Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Emma, your chorus call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the conference call on Wienerberger's results on the first half-year 2021. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star, followed by one on your touchtone telephone. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press the star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Elisabeth Falkner, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm Welcome to the Wienerberger Analyst Call for the First Half-Year of 2021. Our board representatives today are our CEO, Mr. Heimo Scheuch, and our CFO, Mr. Gerhard Hanke. They will lead you through the presentation today, discussing our performance in the first half-year of 2021, but also give you an outlook of the remaining business year. After the presentation, we are ready to take your questions. I will now hand over to Mr. Scheuch for the presentation. Thank you, Elisabeth, good afternoon from all of us here in Vienna. Thanks for being on the call, we will try to go briefly through the presentation that you have received. Obviously, we are delighted to report the best ever half-year result in the history of our company. I think it shows and confirms that our strategic repositioning of Wienerberger is working, we have built a resilient business model, we can create substantial organic growth on one end through innovation and digitalization of the company, and on the other hand, are successful in our M&A work and developing the company further. When you look at the first half-year with a revenue slightly under EUR 1.9 billion, we have a 14% increase to last year. Strong EBITDA increased by 21%. Obviously, from our guidance perspective, we'll talk about this in a minute, but we have increased it to 620-640. We position the company again. Will do so for the future on three strategic pillars. Innovation and digitalization, we'll give you a couple of examples. Operational excellence, the strong contribution from our self-help program in the first half, again, EUR 20 million. Then the M&A project pipeline that is really interesting for us for the future to grow the company. Saying all of it's very important I think, especially these times when we talk about climate change and the responsibility for all of us to contribute in order to prevent these further disasters and really now make changes to the business model and in the sense of how we live together. Wienerberger has made a strong contribution to decarbonization. We've already achieved in the first half more than 5% CO2 reduction. We are pursuing the circular economy move in the sense that all new products are reusable or recyclable, and the biodiversity plan is running already throughout our operations and our sites. When you need more detail, and obviously all of the more information is in the sustainability report. We put a lot of emphasis on this aspect, and we'll make Wienerberger one of the leading companies in the field of ESG in the building material sector. When we look at the market environment as such, very briefly and very quickly, and we distinguish between the new build market, Western Europe, strong rebound in Western Europe, especially the U.K. and Belgium. France is now also picking up. Germany is slightly positive and obviously lagging behind is the Netherlands in this area. When we talk about Central Eastern Europe, we have here obviously the markets like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary that are below levels of 2019. We have not seen the recovery there in the sense that we have seen it in Western Europe. Permits are lower, completions are lower in these countries. As you can see from our business and how we perform, we actually did very well in this region. As I said earlier, due to the fact that we changed our portfolio of products and especially the self-help part. The Nordics are more flat. If we look at renovation, a second core market for Wienerberger, strong markets in all areas, Western Europe, Central Europe, especially in the segment of roofing. Here, very strong contribution volume wise and profitability wise. Infrastructure, Western Europe, again, strong increase and good catch-up effects. Central Eastern Europe also, and the Nordics has a slightly positive development, not as strong as the other ones, but still from a very healthy level they have improved their performance. When we look at North America new build, we have seen a very good growth rate in the first half when it comes to new residential housing. A strong improvement there, and obviously from the fact that we have the state-funded programs on infrastructure, a very strong contribution from our piping business due to the fact that here we have a clear, strong impact from public infrastructure spending. As I said, when we look at the different focus areas, when you look at the first half of 2021, you see that we have increased despite this weaker market in Central Eastern Europe. Our turnover, it is above the level of 2019. Here again, as I said, the key message here is we are on organic growth track in the sense of new products, innovation, and system approach. We have also improved the EBITDA compared to 2019, obviously through our self-help program and our discipline when it comes to cost management. You have seen, obviously, that supply chain management has been very well. Gerhard will talk about it on the raw material side, how we were able, first of all, to ensure availability, very important because we gain some market share in the piping business, and also very disciplined on the brick side when it comes to the input cost on the energy side. Here, good supply chain management. Through all the business units, we have seen good growth rates. The numbers are there. We have a slight margin expansion on the building solution. On the piping solution, we have, from an EBITDA perspective, also good growth. Here we had to digest, obviously, the strong raw material price increases in certain areas, very important increases. As I said, manage the availability. In North America, you have seen, again, a strong margin expansion due to the fact of a healthy market, price increases, and a good cost discipline. When we look at Wienerberger's strategic growth model, as I said, we will continue with our operational excellence. Gerhard will elaborate a little more. We have contribution of the EUR 20 million. The EUR 40 million is obviously on track for the whole year. Innovation and digitalization are the major drivers for further growth. I give you a couple of examples. As I said, very important on the sustainability front here, our move in order to improve our business continuously and make a positive impact on the environment. Let's have a couple of examples when we talk about new technology, especially when it comes to production in the Wienerberger plant. We have spent some research money and resources in the last couple of years and see here good returns when it comes to new optimized production technologies. Here, for example, we have, on slide 14, a good example for new heat pumps and obviously optimizing the heat recovery from our kilns into our dryers, where we can save up to about 80% of energy consumption in the drying process. Again, we will roll this out through our plants step by step, but here a good internal research and development project that will help us tremendously reducing the energy consumption. We've introduced also on the product side, the so-called electron microscopes, very small ones, in order to obviously monitor the weight, the produced lower firing temperatures, improved thermal insulation of our products, and therefore obviously make here a major change, a game changer when it comes to thermal insulation to increase it by 15%, which is actually substantial in our field of products. Here you see that there's a multitude of efforts that we put in place in manufacturing. We are also not staying back and not investing in our plants. On the contrary, we have here a strong track record of improving our plant structure. I give you an example in the north of Europe, where we are the leading company now when it comes to water management and especially modern one in Sweden, with the biggest production unit in the north of Europe when it comes to piping systems, and also a very new production line in Helsinki, in Vantaa, when it comes to special products like pumping stations or device chambers and bigger tanks. On slide 16, you see here what we mean by this. We have now emerged from a simple pipe producer to a system approach. What we talked about, what we try to make you understand what Wienerberger is about. We are not just selling to the water companies in this part of the world, the simple pipes. We are talking here about large urban infrastructure projects when we talk about bigger retention tanks that we produce with all the accessories needed. We also have the digital solutions. You remember that we acquired a Dutch company in order to integrate this in our business. Here, obviously, the water companies can now better monitor and control their water, not only the volumes, but the quality and make their life easier. Stormwater management, obviously, when you talk about the massive rainfalls that we have seen throughout Europe, it's a big issue now how to manage this flooding. Here we have good solutions for the urban areas when we use the stormwater management systems that we have in place in order to prevent flooding in this area. There is, when you talk about Wienerberger, a clear positioning of our company in water management, in smart and intelligent water management of the future, from drinking water to obviously wastewater management here, a vast activity that we will develop through the key markets that we are active in. Another word on the M&A front. Here we have selective growth projects. As I said, we are working on the acquisition of Meridian. We are in good shape with the Department of Justice in Washington. I think we will have here minor remedies, meaning selling off some assets, this is not of major concern. It will not substantially influence our synergy potential. I'm confident, even due to the fact that we had administration change in the U.S., and as you well are aware because you read it from the paper and other news flows, that a lot of projects get delayed currently in the U.S. due to the fact that administration can't keep up with the pace of these mergers and acquisitions. We are in good shape, and I think we get our acquisitions through in the third quarter of this year. We have made also a very, for us, strategically important small acquisition with FloPlast and Cork Plastics in Ireland and in England. Here again, if we look at this in more detail, and we have added a slide for you, and you can also click through obviously on a video and get a better understanding. It's an integrated system from rain to drain, where we use obviously the water from the roof. Here comes obviously this concept of, again, integrating our systems from the roofing side to the water management side. Use the water, store it underneath, also clean it, then use it for water supplies in the garden, obviously for watering, but also in the house for the need that is required. Here, again, a system that is not only in the new build, but strongly in the renovation side. It's a good add-on for us, it will sort of improve its performance because we can use it with our existing customers, social housing companies, big developers, house builders in the U.K., have here a smart in-house system solution, again, for water combined with energy efficiency and durability. Again, a very good acquisition for us. Revenue is about EUR 100 million turnover and profitability also above 20% EBITDA margin. It adds to the margin improvement of the piping business. From a valuation perspective, 7x after three years. Synergies included here good and attractive valuation from our perspective, especially when you look in the U.K. It gives us, and this is, I think, the key message to you, has a strong foothold in the U.K. to grow because here we see a tremendous potential for us to grow as a piping company in the U.K. From our perspective, it fits perfectly those M&A activities in our sort of strategy, geography-wise and market-wise. It enhances our exposure to renovation, which we want to grow obviously, and therefore make Wienerberger even more non-cyclical when we come to sort of the exposure to end markets. It addresses the issues of climate change. As I said earlier, when you talk about water management, prevents obviously flooding, adds to the water storage. When there's not enough water we have available, especially when you talk about watering and water in the gardens, et cetera. It's also a very major addition, I'm sorry, to population growth and the housing demand, where we can obviously deal with these issues better with this integrated solution. We have the right answer to the rapid urbanization that is taking place and the water management in respect to this urbanization issues. It is perfectly in line with all the European Green Deal and all the requirements that you have in the U.K. and in Ireland. I think here, obviously, again, it shows that we as a company are strongly committed to make convenient solutions, to provide convenience to our clients in a much more advanced way in order to meet the ESG targets that we as a company, but also the people and customers have in the different countries. It's, for us, a clear must to improve the quality of life of people where we are active in, to improve obviously their standards and the availability of water. This is, again, I think, a strong commitment of Wienerberger. Before I hand over to Gerhard for the numbers and for the financials. Thank you, Heimo. Happy to do so. Ladies and gentlemen, our resilient business model and our solid balance sheet laid the ground respectively, supported our further growth development for the first six months, which we are reporting today. Growth, not only in the sense of record revenues and results, but also in the sense of a better profitability, in the sense of a stronger ROCE, what we are presenting, while keeping and respecting our strong financial profiles all the times with a Net Debt/EBITDA multiple of 1.6x. Wienerberger generated, as Heimo already mentioned, a record revenue of EUR 1.9 billion in the first half-year and like-for-like EBITDA of EUR 308 million, which is a +21% compared to prior year. With this excellent operating performance, this translates to a strong profit generation and consequently into a net result which is close to EUR 113 million compared to a -EUR 29 in 2020. When we look to the EBITDA like-for-like presentation respectively to the reconciliation between as reported and like-for-like, which adjustments which we did. I think there are basically two things what we adjusted, which are material. The one is that we did the currency devaluation on the US dollar and on the Turkish lira. Secondly, we had, in the reported results, some one-offs out of the sale of non-operating assets, as well as some structural adjustments which were neutralized and finally to end up with the EUR 308, which is the EBITDA like-for-like. Let me give you also a brief overview on the cost management. Wienerberger was challenged in the last month, by a very volatile raw material market environment. This is what we see from today's perspective will keep and we will stay in this environment also for the next six months, most probably. Thanks to our centralized procurement department, we were acting very fast, and I think in a very proactive way. We set the right measures and took the right decisions on time. What we did basically is we secured the availability of raw materials, helped and supported by our long-term supplier contracts, what we have in place. This ensured that we were basically always, during the last months, with a raw material availability which was close to 100%. The hedging policy, which we implemented already during the last years, pays off now in this volatile energy environment where we are in. All the gas and electricity needs that we have are hedged for a very big part, this balanced basically out the constant market increases which we have seen during the last months. Finally, our decentralized business model, our local business model, what we have in place, enabled us to manage our local supply chain and also to manage properly our local inventory levels. Basically, by implementing these measures on time and taking the right decisions, this brought us in a very good way during the first six months. With our implemented price increases, we covered our procured cost inflation, thanks to our implemented procurement initiatives, what I just mentioned, we were able to fully cover the demand of our customers in the first six months. Let me give you an overview and let me give you some more details on our self-help program. You know that the contribution of our self-help program is an essential part of our growth strategy. Next to the M&A activities, our organic growth is the strategic focus area of Wienerberger. We are well on track in achieving our targets, and we expect for the first six months an EBITDA contribution of EUR 20 million. The program is basically embedded in our strategic focus areas. That means that the biggest contribution in the first six months came out from commercial excellence and manufacturing excellence. What does it mean exactly? When we speak about manufacturing excellence, the key aspects are the continuous upgrade of our industrial setup, meaning the optimization of our plant network. In this field, we have seen major contributions in the first half-year. Here, strongly embedded is the continuous improvement culture, which is part of the DNA of Wienerberger. When we speak about commercial excellence, when we look a little bit deeper in there, we see that the strong contribution is coming from the product mix upgrade and from additional margins from new products and services out of our focus area, innovation and digitalization. We keep focusing further on the transformation to be a full system provider, expanding our portfolio with new products and digital services. From today's perspective, we are confident to reach our target contribution of EUR 40 million for the year 2021. On the next slide, on slide 30, I would like to give you an overview about our clear capital allocation, which we follow. To support our long-term growth ambition, we follow a clear capital allocation guideline. 1st, our strong and resilient operating model generates high cash flows with a constant improvement of profitability, what we have seen in the last years. The business model is embedded in a sound balance sheet management. To foster further growth, we invest our money very consequently and consistently. In the ESG roadmap. In growth CapEx, which is supporting innovation and digitalization. 3rd, by investing money in value-creating M&A transactions. Finally, we serve our shareholders with a reliable remuneration, which is on a yearly basis, 20%-40% of our free cash flow. Consistently, we respect and implement this clear guideline, which supports our long-term growth ambition. On the next slide, I would emphasize once more the strong cash flow generation, which I mentioned before. I think it is also very obvious to see what we have earned in the first six months. We generated a EUR 50 million higher gross cash flow and even a EUR 100 million higher free cash flow during the first six months. What we also see out of the cash flow statement is that around about EUR 300 million were allocated to our shareholders as dividend payment or as a buyback for the hybrid bond, which we settled in first half year of 2021. On the next slide, on the slide 32, we present a net debt bridge where we compare H1 2020 to H1 2021, where we see that we basically kept the net debt level more or less stable. We also see that we significantly invested in our business and that also a big part of our cash flows were allocated to the shareholders. Basically, this usage of the cash flows was more or less generated out of our gross cash flow, respectively, by some working capital cash generation. Concerning the balance sheet, which is presented on the next slide, on slide 33, as mentioned before, our resilient business model is embedded in a very sound balance sheet management, which is generating high profitability and creating value for the shareholders. Our ROCE improved in the first six months for almost 4 basis points to close 11%, our net debt ratio is with 1.6x clearly below our internal target of 2.5x. Our strong and solid financial position provides comfortable headroom for growth investments and value-creating M&A transactions. Let me give you a brief overview also on the next slide about our maturity profile and our liquidity position. Basically, with half-year closing, our liquidity position was at around EUR 820 million. Combined with the maturity profile, what you see on the slide, this gives us some certain financial flexibility also for the next years. We almost have no settlements due in 2022 and 2023. As mentioned last time, the next bigger settlements, which we foresee is the bond in 2024 and also the last year's bond, which we issued in 2025. On the last slide, we tried once more to emphasize the importance of our solid balance sheet management, respectively our solid financial guideline or profile, which we follow consequently. The chart shows the expected Net Debt/EBITDA ratio for year-end 2021, considering the announced M&A transactions, meaning we considered here the cash out for FloPlast and Cork Plastics, the acquisition what we did in July. The expected closing of Meridian Brick, the acquisition in North America, and next to the operational deleverage, the ratio will be supported by additional funds out of the disposal of the treasury shares. Considering all these projects and transactions, basically, we still expect a leverage ratio by the end of the year, which is still under two, which is perfectly covered by our internal target of maximum 2.5. With these final words, I would like to hand over again to Heimo Scheuch. Thank you, Gerhard. For me, it is to sum up on the outlook. If you look at the different markets, we have new build market that is more or less, I would say, on the level that we have seen in the first half of the year, stable for the rest of the year in Western Europe, Central Europe, and in the Nordics also in the same as in the beginning of the year, a slight decrease. America will be further growing for the rest of the year. That's our more or less estimation, including also Canada. Renovation, you will see up for the whole markets, different end markets. The infrastructure more stable on the European front and slightly up in North America. On the input cost side, we've talked about raw material, we've talked about freight costs, energy, and labor. I think all of these aspects and challenges that we face, we are dealing with on a day-to-day basis in all our different markets. Try to incorporate this in our pricing policy and make sure that we have enough freight available to move our products around, have enough labor available to lay or install our products, and make it also simpler to do so for the people concerned. All in all, I think what we want to show you here is that we are dealing with this issue on a day-to-day basis. From a guidance perspective, you have here, obviously, the bridge from last year's EUR 560 to our guided EUR 620-EUR 640, coming from organic growth again and obviously the self-help program. I think we have here again, an ambitious set of numbers and targets in front of us for the rest of the year, but we are moving in the right direction. Thank you very much for your attention. We are now ready to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes to line as Yves Bommelaer with Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll have three if I can. First one is on the guidance. Two parts in that question. Firstly on the volume, if we look at the map, correct me if I'm wrong, Heimo, but you just mentioned that for the rest of the year, you expect flat new builds in Europe and then down in Nordics. You're sort of mentioning your thought process from an H2 perspective, but your slide is for the full year, and given the H1 sort of implies that actually there's a deceleration in most markets in H2, which is not necessarily what we see in the leading indicators. The second part of the question is on the EBITDA front. Looking at what you would need to bridge the gap to your EUR 620, EUR 640, and if you take out the self-help in H2, it just means essentially you've got a negative operational leverage or just no volume growth, in fact, volume decline or price cost pressure. I'm just trying to reconcile your thought process and whether or not this is too conservative and if there's clearly some upside on what you're seeing right now. My final question is just on the ESG side of things. You mentioned the exciting investments in the heat pump system reducing by 80% the energy needed on the drying process. How much is the drying process as a percentage of the total energy that is being used in a kiln or in the plant or the manufacturing process, however you want to define it? Thank you very much. Yves, we can make it long or short, a discussion about conservative or aggressive or whatever. I think from our perspective, we need to look at a multitude of markets that we are active in. I've mentioned that some of the key markets in Eastern Europe, starting with Poland, the Czech Republic, down to Hungary, are weaker than expected also. I don't expect them to recover for the rest of the year. I think we see them at this level right now throughout the year as well. Don't underestimate the contribution of these markets on an EBITDA front, margin-wise is higher, has always been, by the way. This is, I think, one of the things that I want to mention here. It's nothing to worry about, but as I said, they are adjusting and some of the political measures that they were undertaking are not yet sort of being positively perceived in the markets, like in Hungary with the VAT decrease, et cetera. What I'm trying to say for the rest of the year, in this part of the world, we won't see a rebound. We remain on these levels and therefore, I think you need to keep an eye on that when you talk about EBITDA expansion. We had obviously a very good run in the second quarter. Don't underestimate also, we obviously alerted to you that the first quarter was weaker due to weather reasons. We had here also some activity that was stronger in the second quarter. I'm not saying that I'm pessimistic for the rest of it here that I didn't. On the other hand, we see also issues like shortage of labor, supply. We might see also some issues on construction sites where other materials are not available due to shortages and therefore the projects get delayed. This is also something we need to be careful and look at. It shouldn't sound that Heimo is now looking for all sorts of excuses in order to say, "Yves, I'm not conservative," We have couple of months to go and the EUR 620-EUR 640, and if you take the upper end with EUR 640, is still an ambitious thing to achieve. I think we all will work hard. Don't underestimate also on the piping front, we'll have to digest some raw material pricing. Even if we have done very well in the first half of the year, this will level out in the rest of the year. Here again, there are some aspects where you need to take into consideration. I agree with you from a volume perspective, if markets are improving or if markets are doing better, then we will take honestly all benefit of it and will certainly not be shy of selling our products. Finally, I just wanted to say one word also on the inventory levels that are dramatically low in Wienerberger. We have sold a lot of our stock already, and we are actually running extra shifts, especially in the roofing area in order to satisfy demand levels. It is something which is a little bit more complex, just to say one and one adds up to two. It actually should add up at three. That's what you expect from me at the end of the day. Again, I think we have an ambitious sort of target here in front of us and we'll first of all meet it and then think about if it's getting better or if we have a fall that is also very strong and not weather-impacted, obviously we'll do better. I think, let us stop here. I think I gave you some of the thoughts and some of the reasoning behind our guidance and hopefully I could put some light into it. Gerhard, we had another question on the. The percentage of drying in the production process. It's obviously, compared to what we use in energy and the kiln, minor. When you take an overall percentage point, we are talking here more in the 25%-30% range percentage-wise. Still obviously every item that we can sort of improve, we will. The major impact is then on the kiln front when we make here sort of technological-wise or on the resource of energy, major changes. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Yves. The next question comes from Matthias Pfeifenberger with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, good afternoon, lady and gents. Couple of questions from my side. Hope the reception is okay. Firstly, coming back on the new build. Some of the earlier slides showed actually a large recovery there and you're still pointing it flat for kind of the outlook for the markets for the full year. It's kind of leveling off, so what would be required to get this new build, especially in Western Europe, going? Related to that, renovation has been strong across the board. Can you confirm you are not seeing any slowdowns? Secondly, on the input cost versus price, can you give us a bit of color what the pricing has been so far in Q2 or the second half, and how you think about the pricing going forward when especially gas prices continue to rise? I know you're largely hedged, maybe also into next year in terms of pricing versus additional cost inflation. Thanks. Matthias, thank you very much for your two questions. From our side, when I look at renovation and throughout our different end markets in Europe and also the U.S., I see it as a strong market and this will grow further because obviously you have a lot of incentivized sort of ways that governments are using now to improve the rate of renovation. I think we'll have some good years in front of us. First of all, keep in mind that the roof renovation is the best one in order to save energy, because it's more or less 60% of the energy consumption goes through the roof, basically, when it's not well insulated. This will be certainly a good business for the years to come. I don't see a major change. The only caveat that I would like to make is we need to be always, and I'm sorry if I repeat it, but the availability of labor is going to be key. It's key because you don't find roofers in a lot of countries in Western and Eastern Europe, people that work on the roof and that are trained to do so. It's a limited resource, and therefore you can't see always only growth here. I think that's why I'm saying it's leveling out due to the fact that capacity-wise, in certain countries, they can't deal with more projects. On the new build front, when you say, yes, I'm saying it's leveling out a little bit on these levels that we have seen, these improved levels compared to last year. Therefore, also here, capacity-wise, the people that are there, we don't have so many masons around. We don't have so many installers around when I talk about Belgium, the Netherlands, for example, or even in parts of France and the U.K. I think what we can see is here that it is a good underlying trend and it will remain and we are happy about it because obviously if we're shooting up in one go more and more, then we will have all sorts of issues from delivery, logistics, and shortages. I think the current situation is very satisfying on this part. I think new build in Western Europe will remain on a good level for the rest of the year. That's what I said. I have no visibility for next year at this stage. On the Eastern Europe side, I told you about the countries where it's a little weaker compared to the years before. Gerhard, you will deal with the pricing issue. Basically on the pricing issue, I think this was your question on pricing and cost inflation, maybe we have take here one step deeper and look at it from business unit to business unit, because on the brick side, we see simply different dynamics than on the piping side. On the brick side, as we announced earlier, we see our price increases, which we implemented around 2% to up to 3%. This is fully enough to cover our cost inflation, our consumed cost inflation. What we see for the second half is that our procured cost inflation will increase. That means also that we already have announced second or even third pricing for the second half to secure that also in the second half, price increase covers cost inflation. On the piping side, it is different. As you know, we are steering the business much more on the margin, on the gross margin side. There we were in most of the countries, especially in the eastern part of Europe, happy that we could pass on basically the price increases to our customers where our pricing were under pressure. This was more in the northern part of Europe, where basically the channels, where we're going via merchants and where the share of the project business is also differently than other parts of Europe where we were not able to pass on basically all the increases of our input costs. This also, when you looked at the margin, on the EBITDA margin of the piping segment, you also have seen that the margin itself is a little bit under pressure, which we expect and hope that we can cover basically in the second half of this year. Concerning energy, you ask for the hedging percentage, yes, we have big part of the energy on gas and electricity we have hedged for the whole year of 2021. We speak about more than 90%, which basically means also to be sure that for 2022 already we have percentages where we have secured this rather a price level which is clearly significantly below the market level, which is around about 70%-80% for 2022 already, yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Matthias. The next question comes on the line of Brijesh Siya with HSBC. Please go ahead. Hello. Good afternoon all. I have two questions, if I may. The first one is on the pricing again. You clearly talked about building solutions. You are going for second and third price increase. Would that mean that the price increases for this year in building solution would look like more like 3%-5% rather than 2%-3%, which you have achieved in first half? Coming to piping solution, you have removed that EUR 20 million of negative impact from the guidance. Does that indicate that you are now confident that you'll be fully recovering all the cost increase in plastic granular prices through price increases in second half, hence you're kind of coming to an equilibrium position? If I may interrupt you there. I think we shouldn't have a misunderstanding, because I think when you say we have removed the EUR 20 million of our guidance, we didn't do that. Yeah. We said, actually, we still have an issue, and my colleague, Gerhard, explained it on the raw material input cost side, that has dramatically increased. We were not able to offset everything in the first half, and we will try to offset as much as we can in the second. We didn't say that we can offset everything. There will be certainly a remaining part for the year when we talk about this dramatic raw material price increases, because we talk here about really sharp increases. Yeah. When you say, we have improved, and this was also trying to make my answer to Yves earlier, is to say that we organically grow stronger, and also the self-help program and also the overall business contributes more to the growth in EBITDA. That we don't only get the EBITDA growth by withdrawing the EUR 20 million of negative impact of this potential raw material price increase. I hope I made it clear. Sorry to interrupt you, by the way. No, that's okay. This EUR 20 million, a small part of it is part of the underlying business rather than it is a specific line item in the guidance. Correct. Absolutely correct. Coming to my second question on energy cost inflation. You rightfully explained about the hedging policy with a strong one in 2021 and a majority of 2022 being already achieved at a lower market price. Looking at the cost, and increase in the energy prices and what we are seeing, a persistent high price all through of 2021. How do you look the pricing situation will evolve in 2022? Do you think this normal, your usual 2%-3% price inflation will still hold? What's the kind of magnitude of price rise you need to do in early 2022 to ensure your cost inflation are being fully covered? Well, if I may, before Gerhard goes into the details. We have never, and I think it's too early to talk about 2022 right now, because we will see how this develops. We've always given you a very good indication on cost inflation and how much we need to cover then through price increases. Might be the case that we need a little bit more price increases next year if cost inflation is higher. Might be. I'm not sure yet. As Gerhard has put it earlier, we obviously are doing price increases in all of our products and areas in order to address the situation this year that has been a little bit exceptional, if I may say so, in a lot of fields when it comes to the input cost side. Sorry to interrupt you, Gerhard. No, no, absolutely right. I think it is too early. I think Heimo mentioned it could be that we need maybe a little bit more, but I think to come here to a final conclusion is too early. Give us more time. We will anyhow have a better view for 2022 in, most probably, after September, October. Then I think with the third quarter announcement, I think it is much more clear what is needed for 2022. Gerhard, if you can ask, probably to push you a bit on this. The 70% which you have secured for 2022, what kind of price rise you need to have that fully covered? Well, this is obviously in the sense that we had in the past. This is the 2%-3% that we have regularly put into the market. Yeah. All right. Okay? Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Yassine Touahri with On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I would have two question. 1st, have you drafted a roadmap to become carbon neutral by 2050? Have you made any assessment of how much it would cost in terms of CapEx, to switch from fossil fuel to carbon neutral energy, for typical clay brick or tile plants? That would be my first question. Then my 2nd question is, what margin of maneuver do you have to address the availability of labor in a context where renovation demand is likely to increase quite a lot long term in Europe, especially if the continent want to achieve carbon neutrality? Can you invest yourself in a training program for new roofer? Can you partner with universities? Do you really need action from the states and from Europe? Ladies and gentlemen, the line of the presentation has been dropped. We will reconnect them and come back to you shortly. Thank you for holding. Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker line has now been reconnected. Please go ahead. I don't know if you could hear my questions. We broke away or broke out of this when you were saying, if we have a roadmap to become carbon neutral by 2050, the answer is yes. The second part of the question is, have you made any assessments of how much it would cost in terms of CapEx to switch from fossil fuel to carbon neutral energy for typical clay brick or clay tile plants? I had a second question, which is, what margin of maneuver you have to address the availability of labor in a context where renovation demand is likely to increase dramatically medium-term if Europe want to achieve carbon neutrality. Can you invest in training program for new roofer? Can you partner with universities or do you need to see action from Europe or from member states? I will address your last question now, if I may. We are working today on two aspects when you talk about availability of labor. The first one, making our systems easy to install, quicker, faster, and for people actually to use also less qualified labor. Couple of examples. You remember the sort of installation of the electrical sort of supply system in a house, this plug and play, and an easy-to-install system that we have here. We have systems now also on the brick side, which will help people to install prefabricated walls very quickly, much easier, two and a half, three times faster than the traditional approach. Innovation, and here also, due to the means that we have available, new products will help. Second one, we have improved and we have put a lot of emphasis in training, using also digital means, not only physical training, but digital training by YouTube and other sort of very easy-to-communicate methods for installers and people who use our products. We will certainly improve this more and more because it's a key element. As you correctly say, if we need more sort of projects to be realized, we need also the skilled labor to do so or the labor as such. We'll make sure that our training is here a key factor of success and we will improve our performance there as well. As I said, the new products will help as well. Innovation is the key role element there. You had your second questions, because I answered your question when I said we have a roadmap. The second one was, what are you actually contemplating on the CapEx front when it comes to changing to different energy resources? Let me say it in this way. When you actually would use hydrogen as a combustible or as a resource of energy, then I think from our change perspective in the kiln, we can rather well handle that with a CapEx that is foreseeable or manageable. We have done some tracks, but it's a little too early because obviously we don't have this combustible available right now in a big sort of means where we could run a plant and optimize it easily. I'm confident that we can handle this rather well. On the side of when we move to electricity, for example, then you have two fields. You either can change completely the production and move to energy, electricity-driven kilns, but then you change a lot of the layout of a plant, and this is more expensive. We're doing currently trails, and we will have some testing results in October, November of this year because we run the first electrified kiln in Belgium. You need to give us a couple of months, and then we'll give you an insight what this costs and what sort of advantages it brings. Therefore, I think, yes, it's possible. Secondly, we'll try to make it on a CapEx front acceptable to all of us. The electrification will be certainly more expensive than changing from one combustible like gas to hydrogen. It doesn't. I'm just curious about the hydrogen market. As you're suggesting right now, it's very limited. Do you think that the hydrogen market is going to expand medium-term, or visibility is still limited at the moment? For the moment, it's still very limited, but I would say that in certain countries, I see, for example, the Netherlands moving very aggressively to hydrogen and therefore also the industry will have access, I would say, in a couple of years because they really push it. I'm confident when talking to some researchers in the universities, you know that there's a lot of efficiency discussion when you switch from electricity to hydrogen, how much you use this in effectiveness. I think here improvements will be made over the next years, and then obviously availability will grow by means of this. I'm confident this is going to be one of the alternative resources that we can use. On another front, biogas is also something we can contemplate. We have it now. Even with the aid or the support of the state in Denmark, where they actually use already in the public system biogas. Therefore, I think we will see a lot of developments. We are at the beginning of this phase, and I think in a couple of years we will see much more or much more detailed terms, what we can use, what is available, et cetera. I think preparing Wienerberger for this, being open for these different technologies is the way forward. Here, I think we're in good shape and putting research and development into it. That's taken. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question comes the line of Cedar Ekblom with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Two questions left on my side. On the M&A front, most of the deals that you've done so far in Europe have been in the piping business and have been more bolt-on in nature. I wonder if you could give us a little bit of color in terms of how you see your M&A strategy moving forward from here. Is this a case of the market is basically set up for bolt-on deals, or is there something more transformational that you could do in piping to speed up the growth path in that division? Secondly, on the solutions point, could you give us a bit of color in terms of what percentage of your revenues today you would classify as solutions and how you see that developing on a three-year view? Maybe also give us a little bit of color in terms of understanding where you see the solution potential being more promising. Is it in the piping business? Is it in the building solutions business? Thank you. Thank you for the two questions. On the M&A front, yes, we did some, you're absolutely right, we call them also bolt-on deals on the piping side. It's only logic because here we have seen that we want to improve our product offering and our margin expansion, obviously, due to the fact that we have these accessory or additional products and so qualified solutions. The market as such is interesting for us because we have some small and medium-sized players, which I would call national heroes in certain areas. When they have some succession planning issues, et cetera, we are an ideal company to take them over. Therefore, to develop these national heroes in companies where we can actually use these technology products in other regions as well. Transformational deals, if there are some and if they come at an acceptable sort of valuation, we would look at it. It's always an issue about creating value with those transformational deals. This goes, by the way, not only for piping, but also for building solutions, where we also have interesting projects. We don't talk so much about all the projects because some of them are under the radar screen. Probably next time I will sort of elaborate a little bit more on the investments in sort of startup businesses and smaller businesses like prefab and others, where we are quite active at this stage and where the capital allocation gap is not as high as in these deals, and promising, by the way. Yes, we have here a good pipeline of small or mid-sized ones. We carefully look at bigger ones as well, as I said, under the condition that they make sense and create substantial value for us. This is the critical part. As you are perfectly aware, valuations have increased dramatically throughout the geographies, therefore, I think a deal like we have put together for Meridian will be difficult to achieve right now on this valuation perspective in other countries and other scenarios. On the second question, when you talk about solutions, the definition for us from solution perspective is obviously when you combine certain products or services to create a solution. When you look at Wienerberger's whole turnover, I would say from our perspective, we have in this overall sort of exposure about 10%-15% solutions today, it's trading up. It's trading up with the acquisition like FloPlast and others, but it's trading up also through innovation and creation of additional sort of service components that we develop or buy in, like smaller issues or developing our own digital solutions. Our aim is certainly to get here also to north of 30% for the whole group. I think that would be something where I see us rather quickly in the next couple of years. Yeah. Again, probably my colleagues will then say I'm too conservative or humble because we have developed glues and bricks and other things and accessories. We could combine them and say it's a solution. Yeah. Therefore, then we could say it's probably even today already 30% of our turnover. Let me be a little bit more conservative than a lot of my colleagues. I say from my perspective, solutions that we have in the turnover of Wienerberger, really solutions is about 15% and we are moving gradually to about 30% on a short notice. I think that's where we're going through. Okay? Can I just ask one follow-up? If we think about the piping business relative to your brick and roofing business, do you think that the potential on that business is higher than 30% on a three-year view? Yes. That's a clear answer. Yes, absolutely. Could you give us any color on that, or is it just too early to think about specifics? I think it's in all of these businesses. When we talk about water, about energy, and in-house business, I think here we are talking about the solution business. Thank you very much. The next question comes line of Tobias Woerner with Stifel. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, Heimo and Wienerberger. Two questions from my side, please. The first one, I just wanted to check on a couple of numbers, with regards to the M&A. Net Debt EBITDA of 1.6% on a 12-month rolling basis, which implies EUR 600 million, roughly EUR 601 million. You talk about the acquisitions, adding 0.7% to that, which on the basis of my math, would be roughly about EUR 420 million. If you strip out the $250 million for Meridian, that would leave you with the two plastics acquisitions adding roughly about EUR 212 million. Does that make sense? Is that the way I should see it, or am I getting something wrong here? That's the 1st question. The 2nd question is about Meridian. You talked about a run rate of EBITDA in the first year of 2021 of $85 million. You delivered a really strong result in North America. Would that imply that your first year could be better than we so far expect? Many thanks. Well, I think your second question first, I think Meridian will not contribute so much this year because when we talk about the third quarter, there won't be a lot of months left for the remaining part. If we then look into next year, and it's again, too early to make judgments about the market in the U.S. and everything. Yes, you're right, we should have a good contribution from the combined business. Also considering the fact that obviously we will have one-time effects of certain restructurings in the overhead and other, so that the normal procedure when you integrate business. If we look it from a like-for-like perspective, it's going to be a good year for, or should be a good year for the American business. Yeah. For the arithmetics and the math, I will hand over to Gerhard. Tobias, we could follow basically your questions. As you know, we clearly agreed not to announce the purchase price. Therefore, yes, your mathematics is what we could understand. As we said, I only can confirm from my side, we will not announce any purchase prices from the deal of Meridian. Okay. If I may then follow up with some questions, and thanks for clarifying this. The 20% EBITDA margin for the two add-on acquisitions, you mentioned minimum 20% EBITDA margins. Does that include the synergies already, or is that before synergies? That's before synergies. That's before synergies. Great. Just lastly, with Meridian, I don't know the term for it, but I should do. Won't you benefit from the cash generated from the announcement of the deal to the closing of the deal? Isn't that how it works? You should, because of that, have a lower acquisition price? Yeah. We have a lock box principle. Yes, you're right. Lock box, that's it. Yeah. Yes, we take advantage of this and Gerhard can probably say a couple of words. Right. Basically, in the lock box, I think it is agreed with. January January, where we have the lock box in, and that means even if the closing is later on, that the cash which is in the company will basically move to Wienerberger with closing date. It goes both directions. Yeah. It goes both directions. Yeah. A lock box goes both directions. As we have cash or will be having cash. Which will end due to the strong development and performance of Meridian, there will be cash. Yeah. That should reduce your acquisition price. Yeah. Basically, the net purchase price. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much, and have a good rest of your summer. Thank you. You too. Thank you. You too. The next question is in the line of Miro Zuzak with JMS Invest AG. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my question. Just a quick one. On page 26 of the presentation, you show the income statement. Whereas last year you basically corrected for EUR 23.3 million of impairment charges to assets, you didn't do so this year. I can see 0.0. However, if I look at your cash flow statement in the report, I see quite a similar number in the line impairment charges to assets and other valuation effects. Maybe you can clarify what the difference is between the impairment charges you took this year compared to last year, whether they are actually booked in this line in the cash flow statement, I'm not 100% sure? Where do you see it in the cash flow statement, just to be sure? It's the fourth line. Last year it was 18.386 and this year it was 20.253. I got it. Yes, I've seen it. Maybe to answer directly on this question, we had last year, and I think here we have to be clear what has been booked last year. Last year, we really had impairment on assets. That means this goes back on impairment testing according to IAS 36. This year, we did not have any triggering events out of asset impairment. You know that we had an impairment of the goodwill, which is around about EUR 10 million. On the asset side, really on the fixed assets, on the tangibles, there was no impairment trigger on that. We had some small write-offs for closing down the one or the other plant in line with our optimization of our plant network. This is not according to IAS 36 on impairment testing. What you see in the cash flow statement, basically, that next to the impairments, you see in the position other valuation effects. You also see all non-cash effects from derivatives, what you have for financial instruments. Therefore, it is a position which also neutralizes other non-cash effects. It has nothing to do with any impairments which are in here in this position. Okay. The reason you didn't basically correct it for it in your adjustments is because it's not based on IAS 36. Exactly. The different reason that you are not allowed according to IFRS, if it is not based on an impairment testing, you are not allowed to show it also in this separate line. We have these small write-offs, what I mentioned before. When you look back to the P&L statement, there is a position which is called other operating expenses in the line. Other, there is a small amount on write-offs for, I think, two or three small mothballing or closures of lines or production sites, which is considered here, but which is not connected with an IAS 36 impairment testing. That's the difference. Okay, cool. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the time for one short follow-up from the line of Matthias Pfeifenberger with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks a lot. The remaining one would be maybe you want to comment on the treasury share sale. I don't know, was it a good share price level? You also commented on the EUR 4 billion market cap this morning in the press conference, or is it just balance sheet containment? You just mentioned relations going up, likely no transformative deals. Is this a good time to sell the shares given that obviously leverage is going to go lower with cash generation? Thanks. Matthias, to be very perfectly honest, we get a good sort of level of demand in shares of Wienerberger. Some sort of investors have indicated that they would take up some shares. Therefore we thought that the Treasury shares are well sort of used in this sense because being on the balance sheet from our perspective is not very useful. We would sort of sell them off to some of these investors. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, there are no further questions. I hand back to Elisabeth Falkner, Head of Investor Relations for closing comments. Thank you very much, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for dialing in today. The next conference call will be on November 9th for our results on the third quarter. For the day, I can only wish you a nice remaining afternoon. Thank you very much for dialing in again, and goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Wienerberger conference call. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.