Heidelberg Mterials S/Adr

Gentlemen, welcome to the Heidelberg Materials full year results 2024 conference call. I'm Moritz, the call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. 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 Christoph Bäumel, Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone that dialed in. Great that you're all here. We are in the room, as always, with Dominic and René and the IR team, and look forward to your questions later. But for now, I hand over to Dominic for our prepared remarks. Dominic.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, everybody, and thanks for joining our annual results 2024 call. We open up with another year of success and progress. You've seen the presentation. I'm looking at the executive summary, basically sharing with you that the RCO hits a record high of 3.2 billion euros. The EBITDA margin jumps up to 21.3%, and it's absolutely in the corridor of 20% to 22% that we took as a target in our 2021 Capital Market Day. Transformation accelerator, initially we shared with you last time, target 500 million. We are well on our way. I'm sure we'll get into some more details down the road. Free cash flow sits at a very healthy 2.2 billion euros, which drives the leverage down to 1.2 times shareholder return, first time above 1 billion in one year in a combination of progressive dividend and share-by-back. We have cancelled the shares of the first wave of the second share-by-back, and we will start the second wave in Q2 right after the um general assembly uh exciting times then for us this year with a revolution around the product offering first carbon capture net zero product in the industry worldwide will come to the market in h1 2025 and then our outlook at an rco growth to a corridor of 3.25 to 3.255 a ROIC around 10% and a CO2 emission with a further slight reduction. If you go to the next page, you see the summary. I'll jump over that right next to the next slide where we see the EBITDA margin improvement by area, and you see that Most areas are contributing to a significant improvement, mainly obviously North America. I'm sure we'll get into some of the details in your questions. All areas on a progressing level or stabilizing on a high amount. Cement improving significantly, but also aggregates slightly up. So total margin for the group jumps up to 21.3 from 17.7 in 22. So overall, a significant improvement in structural profitability. We want to keep it that way. That's why we announced the transformation accelerator program. that should contribute by the end of 2026, an additional amount of 500 million on the results. And we are well on our way with the program. We have broken it down to specific plants and countries, and we will obviously track the targets now quarter over quarter, and we'll also make them available to you. On the portfolio optimization, I think we've made nice progress and we've made a significant divestment with our setup in Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which from our perspective is not our sweet spot for the future development of the group. We have shifted our focus, as you know, to significant transactions in the US. You see them all on the left side of the chart, with five significant acquisitions in North America during 2024. On the operational side, I think it's interesting and important to note that we are coming out of a fairly healthy, if not strong, Q4 2024. The revenue jumped up for the first time for a long time, 2% for improvement operating EBITDA, almost 10% up, margin up, and the EBIT 15% up. If you compare that to the 6% for the full year, you see that the trajectory is going in the right direction at the end of 2024. It then also becomes clear when you turn to the next page where you see the revenues being slightly down, operating EBITDA being up 4% like for like, the margin is up. And then what I said, the RCO you see here like for like improvement 6% while the quarter four was 15%. So you see the trend line showing the right picture, which also is happening on the next page when you go to the operating bridge where you see for a first time for a long time now that the volume impact is basically flat. I'll come to the next page in a minute, but if you stay on this page, you see that despite the fact that the volume is basically flat, the price over cost is still significantly positive, which then obviously turns into a very strong quarter with a profit uplift of 15% or more than 100 million in just one quarter. uh if you keep this in mind and then go to the next page you see the big difference now you see for the full year we still have a negative negative volume impact of 360 million uh and basically being flat in two four you can see uh what that does then also to the result that's what we call the leverage effect so if the volume You don't even have to come back big time. If it's slowing down in terms of decline, you see the impact on the results. So I think in that respect, that is quite positive from our perspective. If you go down into the deep regions, you see that Europe is stabilizing on a high level. So revenue is just under 10 billion. The margin moves up to almost 20%. RCO stabilizes well above 1.3 billion. Cement margin well improved, aggregate margin slightly down. Overall, I think a good picture out of Europe on a fairly high level. North America, strong run, not so much on the revenue side. I think that's interesting to note, but clearly on the profit side and also on the margin side. Method jump of almost 400 basis points on the EBITDA margin. uh rco jumps first time ever above 1 billion so i think that's a really nice uh contribution like for like 21 percent while the group is like for like six percent shows you also what which area is putting the train right now or used to pull it in 2024. EBITDA margin in cement up healthy, and also in agri, let's look, almost 400 basis points margin increase in EBITDA. I think that is a la bonheur well done to our team in North America. Asia Pacific, still from our perspective, not great level, but stabilizing now. on the many dimensions, EBITDA margins slightly improved, even RCO slightly improved, EBITDA margin on cement slightly improved. Aggregate is a comparatively small business, very much focused on Australia here. So I think in that respect, this is reflecting the weakness of the Australian market when it comes to volumes, but not so much the rest of Asia when it comes to the aggregates. Africa, you see on a very high level, Further progressing, revenue up 5%. So I think that's moving in the right direction. Even down margin stabilizing on a very high level. RCO only slightly down. Sorry, yeah, slightly down, but like for like, I report it down, like for like, slightly up. Stable at around 20%. So overall, I think from my perspective, from the market's perspective, convincing picture for 2024. And René, why don't you take the financial side?