Holcim Ltd Unsp/Adr

Good morning. Welcome to the analyst and investor conference call of Balsam's first quarter 2026 trading update. My name is Dan Pomerant, and I'm joined today by our CEO, Mirjan Gutovic, and our CFO, Stefan Kirzner, to present our financial results. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for questions. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star 1 on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you want to remove yourself from the queue, you may press star two. Webcast viewers might submit their questions in writing via the dedicated field on the screen. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. And now, I'm happy to hand it over to you, Emilian.

Thank you, Ben. Good morning to you all and a warm welcome to Holcim's 2026 First Quarter Trading Update Conference. Stefan and I are pleased to be presenting our numbers to you today and we look forward to taking your questions afterwards. As you have seen, we have delivered a strong start to the year. There was a robust organic growth in net sales of nearly 4%, driven by leading positions in the highly attractive markets where we operate. The 8.3% organic growth in our recurring EBIT was even stronger, and this was driven by our premium and sustainable offering, our strict cost discipline, and operational excellence. With our resilient and proven business model across all economic cycles and market conditions, after this strong start to the year, we are confirming our 2026 guidance, which includes a further increase of our industry-leading margins versus 2025. Turning to the regional highlights now, as you can see in Europe, there was a sales acceleration in March and price over cost was positive, partially offsetting the impact of weather on the margin. Our use of alternative fuels increased to 70% in the region during the quarter, future proofing halts in from energy price exposure, and market volatility. You will hear more on this topic from Stefan later. In terms of the outlook, we expect strong activity in infrastructure across the whole region, and in residential, a recent increase in building permits is expected to continue in several countries. In LATAM, we delivered 7.6% organic routine net sales driven by Mexico, Central America, and Ecuador, with a recurring EBIT margin above 30%. We completed one large acquisition and also signed another, and we will talk more on this later on. For the outlook, we expect that the Mexican government plans for 1.8 million new homes and infrastructure projects to accelerate the growth in this key market for us. And in Central America, there will be ongoing high demand for housing and infrastructure. Our performance in Asia, Middle East, and Africa clearly demonstrates that our strategy is able to achieve strong, profitable growth across all market conditions and economic cycles. The region delivered organic growth in recurring EBIT of 26%, while the margin rose 100 basis points to 22%. We saw a strong demand trends in North Africa and Australia and expect this to continue for the full year, driven mainly by the residential and infrastructure sectors in North Africa, and infrastructure projects in Australia. With that, I would like to hand it over to Stefan to talk through the financials in more detail. Stefan.

Thank you, Minyan. And a warm welcome to all of you from my side as well. Always a pleasure to be here with you and now for a Q1 trading update. Turning first to the net sales bridge, you can see that we have robust organic growth of 3.9%, representing 136 million Swiss francs. Total sales was affected by a negative 104 million Swiss francs impact, mainly coming from scope, following the divestment of our Nigeria business, Habala Cement Manufacturing in Iraq, and other divestments completed in 2025. Also, the FX effect created a translation effect of 5.6% as a mixture of mature and emerging markets currency devaluation versus the Swiss franc. For recurring EBIT, we delivered 8.3% organic growth. There were FX translation effects of 26 million Swiss francs, or 5.5%, and 63 million Swiss francs from divestments, as mentioned already in the sales chart. EBIT growth was driven by strong commercial execution, operational excellence, and disciplined cost management, both in the countries and at corporate level. Once again, we delivered positive price over costs. As you know, increasing our usage of alternative fuels is one way that sustainability drives profitable growth at Holcim, increasing our margin and reducing CO2. What may be less appreciated at that point is that it also future-proofs Holcim from energy price volatility. We are reducing fuel and costs through operational excellence in manufacturing while decarbonizing our electricity consumption. As you can see, in the last three years, increasing our alternative fuel usage by 11 percentage points came with a 3 percentage point decrease in our energy costs. That's fuel and electricity cost as a percentage of net sales. By the year 2030, we will have scaled up these use of alternative fuels to 50% globally and 90% in Europe. Already today, almost half of our cement plants in Europe operate between 80% and 100% alternative fuels. Next. Let's look at the progression of our Q1 recurring EBIT and recurring EBIT margin on a rolling 12-month basis. At this time of the year, we usually show this number as a 12-month rolling because the first quarter is by far the smallest in terms of business size, so we put it into a better context. This graph shows our continuing margin expansion. The group margin for the first quarter was down year over year slightly, mainly due to the divestments that I explained before. As Miljan has said, we are committed to further margin expansion to the full year 2026. Now, let's quickly look at the regional performance. Organic growth and net sales was strong in each of LATAM and EMEA. And in Europe, there was significant acceleration in March. Asia, Middle East, and Africa, there was double-digit organic growth in recurring EBIT at 26%, with 100 base point increase in margin. where we maintained a recurring EBIT margin of above 30% in Latin America. In Europe, the margin was impacted by weather. And as mentioned before, good cost development on the corporate level continued. With that, I am pleased to hand it back over to Miljan.