Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I hope that you have had the time to receive and look at our press release and to go through the highlights. Let me sum up our first quarter sales performance. Our consolidated sales for the first quarter were EUR 10,379,000,000, which means that we had a record organic growth in the quarter with like-for-like sales up 14.3% compared to Q1 2020. As we started to see the first impact of the coronavirus pandemic, especially in the second half of March 2020, it is also worth looking at the growth compared to Q1 2019. We report also very strong growth on this basis with like-for-like sales up 9%. These figures demonstrate how our comprehensive solutions for sustainability and performance allowed us to capitalize on the good dynamics seen in our markets, especially renovation in Europe and construction in the Americas and in Asia Pacific. I now hand over to Sreedhar who will give you additional information about these first quarter sales, including by segment. Thank you, Pierre-André, and good evening to everyone. Let me give you more details about our Q1 sales. As Pierre-André said, we have had a very good start to the year with a record like-for-like Q1 sales increased 14.3% versus Q1 2020 and 9% versus Q1 2019. The currency impact was negative 3.8% for the quarter, mainly driven by the weakness of the U.S. dollar, the Brazilian real, and other emerging market currencies compared to the euro. We saw a small positive structural impact reflecting mainly the integration of Continental Building Products from February 2020. Now, coming back to the like-for-like growth. Pricing accelerated to 2.6% positive in Q1, and we continue to increase prices in Q2 in the more inflationary cost environment we started seeing. Given the recent surge in all raw materials and energy costs, we now expect EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million of inflation for the full year, with more impact in H2. Given the good start to the year, we are confident we will be able to compensate the inflation for the year. We saw strong volume growth up 11.7% versus Q1 2020 and up 5.8% versus Q1 2019, continuing on from the good trends we saw in Q4. I will now give you some more details by segment. High Performance Solutions saw continued sequential improvement with like-for-like sales up 11.8% versus Q1 2020 and 2.7% versus Q1 2019. Mobility grew double digit against the weak comparison basis of Q1 2020 and was only slightly below the Q1 2019, pulled down by Europe alone while the sales to the Chinese and American markets grew strongly. Compared to the pre-COVID base of Q1 2019, we continued to outperform strongly in our markets thanks to our exposure to electric vehicles and our high value-added products and solutions. Industry also saw double-digit growth versus Q1 2020 and grew slightly versus Q1 2019. Consumable goods related activities were boosted by DIY markets, whereas the improvement in industrial markets was more muted. In terms of activities related to our customers' investment cycles, things are improving sequentially but are still down versus Q1 2019. The construction industry and life sciences businesses continued to enjoy good growth. Turning now to Northern Europe, where sales growth was driven by renovation. Like-for-like sales were up around 5% both versus Q1 2020 and Q1 2019, as the region was only slightly impacted by the pandemic at the start of 2020. Volumes were boosted by some pre-buy in March ahead of announced price increases. In Nordic countries, distribution saw particularly good momentum thanks to the success of our omni-channel digital strategy, allowing us to make the most of a supportive renovation market. In Germany, we acquired Brüggemann, which offers innovative modular timber construction solutions, boosting the group's growth in light and sustainable construction. In the U.K., we saw strong growth versus Q1 2020 and stable sales versus Q1 2019, with slight growth in distribution. Coming to Southern Europe, we saw a strong sales momentum in renovation. Like-for-like sales were up nearly 20% versus Q1 2020 and nearly 10% versus Q1 2019. Volumes were boosted by some pre-buy sales in March ahead of announced price increases and benefited from more household spendings towards renovation. France drove this growth with sales up double digits versus Q1 2019. In a strong renovation market helped by stimulus measures, we benefited from our energy-efficient solutions, both manufactured and sold through our distribution and digital solutions. Elsewhere, Italy benefited from support from energy-efficient renovation via tax credits. In the Netherlands, we started benefiting from the recent acquisition of Strikolith in the fast-growing exterior insulation system market. Regarding the Americas, we saw significant sales growth on supportive markets with like-for-like sales up over 20%, both versus Q1 2020 and Q1 2019. This region also saw volumes boosted by some pre-buy ahead of announced price increases. North America saw strong like-for-like sales up nearly 20% versus Q1 2019, with growth driven by particularly strong demand and an acceleration in prices. Being able to offer the group's full range of solutions for customers through our local organization is clearly paying off and accelerating the growth in sales. All main businesses saw significant growth, including Interior Solutions, which continues to benefit from the very successful integration of Continental Building Products. Latin America saw like-for-like sales up over 30% compared to both comparison periods. This growth was thanks to both volumes and prices, which kept pace with inflation and despite the more challenging health context in Brazil, in particular, at the end of the period. Thanks to the local organization and an approach in which the group's full range of solutions can be offered to customers, the region continues to see sales synergies and market share gains. Lastly, our Asia Pacific region saw a return to strong sales growth with like-for-like up over 30% versus Q1 2020 and 15% versus Q1 2019. China doubled its sales compared to Q1 2020 and showed strong growth versus Q1 2019 thanks to good underlying market and market share gains. India showed double-digit growth versus the pre-COVID 2019 level, despite the health situation getting worse at the end of Q1. Southeast Asia continued to be mixed, but Vietnam saw more market share gains. To sum up, a very good start to the year. Strong volumes as our new customer and solution-driven organization enabled us to gain share in a number of countries and markets. Good pricing momentum, given the increasing inflation. I would say overall, an excellent quarter. I will now hand over to Pierre-André for concluding remarks. Now I'd like to make a few comments about the outlook and our priorities for the rest of the year. We are confirming our outlook for full year 2021. In a macroeconomic and health environment which remains affected by uncertainties, the dynamic in our main markets proved upbeat at the start of 2021, especially renovation in Europe, as well as construction in the Americas and in Asia Pacific. We have clear priorities as we set out in February. First, the improvement in the group's profitable growth profile through the continuation of our portfolio optimization, outperformance of the markets, thanks to our range of integrated solutions for customers, our strategy of differentiation and innovation, and our ESG achievements, including carbon neutrality by 2050. Secondly, a significant increase in the operating margin compared to the 2018 margin of 7.7%, and ongoing strong discipline in terms of free cash flow generation, driven by constant focus on the price-cost spread, post-COVID cost reduction of EUR 150 million in 2021, maintaining the structural drivers for improvement in operating working capital, focused CapEx of around EUR 1.5 billion, and a continued reduction in non-operating costs. To conclude, as you will have seen in the press release, for 2021, the group is targeting a significant like-for-like increase in operating income with an improvement of more than 100 basis points in the operating margin compared to the 7.7% margin in 2018, assuming, of course, that volumes remain to their 2018 levels. This will confirm the success of our Transform & Grow plan. Sreedhar and I are now happy to answer any question you may have. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have a first question from Yves Bromehead from Exane BNP Paribas. Sir, please go ahead. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll have two, if I can. The first one is on your outlook. You haven't changed your margin guidance at this point, and I appreciate Q1 is a small quarter, but as we sit here with volumes being so far ahead of 2019 levels, especially in higher margin divisions, and with the price-cost spread still being quite positive, sort of begs the question as to, is there any reason, ex COVID-19 uncertainties, why you wouldn't be able to get towards the margins that you have achieved in H2 2020? That's my first question. My second one is on the portfolio rotation. We recently saw the announcement of one of your peer in the U.K. merchants launching a review of its portfolio. Based on the data that we have, I think your U.K. distribution business is still under some pressure. I was wondering, what is your strategy here? If you could help us understand if you are below or at or above breaking even in the U.K. distribution segment, that would be really helpful. Thank you very much. Concerning your first question, I can tell you we are very confident to meet our guidance. As you remember, we have had a target for two years in our plan to reach 8.7% by 2021, which was 100 basis point above the level we had in 2018. For a long period of time, many of you didn't put a lot of attention to that. I reminded in October that it was still our target. That's why we thought at the beginning of this year, it was important to remind that. That being said, if you look carefully at the guidance, the guidance says more than 100 basis points above 7.7%. That means that more than 8.7%. This guidance, I don't see why I will need to change that, but you can consider that as a floor. If you ask me whether I am comfortable about the fact that we are going to have a significant increase in our operating income, I can very happily confirm that. Second question on U.K. distribution. First, we are quite pleased with the evolution of the business in the U.K., which in fact performed better than what we thought in June last year. The second half was better, clearly, although the environment remained fragile, and we have seen in the first quarter, a very good dynamic in our performance in U.K. distribution, with like-for-like sales. In fact, if you compare with 2019, we said we are slightly positive. Having in mind that we have reduced our number of outlets by around 10%. In fact, we have a very significant like-for-like increase, if I use the definition that some other companies are using. We are quite pleased with our performance in the U.K. That being said, there are some parts, and I repeat what I said a few months ago, we have analyzed and reviewed strategically our business in distribution in the U.K., and we have concluded that there are some brands that we may divest when the market condition and it's appropriate. This review has been done. We are in no rush. The situation is improving. We will act when we think it's the best time for the company. Thank you very much for that. Can you just specify if in the U.K. now you're at breakeven or not? No, we are clearly positive in the U.K. In the U.K. distribution, yes? Yes, clearly. Okay. Thank you very much. We have been in the second half of 2020. Thank you. Next question from Jean-Christophe Lefèvre-Moulenq from CIC. Sir, please go ahead. Hello? Yes, we can hear you. Yes. [Non-English content]. Good evening. I have two question, if I may. First one, could we have maybe more flavor on the month of March? Can you confirm that we had an acceleration of the underlying growth, excluding disruptive issues of the COVID first? Secondly, we have an excellent price effect in the Americas. Can we have more flavor? Is that due to a particular business or to a particular country? Many thanks. I will start and maybe Sreedhar will complete especially on pricing. The month of March has been a very good month. Nevertheless, I think we compare with 2019 because in the second part of the month of March, in a number of countries, especially Southern Europe, the U.K., India, was under complete lockdown. You remember, the 5% drop we had in like-for-like sales in the first quarter was entirely due to the second half of the month of March. The comparison with March 2020 is not relevant internally. With Benoit, we compare everything with 2019, when we look at the business. Compared to 2019, the month of March was better than January and February, I would say for two main reasons, even though January and February were good. There are two main reasons. First, January and February in 2021, in some exterior activities, we had an impact of the weather, which we recovered in March, where we had the good weather in March. The second point that you can read in our press release, and I will let Sreedhar complete, and that's a big difference with the years before, especially in Europe, but also in the U.S., is that this year we are able to have price increase regularly. We had at the beginning of the year, and we think that in some countries, we have had a little more volume in March than we would have normally expected because of price announcements for the months to come, which also is good news because it means that the price increase are going to stick. I think that the month of March, to answer your question, was very good, but I can confirm that the month of April is not very different from the month of March. Okay. We are going for a very good April. Maybe, Sreedhar, you want to add something on pricing? Yeah, I will give a little more color because I think the pricing has been one of the most important priority. You have seen, this is something that all the regions and the businesses have taken a proactive step. Last year itself, the whole pricing initiative started from third quarter onwards. we have achieved a sequential price improvement in all the four regions for the second consecutive quarters. That's a very good focus. Particularly on Americas, it was much more frequent price increase. I think they made the best use of the market dynamics, which was quite favorable. That's also a lot of focus on the pricing, doing lot of detailed work, trying to optimize. we see that good results. I think there is a lot of good work has been done. As Pierre-André said, the price increase, we have also announced for the second quarter. There are plenty of pricing initiatives in the second quarter. Particularly in Americas, if you take Exterior Solutions, we made the price increase in April, and there is another price increase we have announced for June. For gypsum and insulation Interior Solutions, we had a price increase in January, we have another price increase in April. As Pierre-André said, there are frequent price increase, and it is something which is required in a current context. I think the team has been extremely dynamic and proactive. Just a follow-up question regarding the price hikes in Americas. Do we have a better dynamic in Latin America or in North America? That was also my question. You have seen that overall price increase in Americas is 7%, and both North America and Latin America have done a good job. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Elodie Rall from JP Morgan. Madam, please go ahead. Elodie? Madam? Oh. Madam? Sorry, I was on mute. Sorry. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello? Yes. Sorry. Thanks. Hi. I'll go fast then, sorry. If I can continue on the topic of the pricing, can you put that into context with regard to the cost inflation side? Very strong price performance, more to come. Does that mean that we can expect price cost to be broadly positive actually for 2021? Is that now the base case? That's my first question, really putting that in context of cost inflation. Second, could you give us some progress on your divestments that are ongoing? I'm thinking Lapeyre, Pont-à-Mousson, the Netherlands distribution. Thanks a lot. Sreedhar will answer the first question, and I'll take the second one. Elodie, price-cost spread, we started a good year. Started the year in a positive note. The first quarter has been good. You're seeing the inflation has gone up, particularly in the last two months. Most of the raw materials have gone up. In this context, at this point of time, I would say that we are very confident to compensate the inflation for the whole year. Concerning the divestments which are happening, Lapeyre, we are in the final stage. We have finished the period of consultation with the union, and we have still a few administrative formalities. This should be done by the summer. Netherlands is pursuing. We have also administrative antitrust procedures which are going on, but it's proceeding. Concerning Pipe, you have seen that we have divested our business in China. We were forced to close, and we sold the building and land in very good condition three years ago of our main plant, but we had another one. Strategically, it was not very viable in the long term. We have been able to sell it in good conditions to management buyout. That is signed and should be closed in the next few months. On the other hand, we don't have, at the moment, short-term projects concerning the rest of our Pipe division. Our assessment on Pipe is that the market going forward of the water will be a good market, but as I said several times, the synergies with Saint-Gobain, which existed, don't exist anymore. I think it's a good assumption that at some point, we will find a way for Pipe to have its own life. I don't think this is going to happen soon. Short term, our priority is to work on the improvement of the profitability of the Pipe business, which is a business where the demand is coming back. Beware, we have cost inflation, which is quite high, and we are making also progress on productivity. That's what I would say about Pipe. I think they were the three topics. I can add that we are constantly continue to monitor our portfolio. There may be more acquisitions and more divestments in the next few months. Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Next question from Sven Edelfelt from ODDO BHF. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Hello, good evening, and thank you for taking my question. Two, if I may. The first one, I think you are merging some of your distribution outlets. I'm thinking about Décoceram on Point.P. Is it business as usual, or is it part of another move to reduce cost on top of what has already been done with Transform & Grow? That's the first question. A second question on pricing. The pricing on the industrial part is only 0.4%. Just wondering why is it a bit light? Is it a matter of mix, Mobility versus industry? One of the other might be a bit light, I would say. Or is it the spread that is good enough for you? Also on this topic, you mentioned some restocking effect just before the price increase. Can you perhaps quantify this impact on the Q1 sales? Okay. I will take the first one, and Sreedhar will take the second one. No, on Décoceram, that's a very small question. At your level, you can consider it business as usual. In fact, Décoceram, for those who are interested, it's a specialist business in tiles. We have a lot of showroom also on tiles in Point.P, we are going to merge this showroom, having in mind that Point.P, in tiles, is probably eight times bigger than Décoceram. You can consider it business as usual. The second question, which is when you call industrial, in fact, you mean. High Performance Solutions. High Performance Solution. Yeah. Sreedhar? In High Performance Solutions, you just have to keep in mind there is a comparison base effect of last year. Q1 2020 was up by 1.5%. There is a price increase initiative in all the industrial markets, clearly. Construction industry, life sciences, the prices are going up. Mobility is certainly much more challenging. However, I would say that the margins are improving due to the mix. We have a positive mix. All the cost reduction initiatives we took. Overall, for the High Performance Solutions, the price-cost spread is neutral for the first quarter. Okay. When you say Mobility is challenging, does that mean it's negative, actually? The Mobility, you don't increase the price month after month, because the service, it's a long-term contract. At this point of time, many times in Mobility, the mix which makes a big difference. You know that we are into more and more high value-added products and in electrical vehicles. That helps us to compensate this and have a good situation in the margin. Yeah. Price is not really meaningful. Yeah. As such, It's a mix- Yeah. ...for automotive car. Thank you very much. Glass, automotive glass, sorry. Thank you. Next question from Eric Lemarié from Bryan Garnier. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Hello. Thanks for taking my question. I got three, if I may. The first one, you mentioned in your press release the impact of the reallocation of household savings toward renovation spending d o you see any risk of a slowdown in renovation once the crisis will be behind us and maybe restaurants open again and the savings of our tool maybe spent elsewhere? That's my first question. Second question regarding the Grenfell Tower inquiry. Is it going in the right direction for you? Do you have any fresh, maybe positive news? Hello? He disappeared. Hello? You have the third question? No. Mr. Lemarié, you are connected. He was cut off. Anyway, I will start to answer the first question about renovation. It is true that at the moment, people have savings, and they have less opportunity to spend. Clearly, home is an area where they can spend their money. That's a factor which is positive. I believe that this trend will continue because with this new life, people are with home working, which is not going to stop. There are many projects which are going to continue. That's the first reason. The second reason is that when you look at the order backlog of our customers is growing very strongly, which means that if you want to do renovation work at the moment in many countries, you are not going to do it before quite some time because the craftsmen are all busy. I think there is a pent-up demand, which is going to drive us for quite a while. The third comment is that the Green Deal energy efficiency packages is really just starting. The only country where we have seen something in 2020 was Italy. In France, it started in the end of February, beginning of March. It's starting now in a few other countries in Europe, I think that we are just at the beginning of this, I think this is going to drive us for quite a few years. The renovation trend, I think, is going to be good for quite a while. Second question on Grenfell, Sreedhar, you can comment, basically, there is no news to report. Yeah. Correct. There's no news to report. Nothing to say compared to where we were two months ago. Exactly. We continue to cooperate. Yeah. I don't know whether [Non-English content] Lemarié is back. Yes, he's always connected. He had a third question, I don't know. Maybe we can move to the next question. We move to the next one and maybe, yeah. No problem. Next question from Robert Gardiner from Davy. Sir, please go ahead. Good evening. Well done on the results. I'll ask two quick ones myself. One on the, just go back on the cost inflation. I think you mentioned EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million, and it was previously EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million. Is it more raw materials versus energy? Can you give a flavor of what's in there? Is it more, I don't know, steel, cement versus energy costs? Give us a sense of that. Likewise, I see in different parts of the statement you talk about supply chain disruption in, I think, HPS around Mobility and in North America as well. I'm just wondering what you're seeing there and how impactful that is. Thank you. Sreedhar? Yeah. The recent surge in the inflation is actually in many raw materials costs. It is not just energy. If we have to make it simpler, I would say 1/3 of this inflation is coming from all chemicals like resins, binders, additives, or metals, steels, profiles. The second 1/3, I would say, is all oil related. Basically, asphalt, energy cost, and then the transportation cost is going up. The other 1/3, I would say, is the raw materials like paper, gypsum, cement, and sand. Actually, you will see across, it is not just in one or two items. Coming to your second question, challenges on supply chain. Yes, you are right. There are supply challenges related to supply chain for many reasons. As you rightly said, it's winter storm in Texas has disrupted the chemical supply in the U.S. The electronics chips shortage in the automotive sector, so far for us, we had a very little impact because of, again, the product mix we have, more into value-added and electrical car. Many of the OEMs privilege the high value-added car manufacturing. There is a certain uncertainty in this area. We need to remain vigilant as we progress. There were also challenges related to logistics, and also we have to keep in mind that the inventory level was also low in general, in all of us. We had a low inventory, and when the demand is strong, you also have this challenge. At the end of the day, I would say, even though we have these challenges on a day-to-day basis in the last two, three months, I would say the teams have done an excellent job in making a very close monitoring, finding alternate solutions to manage the current situation very well. I would again insist here that the new organization, which is local organization, is in a way, again, visible, the effectiveness of that, where you see that the country CEO is hands-on working with the supply chain team to make sure that the business is not suffering in his country. There is a bigger focus, bigger ownership. Far, so good. Yeah. We have to remain vigilant. A lot more work, but no impact. As of now. Yes. Yeah. That's great. Thank you. Next question. Hello? Hello? I think the next one is Nabil Ahmed. [Non-English content] [Non-English content] No, sorry. I'm here. Yes. Next question. We are waiting for you. Yeah, sorry. Next question from Nabil Ahmed from Barclays. Please go ahead. Yeah, good evening. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. All right. Thanks for taking my questions, and congratulations for the very strong start to the year. I had two, actually. First one about India. Could you please update on the situation in the country and how potentially your activities are affected? If you take the last few weeks, really, an update on the situation would be useful. The second question was more on the potential constraints on the growth potential. At what point do you feel you're going to start to see labor shortages? You alluded to supply constraints, which I think is more a temporary factor, but at what point you're going to start to see craftsmen being fully saturated? If you take the example of France, for instance, I think it was the case in the past that craftsmen were reluctant to hire, and we saw renovation market probably not fully unleashing its potential. You're already on a strong growth trend compared to 2019 in France. MaPrimeRénov' has not really started to generate some business. There's potentially incremental benefits from the Green Deal. Where is the point at which you think you're going to start to see some saturation on the supply side? Thank you. On India, I think better that Sreedhar who has some inside information more than anyone else. I let him answer. Yeah. Nabil, it's certainly a challenging situation. Even though as of now it had a very limited impact on the business and this is typical Indian mentality where you keep going on the business as usual, even though there are a lot of challenges ahead of us. It is very tough. Last few weeks has been extremely difficult. We are very much monitoring very closely. Again, the top priority for us is the safety of our employees. We are taking all the necessary precautions and measures, and making sure. We vaccinate our people, yeah. Huh? We vaccinate our people, yeah. [Non-English content]. Exactly. You know that in India, the vaccination is going in a very fast pace. 1st of May, everyone more than 18 years old can go and get vaccinated without giving any explanation. That's the kind of mobilization is happening in the country. I personally feel that they will bounce back very strongly. This is, again, my emotion says that the country will come back. So far in terms of business. Business, no. In March and April, we have had no impact, huh? You have seen our numbers on Asia. Yeah. The biggest contributor to that is China and India and Vietnam. I would say these are the three big contributors. So far it's- Yeah. It's going very well. Yeah. On your question on labor shortages, I would say to some extent we already have it. We have it with a very strong growth. If you look at, if I take just France, which is one example, we have seen the addition of 25,000 job more in our customer base in the last few weeks. I think that this saturation is going to stay. That's why the order backlog is very big. At the same time, we are growing our sales. I think it's exactly the same situation in the U.S. I think progressively, the workforce in our customer base is going to grow. We are at the same time saturated, which by the way, is not bad in terms of pricing for everybody. You may have seen also that we have debottlenecking. We have launched a few new plants, so we'll be able to accommodate a strong demand in renovation for the next few years. Okay. Can I squeeze just a last question? Just wanted to double-check. Did you mention at some point that April was broadly in line with March in terms of growth potential? The reason I'm asking, of course, is to try to get a sense on, because you've mentioned and you've been alluding a lot on advanced purchases- Yeah. ...in anticipation of the price hike. Well, there are- No growth differential between March and April, it's not that much of a factor, is it? There is still one more day to go, I think April is going to be very strong. Yes. In most geographies, and also in our global businesses. Not very different from the trend we have seen in March. Yes. That's very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Josep Pujal from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello, everybody. Two questions from me, please. The first one is on this comment that you have made for several geographies, which is that in March, you had volumes boosted in advance of the price increases that you had announced for Q2. I guess that I would say this is quite unusual comment from you, and I guess that this implies that the price increases announced are significant. Is this the right reading that we have to do about that? Can you be a little bit more specific about the figures? Can we say that it could be double than the 2.6% that we are seeing so far? My second question is on the new construction market. We see that renovation is being very strong for the reasons you mentioned. We see in some countries, and for instance, France, where the new construction, the order books are down 25%, something like that. When do you think it will impact you? It's already in Q2, or it's more in the second part of the year? Thank you. Sreedhar, you want to. I think, Josep, the fact that there is the push on the sales, it reflects the market dynamics and the seriousness with which the price announcement has been taken. For me, it is a more positive news and not that because we are increasing a high price increase and that is why there is a pre-buy. Don't make such calculation of doubling the price increase in the second quarter. On your question on new construction, as you know, the situation is very different country by country. I guess your question is related to France, Josep. In France, I would say that we have seen these numbers on permits and start have been bad for now more than two years. In fact, I would make some comments. First of all, if you look into details, there is a big difference between collective and social housing and individual housing. In fact, in individual housing, it's not going down anymore. The statistics of the last six months are quite okay. It happens that Saint-Gobain, especially in our distribution business, but I would say overall, we are much more present in individual housing. That's why the sales in our distribution activities in France, in fact, are not suffering from this trend. I don't think we are going to see significant impact because the drop in activity in collective housing is already happening. I remind you what I have told you several times during the last 18 months, which is that when there is a drop in new, it's compensated by renovation, because, generally, people have a tendency to our customers to prefer to work on new. When there is a little less new, they reduce the backlog in renovation. The good news is that the backlog in renovation, in fact, is still increasing. That's for France. In fact, we have also a little bit the same in the U.S. with and the trend, and that's also related to COVID, I would say. We have seen a big surge in the housing permits and starts in the U.S. with single-family housing, which is also in terms of quantity of materials for us, quite positive. The trend in new anyway is good in the U.S., but it's even better in single-family. Understood. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Sir, please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good evening, gentlemen. Just one question on my side. You confirm a CapEx spending for this year at EUR 1.5 billion. I appreciate that. It went down relative to the last few years on the back of your focus on free cash flow generation, and that's very welcome. On the other hand, you are seeing very good momentum in demand, and you sound quite optimistic about the short, but also the medium-term growth outlook with the European Green Deal and the renovation wave. Do you believe that the EUR 1.5 billion is enough in terms of capacity going forward? Is there a potential for you to increase this CapEx to cover the demand? I would say, Arnaud, the main priority of Benoit at the moment is to have people delivering on CapEx. Because with the COVID situation, when you start, for instance, a new plant, you need people to come from various countries. It's not that easy. We are starting our plan, but we are trying to ramp up. I would say that in the second part of 2020, we spent less than expected, and I would say a little bit less than what we wanted. At the moment, we are not putting our feet on the brake, but I am comfortable that we will land close to this number. Yeah. In any case, I think we are not going to make compromise on the growth CapEx. No, we are not going to make compromise, but the only issue is that some of these growth CapEx are sometimes a little bit late, because of some subcontractors who are not working, are not able to be on the site. We manage, but if anything, we are a little bit late compared to a little bit in advance at the moment. Thank you very much. In fact, that means that we may also have a little more CapEx on the second half than on the first half, I think. Sreedhar, you? Yeah. Thank you. Next question from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Sir, please go ahead. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Questions rather. The first one is just to come back on the price-cost spread. If you just give us some help, maybe, on the new raw material guidance of, call it EUR 650 million, I think is the midpoint. Would it be fair to say that you need 3%-ish price increase to cover that, if I look at your industrial sales? We can get a sense of what's a realistic price expectation for this year, and taking into account the comment that you expect to be around neutral. First question. Second question is, I think in one of your responses or remarks, you were suggesting perhaps there would be more acquisitions in the months ahead. Was that just a side comment, or are you flagging that we should be thinking about perhaps something slightly bigger, so rather than just bolt-ons? The third question is just maybe on your guidance. I appreciate your guidance is for flat volumes versus, I think, it's 2018 being the baseline. I guess that's now looking, forgive me, but probably a little bit conservative. I guess the question is, and I don't expect you to guide me specifically to volumes, but if I tell you, I don't know, one percentage point of additional volume, what impact does that have on margin? I don't know if there's a rule of thumb we can say, I don't know, for every point of additional revenues against the baseline, you think margins would be X higher because of operational leverage. I don't know if that's math that you could help us with. Thank you. Sreedhar, you want to start? Yeah. On price, your number is correct. Three-ish is something which should compensate the inflation, the industrial part. Remind you, we are already in the first quarter, we have 3% price increase in industrial part of the businesses. What is important to keep in mind is with all that announcements we are making in Q2, this price increase will help us to deal with the second half, which we have a base which will be a much tougher base, because last year, if you remember, we had 1.4% price increase. We just have to factor that, and that is why I remain confident that we should be able to compensate the inflation for the year. Yep. We are on the very track for as of now, we have been cautious on that. We started, I remember, in September last year, so we have been ahead, and we try to stay ahead because of what Sreedhar is talking about on the cost. Far so good. The fact that we may have a higher volume than in 2018, yes, if you look just on the first quarter, it's between 9% and 10% more volume than in 2018. I have no idea whether we will continue at that level. If you assume that, yes, we should have a better margin in 2021. On acquisitions, I just said that comment that we are constantly having small acquisition and small divestitures. I'm not flagging anything special. We are constantly reviewing things. As I said in February, we are careful at the moment. Prices are high. We say no more often than we say yes, and I don't exclude anything, but I don't have anything specifically in mind at the moment. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Laurent Runacher from Exane AM. Sir, please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Congratulations on your great results. I was also in the same direction of Gregor, because in the past you used to say that your operational leverage when doing an additional 1% volume was in the range of 15% EBIT margin on the distribution divisions and 30% for the industrial divisions. Is it a good rule of thumb to use, given the fact that you've been in a quite positive environment, also implementing the right price increase to offset the raw material increase? Well, I think we have already talked a lot about that. I remind you, it's a sales call, so we will talk about that when we publish our results in July. As a rule of thumb, the numbers. I think I answered your question. okay, 30% and 15%. Next question. Thank you. Next question from Eric Lemarié from Bryan Garnier. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Could you hear me properly this time? Yes. I was cut. Okay. I will ask my question again. Yes, you had a third question that we didn't hear. Oh, okay. I hope you heard the answer to your first two questions. No, I will have a look to the transcript then. No, sorry, I didn't hear your answer. That's all right. The second one was very quick. Grenfell, the answer is no news. Okay. The first one, it was about the renovation. I think it was a long answer. You look at the transcript, but I gave a long answer on that one, yes. Okay, that's right. Basically, that is going to continue. Okay, good. My last question, it's a very quick one actually. In terms of acquisition of new niche technologies, you have acquired HTMS recently. You mentioned that recently, and I was wondering what type of new technologies you would be keen to add to your portfolio going forward. Is there any specific technologies currently that you could be interested? Well, we are looking at adjacencies, things that are close to what we are doing. If I want to have more detail, I guess it's probably going to be an important point that Benoit will cover in October. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Three quick questions from me. First, were you positively surprised by the strength in demand in March and April, and also by the pricing development? Are you more optimistic than on the February 25th? That would be my first question. My second question is that you are suggesting that the April demand is as good as in March. Does it mean that the pre-buying activity in March did not translate into a slowdown in demand in April? My third question is, how much of your 2021 gas bill is hedged? Are you expecting some gas inflation, or are you fully hedged? I would say, yes, the month of March was stronger than what we had in mind when we had the call on the results. The month of March was very strong. We knew that the winter had been a little bit harsh in January and February, and we had good weather in March. I think globally, we had a very strong March. April is as strong. I would say in April, we may have slightly less volume, but we'll have a little more price, which is a part to your answer. I think that the demand is quite high in the most of our markets, especially in the construction market, but also in a number of industrial markets. The demand is, at the moment, quite high. I repeat what I said, which is that the order backlog of our customers in many countries is growing and is high. I think that we are seeing a very good demand at the moment. Plus there are price increases happening even during the Q2. We are going to have additional price increase in May and in June, depending on the country and the business, yes. Yes, we have a very positive momentum at the moment. On the gas hedging? Yeah. Question is for Sreedhar. Sorry. On gas, if you just recall the overall energy bill we have is EUR 1.1 billion for 2020. Of course, this will be more in 2021 with the increase and the volume also going up. Half of that is, more than half is electricity, and the balance is what is between gas and the fuel. The gas inflation, what we saw end of February, if you look at the average of January and February, we had something like 75% as compared to last year. Last year it was very low, if you recall. Now, in April, it has gone up substantially. This actually close to 170% as compared to just April month, just one month. In terms of hedging, we have close to half of, 50% on an average we have hedged in our energy. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question from Christian Korth from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead. Good evening. Thank you very much. I have two questions, please. The first one is again on the pre-buying effect you quoted several times in the press release and in this call. I just wanted to ask if you can give us an indication how we should think about the magnitude of this, and if you can quantify that in any kind. The second question is about the strong demand for renovation in Europe. I just wanted to ask if there are specific product groups that are in specifically high demand in the current environment. Are there specific parts of your renovation product portfolio that are in higher demand than others? Thank you very much. On the second question, no, I think it's very broad. What I would say is that there are some areas in our distribution business where we have, in fact, very big price increase that we are passing to the customers in terms of metal. We have some shortages in some countries in Europe on wood products, but it's not a big part. Overall, the demand is stronger across the board, both on our manufacturing businesses and our distribution business, if I take the overall quarter and the month of April. Of course, there are some products where the impact of the weather is bigger. For instance, if you take exterior products, January and February was low, and March there was a pickup. The quarter, it's a very broad increase across the board of our solutions. The first question, I forgot now. It is pre-buy magnitude. Pre-buy. I think I am not able to quantify that, but what I would say is that there is still pre-buy in April, in fact, because as Sreedhar said, we are continuing to pass price increase regularly. I am not able to quantify this impact. What our people are telling us, and I don't think they are able to quantify that. Yes, the months of March, the sales were very high, and when pressed why, they think that some of their customers have ordered a little more. The sales in April are also very strong. There is also this element. We think there is this element, but frankly, I'm not able to quantify. Okay. It's not major, I would say, compared to the 20% type increase we have. I don't know, maybe it's a couple of percent. I am not able to quantify, frankly. It's not the same in each country. Okay. We just wanted to mention that just as an indication that pricing is working. Maybe because we were a bit surprised by the strength of the volume in March, but it's continuing. Great. Thank you very much. Then maybe it's not pre-buying, but regular demand. We will see. Thank you very much. Thank you. There is no more question for the moment. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Next question from Harry Goad from Berenberg. Sir, please go ahead. Yes, hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question right at the end. You've obviously talked a lot about the strength in demand from the renovation segment, and there's a pretty clear message on that. Can you talk a little bit more about demand and passages you're seeing with [audio distortion] We don't hear. ...the broader construction economy, technically? I'm sorry. I didn't hear the second part. It was cut after you talked about renovation, you want to talk about what? Can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah. Okay. What I was saying is, aside from the message you're giving on renovation, where there's a very clear message, can you talk a little bit about the other parts, like broader construction thinking, sort of commercial, industrial, any sort of patterns you're seeing there across Europe within that of the part of construction would be useful, please. Thanks. Well, I think I already commented on new construction, saying that the difference between renovation and new construction is that on renovation, it's a pattern across all the developed world, I would say. On new construction, there are patterns which are different. You have obviously a different trend in Germany, which is very positive. In France, which is less good, but I commented that we are less affected for residential. U.K. is at a low point, and it's going up. Scandinavia is high, but it's staying high. I would say there are different trends, but globally they are okay. Now, maybe your question is there is another segment we have not touched so far, which is the non-residential. There what we see is okay. We thought that we would have something relatively low in offices, and it's not extremely bullish, but it's not as negative as maybe we would have thought. We think we are going to have something very positive in public building, in renovation because of the Green Deal in Europe, and we may see the same thing in the U.S. This frankly has not started, and I would say at best it would be at the end of 2021. I think it will be, but the bulk of those good trends in non-residential renovation will be in 2022. Positive news, but not right now. Okay. Thank you very much. I answered your question? I'm not sure. I heard you all the time you were speaking. No, you did answer the question. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. There is no more question. Ladies and gentlemen, just a little reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Gentlemen, we have no more question. Back to you for the conclusion. Okay. If there are no further question, I thank you for participating in this conference call, and I remind you that our first half results will be published on July 29 and will be presented by Benoit. It was my last call. I would say, if I am correct, I have done 56 quarterly calls, and I am very happy that Benoit will take over with you in July. Thank you for being patient with me, and back to Benoit in July. Thank you.