Hello, and good morning, everyone. I hope you are doing well and staying safe also with COVID. It is my pleasure today to present together with Sreedhar, our group CFO, our H1 results for 2021. There are three strong positive takeaways from our results. First, we have delivered an all-time high record on all financial indicators, and we have largely overcome the 2020 COVID crisis. Second, we have revised up the guidance for the full year, again, as a record operating profit for the full year 2021. Third, Saint-Gobain ambition is clear, become a worldwide leader on light and sustainable construction. Our agenda for today, I will cover the main highlights of the first half results, then Sreedhar will drive us through all the financial indicators in details, and I will come back on some highlights on the strategy and the outlook for the second half of 2021 and the full year. Now on the results. It is as simple as that. We have had an all-time record on all our financial indicators. I will not compare anymore with H1 2020, but I will compare with H1 2019, a normal year, which makes, again, our record year, record first half, even more impressive. I start with organic growth, 11.9% versus the first half of 2019. A strong performance of volumes up 7.6%. This is a combination of two things. First, strong structural underlying market trends, and second, substantial market share gains in many geographies. Within organic growth, you can see that we have had also a solid pricing power. Thanks to our leadership position, our pricing power in many geographies, and our teams have acted very fast, have been very agile to have several rounds of price increase during the first half. We have seen that the second quarter was even higher in terms of price increase versus the first quarter of 2021. All these translated in a very substantial increase of operating profit, so a good leverage on volumes, operating profit being up 53% in like for like to a new record of EUR 2,376,000,000 for the first half. This translates also into a record operating profit margin at 10.7% for the group, which means, I insist on that, best-in-class margins in our manufacturing segments, around 14%, and in our distribution segment, around 6.7%. We have also a good jump in EBITDA, record as well in absolute figures, a very impressive 60% jump on recurring net income for the first time above EUR 1.5 billion in a semester. Finally, a very good job done on cash with a record free cash flow close to EUR 2.5 billion in the first half. As you can see, as I've said in the introduction, we have largely overcome the COVID crisis. Behind those figures, this fantastic set of results, they are all the men and women of Saint-Gobain. I want to pay tribute to them because they have been extremely agile, extremely dedicated, and I'm very grateful for all their talents, their commitment, their passion for the business, which has delivered, again, a fantastic set of results. We can also say that we have reached a successful conclusion on Transform & Grow. You may remember the program we launched 2.5 years ago. We had three objectives, first on the organization, second on the portfolio, and third on the margin. Our organization is very agile on its feet. We have seen that on pricing, we have seen that on supply chain to deal with all the challenges we have faced every single week during the first half to make sure we could deliver on our customers, make sure we could have the raw materials to continue manufacture all our products and service any job site around the world. The organization is working, and we have proven that again with the performance in the first half. Second, we have proactively enhanced our growth and profitability business profile with EUR 5.3 billion of divestitures over the last 2.5 years, EUR 1.5 billion of very attractive acquisitions. I can tell you that the Continental Building Products acquisition, which we closed in February 2020, is delivering a fantastic set of results. We have seen that in close to or above 28% EBITDA margin in the first half. All the signs that we have seen between the Chryso teams and the Saint-Gobain teams in the last few weeks have been also extremely positive. Chryso will be a very strong growth platform for us. On the margin side, with 10.4% over the last 12 months, we have largely exceeded the Transform & Grow objective of 100 basis point gain in 2021 versus the 7.7% we had in 2018. All in all, we can now say that Saint-Gobain is on a new trajectory as a leading player on light and sustainable construction, delivering solutions of sustainability and performance for our customers. I will, of course, together with all the team, come back to that in more details during our capital market day on October sixth. This is what I wanted to say. Very strong, very good first half, successful conclusion on Transform & Grow, and a very clear ambition going forward. I now leave the floor to you, Sreedhar, for all the financial metrics and the details. Thank you, Benoit. Good morning, everyone. Let me give some more details about the results of H1 2021. Starting with organic growth. We have seen a record organic growth in the first half, even in comparison to H1 2019, with 11.9% growth. We saw negative structure and exchange rate impacts. The structure rate impact came from the continued optimization of our portfolio and acquisitions to enhance our growth and profitability profile. The exchange rate impact came from the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, Brazilian real, and other emerging market currencies. You look at the sequential organic growth, here you see, particularly when you compare with 2019, the last four quarters, you will see a sequential improvement in the organic growth quarter after quarter. We saw a continuation of the very strong underlying trends driven by renovation in Europe, construction market in Americas, and in Asia Pacific. The reasons for the acceleration in Q2 2021 are mostly the positive effects of working days, which had an impact of 3% on Q2, as well as the price increases. If you look at the pricing trends, we have accelerated quarter after quarter price increase against an increasingly inflationary backdrop. We now expect raw material and energy inflation of more than EUR 1 billion for 2021, of which EUR 400 million was in H1 2021 and EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million in H2. All the business leaders have actually taken a proactive steps in pushing the prices, and hence we have achieved in Q2 price increase of 5.1% at the group level. If you look at the price increase for the manufacturing businesses only, it was 4.3% in H1, of which 5.5% in Q2. For the year as a whole, we are confident to offset the inflation for the year given that we are continually pushing the prices. Coming to the operating profit, as Benoit said, we have achieved a new record of operating income and margin, beating our H2 record. This was driven mainly due to the very good leverage on volume, a strong positive price-cost spread, additional savings of EUR 100 million on account of post-COVID cost structure reduction measures, good progress on operational excellence savings, and continued low SG&A costs thanks to savings in discretionary costs and structural gains from Transform & Grow. Now let me take some time to explain about the last 12-month margin evolution versus 2018, which was our reference for the transformation program. Which clearly demonstrate here you see that we have significantly surpassed the Transform & Grow margin objective well in advance. The last 12-month average margin is 10.4%, which means 270 basis points improvement in the margin versus 2018. 180 basis points are structural, of which two-third link to Transform & Grow with the portfolio optimization and cost savings, thanks to the new customer-oriented and leaner organization. The one-third coming from structurally higher volumes in European renovation market, Americas, and Asia Pacific construction markets. We can consider that the remaining 90 basis points is exceptional, coming from high price-cost spread, discretionary cost savings, and post-COVID catch-up effects in volumes. If you take out this 90 basis points of exceptional contribution, the normalized margin is 9.5%. Given the fact that we have seen certain exceptional effects in H1 2021, we don't expect any favorable seasonality impact in H2. It is also important to remember that the craftsmen in Europe will be taking their normal vacation in summer and in the month of December, unlike last year. Here you see that we have recorded an increase in business income of over 70% compared to H1 2019. Even better than 45% increase in operating income, thanks to a significant reduction in non-operating costs, which includes the provision of two recent class actions in the U.S.A. for PFOA. We have also achieved a new record EBITDA and EBITDA margin. If you look at the P&L lines below business income, you will find that net financial expenses was slightly lower compared to the last year and the average cost of borrowing remained flat. Income tax was higher, is mainly linked to a one-time impact of EUR 105 million deferred tax on account of a tax increase in the U.K. from 19% - 25%. The group tax rate on recurring net income remains at around 25%. Recurring net income reached to, again, a new record of EUR 1.5 billion. Free cash flow, we have again, record free cash flow of EUR 2.5 billion and a conversion rate ratio of 84%. This was driven by a record EBITDA, low non-operating cost, and very low CapEx and working capital. Please note that the CapEx was lower than planned in the first half due to the COVID situation, and we expect to see a catch-up effect in the second half and still reach EUR 1.5 billion CapEx for the full year, which we guided at the beginning of the year. As you are aware, the working capital was already low at the end of 2020 because of a very low inventory level and extraordinary work done by the teams in reducing the overdue receivables and also revisiting all the payment terms of suppliers and customers. There has been a continuous focus on these topics. At the same time, there is also a realization that the current inventory level is too low to serve the customers in a right manner. What it means is that we need to rebuild the inventory to a reasonable level in the second half. However, due to exceptionally high sales in the first half, we have not been able to rebuild the stock yet. This should happen in the second half. The working capital at the end of the year will be clearly higher than what we saw at the last year's in terms of number of days. Due to these reasons of CapEx catch-up and the inventory build-up, we expect the free cash flow conversion for the year to be lower than the exceptional level of H1, but certainly higher than 2019. Net debt, finally, you see that here we have a significant decrease in our net debt with a reduction of EUR 2.2 billion compared to the end of last year, June. This is mainly due to the record free cash flow generation. Overall, our balance sheet and credit metrics remains very strong. Let me get into the results by segment. Please note that my comments will be with reference to the 2019 H1, as it is more pertinent to compare instead of H1 2020. Starting with High Performance Solutions, we have up slightly versus 2019 with an overall improvement in industrial markets, apart from European automotive market, where we could not push the prices up. Mobility sales remained below 2019 levels despite good increase in sales in Americas and China. Due to the weaker European automotive market, the mobility remained below 2019 level. The shortage of semiconductors and their impact on supply chain also impacted our sales in Q2. We continue to outperform the global automotive market thanks to our increasing exposure to high value-added solutions and electric vehicles. Industry grew slightly versus 2019. Surface finishing solutions were boosted by DIY markets, whereas the activities related to our customers' investment cycles are improving sequentially, even though they are still below 2019 level. The construction industry and life sciences business continue to enjoy the double-digit growth versus 2019. The overall operating margin continued to improve sequentially at 13.5%. In Northern Europe, the sales growth was driven by a good dynamic in renovation markets in all countries. Nordic countries continued to deliver good growth, particularly thanks to the success of digital strategy in a supportive renovation market. Germany benefited from dynamic construction market, especially in light construction and construction chemicals applications. The U.K. saw an acceleration in growth from Q1 to show double-digit growth in Q2. This was driven by distribution, which benefited from the optimization of the network and the market share gain. The region recorded an operating margin of 7.9% in the first half, up significantly compared to 6% in H1 2019. In Southern Europe, we saw strong sales growth with the help of the comprehensive solutions, which enabled us to clearly outperform the dynamic renovation markets. France grew strongly thanks to the solid renovation market with our energy efficiency solutions sold to a large scale through an unrivaled distribution network and digital intermediation platform. The success of the stimulus package, MaPrimeRénov', added to the positive dynamic. The customer-centric approach of our teams enabled us to serve the market very effectively and gain market shares. Italy also benefited from government initiatives to support the efficient renovation via tax credits. Spain grew strongly in the construction chemicals and light construction markets. In Netherlands, we benefited from the recent acquisition in the fast-growing external insulation systems market. Africa and Middle East countries made progress, particularly Turkey and Egypt. We achieved a record operating margin in the region at 9.1%. Thanks to the good growth in renovation, excellent leverage, and excellent operational performance from our teams. Particularly the productivity improvement was quite impressive. The positive impacts of the group profile optimization and structural cost reductions. Americas, we continue to see a very strong underlying construction market enabling us to deliver organic growth of 25% versus 2019, with pricing up double-digit in a clearly more inflationary context. In North America, growth was driven by particularly strong demand in the single-family house, and we saw the benefits of our comprehensive solution offer with the new organization structure. Our very agile local organization enabled us to deal with the supply chain challenges, which was very particular in the U.S. We also continued to see a good growth in our sales to the light construction market. Thanks to, again, successful integration of Continental. As Benoit said, it's a big success. Latin America continued to see strong growth in volumes in all businesses, despite a challenging health situation in Brazil. Thanks to, again, our local organization and offering to all full range of solutions to customers, the Americas region continues to strengthen its market position. We achieved a record operating margin in the Americas region at 17%. This was mainly due to the strong leverage on volumes on the pricing increase, and the price cost spread was also very positive. Asia Pacific, we saw strong sales driven by China and despite a challenging health situation in India. In China, the growth accelerated in Q2 thanks to a good underlying market and share gains in the interior solution and construction chemicals, where we are investing for quite some time. In India, after a double-digit growth in the first quarter, Q2 was impacted by difficult health situation. Southeast Asia performance was quite mixed, with the continued market share gains in Vietnam and the deteriorating health situation in many of the countries in Southeast Asia. The region achieved an operating margin of 11.2%, well ahead of 9.5% seen in H1 2019. Again, due to strong volume leverage impact and structural cost reduction. Let me summarize. You have seen as we have achieved new record results in all the performance indicators with a significant improvement in the structural margin. Thanks to the market share gains, comprehensive solutions which we offer to the light and sustainable construction markets, excellent focus on cost and price, deploying more resources in profitably growing markets, real focus on cash, focus on discipline on capital allocation. All in all, also thanks to the underlying market, which is quite strong. With all the progress that we have made in the last two and a half years, and I'm sure you all would be convinced that Saint-Gobain has radically changed, and we have the team which is highly motivated to deliver consistent results in the years to come. I remain very, very confident about it. I pass on the floor to Benoit to explain the strategy and give you the outlook for the second half. Thank you, Sreedhar. Now let me share with you some highlights of our strategy. First, our core markets are seeing growth acceleration, supported by strong structural fundamentals. This is first renovation in Europe, pushed even more with the European Green Deal environment, and the need across all Europe to accelerate on energy renovation. If you think of the Fit for 55 of the EU, that means minus 55% of greenhouse gas emission between 2010 and 2030. This is a big acceleration on energy efficiency renovation. Second, new build in the U.S. We are embarked in a good, positive cycle on single-family home in the U.S., which remains very high. There are also additional measures, such as the First-Time Homebuyer tax credit, which will further support the dynamics. Third, of course, the mega-trend of strong paths of urbanization in the emerging markets. On those three markets, we have leveraged our leadership positions, again, as the unique player to deliver large and wide solutions for sustainability and performance impact. We have made all the analysis in details. We'll come back to that during the capital market day, that 70% of our solutions are sustainable, and they provide good, solid contribution for better planet and also better health and well-being of the people. Those tailwinds in our underlying market trends, they have been leveraged also by best-in-class execution. Again, agility in our organization in order to make a difference versus our competitors. We have seen that on the price-cost management during all the semester. We have seen that on the supply chain optimization with very quick local decisions. We have seen that also on the continued delivery on savings, in particular for the COVID-impacted businesses, EUR 150 million of savings over the last 12 months. I'm happy to say also that in a context of very tight demand, customer satisfaction has remained on top of our priority. If I take our large distribution business in France, they even improved their Net Promoter Score, the customer satisfaction index, by three points at an all-time record at 50. All the plants and all our distribution businesses have delivered double-digit productivity gains versus some years ago, and we have been able also to open 13 new plants in the last 12 months, including 10 in our light construction businesses, whether it's in Asia, Latin America, Middle East or Africa. We have also, during this busy period, continued to prepare our future growth, shaping first better business, which remains central to our objectives for Saint-Gobain with acquisitions such as Chryso, such as Panofrance on the wood market in France, which is growing very fast, reinforcing our growth platforms for, again, strong positions on sustainability and performance for our customers. In parallel, we have successfully completed a large number of significant divestitures, like Lapeyre, which has been done on June 1st, our PAM China business, which we closed on the 28th of July, three days ago, our Dutch distribution business, which we closed today, actually, and also some glass transformation businesses in Germany or some non-strategic, low-performance specialist distribution network in the U.K. and in Spain. We have also made steps forward on innovative solutions. I would like to highlight one, which is symbolic, what we call our weber.col flex éco. Sales have grown by close to 30% over the last two years compared to H1 2019. It is a patented best seller, the only cement-free mortar solution with 50% less CO2 as a content, and also improved comfort for the use of the craftsmen. Same on digital, where with our omni-channel strategy, we have continued to make good progress. We are the largest and the widest marketplace for professional craftsmen in France, and in the Nordics, our Dahl network has jumped four points in terms of e-commerce, now above 30%. At the same time, where do we stand on our ESG roadmap? You know that for us, ESG is not something on the side. ESG is at the core of our positioning. It's at the core of our strategy toward sustainability, towards carbon neutrality for our construction and industrial customers. We have achieved important results also in our ESG roadmap in the last six months with initiatives across a wide spectrum of the group, and I want to illustrate just a few of them. All employees are engaged. We launched in Northern Europe at the beginning of the year, and we are rolling it out across all the group an internal carbon fund. Just in six months, we had 1,000 initiatives from employees who are very engaged to make a difference on sustainability. We are also pushing ESG innovation. Poissy in France had a roadshow over 250 outlets to show all the bio-sourced materials we have in our catalog. It's 1,500 products training the customers on the Saint-Gobain offer towards bio-sourced products. We are also extremely proud to have launched the first net zero carbon plasterboard plant in Norway and many other steps that you can read on the slide. ESG is very important to us because if I step back, Saint-Gobain is at the heart of the global challenges of the world. This is our purpose, making the world a better home. When I look at the top three global challenges in our business universe, this is first carbon neutrality. We have more than 70% of the world GDP committed to carbon neutrality by 2050. It's even higher if I take China by 2060. That's more than 120 countries. None of them is going to get there if the buildings are not carbon neutral. Second, resource scarcity. We have to be very vigilant on savings on natural resources. Third, of course, fast urbanization in emerging markets. Saint-Gobain has solutions and answers to all those three big challenges. If I take CO2 emissions, our solutions provide answers to the needs of reducing the CO2 emissions. We are the one-stop shop of energy-efficient renovation in Europe. It's true in France. It's also true in Germany. If I take that example of a 2D off-site solution that reduces CO2 emissions by 50% on this kind of building. All in all, renovation accounts for roughly 50% of our sales towards renovation with a big play behind it on energy efficiency. In terms of resource efficiency, light construction is a critical answer. Among all the benefits of light construction, it does reduce the need of resources, substituting heavy construction materials with lighter and faster solutions, easy to recycle on the materials. This is why we are pushing a lot light construction across the group and around the world. Third, in emerging markets, the big topic is speed of construction, speed of urbanization, which is a key challenge. Again, light construction is an answer for faster, sustainable construction from the beginning. We benefit a lot from that in our big countries in emerging markets, whether it's China, Vietnam, Indonesia, or of course, India. We have allocated actually a lot of our CapEx towards those growing emerging markets. In big urban cities, big cities in emerging markets, of course, greener mobility is critical. It is an important challenge to tackle. Within our mobility market, we are pleased to say that by the end of the year, we'll have reached roughly 20% of our sales towards electrical vehicle, a much higher market share than the average of the automotive market. A big step forward also on greener mobility within our mobility segment. Last challenge also, if I go a bit broader than just the construction market, decarbonize the industrial processes. Here our specialty materials for bioprocessing solutions, for instance, they replace heavy CO2 steel containers in the biopharma with single-use plastic. They are very efficient in terms of water usage, in terms of chemical usage in operations. If I take our ceramic specialty refractories, they reduce by 25% the CO2 emissions of a furnace that manufacture glass, which will make a lower content of CO2 glass for the buildings at the end of the day. In a nutshell, a clear and robust strategic vision delivering sustainability and performance solutions for our customers. This is our way forward. I turn now to the outlook for the second half and the full year. We should continue to benefit from strong momentum in the main markets and strong momentum, which are going to continue in the coming years. It's not going to stop by the end of the year, especially in renovation in Europe, new construction in the Americas and in Asia Pacific. Overall, a solid operating performance for the group. Providing that there is no major impact from the coronavirus pandemic, we expect the following trends by segment. In High Performance Solutions, a continued sequential improvement in our insured markets, with the exception of automotive in Europe, where we are more cautious. All the businesses also related to investment are going to improve gradually, although they are expected to remain a bit below the good level that we recorded in 2018. In Europe, we have continued outperformance in construction, thanks to our big solutions towards renovation. The support from the stimulus program that we are seeing now on the ground. Keeping in mind, as Sreedhar said, that we have a high comparison basis last year, particularly during the summer. All the customers, all the craftsmen in France, for instance, but not only, worked almost all the months of August and also in December. That's a bit of the technical effect in terms of base versus last year. Overall, energy-efficient renovation solutions should continue to boost the momentum in France. New construction markets also are picking up compared to two years ago. We have seen that even in the French statistics yesterday evening on new construction. Nordic countries and Germany should also benefit from good momentum in renovation, and the U.K. will continue to bounce back in terms of environment. In the Americas, solid market growth, particularly for residential construction, whether it's in North America or in Latin America. You have seen the fantastic performance we have had in the first half, gaining a lot of market share in this region. In Asia-Pacific, good market growth with good momentum in China. Some uncertainty, for sure, in India, and on the health-related disruptions we have seen recently in Southeast Asia. In this context, what are our priorities? First, continue to accelerate on growth. We are extremely well-positioned as leader in light and sustainable construction, and we want to continue to accelerate on growth with our different businesses and solutions. Our ambition is to outperform the market, thanks to the organization and all the teams who are in place and extremely agile and committed. We'll also continue to make further progress on ESG during the year and continue to optimize, as we have done, the group profile. We think we'll integrate Chryso either in October or early in November, but we are making very good progress in that aspect. Second set of priorities beside growth, continue, of course, to maintain a lot of initiative and strong focus on profitability and performance, maintain robust margins and also strong free cash flow generation. We'll do that with an ongoing constant focus on the price-cost spread with a good pricing discipline, and we have several rounds of price increase already planned in July, August, October across the world in many business lines to offset the strong inflation in raw materials and energy cost. Deliver the additional EUR 50 million cost savings as part of the post-coronavirus adaptation measures for the businesses, which have been severely impacted by that. Ongoing operational excellence program, which have proven to be extremely good and a very solid contribution in the last 12 months, offsetting the inflation, including raw materials and energy, which we cover by price. Maintain a structural improvement in our working capital requirements. CapEx, you have heard Sreedhar, even though we are a bit behind the plan end of June, we intend to catch up and come back with roughly EUR 1.5 billion of CapEx for the full year, with a very good focus on our growth CapEx and ongoing digital transformation. We'll continue to pay high attention and reduce the non-operating cost. All in all, our guidance is for full year 2021. The group is now targeting, so revising up our guidance, a very strong increase in operating income to a new all-time high record with like-for-like operating income in the second half, close to the previous record of the second half of 2020. I finish my presentation with this slide. This is the new executive team I've put in place since July 1st. This is the best possible team for Saint-Gobain. A high level of experience, diversity with 38% women, half international members. It is a very strong set of leaders acting together as a team, pragmatic and fast on execution, performance-driven, and all aligned on our strategy. I feel extremely confident on the ability of our team to succeed, and we are all committed, I can tell you, to write a new successful chapter for Saint-Gobain. You will have the opportunity to interact, either physically or digitally, with all the team members during our Capital Market Day on October 6th. Thank you, and we now turn to your questions for Sreedhar and myself. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question. Take the question in the room. Press zero one on your telephone pad. Take the question in the room first. Then we'll go on the call. Third on the internet. I think Jean-Christophe, maybe first you will have to keep the health constraints. Good morning. I'm not sure we hear you. On the internet just to make sure it's for APSA. Excellent. [Non-English content], good morning. Couple of question, if you don't mind. First one, we have a very strong improvement of EBIT margin in Americas. Do we have specific factors apart from the strong improvement of the contribution of Continental? Secondly, could we have more flavor on the flat glass business and mainly the order of magnitude of the four-millimeter price, including the energy surcharge? Third, more generally, in your pricing policy, do you implement energy surcharge as we have in the cement industry, energy and CO2 surcharge? Last question, can we have more flavor in the price hikes in plasterboard and insulation? Many thanks. Thank you. We'll share the questions with Sreedhar. I take the ones in North America. We have a very strong performance across the board, different product lines. It's not only because of Continental, even though Gypsum is doing very well, but it's true for roofing, it's true for siding. It's a combination of strong volumes. The underlying volumes are extremely strong, and our plants run 24/7 with all capacity running. Good and solid actions on price. We have clearly a strong positive price-cost spread in North America. It's a combination of a very lean organization, a lot of synergies of what we have implemented in the last two and a half years, and a good momentum across the board on volumes and pricing. It's, I would say, a grand slam in North America doing extremely well. I will answer on the energy surcharge and then you take the flat glass, for instance. No, we don't implement specifically energy surcharge business by business. It's an overall price increase. What has changed structurally and what we have done in the last six months is that in many geographies where the price increase was once a year, we have had, in France, in Europe, multiple rounds of price increase. The dynamic on pricing, it was clearly the case in the U.S. for years and years. If I take roofing, we had the price increase in February, in April. We have another one in August. It's every second month or so. In Europe, because of the raw materials and energy inflation, we have had multiple price increase, but no specific on the energy surcharge. Coming to your question on four mm glass. In Europe, it is consistently improving. Sequentially, it's improving. We had 7% price increase Q2 versus Q1. 5% increase again, Q1 versus last year Q4. Clearly, quarter after quarter, there is a good progression in price. We continue to push the prices up even now, while I speak to you. The price at this point of time is EUR 3.4. Okay. Coming to the plasterboard prices. In general, there is a very strong focus. You have seen across, we have been successful in pushing the prices up. The Q2 prices is a clear example. It is accelerating. We are consistently making the price increase at a frequent interval. I think this is one clear good thing which has happened is that all the business leaders have taken a proactive steps in pushing the prices even before the inflation started hitting our P&L. In Americas, if you take the example, we increased the plasterboard prices last year in August, and then again it was increased at the end of the year. In February. We are talking about in June, we made an announcement of a price increase. Price increase is a topmost priority. I think Benoit and I, each time whenever we meet any business leaders on any business review discussion, there is a detailed discussion on spread between price and cost inflation. I remain very confident to compensate the inflation for the full year, even though the inflation is going up, as I mentioned, mainly because of the focus and the push we are giving on price. I know in most of our businesses, we are running on full capacity. It's true in glass in Europe, it's true in North America. All the businesses are running on full capacity right now. Another question? Yes, him. Yes. Good morning. Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. We'd have two question. First, a question on capital allocation. When we look at the past 20 years, the return on acquisition has been relatively underwhelming compared to peers. Also, the number of shares has increased by nearly 60%. If we look at the next decade, in this Fit for 55 environment, what process have you put in place to make sure that you don't overpay for acquisition? If acquisition are too expensive, could you consider share buyback? That's my first question. My second question would be, is it more short term? When we look at your guidance for H2, it suggests a sequential decline in EBIT versus H1. Do you see any sign of this happening in July? You're talking about most of your plants running at full capacity. Is it still the case in July? I take the first question, even though it's a midterm, long-term question, we'll address it during the capital market day, for sure. The capital allocation and also the question of buyback and number of shares. What I can tell you, and I think we have proven that the Continental Building Products acquisition is a fantastic one. You see the impact we have, and we'll provide all the details to you in the capital market day. We are going to create value in year two. That's a very significant step change in terms of acquisition and discipline, in terms of quality of integration. We have kept all the management team of Continental, and they run the overall gypsum business of Saint-Gobain in North America. That's a sign that we have changed, being able to keep a former manager in a U.S.-listed company. If you think of Chryso, I think Chryso is a fantastic growth platform. Of course, we have not yet it in our books, but I'm extremely confident that it's something which will be a fantastic acquisition for Saint-Gobain going forward, a growth platform, and will create good returns on those two large acquisitions. We are very disciplined. I hear, I'm conscious of the comment from the past. I look at the future. I don't look at 20 years ago, clearly, we are very conscious about that and the impact on return on capital employed that we need to improve, and you will see that we have made significant steps in 2021. On your short-term question, we guide for close to, because there is uncertainty on the health side. Close to means close to, you can interpret it in various ways. We are very confident about the underlying trend. There is, yes, a bit of uncertainty on the health side. There is a bit of uncertainty on how many days customers are going to take in terms of holidays in August or volatility of the weather in December. This is the reason why we are a bit cautious. Now, in July, we don't see a pattern change versus the momentum we have seen in the first half. July is running well, and that's a good sign. That's what I can tell you. On the short term, our plants are running full speed. We have made sure that we lower the. Usually, you have big maintenance during the month of August. When it's not three, four weeks, we make sure that it's eight days or 10 days to make sure we can service our customers. If I take again just France, there is an all-time high of order book from the customers. The challenge number one for all the team today is make sure we service the customers, make sure we reduce the lead times, make sure we offset with rounds of prices the impact of raw materials. We are running full speed, and the trend of July is very good. Thank you very much. Another question in the room? If not, we'll switch to the conference call. I get there is an intermediate person to take the question one by one. Let's go ahead with the questions on the call. Okay. Thank you. The first question by phone comes from Yves Bromehead from Exane BNP Paribas. Sir, please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. I had three questions. My first one is on your H2 2021 operating income outlook. Could you maybe help us to understand what are the assumptions that you've taken? I think you've just mentioned some of the assumptions on volumes, but maybe on price costs, you're now running at mid-single-digit price increases, and you've just mentioned further price hikes. I'd like to understand how you view this in the context of your guidance for EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million input cost inflation, given that that would imply a further positive price-cost spread in H2 2021. Any color on that would be appreciated. I'll follow up with the other questions after. Okay. Sreedhar will take that one. Okay. As I mentioned, the total inflation at this point of time I'm expecting is more than EUR 1 billion. If I have to give you more color, it's EUR 400 million is in the first half. That means I expect in the second half to be something like between EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million. If you have to compensate the whole more than EUR 1 billion or EUR 1.1 billion, if you have to compensate this, we need to have a price increase in the manufacturing businesses, which is 4.5%. In the first half, we have 4.3%, and you have seen the second quarter is 5.5%. Keeping in mind that there is a base effect of the second half and all the improvements, price increase push we are doing, we continue to do. I remain very confident that we will compensate the total inflation for the year. Your second question, Yves? Thank you, Sreedhar. My second question would be on the underlying environment. Clearly, trends have accelerated, even in Q2 versus Q1, regardless of the holidays of the craftsmen. Are there any drivers that you would expect to continue in H2 and after that, even in 2022? Here may be related to the public renovation. I think last time you mentioned that this had not yet started and the Fit for 55 objective is now to reach the 3% of public building stock to be renovated. Are you seeing anything here that would suggest that there's an acceleration? Maybe my last question would be related to the fiscal stimulus programs. Given they're working really well across Europe, is there a risk that they've actually went ahead of the target for 2021, and therefore in 2022, there's a risk that the incentives that are allocated could come down versus 2021 and have an impact on your volumes? I will answer those two. You have seen the volumes were pretty even when you make the math of the number of working days between Q1 and Q2. We expect those underlying trends to continue, and they are good. We expect those good drivers to continue. It's true, I've mentioned that. For new construction in the U.S., you have seen the housing start, they continue, and those cycles, they are multiple years in terms of cycles. Also, the need for energy efficiency renovation in Europe is a decade, if not more, if I think of the carbon neutrality by 2050. The underlying trends are very solid and will continue. We'll outline all that and what it means structurally for higher growth of Saint-Gobain versus the growth we have had internal growth over the last 10 years. Those underlying trends continue in H2 and are good. For instance, the MaPrimeRénov' in France, we start to see the impact of that. It's now 300,000 dossier projects which have been financed, 400,000 which have been filed and registered, and there is more to come. The French government has decided to double the subsidies towards that in 2021 and also in 2022. I answer also to your second question. We start to see that clearly on the ground. The public buildings renovation, no, they have not yet started, and we expect that by the end of the year or early next year. All the additional stimulus programs, I think they are going to be there in the next two to three years. After that, because it will take some time for the Fit for 55 to be put into actions country by country. We don't expect that in terms of directives and laws country by country before 2023 or 2024. In the meantime, we have the bridge on acceleration from the stimulus programs. We feel very confident about the underlying trends, whether it's in Europe, whether it's in North America with the new construction cycles, or of course, some large emerging markets for us. I answered, I think, on your question for the fiscal stimulus. We have seen doubling of that in 2021, and already it's not yet passed into the budget law in France because it will be done in the fall. The French Ministry already said it will double in 2022 to continue the positive success we have seen on those kind of measures in France. Particularly in the new construction. Thank you very much. No, particularly in the new construction, the impact on us, we see little later. There's always some time lag. We should see that clear impact. You have seen the move, of course, I don't mention that again because it's quite obvious, but the move after COVID towards single-family homes, towards better comfort, towards a renovation of your place, to have education of the kids, to have work from home, all that is good, solid trend. The single-family homes in France, which is a big market for us, is clearly accelerating. We have seen also the impact, of course, in the U.S. That's the reason why we run at full capacity 24/7 for our business lines. Thank you very much. Next question, I guess from. The next question comes from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Sir, please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning, gentlemen. Three questions on my side, please. Firstly, coming back on slide 10, you mentioned a 9.5% normalized operating margin. Could you please elaborate how you come up with this number? Is it conservative? Are you implying that Saint-Gobain is never going to go below this margin anymore or what it would take to do better or to do worse? Secondly, still on slide 10, the 90 basis point exceptional margin from price cost and COVID savings. It is very helpful, could you give us a bit of an impact by region? Maybe if it's just qualitative, obviously very impressive margin in H1 in Southern Europe and the Americas. If you could have an indication of where the 90 basis points has been more visible and what sort of normalized margins we could expect by region. Lastly, if I may, on the CapEx outlook, Sreedhar now is focusing the group on free cash flow. I'm sure he's very happy that the CapEx is kept at a low level. On the other hand, I'm sure that with a better growth outlook, plenty of engineers out there will be very keen to expand capacity and increase CapEx. How do you manage this dilemma please, and what is the midterm CapEx outlook? Thank you. I take just a high-level comment on your first question, and then Sreedhar will give you all the details behind it. We'll guide you on our midterm ambition for the margin of the group during the capital market day. This is something important to us. We have made very good progress over the last two and a half years, and we'll guide you on the 6th of October for the midterm ambition on our margin for the group. Arnaud, the last 12 months, as you rightly said, we are comparing with 2018 versus the last 12 months. The gap is we are talking about is 10.4 versus 7.7. There are three elements to it. One is 60 basis, I mean, 120 basis is all Transform & Grow. You know that. It's a structural change which we have done. 1 is the cost in terms of organization, making organization leaner, removing all the layers. The second part is the portfolio rotation and also the acquisitions which we did. Continental is a good addition. The second element of that is the 60 basis point is to do with the structural volume growth. Here, the structural volume growth, if you look at the volume of the last 12 months, we're talking about 5.5% volume. Half of that is taken as structural volume, and half of that is taken as catch-up effect post-COVID. Which falls into your 90 basis point explanation. This 60 basis point purely comes from the half of the volume growth, which we have seen in our businesses. In the 90 basis point, there are three elements. One is the price cost, which explains almost 50% of the 90 basis point explanation is coming from the price cost, and the balance half is coming from the volume catch-up impact and also the discretionary cost. Second question is on CapEx. It's always an ongoing dilemma. At the end of the day, I can only tell you that there is absolutely no compromise on any growth CapEx. Business leaders know that if there is a need to invest to ensure that we serve the market with a growing market, there is no limitation. It is true that the first half has been low, and I don't think it was in line with what we expected. We had certain operational challenges because of the COVID, but I'm very confident that it will catch up. I think the plans are very clear. We all have learned to make this intelligent trade-off. Every time when we do a CapEx, we need to focus on growing markets, the businesses which has a good track record. The idea is to create value in every single investment we make. I know one thing also we have done with a lot of rigor in the last two and a half years is to standardize the CapEx across the different business lines. Standardize the CapEx means you can control what is maintenance, what is regular CapEx, and a very good decision on the growth CapEx. We have also divested businesses which did require a bit of CapEx with no margin, no profit, no cash flow. That also has a structural impact on the performance of our CapEx and will guide you also during the capital market day of what we expect in terms of average CapEx as a% of sales going forward. We still a very good discipline on cash and free cash flow, but also good CapEx going forward to support the growth of the group. We have seen 13 new plants, I told you, in the last 12 months. We have announced new plasterboard capacities in Spain, in Romania. We are opening up a new float line in India, new plants in Southeast Asia. We are also pushing a lot of initiatives to prepare the growth of the future. Thank you very much. Another question. The next question comes from Sven Edelfelt from Oddo BHF. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. Two questions for me. If I look at volume, they are broadly spread across all geographies. Could you speak a bit louder, Sven? Because we cannot hear you very well. Yes. Thank you. Of course. Is it better now? Yeah. Much better, yeah. Okay. If I look at volume, they are broadly spread across all geographies. If I turn to margin, there are substantial gains for all businesses except for HPS, which is lagging behind. If I'm not mistaken, Benoit, you were in charge of geographies while Laurent Guillot was in charge of HPS. Is there something that David Molho, your new head of HPS, can do to improve operating leverage? Will it be cost-cutting or disposal of underperforming businesses, if any? First, Sven, I was in charge of all the group. I was CEO of the group, and I was in charge of all the group, and Laurent Guillot reported to me in that respect like all the other regions. Second, I am extremely happy with the job that has been done by the High Performance Solutions teams. Those markets, as we said, are sometimes a bit more challenging. If I take mobility, the automotive market, we have gained market share in mobility. When we are down 3% worldwide on mobility, all the public release I have read on several OEM suppliers for automotive in the last week are towards a -10%. We have gained market share, for instance, in mobility. We have made good strides on the electrical vehicle. That being said, again, the insured markets have been lagging a bit behind in terms of recovery because some are also linked to the investment cycle, and we know it takes a while to catch up on investment because it's a longer-term decision, but we see that coming. That's the second part I want to mention. Third, there are a lot of structural cost savings measures that we have put in place in those businesses in the last 12- 18 months, which was part of some of the non-operating costs of last year. It's part of the EUR 150 million of savings we have delivered in the last 12 months, and we see that in the margin. Early in the year, we didn't guide you for a margin of 13.5% for High Performance Solutions in the first half. I'm happy with the rebound of margin we have seen in High Performance Solutions, and we'll continue to put our eggs within High Performance Solutions in the fast-growing business and continue to push the margin. You can see that we are getting close to the level of 2018, which was 13.4. I'm happy about the second quarter improvement we have seen on the margin, and I'm extremely happy with David Molho and all the team, what we see for the future of High Performance Solutions in terms of solutions for the construction, solutions for the industry, and impact on growth margin and performance for the group. Thank you. Next question. Can we have a Sorry. Can we Yeah. Speak louder because we cannot hear you. Sorry about that. Yeah. Can we have an update on the asbestos litigation in the U.S.? I know it's in Chapter 11. Can we have some flavor on the last development? How close are we to see a happy ending? It's always long. It's always long with lawyers in the U.S., Sreedhar. Yeah, it's always long. You're right, Benoit. The process is under control. We are making progress as expected. It's a long, drawn process, and you need to present your case, and I think it's going to take time, and don't expect that it will happen in next 12 months time. This is something which we knew. If you go back to all the precedents, other examples, it took somewhere between three to five years. You have to have the patience. I think the good part is, as of now, all what we expected is what we are seeing in the process. We remain very positive about finding a good solution for this issue. Yeah. Next question, please. Thank you. The next question comes from Matthias Pfeifenberger from Deutsche Bank. Sir, please go ahead. Thanks a lot. It's Pfeifenberger. A couple of questions from my side. Thanks for taking them. It's clearly on the holiday point you made on the craftsmen. Are you already seeing that? Are there, let's say, regulatory issues that would make the craftsmen go on holiday? Because I'm looking at this industry and all the projects get delayed and especially on the residential side, people would be happy to get their projects moving and they're not moving, and maybe in three months time we'll talk about that, and they have also used the summer months to do some of the projects. Related to that, do you already see any slowdown in the residential renovation momentum? I take your question. It's hard to predict how many days craftsmen are going to take. What is sure is that last year they didn't take holidays or until the middle of August, and second, they worked between Christmas and New Year, which was quite unusual. If I take the craftsmen, it's a bit like the Saint-Gobain team. They have worked extremely well and a lot over the last 15 months. At some point, I wish the craftsmen could take some holidays. If you look at the long term. We don't see that happening. We are not micromanaging the planning of the holidays of our craftsmen. It's hard to make a math and a detail, and it varies a lot country by country. It's mostly in France I'm referring to. They are all extremely busy. What is important for us, and it's a big task and we are also providing solution there, is to train our craftsmen. We have trained, in France, 5,000 craftsmen this year. It's important to provide to them easy, fast solutions so that they can save time on their job site. I take a, you could say it's a bit a crazy example, but when there was a pure lockdown, there was no wasted time on traffic for the craftsmen. They were going directly to the job site without losing any time on the traffic jam. They could not go to restaurant. They had to eat a sandwich so they could save half an hour. Yeah at lunchtime. Those technical aspects are real life on the ground. Now, it's not going to make a big math and a big difference on the size of the group, and there is no regulation whatsoever in terms of asking or forcing the craftsmen to take some holiday. They have the largest backlog ever of orders. If any of you have a craftsman, keep it because you are not going to see another one before six or nine months. if you have any job site. It's good, it's positive, but there will be some technical effect, we think, in August. I don't expect, if I take France, if I take other countries, a big like for like. We had a huge like for like growth in the month of August 2020 versus 2019. the month of August to be probably a bit behind in some markets in 2021. We don't see a slowdown as we speak because the main challenge, as I said, is on our manufacturing side and in our distribution outlets to service the customers. We could see some impact in August, some impact in December. No big deal, but it's a technical effect we should keep in mind. Yeah effect of, I think, it's minus 1% of the working days in the second half versus the second half of last year. Those technical effects, we have to keep that into consideration. Okay. On the restocking point you made, is there a risk that you won't be able to restock because demand remains strong? If you're able to restock significantly, is that a big point on the margin on operating leverage that helps? We are pushing to restock. We have done a bit of that in some in our distribution network in France recently. We have a lot of stock out. This is coming back to a normal level of stock to service our customers. We don't expect big impact on our overall margin, so no significant impact on the manufacturing side coming from that. The main challenge behind coming back to a normal level to service the customers. I take one example, for instance, on siding in the U.S. Usually, in our catalog of products, we have 60 colors to put siding on your facades, dark blue, yellow, whatever, on your facade. Now, we have been running with six colors in the last five to six months because there was a shortage of pigments from the chemical companies in the U.S. Customers have been happy to deal with six colors. If we can come back with a regular stock of 10, 15 or 60 colors, we'll do that, and it's a bit more stock, and it makes sense for the customer. I don't expect, again, a big impact on the margin for the manufacturing side. It's basically coming back to a regular level of stock for the customers. Yeah. Thank you. Also reducing the lead time. Big topic has been reducing the lead time. I'm happy to say that we didn't shut down any job site of customers, but the lead time, if I take some plasterboard plants, it went from one or two days to three to four weeks, and all the industry is like that. We have to reduce the lead time, and we are working a lot towards that, whether it's in Europe or in the U.S. I think what is important, Benoit, is we are not the only one who is going through this situation. Yes. It's an industry. I think we have done well versus. Relatively. In terms of service to customers. Yeah. Thank you. The next question comes from Josep Pujal f rom Kepler Cheuvreux. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Hello, gentlemen. Two questions on my side. The first one is about one comment that you made at the very beginning about the substantial market share gains that you were doing. Can you give a little bit more flavor on that? What are the areas where you are making the most market share gains and how do you suddenly achieve this compared to the past? Do you have two or three case studies to share with us? My second question is on the inventories. You say that they start to be very tight. Where are the areas where they are the lowest, please, and what does it mean in plain terms for future growth? Does it mean that it will be difficult in those areas to continue rising the volumes? Thank you. Market share gain, first, for instance, we measure our market share gain in distribution every month, and we have gained market share. We have gained market share because the teams have been on the ground extremely efficient. One case study, for instance, we have digital services to help our customers take orders from our intermediary platform with B2C customers being serviced very fast. We have the new digital tools to make sure we have good translation between the orders at the counter and the speed at which we load the trucks of customers. We have reduced dramatically the service time to customers. It's a way to attract more customers. If I take France in the last two years, we have gained 20,000 small customers. We have 400,000, more or less, customers within the CAPEB. We have gained 20,000 new customers in France in the last two years. This is a significant market share in distribution in France. If I take North America, here I read public metrics released last week by some big players. When you grow 37% in Latin America, I've not seen that in a public release from peers. We grew 25% in Americas overall. I've seen 10, 12% growth in Americas, not 25. This is clearly one area where we have outperformed the market. One reason for that, I mentioned that already in some of the synergies we have put in place. If I take the U.S., CertainTeed used to run the business by silos. Silos of roofing, siding, ceilings, gypsum, et cetera. Now we run all exterior products together with the same guy on the ground, covering both exterior products of roofing and siding, visiting the customers two times as much as in the past and providing a larger offer to the customers. This is the way to gain market share when you have such a large offer. We are the largest building materials provider in the U.S., and when you act together as a team, which has been the case, you have such a big jump on sales, market share, and the impact also on the margin. Brazil, I think I highlighted also that. We have solutions where we have facade solutions with four products of Saint-Gobain together, faster installation time, reducing the CO2 impact and prescription from the Saint-Gobain teams towards the customer. We have multiple examples. We'll have more of that during the capital market day to highlight those solutions, but clearly some significant market share. If I take India, we have outperformed the market for many years, and we continue in India. I would also add, obvious example is the mobility. Benoit, it's a market is down by -13%, and we are down by -3%. It's a very obvious case, and this is mainly because we are growing faster in electrical car. Our market share has gone up significantly, and share of the total mobility sales is close to 20% in this year. That's what we are expecting. There are many such structures too, Benoit. If I take your question on inventory, what is important on inventory is to rebuild inventory to assure the right customer service. I don't anticipate that to hammer or to cap the growth. If I take the U.S., again, we are on allocation of products, with long lead times. If we can breathe a bit more, and we are like the rest of the industry, if we can breathe a bit more, reduce the lead time, expand the color range that I mentioned for siding, that will be additional service for the customers. If we had more capacity, we'll see more growth, but all competitors, all manufacturers are like that, and we are going to add capacity as we speak. If I take Europe, we told you that we expand in plasterboard, both in Spain and in Romania. We added shifts. If I take our plant in Belgium, for instance, beginning of the year, it was running 3 shifts. It's now running 5 shifts. All those actions have been put in place on the ground to accelerate on our capacity towards the customer. We are pushing for that. On the ground, when you see the supply chain, we're happy that we don't see any negative impact on the business, it's a day-to-day challenge. I think the teams are really doing exceptionally good job of managing, making sure that the customers get what they need. I don't think you can run the business like this for long, running after each and every micro details on a day-to-day basis. I think it's important to build some reasonable level. The key point, which we have done successfully in the first half, is to anticipate. Anticipate on raw materials, anticipate on staffing, anticipate on transportation. Some truck drivers have been lacking in the U.S. recently or in the U.K. We try to anticipate as much as we can in order to do better than competitors and serve our customers. Overall, you can see there is a good underlying trend, good momentum, and we expect that to continue not only in the second half, but also into the years to come. Very interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question. The next question comes from Nabil Ahmed from Barclays. Sir, please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, everyone. I have three questions. First one, thank you for highlighting the 90 basis points temporary margin improvements. That's really useful in terms of mid-term forecasting. Just to be clear, when do you expect that to fully unwind? Is that 20 basis points fully included in your H2 2021 operating income guidance, or this will be spreading to next year as well? I have a second question about HPS margin outlook. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect it's the division which benefited less from positive price costs, and therefore probably more from structural improvements through the restructuring. What's the outlook for the division in H2 and beyond? Is 13.5% in the floor with some upside if the auto market recovers? Lastly, I think you started to allude to that, but can you talk a bit more specifically about spare capacity you currently have in Europe and in the U.S. in your various business, and at what point do you need to invest in capacity and maybe spend more in CapEx than the EUR 1.5 billion? I will take the second and third, and Sreedhar you will come back to the first. Yes, you are right that HPS benefited mostly from all the structural actions that have been put in place on several businesses. A good evolution on the margin. That should continue to have a positive impact. The outlook for the margin for HPS is close to 2018 as a full year, which was around 13.4%. That's the kind of margin we should expect for the full year of HPS, which is a good performance. The slight caveat, we mentioned it, is how fast and how far the automotive market is going to recover in Europe. We are going to benefit from structural improvement in many businesses. The businesses related to investment cycle are going to continue to improve. The only area which is more challenging, and we continue to take actions, is towards automotive Europe. That's the kind of margin around the 2018 margin, 2018 margin that we should continue to see going forward for the second half of this year. In terms of capacity constraint, the first action which we have done is, again, to make sure that we run seven days, five shifts, 24/7. We have most of our plants now running like that, making sure also we optimize, we reduce the downtime for maintenance in some parts of the year, making sure we have the full shift, also on the logistics side, et cetera. The second action is to work on debottlenecking. In many lines, before you add significant CapEx, we need some in some areas, and I've highlighted that. You need to debottleneck. We have a lot of detailed actions with our central programs on world-class manufacturing to debottleneck the plant, run 5% faster on the line speed, and that makes a big difference in terms of capacity at the end of the day. Sometimes also simplify the product SKU that you manufacture so that you have less changeover. There are a lot of detailed tricks, I would say, which could have a significant impact on the capacity before we go towards more capacity. On the capacity side, we are adding, again, capacity in plasterboard. We are adding capacity in flat glass in Mexico, in flat glass in India, in plasterboard in India. We are adding a sixth plasterboard plant. We have added 10 construction chemical plant around the world in the last 12 months. We are very active on construction chemical, and we plan for more going forward in several geographies. We look at that with a lot of positive trend underlying. Before you add big CapEx, and we don't intend to go beyond the EUR 1.5 we guided for in this year, and in that kind of range going forward, you have a lot of detailed actions which make a huge impact on productivity and capacity for the teams on the ground. You take the first one, Sreedhar? Yeah. I presume the first one you are referring to the impact of scope in the second half. No, sorry, Sreedhar. I was referring to the 90 basis points temporary margin improvement. You highlighted- Yes The structural improvement in margin and the 90 basis points. It's not related to CapEx. The question was, when do you give back price cuts? When do you see your discretionary spending going back to a more normalized level? When do you expect this volume catch-up you are referring post-COVID, so the 50% to fully unwind? Whether that is included in your H2 2021 guidance or you see some residual impact in 2022 and therefore it's going to be more spread than that. Yeah. The discretionary costs will certainly be the savings, whatever we did, it's certainly going to be much lower in the second half. We are going to start visiting the customers. We are going to have the market days. I think the travel is going to start. I think the biggest element of the discretionary cost is all about travel. I don't expect it to come back to the normal level in the second half, because I think it will happen in a gradual phase. Maybe there will be some small element which would be there. When we guide, we don't get into those kind of a micro level details. It's a guidance based on what we see, a broad trend. That's why we guide on like for like business. To answer your question, discretionary costs will be lower. The savings will be lower, but it will catch up as we progress. Keep in mind also that we'll see in the second half of this year, the impact of some of the divestitures we have announced recently and that we have not yet seen in the first half. It's going to trigger some additional structural gains on the margin. Yeah in the second half. Sure. Keep that in mind because the Graham divestiture, Lapeyre, we had just one month in June. Dutch Distribution was still in our books until end of June. Those impact are going structurally to be there in the second half and going forward. Related to price costs, the gains accumulated since H2 2020, which I think are EUR 130, something like that, do you expect that to fully unwind in the second half? I would not be so precise about the second half, what will be the exact situation, but I can only tell you that everything what we're doing, I'm very confident that we will compensate the total yearly inflation which we have seen. I guided EUR 1.1 billion. I gave you the details of what was there in the first half is EUR 400 million, second half, I'm expecting it will be something like EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million. There is a good focus on price. That gives me confidence that we should be able to compensate. Mathematically, you should even be willing to have a negative impact that spread in the second half. Again, it's too premature to talk about very precisely. That's why I want to guide you for the full year impact, which will remain positive. We will compensate the inflation for the year. Okay. That's clear. Thanks a lot. Second or next question, sorry. The next question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Sir, please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Sorry, I'm going to ask another one on margins. Agreed you were helpful in giving me sort of underlying run rate, you're saying 9.5. Would I be in the right ballpark if I said the portfolio changes that have occurred sort of Poliet, Lapeyre, Chryso, Dutch Distribution, and there's a few other ones, Graham, that they add something like 40 - 50 basis points just to the mix before we consider anything else. Is that about right? 30 - 40. Maybe kind of circling back to your broader outlook. Yeah, okay. You say 30 - 40, yeah? Yeah. Coming back to your question. Can you hear me? Yeah. Go ahead, please, yeah. Yes, Gregor. I answered quickly without allowing you to complete the second question. Go ahead to your question, yeah. Okay. Sorry. The second question is regarding the growth as we go from here. Obviously, you're kind of flagging holidays and sort of tightness, et cetera, and the basis of comparison. It's obvious the rate of growth will slow. I guess as a broader idea, do you think that the renovation market in general has been over-indexing? You've perhaps captured a lot of growth in a very short period of time, and therefore we should be thinking about an unwind or sort of perhaps no growth for a period of time? Do you think actually, with the energy efficiency spending and all the stuff that's still coming, I guess that you flagged early in your remarks means that we can continue to grow from the current level. I'm maybe being a bit cheeky. I'm trying to get you to give me a directional steer where you think the trend is into next year, essentially. Gregor, the trend is very positive. The trend had structurally changed, versus the one-ish percent of organic growth we had in the past. We have structurally changed. We'll highlight all that during the capital market day. Structurally, the trend has dramatically changed. We see that in our customer order books. It's just growing up. That means the backlog of orders is growing on energy efficiency renovation. New build in the U.S. is just moving up and there is a big lag on what is built, what is needed. There is a big need of new housing, renovated housing in the U.K., in Germany, in France, in the Nordics, in the U.S. Everywhere, I would say the pile is growing. We are extremely confident about the secular trends behind that are going to triple, of course, continue to triple in the second half, but 2022, 2023, 2024. This is a big change for Saint-Gobain on all those renovation trend, new construction without even mentioning the emerging markets, but new construction cycle in the U.S. Look at the big picture of what has been behind in terms of construction for the last 10 years in the big major contract markets. We are behind the needs. There will be a strong momentum in the years to come. Next question, please. Thank you. Just to be clear, you said 30-40 basis points. We were talking over each other. Yes. On the structural gain that we are going to see, not all of them in the second half, well, 20 - 30. Chryso will come maybe in October, November. The positive impact of Chryso, I don't think we'll see much of that in the second half, but the impact of the divestitures announced, yes, we'll see that clearly, at least 20, 30 basis points in the second half of this year on top of the structural margin that we have highlighted with Sreedhar over the last 12 months. Again, we'll guide you on the midterm ambition of the group in terms of margin- Thank you. At the capital market day. Next question, please. The next question comes from Tobias Woerner from Stifel. Yeah, please go ahead. Yes, thank you. Congrats on these stunning results, thanks for taking the questions. Just with regard to your working capital, when I look at trade creditors, they've gone up quite significantly. You don't seem to pay your suppliers, on the one hand. On the other hand, given the supply shortages we're talking about, do you feel adequately stocked up, and how much more should that be? In a nutshell, the free cash flow generation in the second half, if this all normalizes, how do you see it? The second question is, when I look at 2007 peak margins for building distribution, strip out Lapeyre, which made some money back then, and also building distribution Germany, I get to roughly a margin of 6%. You're getting close to 7% as we speak. What do you think is your normalized margin in the building distribution side? Just lastly, probably one for Sreedhar, your H2 2020 EBIT was EUR 2,028 or EUR 2,028 million. Can you just maybe give us a hand with what the structural or the scope impacts were, which we should strip out? Thanks. Thank you. I answer a bit on the supply and Basically, we need to increase inventory by four, five days in terms of finished goods, in terms of products to enhance our customers. That's the magnitude of what we need to do, and we will answer on the creditors of Sreedhar. The beauty about Saint-Gobain is that those decisions are taken on the ground, and they are with small numbers on the ground everywhere. We don't rely on a big pocket of raw material where there is a huge short age. We are not in this kind of semiconductor dilemma of the automotive markets. We are dealing with thousands of small raw materials here and here. There is no significant impact to the scale of Saint-Gobain, but that means a lot of agility on the ground on all details for our teams. No worry, no big risk of any question of supply chain, Chinese supplier, whatever. We don't source a lot of products. We don't have this huge overseas transport from China type of cost that other businesses could have. That's what I want to say. In terms of de-risking, we are very well-positioned. On your margin for distribution, again, I look at Saint-Gobain for the future. I don't look at what we did 25 years ago or 10 years ago. Indeed, yes, a kind of six-ish distribution margin is a good margin. Yes, we have done some structural changes, divesting some low-performing businesses. That's a significant impact. Second, also improving structurally the very good businesses we have. All the investments we have done on logistics, on digital, that makes our businesses and strong businesses, whether it's in the Nordics, whether it's in Switzerland, a bit in the U.K., in France, much stronger businesses. We feel confident about the performance of our margin in distribution going forward in some of the magnitude that we spoke about. Clearly, we are extremely happy with the 6.7% that we have performed in the first half, and that's a new record and a new set of benchmark. You want to take- On working capital, Tobias, just recall what we reduced vis-à-vis last year is last year, we had reduced nine days of working capital. This year, we have further reduced by seven days, and that's why I said that one of the things we really need to correct is the inventory level to serve the customer. What it means is for the end of the year, what I said end of February, that nine days what we reduced last year, 50% of that is structural. We are very confident to preserve the structural reduction, which we will do in working capital. The balance, we should keep that flexibility because I think it's important that we serve the market. If we don't serve the market, then the trend which we have, the fair gain trend, is something which we want to continue. From a guidance point of view, you can take into account that the working capital will certainly be in number of days higher than what you saw last year, 2020. Second thing is you have to keep in mind is CapEx. We talked about it. There will be a catch-up effect of CapEx. We are still guiding, sticking to this EUR 1.5 billion. We spent something like EUR 400 million in the first half. The balance should come in the second half. It is important that we invest to continue to grow in the market. For me, the cash flow, you need to see from a ratio, I mean, the conversion point of view. As I said, you should keep the 2019 as the good reference point, which is 44%. I'm sure we will be better than that in this year. Coming to your other question on technical question, which is what would be the impact of Forex and the scope? It should be a limited impact in the second half. I say with some caveat because the exchange can move from one end to the other end. As of now, what I see, the Forex, the spot rate, particularly the dollar. Right now it is 1.19. Last year it was 1.18, so we are talking of a slight negative there. Otherwise, Nordic and GBP is becoming positive. As far as Forex is concerned, I believe that it would be a neutral to slightly positive at this point of time, and then scope impact should be slightly negative. All in all, I would say that should be a limited impact for the second half. Thank you. Very helpful. Maybe one follow-up question or request. For the investor day, are you going to show margin targets group as a whole or by division or? What does it all for? You will see, Tobias. I will see. I'm too curious. Thank you. Bye-bye. Have a good summer. We will be helpful to you, whatever, our best possible manner. Thank you. It's always important to give you wish list to Sreedhar and Vivien, so that we answer your needs for the capital market day. I had a meeting with all of you on the 1st of July, please fill the pipeline of questions or expectations. The very first day of his taking the job. Next question, please. The next question comes from Christian Korth from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning. I have three questions. Apologies for the first one. I would like to go back to slide number 10. On your operating margin for the last 12 months, I was wondering why you classified the price-cost spread as exceptional. I thought that it is a key objective to have a positive price-cost spread. Everything you said today sounds like you're not willing to give away any of the achieved positive price-cost spread. While I know that the world is changing, I'm not sure why it is classified as an exceptional, which means you expect it to vanish at some time. Maybe you could please explain this to me, why the positive price-cost effect should disappear. The second question is, if you could please remind me what your energy costs were in the first and the second half of 2020. The third question is just on Chryso. I wanted to ask what the status of the transaction currently is. What is the status of? If it is in line with your previous planning. Could you repeat the third? What is the status of? Chryso. Yeah, Chryso, what is the status of what on Chryso? I didn't get it, sorry. Yes. What the status is on Chryso, and if it is in line with your planning? Okay. Very good, yeah. Just before you give the price-cost spread, this is our leadership positions on pricing power. We are extremely happy about what we have delivered in the second half of last year, first half of this year, and we are not going to stop there. Don't take us wrong. If we can maximize the price-cost spread to leverage our pricing power, we'll continue to do so. What we are saying is that it was quite exceptional versus the past in terms of magnitude. This is only what we are saying, the magnitude of the price-cost was quite exceptional. It was EUR 235 million if I take the last 12 months. This is, I would say, above normal. We think it's going to normalize. The incentive, the targets for all the teams to continue to push for that and capture the maximum of it and leverage the very big volumes and expectations from our customers on this aspect. It's not going to disappear, but the magnitude is going to maybe cool down a bit. Sreedhar, you want to be more precise than me? No, I think you have added, you have said everything what I wanted to say. It's good. Energy, so. Energy is, last year it was EUR 1.1 billion. This year we are expecting EUR 1.3 billion. Chryso, we have had with all the legal constraints, of course, because we are filing the antitrust, we pay attention to what we can do, what we cannot do. We have had some interaction to introduce the teams to each other. I can tell you the chemistry, without any joke, but the chemistry between our teams has been extremely positive in terms of ideas of business growth going forward, in terms of preparing the integration around the world. I was with the Chryso team the next day, and from there, we have started to do it country by country. The chemistry is very good. The trend on the business is good. Actually above what we had in mind in terms of the last 12 months when we announced the acquisition. The Chryso manager guides me for the 2nd half, close to, but I think he's delivering very well so far, slightly above what we had in mind on the last 12 months. In terms of antitrust filing, I think we have 13 filings. three or four of them are already done, and we expect the rest to be done around end of September, early October. Chryso, I would say latest, should be in our books on early November, if not slightly earlier. Everything is positive and green on Chryso. They are extremely eager to join Saint-Gobain. We are extremely eager to welcome them. It's a fantastic team. They are all on board, and I'm extremely positive. All the feedback also we heard from customers, including the Chryso customers, after the announcement of the acquisition. It's a fantastic growth platform for us going forward. All positive on Chryso. Thank you. I just didn't really understand your answer on energy cost. Could you please repeat that? It's EUR 1.1 billion last year, and this year I expect it to be EUR 1.3 billion. Okay, that's for the full year, right? Sorry? Full year. Yeah, it's full year for sure. Sorry, my question was the split for the first and the second half? Uh- Half year. Yeah. I think last year it was a very unusual year. I don't have the figure on my mind. It doesn't make sense to look at like that because last year, the first half was much lower because the production was limited. Plus, we have some hedging, so we are already hedging 2022, if not 2023. For us, the energy impact in the second half is already there and accounted in our figures. Next question. Okay, thank you. I think we covered all the questions already on the call, and let's take now the questions. Is there any more questions? Sorry. No, we have no more question by phone. Okay, let's take the questions on the internet. I will read them. This is a question from Mike Betts. Given you are operating at full capacity, do you plan to significantly increase CapEx in 2022, or do you think demand is currently above long-term sustainable levels? Thank you, Mike, for the question. We are going to increase a bit the CapEx next year, slightly above probably the EUR 1.5 billion level of this year, not significantly. Again, there are a lot of actions to make sure that everywhere, which was not the case even 12 or 18 months ago, we run at full shift. We debottleneck our plant. We optimize. We have done a lot of actions on 4.2 in manufacturing with our experts. We debottleneck the plant to gain capacity on the lines without significantly changing the CapEx. No big change, but a bit more CapEx, yes, for 2022. Good CapEx on growth following the trend. I don't think the current demand is overdone on the demand side. Sorry, because the questions are moving. I take the next one. There was another question, I think from Mike Betts. No, I think this is it. There is a question from Josep Pujal. When David Molho did replace Laurent Guillot. The executive committee, I put in place this new executive team on July 1st. It was announced on June the 4th. There was a press release on June the 6th, if I'm correct. You have read that. The team was announced right after the AGM- Yeah Which appointed me as board director for Saint-Gobain. David has been within the group for 12 years in many successful positions. David took over like the rest of the team. There have been other changes within the team. I've highlighted all the team, please refer to the press release we had on June the 6th. Everything is in place on July 1st. This is the time I took over as CEO of Saint-Gobain. Mortar without cement, another question from Josep. What do you put instead? Ha. We put other materials, I don't want to go into the specifics, other materials, those formulations are patented. We have the patent, the only one where we can take mortars without any Portland cement in our mortar with even better, less itchy, less dust for the craftsman. This is the patented solution. Even recently I checked because I was pretty sure you would ask the question, but our teams prefer not to disclose. You can have a lot of things. You could have clay, you could have slag, you could have all kind of waste materials. Clearly, we are pushing a lot of ideas to put in our mortars and construction chemicals. What we call waste materials, so collection of waste from your demolition sites. This is a way to reduce the level of cement, big way, in our formulations. Here again, I think Chryso will give us also a lot of input on the chemistry and the modern chemistry we can put in many materials of Saint-Gobain going forward. Another question from Joseph. PFOA class actions, how much have you booked, and how much was the demand of the other side? Well, we don't publish the other side. The details, I think- We booked what was necessary to- Correct. What I can tell you is there are two class actions. New York is closed, signed public now, and also the Vermont is another site which is in progress. We have made the best estimate. On these two class actions, all the expected cost has been provisioned end of June. We have EUR 78 million in the books been provided. Next question from Manish Beria from Société Générale. It seems that the relationship between growth and CapEx is likely to change for better. Do you foresee an increase in your payout ratio medium-term, or do you want to recycle the extra cash generation for M&A? I think it's typically a question for the capital market day. We are conscious, Sreedhar and myself, about all the expectations, also all sometimes the negative feedback that some investors had on Saint-Gobain over the last 10 or 20 years. We take that into account in terms of the right discipline on cash allocation. This was the first question earlier today. The right also discipline in terms of return to the investors, whether it's in terms of share buyback or dividend. We'll come back to you during the capital market day with, I think, a very solid plan to create value for our shareholders mid and long term, as well as a very good discipline on acquisitions. I'm very happy to say that what we have done in terms of divestitures in the last 2.5 years, it's more than 30 divestitures. We have not been, with no taboo on the divestitures and also very active on acquisitions. It's more than 40 acquisitions, good ones with very good returns. Some of you were a bit skeptical when we announced Continental in November of 2019. We knew the cycle was there. We knew the team would be a very strong fit within Saint-Gobain. I think we have proven to deliver well on acquisitions in the last 2.5 years, and we'll continue to do so. This is the way of Saint-Gobain going forward. "Some sell-side analysts do not think" The same question from Patrick. Patrick, sorry, Millicom. "Some sell-side analysts do not think you will announce big changes in the targets and strategy in the Capital Market Day in October. What is your reply to this?" Well, I will think about that over the summer because I don't want to disappoint anyone. What is clear is that we talk to all the stakeholders, not only the sell side, but also the buy side and the investors. We are on the growth strategy for Saint-Gobain. Saint-Gobain has changed. We are not in the same picture of Saint-Gobain compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Saint-Gobain has changed. We are on a growth pattern. We have delivered in terms of discipline on the cost side, in terms of margin. We have surprised you several times in terms of your expectations on the results. Sreedhar, myself, and all the executive team is committed to deliver on our commitment. We'll highlight all this during the Capital Market Day. I've been part of the strategy of the group. I've been leading the Transform & Grow actions of the group, whether it's portfolio, organization, or margin impact in the last two and a half years. I'm very happy about the story and the drive we have right now. Don't expect a U-turn on the strategy because we'll continue to accelerate on that strategy. It's clear, leadership on light and sustainable construction. We have seen the impact it provides to Saint-Gobain in terms of strategy and in terms of impact. Whether I understand the value of Saint-Gobain on the share price, no, and I'm ready to convince our shareholders, our buy-side analysts, that there is something to change on the valuation of Saint-Gobain going forward. Another question from Patrick Payet. You mentioned that 70% of your solutions are sustainable. Does it mean that 30% of your products are not sustainable, and which activities are these then? This is a very detailed work that we have done over the last six months, and we'll highlight that during the Capital Market Day to classify our portfolio on two axes to serve our strategy of light and sustainable worldwide leadership and construction. What we provide in terms of sustainability for the planet and for the people, and what we provide in terms of performance for our customers. We'll highlight all that, and there is an overlap of what we do on performance for our customers and what we do on sustainability. With that, we cover 100% of the group. There are some accessories and things like that which do not fit in either of the two categories, but I feel very good about the portfolio of Saint-Gobain delivering sustainability and performance for our customers going forward. All the team is going to highlight that by region, by segment during the Capital Market Day. Those solutions, these are the reason why we deliver such a big impact on the margin. I meant in my introduction that we deliver best-in-class margin. Tobias was kind enough to highlight the 6.7% margin on distribution. We have delivered 14% margin in our manufacturing businesses. I think it's best in class, if not close to best in class of the best peers in the industry. I think it's our job to convince all the investors, all the financial community that we are best in class in terms of running our margins and running the long-term organic growth of the group going forward. I think we have covered all the questions, if I'm correct on the internet. That being said, we are extremely happy, Sreedhar N., myself, and all the team, about the results we have delivered in the first half, all-time record of Saint-Gobain. This is, I think, the third positive surprise in the year. We are committed to deliver. We are very confident about the second half. We have revised our guidance up for the full year, and we are committed to deliver an exceptional year in 2021 as all-time high record. More to come in the details and also to touch and feel the team during the Capital Market Day. I wish you a very good summer, a very safe summer, and happy to see you on the 6th of October for all our strategy going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you.