Holcim Ltd Unsp/Adr

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.