Good morning and welcome, everybody, to Holcim 2023 full-year results. This is the Analyst and Investor Conference. I'm Nesrine Gharbi, and I'll be your host today. I'm very pleased to be joined by our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Jan Jenisch, our CEO designate, Mr. Miljan Gutovic, and our CFO, Mr. Steffen Kindler. After their presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. We will start by taking questions from the room. If you're joining us by webcast, please click on the Q&A button and follow the instructions. And if you're dialing in from a phone, you can ask a question by joining the Q&A queue, pressing star 14. If you would like to drop out of the queue, you can press star 15. And with this, I'm handing you over to Mr. Chairman and CEO Jan. The floor is yours. Yes, thank you. And from my side, good morning and a very big welcome to our Analyst Conference for the full year results. Very excited. We have a full house here today to be in this wonderful Kunsthaus, maybe the single most exciting art museum in Europe or in the world. And the most exciting part you're not aware of, it's built with ECOPlanet Sustaino. This shows you the new growth path for Holcim. This is built with the first cement globally where we have 20% construction and demolition material inside. So we literally take back the construction demolition waste, concrete, bricks, and we recycle them 100% and put them back into our new product. And then it looks like this. Very stunning. For those of you who have not the pleasure to be with us today in person, please visit the Kunsthaus during your next visit in Zurich and be impressed by ECOPlanet Sustaino and what Holcim can build now, sustainable and fully circular. Great time to meet. We have the full year results. I'm very excited to speak a bit about some of the highlights, and then I will pass over to our CFO, Steffen, who gives you more view on the region and the individual performance. And then our incoming CEO will do the outlook for 2024. 2023 has been, I would say, a very fulfilling year for us, what I like best, top performance, and at the same time setting the strategy right for the future, spreading all the strong pillars. The results we're going to speak in more detail later. Very happy. We have a record free cash flow of more than CHF 3.7 billion. This is now the fifth consecutive year with a cash flow above CHF 3 billion, and that enables Holcim to not only strengthen the balance sheet, not only return a lot of money to the shareholder, but to build a stronger foundation for the future with all the acquisitions and all the investments in decarbonization. On the strategy, I will quickly talk about these strong pillars we have from the transformation with our M&A to the rapid expansion we see in the new segment of solutions and products for the company, then our fast pace in decarbonization, but also into circular construction. And I will talk today a little bit also about branding. This is big for us going forward to have advanced branded solutions for the customers. Then I talk a little bit about the performance culture at Holcim. You have the presentation. I will not go into the detail of how we made this company with the strongest earnings profiles in the whole sector over the last few years. I like to point out the quarter four maybe of last year. You see here the slide that we have not weakened. We have delivered quarter by quarter in 2023. You see the chart. We have actually increased the performance quarter by quarter. I promised you this when we were meeting a year earlier. I told you that our margin will see increases quarter by quarter as the costs are still very high in the first half of the year. This is what we delivered here also for the full year. The best quarter was quarter four, which is great and gives us a great confidence also going with the right momentum into 2024. A bit details here. Very happy to see this Q4 analysis. You see the sales, 5.5% organic sales growth. And on top of that, what you don't see, we made another 3.8% growth by acquisition. So Holcim was growing more than 9% at constant currency in the Q4 2023. And this enabled us to fully offset the strong Swiss franc and even in Swiss franc grow by a bit more than 2%. And then, of course, on the EBIT line, like you can expect from us, this increasing margin throughout the year, achieving more than 17% of EBIT growth organically, but also in the Swiss franc, more than 8% EBIT growth in Swiss franc for Q4. So this is really fantastic. This is exactly where we wanted Holcim to be, to finish the year with the strongest quarter and taking this position of strength into that 2024. We have achieved the financial targets of Strategy 2025 two years ahead of plan. Great timing. Four weeks ago, we announced our new strategy by listing our North American business in the U.S. and creating two champions, two growth companies with different strategic profiles, different investor profiles. This is a perfect time to do it. We have done all the financial targets, and now we're going to unleash the next level of profitable growth for Holcim. I could show you these charts for the next two hours or so because it shows how much we have done and how strong the base is now. You see the EBIT margin. I would say it's a sector-leading EBIT margin here. Now we promise that in 2024, it will increase to 18%. So we are, I think, here also with the right momentum. Earnings per share, you see here, even in the strong Swiss franc, we were able to grow more than 15% on average by year. If you make this calculation in euro and US dollar, you are close to 20% of annual growth rate earnings per share. Cash flow, very important. We have questions how sustainable the cash flow is. Very simple. We have now delivered 5 years of a CHF 3 billion+ cash flow, and we have just started. I don't think the ambition of the new CEO is to have any weaker cash flow. This is clear. If you draw the trend line, you can maybe anticipate where the cash flow is going to be in the future. Very happy. You see the cash conversion is above 50% also on a sustainable level. Very happy we have now this high performance organization established. Let's go to the balance sheet. You all know the numbers. This is, for me, very important. You need the entrepreneurial freedom to realize opportunities without always asking the banks to finance it. We have established this for Holcim. We have a strong balance sheet, 1.2x net debt leverage. You have seen we have decreased the net debt by more than CHF 5 billion over the last few years. This is the right level of balance strength you can also expect from us in the future. Dividend, very happy. I think I'll leave this to Steffen to talk about the dividend and the share buyback later. What is very important is that the successful transformation we made at Holcim to build up the new segment solutions and products to focus geographically much more into North America, but also strengthen Europe and Latin America, is also driven by M&A. We did 97 transactions over the last five years, 97, 19 divestments, 78 acquisitions, and all value accretive from day one, I would say, very well executed. And I want to share a detail with you. You all know this, that we do this very value disciplined. You see here even solutions and products, businesses normally well in the double digit, multiple. I think we bought them on reasonable levels with high synergies. The bolt-ons, you see, around five times multiple, so high synergistic. And then on the divestment side, we were also very disciplined to sell here for significant valuations. All that helped us then to have this strong balance sheet and have all the cash we can also distribute to shareholders. I think this is very important. This we have been working on for the last years, that we really have the most successful M&A machine. We have done 28 acquisitions last year. This is more than two a month. You see our results. We don't have any watering down of the results. We don't have any special reporting. We take these acquisitions, and we make them accretive from the first year. Here's just a couple of points I want to share with you. We just talked about that the M&A is now a very positive part of the growth, 3.8% sales growth in Q4 alone. On the 28 acquisitions, that is around 4% pro forma growth, so a big part. You can expect this to continue. We gave you guidance for this year that we're going to have more than 2% growth coming by acquisition in addition to the organic growth, which will be also above 4%. Important to me, I like to buy family-owned companies. 80% of the acquisitions are family-owned businesses. Family-owned businesses, they have the values we look for. They have high-quality products. They have high-quality production, long-time employees. At the same time, they're not optimized in some processes like procurement. So we are able to integrate and to execute synergies on a very significant level. We have a super M&A team in place. You see our average time from signing to closing is only 4 months, which is very important because you don't want that company being in uncertain times. You want to start to integrate and realize synergies, of course, as fast as possible. This is a very important part of the Holcim way of M&A to have the shortest time period from signing to closing. We have a full team globally. Our local people are fully accountable on these transactions and on the business plans and the synergies. Then finally, I think it pays off when you see our results. They are not diluted by acquisitions because they are EPS accretive from year one. And also on the ROIC, they are double digit already on year three. Maybe the last thing I want to share with you is our people. You know our decarbonization story. We have reduced the CO2 per net sales another 20% in 2023 alone. So we come into totally new levels of decarbonization, which is now a big part of our success, especially in Europe. I want to talk about the brands with you. This is now the new Holcim. It's about the most successful brands in building materials. We have just started the upper three brands. They were just introduced in the last four years. So this is our low carbon or our sustainable building solution brands. We have launched ECOPlanet. It's already more than CHF 2 billion in sales. So it's our biggest cement brand globally. We have our ECOPact, also our at least 30% CO2 reduced concrete. It's also more than CHF 1 billion in sales already. And now we introduced ECOCycle, which stands for circular construction, taking all the construction and demolition materials back and building the Kunsthaus Zürich in Zurich. That's our ECOCycle brand. It's already huge. We have recycled last year 8.4 million tons of construction demolition material. This is 1,500 full truck loads every single working day of the year, 1,500 full truck loads coming in, being recycled and reused as a raw material or in the finished product. Fantastic story. And we can talk more about it, how this is profitable. And this is a totally new growth segment for Holcim going forward. We have very strong brands. So on the other side of the Atlantic, in Latin America, we have the flagship brands for cementitious, Apasco and Fuerte, both together, also CHF 1 billion brands. And they are the flagship brands. People go to the store. They don't buy cement. They buy Apasco. They buy Fuerte. And in North America, our story is very branded. We have the biggest, most successful cementitious brand with OneCem. It's a CHF 2 billion brand already. We have our roofing business. It's branded for flat roofing. It's branded under Elevate, also a CHF 2 billion brand. So altogether, only the six brands you're seeing, they account for 30% of Holcim's turnover. And this is the way going forward. Everything we do, we want to brand for the customer with having the high quality, high sustainability promise for the customer. Our people, and you know we are big on performance culture at Holcim. And this is a bit the background around it. We have this deeply embedded performance culture at Holcim, more than 500 profit and loss leaders. Every single Swiss franc has only one owner at Holcim. And we have established that over the last five years. It enables us, of course, to have the accountability, have the responsibility, and at the same time, be the closest to the customer. I don't want to take a decision from Switzerland on a US customer or a Mexican customer or a customer in Spain. This is best done by our locally empowered people. To do that, you need to give them the empowerment. Also, of course, you have to put them in your performance framework, which is the second bullet. We have transparent and accountable performance management. We all work around the globe on the same KPIs, starting with growth, EBIT, free cash flow, and return on invested capital. Everyone is incentivized on the same metrics. If you ask me for one reason, we have the strongest margins in the industry. It is our performance culture. The proven track record we just talked about, our system of M&A, what we have developed over the last five years, is also around the people. We have very high satisfaction of our staff. We have the highest employment engagement scores for this Gallup employee survey. We have more than 90% of the people participating. Very important at Holcim, customers and employees are our two highest values in the company. We have our own business school, and we work very hard to make sure we have 85% of our promotions coming from within the company. I think with this is a bit the background. What I think we have established now at Holcim, what I like the best, we have performance quarter by quarter. At the same time, we established these strategic foundations to go into the future very strongly. With this, I hand over now to our CFO, Steffen, who gives you more details on the financials. Thank you very much, Jan. And good morning, everybody, also from my side. I would actually also like to start with Q4. Q4 was our strongest quarter. We had tremendous momentum towards the end of the year, which we intend to carry over into last year. When you look at our Q4 sales, we grew by 5.5% organically, but we grew by more than 2% on an absolute basis against the strong Swiss franc. Something that's worth highlighting here is the 3.8% growth from acquisitions. Remember, in the fourth quarter was the first time where we didn't have the effects anymore from the divestments of India and Brazil because those were completed in Q3 2022. So this is only acquisitions, mainly our bolt-on strategy and the acquisition of Duro-Last. And you see a beautiful run rate of 4% here, which also proves to the point that Jan mentioned earlier. Same when we look at our recurring EBIT. Again, strong momentum in the last quarter, almost 18% organic growth in recurring EBIT, 8% on an absolute basis, showing that with our organic growth, we were able to offset the strong currency headwinds in the last quarter. A couple of records here. The EBIT growth in the last quarter was actually the strongest of every quarter in 2023. The CHF 1.117 billion is the highest Q4 we ever had. And so we achieved a couple of new levels here also in the Q4, again pointing to the momentum I mentioned earlier. Across the regions in Q4, you see that it was broad-based. We had profitable growth across all regions. You see especially that on the recurring EBIT side, we grew double-digit in all of our five business segments, again pointing to the very strong finish of the year. Now let's look at the full year numbers. We start with sales. We achieved sales of a bit more than CHF 27 billion. That's an organic growth of 6.1%. You see in the column left to that, acquisitions and divestments had a negative impact of almost CHF 1.8 billion. That is driven by the divestment of India and Brazil and the acquisitions of Duro-Last and our bolt-on strategy. As I said earlier, in the first three quarters here, still the divestments having an impact. And we have foreign exchange effects last year of almost 7% on sales. Recurring EBIT, a similar picture. We had recurring EBIT growth of 14.7% organically. We achieved a new record of CHF 4.76 billion recurring EBIT. So we're slightly up against last year, against the strong Swiss franc. What you see on this chart, which I want to highlight, is we offset more than CHF 400 million of translation effects from currencies. These are about 60% in mature markets, 40% in emerging markets. So it's across the board. The strong Swiss franc is something that we work to overcome every year. Oops, sorry. Now let me quickly go through the regions with you. What you see here is that we had a very strong earnings profile with a broad-based growth across all our regions. And we see a bit more detail on the next page. It's just a few highlights by region, starting with North America. We had record net sales and recurring EBIT here with a strong margin of almost 22%. Latin America, it's the 14th consecutive quarter of profitable growth with record recurring EBIT and a strong margin of above 34%. Europe, a record in net sales and recurring EBIT with a margin of almost 16%. Asia, Middle East, and Africa, strong margin expansion here of almost 6%, more than five percentage points to 21.2%. And here also remarkable the divestments that we signed last year and that will be concluded in this year. Looking at solutions and products, we talked a lot about solutions and products in the last quarterly earnings calls. Now we can reaffirm that we had positive growth momentum in the Q4 of last year. And with the sales stabilized now, we also see the margin expanding again. For the sake of completeness, I showed you this chart, I think, since the half-year mark to explain to you what the stocking and destocking means. So I'm probably going to show it for the last time now because that story is complete. You see the effect of stocking here in Q2, Q3 2022. And you see the reverse effect of destocking in Q4, 2022, and Q1, 2023. But then you see now that the levels of our revenues are normalized. So I think we retire this chart now and call the story complete. When we look at financial performance in the P&L, we start with the record recurring EBIT that I already mentioned of CHF 4.76 billion. And then you see in the lines in between here, actually, you see not a lot. This is because in our company, we put everything into our recurring EBIT. We don't put a lot of entries in those lines below. And therefore, what we do in recurring EBIT is really also reflected in our EPS. You see down here, we have a record EPS of CHF 5.42 per share. That's up more than 9% before divestments impairments. We allow ourselves here to exclude the DOJ resolution from last year in order to make this comparable. So a very strong increase in earnings per share. Record free cash flow, we talked about that a lot, CHF 3.7 billion or a bit more than CHF 3.7 billion free cash flow. You see the bridge here. It's nothing unexpected. The change in working capital, the CapEx, taxes, financial expenses, and a mix of other things. What I want to highlight on this chart is there are no one-off effects here. There's nothing that we did in one year that will not be repeated. We have a free cash flow above CHF 3 billion now since five years in a row. And we achieved this level consistently, a record this year, but with very, very good opportunities into next year again. Looking at our net debt, you see the bridge here. Remember, please, that our net debt in 2022 was particularly low at a debt leverage of 0.9 because we had the proceeds from the sale of India. And now this year, you can see with the free cash flow, the acquisitions that we did. But also, with the more than CHF 3 billion returned to shareholders in 2023, we're now at a net debt level of CHF 7.9 billion, which is a debt leverage of 1.2. Very important here for us to say we're committed to a strong investment-grade credit rating, BBB+. And our balance sheet comfortably affords that. Looking a little bit into shareholder returns now, we have good results. So the next question is, what does that mean for the shareholder? Well, what has it meant for the shareholder in the past? In the past years, you see we returned CHF 8.8 billion to the shareholder, roughly 2 of those to buyback, 6 of those to dividends, while we strengthened our balance sheet. So we returned to the shareholder and strengthened our balance sheet. And this is why we're coming from a position of financial strength. And what does that mean going forward? That means 2 things. Number 1, we increase our dividend by 12% from 2.5 CHF to 2.8 CHF. Remember, we pay this dividend from foreign capital contributions. So there's no withholding tax. So we think we probably have the best dividend policy in the SMI. And what we also do, we launch a share buyback program of CHF 1 billion to be completed in 2024. Remember, in 2023, we already had a share buyback program of CHF 2 billion. That was rather triggered by the strong proceeds from the India sales. Now, this share buyback program is triggered by our strong financial results, the strong cash flow, and the very healthy balance sheet. We're going to pay this out of cash at corporate level. There's no additional bonds or debt going to be issued. It's going to be paid out of cash. With that, I would like to pass on to Miljan for the outlook. Good morning and warm welcome to all of you. You have seen it, record performance again from Holcim, quarter by quarter in 2023. This is driven by our superior earnings profile, from our best-in-class EBIT margin to our strong balance sheet and, as Jan explained, deeply embedded performance culture with more than 500 P&L leaders across the world. That's why we believe Holcim is well-positioned to capture further growth. And we are confident about 2024. And therefore, we are guiding for organic net sales growth of more than 4% plus additional growth of more than 2% from our well-run M&A activities. This all will result in overproportional EBIT growth. We discussed our industry-leading EBIT margin of 17.6%. This was really driven by transformation and shift from volume to value, from more attractive markets, markets that are growing, and markets that are profitable. That's why we are confident that EBIT margin in 2024 will reach 18%. Jan said it. We don't have a choice. Free cash flow has to continue five years above CHF 3 billion. So nothing will change in 2024. We need to have strong cash flow to continue to invest in profitable growth and, at the same time, provide value creation to our shareholders. Circularity and decarbonization are at the heart of our strategy. And that's why we will continue to invest in this profitable growth driver. Here, you see our commitment for construction and demolition material recycling. ECOCycle platform was initiated to accelerate the recycling of construction and demolition materials. We have reached 8.4 million tons last year, which is 24% above prior year. And we will continue to deliver another great result this year of 20% to be close to 10 million tons. At the end, in conclusion, Holcim will continue to deliver superior performance. This is indeed driven by our superior teams, by more than 64,000 people that make Holcim a great company to work for. Thank you. Well, thank you, Miljan. Now we can take questions. We will start by the room. Arnaud Pinatel, On Field research, second row. Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry. Question. First of all, congratulations for the Q4. There were impressive results. Congratulations also to Miljan for the new position. But my question is around the growth for Holcim in the future because the debate at the moment is what multiples will be applied to both entities when the spinoff will be down. And we have in mind that in Europe, the priority will be decarbonization. And you can make it profitable. It's clear in what you are saying. But do you intend also to grow in Europe in solution and products? That will be my first question. Secondly, if you cannot go to the US because it will be obviously the new field for the new Holcim USA, knowing that you are exiting also progressively emerging markets, knowing that you are Australian, will you go to Australia? We can see at the moment, it's a very fashionable destination. We have seen CRH. We have seen Saint-Gobain moving fast. So would you grow in Australia? And would you like to acquire more critical size in Australia? I guess it will obviously enhance the growth profile of Holcim, excluding North America. Let me answer the question a bit differently to start with. Then Miljan can give us all the details about Europe and Australia. I think what's important to understand is that in building materials, this is a growth market. You have all the growth trends of urbanization, increasing population. We have to make our buildings more energy efficient, more sustainable. Then we have the new stream of making it circular. So we have amazing megatrends going forward. That's important. That's why it is important for us at Holcim to have this growth strategy and to have it on both sides of the Atlantic. The second aspect is the market size is huge. When you look at the North American market, we provided some data with the presentation on January 28. I think we said this is a $175 billion market for us as of today. We have a market share from 20% in flat roofing all the way down to 2% in aggregates. So we are really positioned, or we have all the potential to grow the company. It's the same in Europe and same in Australia. It's important for me to set the framework right. We have the megatrends for growth. We have plenty of room to grow. Let me start with your quote. Sustainability rhymes with profitability. Your quote. And that's why I'm very, very excited about prospects of decarbonization and circularity in Europe. Yes, Europe has the most advanced and rigid decarbonization framework. But at the same time, there are tools in place to support companies like Holcim to grow. And we discussed it last year during our Decarbonization Day. This will lead to consolidation in Europe. This is helping our prices go up. This is the whole shift from volume to value. And do not forget that in Europe, we still have some growth pockets. I am very optimistic about Eastern Europe, for instance, especially our presence in the two big countries, Poland and Romania. We are seeing a growth. Also, Greece, Spain, they are doing well. So maybe in the short term, we will see soft markets in Europe. In the long term, I'm thinking we will go back to the growth driven by infrastructure but also come back in residential. So all in all, decarbonization and circularity is the key priority for our business in Europe. And we also have developed a strong platform in solutions and products, mortars, precast, and some other business segments. To answer your question about Australia, it's quite encouraging to see the momentum in Australia in the last few weeks, what's happening, all these mega deals. You saw that we are investing in Australia. Last year, we had 2 acquisitions in Australia and New Zealand. We are looking for further opportunities. I believe Australia can have an equally good story on circularity as Europe. And you will probably see more from us on Australian topic. Thank you very much. Just a follow-up question, if I may, regarding the brands because you were very clear, Jan, on the value of these brands. With the spinoff and you have global brands, how does it work? Who is keeping what? Because ECOPlanet and ECOPact are adopted on both sides of the Atlantic. So I suspect that for 1SEM and Elevate, it's easier. But for ECOPact, they. It's already quite focused. So I mean, Holcim will remain Holcim. We are very happy that we have modernized. This Holcim brand came back to one name in all that. Then for North America, we will introduce a new name later this year. On the branding side, if you look at the six brands, you realize that they are already very regionally focused. So the eco brands are dominantly in Europe and also very active in Latin America. They're our customer. They have a high value in a Swiss brand. Whereas North America is very much focused on their own branding stories. So it's quite a good fit. We will push that branding for both companies very strongly. Thank you very much. Second question, maybe. Remo Reznow, Helvetische Bank, first row. Thank you. I would like to come back partly on one of the questions of Arnaud. After the spinoff, if you look into 2025, Holcim will again be a much more cement and ready-mix focused company because most of the transformation was focused on North America. So will we see a similar development in Holcim 2025 going forward as we have seen the last five years in the sense that we will go rather out of cement, not by divesting but by acquisitions in other fields comparable to the last five years? Miljan, that's a question for you. As I mentioned, we already have established platform for solutions and products in Europe. We have concluded several M&A acquisitions in Latin America. We will continue to work on this. To answer your question, yes, solution and products will continue to grow. However, at the moment, for Europe, the priority will be on decarbonization and circularity. Okay. Then on Latin America, I mean, Latin America generates around 11% of sales, about 21% of EBIT on the group, double the margins as in the average. How much of that cash you generate down there is actually available for the group? I mean, can you take it out of these countries? Can you use it for group purposes? Minorities, there are not that many anymore, I think. But there are other restrictions, probably. Steffen, I would say? Yeah. Okay. Happy to answer this one. We actually have a very good cash repatriation out of Latin America, out of all countries. We look on the corporate level at cash in countries and cash at corporate. And almost all our cash sits at corporate, also from Latin America. We have a very active approach to repatriating cash whenever windows of opportunities arise. Yeah. No issues there. Okay. Great. The EBIT margin of 34-point-something%, is that sustainable? Will it even grow further? I hope it's increasing. No, you have to. This is why we tried this time to show you also the development. I mean, we have put the performance culture in place, the performance management in place. We go into branding, into value added. We have guided also for high EBIT margin. I think you can see that this is not limited to one region. Okay. In the Q4, however, I mean, we've seen very strong sales growth in LATAM. I think the most positive surprise was there in the regions. Absolute profit also grew. But the margin was down in comparison to last year. Has that to do with overproportional price increases? Let's look at this year. It's also a quarter only. We have been so successful in the quarter. Latin American are very smart businessmen. They probably were already far ahead in the incentive schemes and maybe made sure they have a strong base for next year. I would not overinterpret the quarter for Latin America. They do excellent. When you go there, I mean, we have also our people. We operate with local people in Latin America, also on the management but trained by us, of course, and within our performance culture. They are the most agile managers for all these cycles you're having. You have the political cycle, the currency cycle, the economic cycle. It's all maybe more volatile in Latin America compared to other markets. They are the master in this, from Argentina to Mexico, from Ecuador to Colombia. They do this very well. The market looks strong. We will see strong results this year. Thank you. We will take the third question from the room. Then we will probably switch to the webcast. Martin Hüsler, ZKB Bank. Thank you. The first question is about the price-over-cost situation. Now we start 2024. Can you give us some indications and also maybe if you even see room for further price increases in certain regions? And the second question, maybe a bit related to that, the CO2 prices have come down sharply. What's the immediate impact on you and then on the whole sector? Does this increase price pressure for cement? No. Look, I start with the second question, Martin. Look, the decarbonization, that's one of the megatrends. And especially in Europe, where we have the Green Deal, with all the regulation and with the carbon scheme and I always said this works excellent for Holcim. The company who decarbonizes the fastest gets a benefit on the cost side. And the company who provides the most sustainable building products for the customer benefits on the customer side. And we are now in this sweet spot. So I always said, for us, the CO2 certificate scheme works excellent at EUR 50. I said before, EUR 100 is a very nice position or anything higher than that. So for us, it's not a concern. We have to see how this is phasing. You also have to see that the current CO2 certificate scheme has a very rapid decrease in certificates starting in 2026. So we should not be too short-term now and think about what's happening this month with the certificates. I think the long-term trends are very clear. On the pricing, we are pricing at Holcim. We are pricing responsibly. Now, you asked me a bit for the guidance for the year. We gave already, I think, a confident outlook that we believe the EBIT margin will further increase. You can also tell from the momentum quarter by quarter that this is the way forward. On the cost side, maybe more important than on the pricing side, you know that we still had quite significant high cost levels in the first half, even in the first three quarters of last year. So in principle, we expect now quite significant cost upsides this year. While the energy and you're all experts to analyze all the different cost buckets, and while energy was already easing in the second half of the year, we still have other big cost buckets, logistics, maintenance, still on very high levels. Here, we expect this year that we are able to bring this into more favorable cost terms. Thank you. Maybe next question from the webcast. We have Élodie Rall from JP Morgan. Hi, Élodie. Hi, Élodie. Can you hear us? In the meantime, we can take other questions from Lothar Lubinowski from Octavian. First row. Sorry. I can speak up. Jan, can you talk a little bit about the dynamics in Solutions and Products? Because the comps was relatively low. The organic growth was 2.8% is good. But it's not really dynamic. What are you seeing there? I mean, simply expect double-digit growth for us this year, nothing less. I mean, we came from the destocking and then the destocking in 2024. That went into October. We saw very good numbers November, December. Let's not talk about months. I think we have now a strong 2024 ahead of us. Solutions and products, why this stocking, destocking was a unique thing in the last 50 years with disrupted supply chains. The very positive aspect of solutions and products, where we do 70% is repair and refurbishment, that's a very constant demand. This is going into the future. Expect very good results from us this year. If we leave destocking aside, so what do you see from the market dynamics? Is it really getting better because it's mainly a U.S. business? No, the market is great. I mean, our contractors, they are booked for the year. So this is why we have a very, very confident forecast. Next question, maybe. Cedar Eblum from Morgan Stanley. Hi, Cedar. Can you hear us? Good morning. Can you hear me? Loud and clear. Go ahead. Perfect. Thank you. Morning, everyone. So I've just got a question on cash flow. In your cash conversion of 58%, is there any difference between your North American business and the remaining assets? And the reason why I'm asking is I want to understand what the cash return profile could be of your ex-North American assets post the split. Is this a business that could continue to pay the group dividends even on a much smaller operating basis? Or is there downside risk to your Holcim dividends post the split? Thank you. Hi, Cedar. Good morning. Look, we have provided quite some comprehensive information on the split on January 28th. We also gave you the timeline that we need now till the second half of the year to give you the full plan forward, transaction structure, capital structure of the two companies. Then we bring you all the data, all the P&L. So you're sneaking this one in, Cedar. What you can see from our January 28th presentation, we have two strong companies with strong earnings profiles. I think it's fair to assume that both entities have a high cash generation. I cannot give you more details at this point because we have to sort out what's the capital structure. If going into the future, that has an effect on the cash flow as well. So we're going to bring you that information later. It's fair to say for today, both companies are very significant cash generation. Okay. Maybe I can just ask it in a different way then. I won't ask for the information from the split. When you think about your solutions and products business and even the group today, the cash conversion is higher than some large-sized assets. So do we need to think about solutions and products being a much higher cash conversion business than the heavy-sized business? Or is it actually that your heavy-sized business is so efficiently run with a very tight CapEx profile? Thank you. Yeah. See, it's kind of different. When you're coming out of cash conversion above 50% like we do or you have a cash flow margin above 13%, what we have and what we plan for the future, we are not able to accept any low cash flows from any of our 4 segments. And we have almost similar cash generation in the 4 segments at the moment. On the one hand, you have a lower capital intensity from solutions and products. But if you analyze our results, we have reduced the capital intensity of our traditional segments a lot over recent years, bringing us to a CapEx level of around 5% of sales. So again, we bring you more data in the future, Cedar. But for now, with the high cash conversion and the high cash margins we are having, it's fair to assume there are no dead bodies at Holcim. There's not one segment not significantly contributing to the cash. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Cedar. Next question from Ebrahim, HSBC. Hello. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, if I may. The first one is about capital allocation. We know that you have a CHF 1 billion share buyback program but on CapEx and acquisition. My second question is about the working capital effect to expect in 2024. Look, we talked about the cash flow before. We are very proud to have this strong cash generation. This will not go away. We plan another cash-rich year. I think even the new CEO is maybe in some competition with the numbers, which is where we want him to be. So just first of all, expect that this cash flow generation will continue for the years to come. And then we have the positive situation that we have a lot of cash to allocate. And we are very happy now, increased the dividend. We are very happy to have the CHF 1 billion share buyback. And it's well covered by this high cash generation. I don't know, Steffen, if you want to talk about it. It's also important to notice that we have the cash at corporate. So the cash all is in Steffen's office. This is another reason. You have companies. They talk about cash. And then the cash is in Argentina or is somewhere else. Our cash is in the CFO's office. No. Can you confirm that, Jan? I answered that question before. We're very successful at repatriating cash into Switzerland. We keep almost all our cash in the corporate group. You asked about working capital. Look, I think it's important to understand our free cash flow is driven by EBIT and EBITDA. Our free cash flow is driven by operational results. Our cash flow is driven by managing all the lines below the operational results as well, as I showed you before. We don't allow to be booked one-offs and exceptional things. It all goes into the operations. Now, working capital is something we manage, something we have an eye on. But the driver of our free cash flow is EBITDA. I think that needs to be very clear. We had a good contribution from working capital in 2023. We made some good advances there. We'll continue on that. But it's not the main driver of our free cash flow. Maybe you tell precisely how much is your cash year-end and how much under your desk. So our cash year-end is about CHF 6 billion. Under my desk is about CHF 5.4 billion. We check his office once a day. My office has a special lock. All right? All right. Thank you, Ebrahim. Next question from the webcast. We have Ephraim Ravi from Citibank. Hi, Ephraim. I think Ravi dropped the line. We will take a question from Ross Harvey, Davy. Hi, Ross. Can you hear us? Can you hear us, Ross? All right. We will take next question from the room then. Tobias Werner from Stifel, third row. Thank you for taking my questions, two if I may. The first one, you've improved your carbon footprint significantly, more than 20% in 2023. When we look at valuations versus the carbon footprint, it tends to improve exponentially from about 1,000 tons of CO2 per million revenue. So would it be possible just to get a sense of your journey going forward on that line? I admit it's our job, really. But it would be helpful. And then secondly, there were two announcements three days ago, one from the Federal Ministry of the Economy and Climate Affairs in Germany about CCS, that that should be facilitated. And a second one about a zero-carbon cement plant to be built in the port of Amsterdam, 1.2 million tons. What do you make of those two announcements for your business? I take the first question. Then I think Milan can give us more clarity. I mean, it basically goes to our point that this decarbonization is the new competitive factor in Europe. And you all know we have in the last two years, there were 10 cement plants granted subsidies by the EU Innovation Fund. And we received 6 out of the 10 grants, which I think just made me myself comfortable that our people do a good job because this decarbonization is about step-by-step improvement. And it's about being faster than others. It's not about being perfect from the start. So I'm very happy to see that. And all this news for us is good news because we are, I would say, leading the sustainability and the decarbonization competition in Europe. And we will be very happy to continue there. From my side, I believe very encouraging news from Germany. As you know, two years ago, we have been awarded the EU Innovation Fund for a project in Lägerdorf in Germany. So German government is now pushing for storage options. We realize that on EU level, without onshore storage, we will not be able to deliver a commitment of 50 million tons per year. That's why the alternative is to accelerate onshore storage. Regarding your last question, I don't feel comfortable commenting on competition. But we know we have exactly the same product portfolio. This is based on slag, fly ash, and some other alternative supplementary cementitious materials. So we can do that today. But the question is, is it scalable? For us, we have a clearly defined decarbonization roadmap starting with all levers from alternative fuels, alternative raw materials to the large-scale carbon capture projects to go down to net zero. All right. Thank you. We will try again the webcast. Ephraim Ravi from Citigroup, Ephraim, can you unmute yourself? Hi. Can you hear me now? Loud and clear. Thanks. Go ahead. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry for the tech glitch. Firstly, you've specified 2% or at least 2% organic growth from M&A. Order of magnitude is about CHF 500 million if I just put some numbers around it. Does this mean that multi-billion EUR or CHF acquisitions are out of the cards for 2024 till you do the split? And can you also give us some guidance as to which geographies are you looking at, i.e., is it more North America, or is it going to be more in Europe? And second question, ECOPlanet and ECOPact, 19% of sales, quite impressive. My understanding was that you were trying to increase market penetration and brand recognition initially before pushing that pricing more aggressively. At what percentage of sales would you feel that we've had critical mass here, and we need to kind of push pricing more aggressively? Yeah. Hi, Ephraim. Look, from our M&A policy, and I was very happy I could share a bit more background information to you today, how we do the deals from family-owned companies at our prime target to our team spot on valuation, on integration, and synergy delivery. And you expect the same from us, please. I think we have on the slide, we have a geographic mix of the acquisitions. And this, you can expect from us. We want to acquire in North America. We want to acquire in Europe. We want to acquire in Latin America, where we also made some very good additions. And I would say these are our prime targets. But we also had 2 acquisitions last year in Australia and New Zealand. So expect from us we did 28 acquisitions last year. I'm not sure if we can do 30 this year or if we will do 20 this year. But I would say a range of 20-30 is a fair assumption. On the bigger ones, Ephraim, what you see also with us, we have a no dilution of our earnings with M&A because we have this disciplined project organization and delivery. And this tends to work better with reasonable-sized acquisitions. And you hear that in the newspaper every day. There are some people thinking that every second big acquisition goes in the wrong direction. And this is a bit my observation as well. So we are very careful. We did bigger acquisitions. We did the Firestone acquisition, the Malarkey acquisition, the Duro-Last acquisition. So we did three acquisitions well beyond CHF 1 billion in valuation. And we don't exclude that. We did actually just—it's less than three years ago we closed the Firestone acquisition. That roofing is with us for 10 years. It's with us less than three years. And we did three major acquisitions in roofing. And you can expect that from us going forward. But you see, we did 78 acquisitions the last five years. And we did three of them. 5% were really big ticket size, so above CHF 1 billion. And I would love to continue that. But the bread and butter of a growth strategy based on acquisition are bolt-on acquisitions. And you can buy them for reasonable multiples. You can integrate them simple. And you have a high synergy, a high synergy delivery, usually 50%-100% synergies on these family companies. And that's our focus going forward. Thank you. Very good. Thanks. The comment on ECOPact and ECOPlanet. For us, the story will continue. To be frank with you, 3-4 years ago, when we launched ECOPact and ECOPlanet the other way around, respectively, we were not anticipating such a growth. Today, these products are sold from New York to Sydney, from Mexico City to Dubai. It's still the only global brand of low-carbon cement and low-carbon concrete. This year, we would like to accelerate our activities on ECOCycle because this is the opportunity now that we need to grab. I would like to reiterate, last year, we did 8.4 million tons of construction and demolition materials recycling. We want to increase that to 20%. In Europe alone, we have more than 19 recycling plants dedicated to construction and demolition materials. That will become our next big momentum in the years to come in addition to ECOPlanet and ECOPact. Thank you. Thank you, Ravi. Next question from the webcast. We will try Ross Harvey from Davy again. Ross, can you please unmute yourself? Can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yes. Please go ahead. Thanks. Okay. My question is on Asia, Middle East, and Africa. I noticed that Q4 saw another nice sequential pickup. Just wondering, can you discuss the momentum there into 2024? And And maybe just under the new structure, what your capital allocation plans are for the region. I know the annual report mentions a number of sustainability-led initiatives will continue. Do you plan to scale that up? I know it's not the type of market that we usually associate with sustainability. But you might just discuss that. Thanks. Hi, Ross. Look, we are managing that region is maybe the most heterogeneous region. It spans from Australia to China to parts of Africa and Middle East. And nevertheless, the region is very efficiently led. We have actually the highest margin increase last year was in Asia, Middle East, Africa. And we are running these countries very well. We have done a significant number of divestment in that region. And we will have another few markets maybe where we can find better owners. And that's, I think, going forward. We will be very value-focused for these regions. And we will have very high returns. Just about capital allocation. Capital allocation. That's the answer for Asia. Capital structure. Can you please repeat your question on capital structure? That didn't come across very clearly. Oh, that was mainly through the capital allocation. So I think you touched on it so much. But would you look at M&A in the region, which is Holcim acquiring? Or do you think that's the region you're happy with your portfolio there? Yeah. Okay. Look, in that region, we have done 2 divestments in 2023. 3 divestments. We signed South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. We have put CapEx into that region. So the capital allocation for the region, EMEA, is not something we would comment specifically upon. But the way we go about in that region is we look at each country separately. And you got very, very well-running businesses in the north belt of Africa. We got Australia. And we got a couple of other very, very well-functioning businesses there that we support. And then on the flip side, you saw some of these countries. But it's also not easy to repatriate cash. And so over time, we look very closely if it's better owned by us or if it's better owned by somebody else. I would say this is the approach. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Ross. We will take the next question from Gregor Kuglich, UBS Bank. Gregor, can you hear us? Well, hi. I hope you can hear me. I've got a couple of questions, please. So on the free cash flow, Jan, I kind of heard you say, "Look at the chart. Draw a line. And that's the trend of the free cash." And obviously, that would imply growth versus the CHF 3.7 billion. At the same time, you're guiding for over CHF 3 billion. Those two may be not inconsistent with each other in theory. But I just want to understand whether that's what you meant or whether we should be thinking of something that could even be down but still over CHF 3 billion. I just want to understand the sort of growth profile of that free cash, please. The second question is on energy cost. So can you just remind us what they actually did last year? So how much did they decline by? At this rate, what would you expect them to go down by in 2024? It seems like that's going to be a big driver for your growth. Then clarification question on the solution segment. Did you say double-digit growth? Was it top line, bottom line comment for 2024? What did you mean to say? Thank you. Hi, Gregor. I take first and third question. And I think Steffen takes the second question. Look, on the cash flow, I think hopefully, we appreciate that we give a very detailed guidance for the beginning of the year. And we give a confident guidance. Is it growth? Is it EBIT margin? I think also the free cash flow is reassuring above CHF 3 billion. However, we left some room for the new CEO to make maybe upgrades to the guidance for the next quarterly reports. So we didn't want to take all the fame away and just take it as a confident guidance for this point in time. On the solutions and products, so I think we rightfully have high expectations for this year. Double-digit is the sales growth already. And then our style, that has to be translated in overproportional EBITs and cash flows. I take the point on energy cost. Our energy cost was down on a per-ton basis in 2023. We expect a further decline in 2024 of our energy cost off, let's say, low- to mid-single-digits%. That trend will continue. How much was it down last year if you have it? I said we had a decline in 2023 on a per-ton basis. We expect that to continue into 2024 by low to mid-single-digit%. Low to single. Perfect. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Gregor. We will take next question from Louis Prieto, Kepler Cheuvreux. Hi, Louis. Can you hear us? I can. Thank you very much for taking my questions, two from me this morning. I understand the relevance of pricing in the investment case of your European footprint in the context of a spinoff. But in your view, what is the long-term growth potential for volumes in Europe? Has the region gone pretty much ex-growth on the volume front in your long-term planning? And the second question is very, very brief. Given where CO2 certificates are at the moment in terms of price, would it make any sense for you to purchase some at these levels in order to have more flexibility in the future? Thank you. Hi, Louis. What region was your first question about? Europe. Oh, Europe. Okay. I let this answer with Miljan. But look, on the CO2 certificates, I mean, we run a very tight performance ship. I always made it clear I'm not a fan of hedging. So to buy now certificates, to waste them in the future, that's not my job. I'm not an investor for Holcim in CO2 certificates. I don't do hedging on other products. We want to have a P&L run on a daily basis, agile, and on performance basis. And this is why we will not purchase CO2 certificates. We want to decarbonize and use less certificates. And you would be surprised if I share with you our CO2 certificate balance we have at the moment. You would be surprised how well-positioned we are. On the hedging, just another comment that you don't misunderstand me is a lot of people talk about the hedging. Usually, always, the companies present how great they are on hedging. I always tell, well, if they are so great on hedging, they maybe should be in private equity or hedge funds or something because that's not my job. If I'm good at hedging, I would be much richer and do something else. Now, to the hedging, what we like to do is long-term contracting. In the past, when we talked sometimes about energy hedging, for example, that's not a hedging. That are long-term contracts. We have today about 50%-60% of our energy sourcing are long-term multi-year contracts, even more so for renewables where we invest or commit to multi-year contracts. That's the right way to do. That gives us a very stable base and no surprises and enables also our management to focus on other areas. I don't want my management to be hedged against energy increases because then they are not sharp enough in the market to ask for the right pricing for our products. This is why hedging for me, that's not my area of competence. We run the company sharp, daily basis P&L. So no CO2 certificates. Regarding volumes in Europe, yes, volumes have been soft in the last two years. But once again, I would like to reiterate that in Europe, it's not about the volumes. It's about value over volumes. That's why we are talking about ECOPact, ECOPlanet. We are talking about decarbonization and circularity. And this will all drive the growth in the years to come. On the bigger scale, volume softness in Europe is driven by residential sector. We know there is a big drop in residential sector in all our key markets. But the shortage of housing is evident in Europe. So at some stage, we will see the reverse. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Louis. We will take the next caller, Arnaud Lehmann from BOA. Hi, Arnaud. Can you please unmute yourself? Hello. Can you hear me? Loud and clear, Arnaud. Go ahead. Very good. Two questions, if I may. Firstly, on capital allocation in North America, you're going to be a U.S.-listed entity, probably a bit less pressure from U.S. investors on decarbonization. So are you still committed to spend CapEx and OpEx on decarbonization in the U.S.? And related to that, on your M&A strategy, you have a much larger CMON business relative to your aggregate business, which I think CMON is twice the size of your aggregate business. Do you feel the need for more acquisitions in the aggregate space to complement your vertical integration in North America? That's my first question. My second question is just a follow-up on Europe. Margins have expanded quite dramatically in the last two, three years. Do you believe this is a sustainable level of margins? And do you think pricing could remain at least stable for 2024? Thank you. Sure, sure. So sure. So when it comes to Europe and the pricing, we are guiding for resilient pricing in Europe. This is driven by several factors which we described today. And also, we went into details during our decarbonization day in November. So I'm confident that even in 2024, we will see a solid price increase in all our key markets in Europe. I did not. Did anyone understand the first question? No? There was. Well, there was two parts. Are you still committed to U.S. decarbonization? And are you still looking to expand your U.S. aggregate business, the acquisitions? Do we need to invest in decarbonization in U.S.? Arnaud, please. Can Can you? Look, we have in all regions, we have a very strong decarbonization roadmap and, for me, even more important, sustainable building solution roadmap for the customer. But it differs. We have in Europe now the very strong regulation and incentives from the Green Deal. And in the U.S., I would say the speed and the regulation is different. So we have an adapted roadmap for the U.S. All right. Thank you, Arnaud. We will take next question from the room. Any question? Gentlemen at the first row. Freddy Hauslau, Octavian Zurich. It just strikes me with the listing in the US, you've built up a fantastic roofing business which must have a lot of technology. It's got scale. It's got a lot of things. And now we have a European entity with much less of that. How confident can you be about repeating that? It strikes me as being a very attractive segment to be in. Now, I'm talking about Holcim ex US. How does the future look in roofing? Is there enough potential out there to repeat the same thing? Is that really a target? I mean, look, let me just start to answer. First of all, we are very fortunate to establish that roofing business in the most attractive U.S. market. I think if you can select, that's where you want to be. So very happy to have that. We have so much room now to grow in the U.S. We shared already. It's a $40 billion+ market. We are just scratching the surface as number three player. So I think the North American team has to focus on North America. We can double the business there. We can go then also into connected application areas. We can go into the facade. We can even go stronger in insulation. So there's a lot of vision behind the U.S. business. And I think then for Miljan, it's fair to say that he has built up a very nice mortar platform for solutions and products. He has a small roofing business. But for him, the big growth avenues is decarbonization and circular construction. Thank you. I think. Next question from the room. Eugene Perger from Research Partners. I have two questions. The recycling business, is that kind of a business model on its own? Those are profit centers? Or is it kind of a side service to building customers that you deal about their old materials? And the second question is that more or less, everybody is hurrying up to build up their solutions and products divisions. Is there a competition for those roofing companies, consulting companies, and so? Isn't there the danger that you start to overpay those bolt-on acquisitions as everybody is doing that at the moment? I take the second question. It was interesting for me that someone, I don't know, was frustrated that well, I was, first of all, surprised that it was possible for us to enter the roofing space such as scale. I think if you turn back time three years earlier, I don't think the competition would allow us to buy those iconic companies, Firestone, Malarkey, Duro-Last. I mean, they are the most iconic roofing companies. And they are all with us today. So I think while we did this very well, I think there might be bitter taste with other people. And again, if you turn back time, maybe the pricing would be different because you see our results. We make this work for us. We have high synergies. We paid very reasonable multiples. So we didn't overpay. We talked about this earlier, that our focus, as we did three larger acquisitions above CHF 1 billion. The other acquisitions are all bolt-on acquisitions. And this is 28 acquisitions last year. So we are feeling very well. We have adjusted our valuation a bit. The times are a bit different. Sometimes you have a buyer market, a seller market. So I think our valuations we pay currently for bolt-ons is lower than what was paid a year ago or two years ago. So actually, to your question, I think we see an opposite trend at the moment. But very important for us, we have that disciplined project, a project organization where we have strict valuations, standalone basis, then integrated with synergies. And that's the business plan the people are asked to execute on. We're very disciplined. That's why we have no dilution in our results from acquisitions. That you can expect from us going forward. So to answer your first question on circularity and construction and demolition materials, it's a fully self-independent P&L. There are a few things related to it. So what does it mean? First of all, for us, it has to be in the big cities if the position is critical. For example, London is today the biggest urban mine in Europe with tens of millions tons of construction and demolition materials generated each year. And majority of this ends up in the landfills. So this is a truly growth opportunity for us that will last in the years to come. Secondly, this business of recycling construction and demolition materials is highly synergetic to our existing businesses, our existing traditional businesses like cement, ready mix, and aggregates. So we see a great opportunity to grow in volumes, in the net sales, at very healthy and profitable margins of double digit. All right. Thank you, Eugene. If we take more questions from the room. Time for lunch. Maybe you take Eve, and then we go for lunch. All right. Well, next question from Eve Bromhet, Société Générale. That will be our last question. Yes. Go ahead, Eve. We can hear you. Eve. Yes. Can you hear me back? Yeah. Now we can hear you. Please go ahead. All right. Apologies for that. Yeah, just a quick question on the scope impact in Q4. Your Q4 EBIT impact from M&A was very, very negligible, I think, at CHF 4 million versus the impact on revenues, which is at around CHF 240 million. So I just wanted to elaborate if you could elaborate, sorry, on this specific question. And then a second question on PPA amortization. Just wanted to understand how much is booked in 2023 and looking forward at 2024 as well. Thank you very much. So I would take the one on the Q4 EBIT from M&A. Look, it's a very easy explanation. These businesses that we acquire new in the first year, they have startup costs. They have certain costs to be put in order to get the business up and running. And those costs usually incur at the first 3-6 months. So that's why the EBIT contribution in the first months is a little lower. And then it catches up with the run rate. We watch this very, very diligently so that we make sure we always hit our business plans at the milestones that we set. But in the first few months, of course, you have costs to get the business up to speed, get the accounting right, get the IT right, things like that. That's the reason. Okay. Good. Good? Good? All right. Well, thank you very much. With this, we close our Q&A. Thank you for joining us. Have a great day. So again, it's a big pleasure to have you all here in the room. We can later experience a bit more the new Holcim materials, recycled and low carbon. We have lunch together. Please note, we have the management team around. So we have Oliver, our head of Latin America, is with us. We have Martin, our region head for Asia, Middle East, Africa. We have Jamie, Solutions and Products. We have Tufik for North America with us. So please feel free to get more background or details you'd like to have. And look forward to having lunch with you. Thank you.