&A. In Europe, we have completed 60, in the last four years, 60 highly valued accretive acquisitions where we have attractive business plans, where we have attractive synergies, and that's helping boost in our EBIT margins. So on the mixed strategy, So Henry, traditionally, I mean, it was slag and fly ash. And we still have these products. We have reserves. We have long contracts. But idea and where the future is that we move into the in-house produced mix. And when I say in-house produced mix, I talk about calcined clay. I talk about construction and demolition finds and these kind of products. And this is all part of our investments in decarbonization and circular construction. In Switzerland, we are producing cements that contain 20% of construction and demolition materials inside. In France, we even showed the project. It was one of the nautical bays in Marseille, I think, or in France anyway, where we are already producing cements that contain calcined clay. All of this is produced in-house and we want to accelerate this. So what the future holds for Holcim, we will be less dependent on slag and fly ash and we will be able to produce these products in-house. Martin from ZKB asked the question, we will see this transition from clinker production and calcined clay. This will happen in the next few years. And we are already producing clays in several places around Europe, but also in Latin America and also in North Africa.

Perfect. Thank you, Miljan. Thank you, Harry. Thank you so much for participating in our conference call today. If there are further questions which come up, please don't hesitate to contact the investor relations team of Folsom. We are more than happy to help. And with this, I hand over to our captain, Miljan, for some closing remarks.

Aye, aye, captain. Thank you all for joining. Thank you for your question. As you have seen, once again, we delivered. We delivered exceptional financial performance and we will continue to deliver. We are very excited about our latest addition to Holcim signing of Oxela. Now it's all about closing this acquisition and then delivering and over-delivering on our business plan and also on our strategy. And once again, all of this is possible thanks to our deeply embedded performance culture. And one big thank you to all my colleagues, 45,000 of them around the world. All the best and thank you.