Heidelberg Mterials S/Adr

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Heidelberg Materials Half-Year 2025 Presents conference call. My name is Yusuf, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that this 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 followed by 1 on your cell phone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christoph Beumelburg. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone listening. We have our Q2 results call, and we've prepared some remarks that you may have read already. Dominic and René will go through them real quick, and then we have ample time for Q&A. Over to you, Dominic.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Welcome from our side to the Q2 2025 call, where we will present you the prepared remarks. I think overall, great quarter for us. We are satisfied with the delivery of what we have promised, strong revenue growth, 3%, but especially RCO up 8%. carried by disciplined pricing, by good cost management, not so much volume up, clearly upside down the road. We have executed the second tranche of the share buyback as announced, still running, and has been started during Q2 in magnitude up to 450 million euros. We continue to be on the gas pedal when it comes to growth. We have closed the giant acquisition in the U.S. in April, and we've also successfully closed the transaction in Morocco, end of Q2. So in that respect, things are moving in the right direction. That's also true for sustainability. Great progress here, minus 4% CO2 emissions year over year. I think that's good because we wanted to pick up speed a little bit towards the targets of 2030, and I think that moves in the right direction. And on the back of all of that, we are confident to confirm our outlook for 2025 with an RCO band of 3.25 to 3.55, a ROIC of around 10%, and a slight reduction on CO2 emissions. Okay, then we go to slide four when we come to the details of the results. You see revenues up 3%, EBITDA up 7%, EBITDA up 8% even, and the operating margin moves up 81 basis points to 24.2%. I think that is pretty much in line what we have targeted. H1 is a little bit weaker. That also tells you that Q2 has the right trend. And you see on page five the results for the first half, which is then 6% up in EBITDA and 7% up in RCO, margin up to 18.7%. What is important for us is on page six, you see that volumes are still coming down a little bit. So there was no help at all from the volume side, which leaves the upside on the road. But good management of price over cost with a clear positive outlook. 99 million that then leads to an operating EBIT of more than 1 billion first time for us in the history of the company. H1, 2025, then even with a more pronounced picture on the price over cost, you see also here that the volume pressure for the first half, minus 67 million, was a little bit higher for the first half. That shows you that the volumes are ever so slightly leveling out and even coming back, which is good news, while the price over cost is is even more pronounced in H2 than it is in quarter two versus H1. So overall also that trend goes in the right direction. It's carried not only but also by the transformation accelerator. We have said we target the 500 million. We are absolutely fully on track to get there. I would be even hopeful that we may even overperform on that one. But for now, the clock is ticking and we have about 140 million euros in the pocket. But the trajectory is going in the right direction. So overall, I'm very satisfied and we are very satisfied with what we see here. Europe, on a high level, on the revenue, basically more or less flattish, slightly up, reported like-for-like flattish. EBITDA margin moving up in the right direction, and also RCO on a high level moving beyond the 500 million. For the EBITDA margins, you see in cement up and also in aggregates up, so Also there the train moves in the right direction. North America with a little bit of headwind. Like for like, revenue is down but reported 4% up because the growth is really moving in the right direction. I mentioned giant. EBITDA margin more or less flattish. RCO more or less flattish. And for the business lines, cement slightly up and aggregates quite significantly up in terms of margins. I think the underlying structure is okay. We just obviously need the market to come back in North America, which we are hopeful that this will happen. Asia Pacific, still, you know, I think there is upside from our perspective, but we are turning the corner in the performance. You see that EBITDA margin goes up. You see that the RCO goes up. And you see also that margins both in cement and aggregates go up. So I think that indicates that Asia is finding some stable ground from where we then can further accelerate. And talking about acceleration, AMVA, Africa, Mediterranean, Western Asia, is clearly performing on a very high level, 25% or almost 25% revenue up. EBITDA margin significantly up to 25.8% and resides almost 50% up with plus 44% up to 144 million. EBITDA margin in cement really good now at 27.8%. If you go to page 13, you see that also good results on the financial side come with good results on the sustainability. Obviously, for us, key milestones in Q2 was the opening of Breivik. Some of you were present there. This is the world's first carbon capture industrial scale plant in our industry. We are well on track also with acceptance tests and storing the first CO2. So that looks really promising, and we are happy that on the back of that, in H2, we will start with the sales of Evo Zero, which is a unique product globally, and we will clearly market that to some very exciting customers and projects. Circularity moves on with our development in Poland, both on recycled aggregates and also recarbonation. So the combination of EcoSem there and also our Gorazde cement plant are doing in the hyperlocal vicinity around the plants a very good job. We will now deliver the first concrete with 100% recycled aggregates. I think that's great news. So circularity is also being advanced quite substantially. And last but not least, especially also for our emerging markets, a very good news from Ghana. You heard us talk about the erection of the plate-style clay plant. We are now in the market with the low-carbon products. They are locally sourced and locally produced and locally sold. which for imports market like Ghana is a very important advantage because you don't get stuck in ports with clinkered imports, but rather produce locally. So 100% local content in that respect, that's great. And the market is very well accepted. The product is very well accepted in the market. If you go to the details of the sustainability performance for us, we continue to build our world leadership in terms of clinical incorporation factor, now down to 68.5%. That's very good indeed. We started back in 2020 at almost 75%, so significant progress there. But what is also very important to see is the acceleration of the alternative fuel rate. You see that we jumped up from 30.6% to 33.5%, so the above 50% target is clearly in reach. Big contribution from that end, and we are very confident that we will get to the above 50% by 2030. And on the back of that, obviously, the CO2 emissions came very close to 500 kilograms on a global scale. in reach with a target for 2030 of below 400. With that, I would hand over to Rene, and you go to the financials.