My name is Lucy Rodriguez, and I am the Chief Communications Officer for CEMEX. First and foremost, after one and a half years of quarantine, it is wonderful to have everyone together again, albeit both virtually and physically. A very big welcome to CEMEX Day 2021, Part 2, our first Hybrid Analyst Day. I have a few housekeeping items before we begin the formal program. Slides for the event are available on our website at CEMEX.com. Except for our CEO, Fernando González's introductory remarks, each presentation has a Q&A built into the session. We will conclude the event with a Q&A with our CEO. During the Q&A sessions, we ask that for the audience here in the room, you raise your hand to be recognized. Once you are recognized, a microphone will be delivered to you. We suggest that you stand up to ask the question and that you give your name so that you are identified on the webcast. For the virtual audience, well, actually, for the entire audience, we ask for your patience during the Q&A because we do have to balance questions from our virtual analyst as well as the analyst in the room. For those analysts joining us virtually, please click on the raise hand button that is enabled on your screen to ask a question. Once your name is called, unmute yourself, and please ensure your camera is on. If for any reason your question is not answered, please feel free to reach out to CEMEX Investor Relations. We are pleased to be here today at the New York Stock Exchange and grateful to the exchange for once again making their premises available to us during the pandemic, so let us begin. As you may remember, due to the pandemic, we split up our usual annual Analyst Day into two separate events. The first, a financial and strategic review that took place in June, and today's event that is more granular and focuses on the regions, the climate action roadmap, and our digital strategy. In today's event, our CEO, Fernando González, will begin by providing a brief overview of Operation Resilience, our digital initiatives, as well as our climate action commitments. That will be followed by presentations from regional presidents who will provide an update on recent market trends and medium-term outlook of their regions, as well as our climate action roadmap and our digital strategy. We have with us today our full executive committee who will be available for the Q&A. There is so much happening today at CEMEX between our ambitious climate action targets, our growth investments, our digital engine driving customer centricity, and the organic growth prospects of our markets. I think you will hear interesting insights into what is happening in our regions and how we think about future growth, as well as our purpose and how we intend to build a better future. And now, for a quick disclaimer, I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are based on our current knowledge of the markets in which we operate and could change in the future due to a variety of factors beyond our control. In addition, unless the context indicates otherwise, all references to pricing initiatives, public price increases, or decreases refer to prices for our products. And now, it is my pleasure to introduce our CEO, Fernando González. Good morning to all, and thanks for participating in this second section of CEMEX Day, either presentially or through the webcast. I hope you and your loved ones are healthy, and we will spend a few hours commenting on the agenda you already know. But before getting into the main content of the agenda, we thought it was a good idea to kind of review things that we have been communicating is our north, which is expressed in what we started calling Operation Resilience in September last year. Briefly, let me go through the process because there have been several surprises in this pandemic process. March last year, because of the dominant scenarios then, which most of them were disastrous, we reacted boldly, precisely because we thought we were headed into a disastrous scenario. Now you know the story. We took bold actions, savings, postponing CapEx, eliminating, getting as much cash as possible, developing 52 health protocols to protect our employees, all that stuff. But you know that the second surprise is that instead of disastrous scenarios, at least in my case, it's the first time that I see a V-shaped recovery, three months, four months at the latest, and there was a full recovery of our business activity in our sector. Didn't happen in others, but in ours, construction was declared essential almost all over the world, so we managed to recover. And the next surprise was that instead of moving and recover to pre-pandemic levels, in our markets, we saw growth. Again, another surprise. We were not expecting such a positive scenario by then. And that has been the case since then until the info we have already reported in the second quarter. We summarize all our actions during all this roller coaster because of the pandemic into this Operation Resilience. Let me go briefly through the elements so we can move to the main content of this event. Let me start with EBITDA growth through margin enhancement. We commented we wanted to have a target margin of about 20% during the first half of the year. It's slightly higher than that, supported by market growth, by our actions, cost and expense reductions, and all of the like. Now, before moving into the other three, the other two are still just a review of Operation Resilience. The last one is one of the main contents of this CEMEX Day. But before moving to those, I think we have to acknowledge that lately, impacted because of the Delta variant and perhaps some other issues, what we've seen, and lately, meaning two, three months, what we're seeing is this super hot scenario moving into a hot scenario, meaning there has been some slight decline in global GDP, which is still around 6%. There has been a reduction, for instance, in relevant markets for us, in U.S. GDP by a half percentage point. So it seems like there is a sort of a slowdown of these scenarios that were dominant during the first half of the year to a slightly lower growth, but still pretty relevant. It was not the idea for this CEMEX Day to get into expectations and short-term issues. That's supposed to be done three weeks from now in our third quarter call. But we thought it was convenient to address a few issues. First, I said for weather issues, and we have had some in the U.S. and Mexico and Europe. This slight decline in GDP growth in different markets has not been translated into less growth in our cement, ready mix, and aggregate volumes. Our expectations are still holding. They might have an impact afterwards, but so far, we have this expectation similar to the ones we have been communicating before. What has changed is inflation. We thought we were going to have inflation, but not as much as we've seen, particularly fuels, electricity, maritime transportation in particular. So we've been impacted because of inflation. And another impact, which is related to several variables, but referring it to inflation, we've seen in our sector, no different to others, there is an impact because of supply chain issues, constraints. There is scarcity of certain goods. We needed to buy at spot prices certain issues. That's more expensive than when you're really prepared to spend. So it's been impacting us to some extent. There is another variable. It's not huge, but remember that our expectations were expressed at FX prevailing at the end of June. So by now, we have some impact because of FX, particularly mainly because of the Mexican peso, and another impact, and because that's the other variable related to supply chain issues, is that we've seen some delays in the execution of our growth projects, meaning goods are taking longer. It's like cars are taking longer to give it to you. By the way, we've been responding to all of this, meaning now our pricing strategy is completely different, as you can imagine. We are increasing prices on a much more frequent basis, and we are understanding the dynamics, the competitive dynamics in different markets. We are doing as much to continue with our policy in pricing, which is gaining back inflation we have in our cost structure. So all in all, we believe in a sort of preliminary basis, meaning preliminary because we don't still have the full data for the quarter. Again, we will comment that during our call. But we believe that all these variables can impact our EBITDA for an amount of around $100 million. So that's what we wanted to comment. We thought you were expecting us addressing somehow this situation. We need to better understand, again, we've been surprised several times in the process. We don't want to be surprised again. So we are preparing. We have changed our pricing strategies. We have changed or we have taken again measures on postponing costs and whatever the investment can be postponed. So we are doing all of that. So we will have better information during our third quarter call in three weeks. One piece of info that I can tell you is that all contribution margins in all our products, well, it's cement, ready mix, and aggregates, in all our regions, with the exception of the margin we make on imported cement in the U.S., are holding or growing in the first eight months of the year. So that's already eight months. So what we're saying, lately, we've seen this trend. We see what's happening. We are reacting. We will need some additional time to go deeper and communicate what we believe is going to be the impact, at least for this year. So let me move on to the next element of Operation Resilience. What can I tell you? You know all the measures. Growth, EBITDA growth has been relevant for us to deliver. The financing we changed, the free cash flow we are generating, all in all, is helping us to move to our aspiration or previous target of having leverage below three times. And now, once we achieve it, now we're setting the target of gaining investment grade. As you know, Standard & Poor's just changed our outlook, and they did mention the parameters that they think we should comply with in order for them to upgrade a notch. So we are very vigilant on that part. The third one is optimizing our portfolio for growth. If you remember, even before the pandemic, in early 2020, we made some adjustments to our strategy, and we decided to start investing in businesses we knew were attractive businesses, small businesses, all around our business activity, mainly in the U.S. and Europe, to some extent in Mexico. I mean, everywhere, but these types of businesses. Now we know that it was really true that there was an opportunity that we didn't manage to tackle before because we were using all our resources to reduce debt. And now we have very interesting low-risk, profitable projects for investments of about $700 million. These investments are really small, meaning from $5 million to $30 million. Some are even less. A few are even more, but that's the range. And we are executing. We do expect that by 2023, if we manage to execute this $710 million in these projects timely. I already warned on the supply chain issues we have. For instance, we are ordering ready mix trucks in advance. We don't want to be in a position where markets are growing and we cannot take advantage of it because we don't have the trucks. That's the type of measures that we've been taking. These investments should generate around $320-330 million of EBITDA by 2023. That's a figure that we will continue updating as long as we understand how effective or how impacted this activity could be because of supply chain issues. Now let me move to, sorry. Oops. Sorry. To the sustainability agenda, in particular, I have to clarify that at least the comments I'm going to make are in particular oriented into a low-carbon economy. There are others that are very relevant. Today, at least in my case, Juan Romero is going to elaborate much more, but we are going to be focused into CO2 or low-carbon economy. You have the data of the second quarter. There's a reduction of 1%. When you mentioned short period of time, that's not that sizable. But again, it's indicating that we are moving forward according to the plans that are going to be deeply explained to you. Briefly, this is a very long story. Yeah, and I have 15 minutes. Lucy told me several times, "It's 15 minutes." But I think I can summarize it. I can summarize it. Climate change is not news. It's not new for us and for other companies. So what is the fuss? Why is it that we want you to listen to us on what we have to say? Well, a way to put it is that we seriously started working in climate change since 1990 after the Kyoto Protocol, and it was not just us. It was the whole industry. It's been 30 years. In 30 years, we have managed to reduce our CO2 emissions by 20%, I never remember, 22% or so. Juan is going to mention that. The reason we are addressing this now is because climate change is in a new momentum because of evidences precisely on climate change and because of how many some traditional, some new stakeholders have engaged in the last 12 to 18 months into climate action, so that makes this a completely different game. It's not different rules. It's a different game, and that's why we wanted to adjust our strategies, our targets, and everything towards this new momentum, which is different in how much is demanded and how fast is demanded. I know you all read things, most probably the same articles that I read, but I cannot help that I remember Greta Thunberg saying, "2050, come on. You have to act as if your house is on fire." So it's different, and nowadays, in this momentum, it's not only Greta. It's a critical mass of stakeholders expecting and demanding us to change and to adjust. What has been our response, and as you see in the middle of the chart, 2020 and 2030 is a decisive decade. The first part of what makes it decisive is that we have changed our stand. We have changed our aspiration. We started by stating 2050 carbon-neutral ready mix in the market so our customers could build with low-carbon products. But afterwards, we subscribed to the well below two degrees scenario, which is the one that is aligned to the Paris Agreement. After subscribing to the scenario, SBTi certified that the specific numbers, the specific targets we are now proposing or committing by 2030 are the ones that are precisely aligned into what is needed for temperature not to go above two degrees. This scenario, nowadays, there are ways for SBTi, in this case, as a certified, but there are ways in which you can subscribe and define the specific targets to it. After doing that, we subscribed to the one and a half degree scenario. We Mean Business and UN Race to Zero, which means right now there is not a way to define specific criteria or numbers, but it's the intention of going even deeper in the reduction. Right now, there is a process in which this scenario is going to be specifically defined for different industries. We are very pleased because we were invited as part of the committee that is going to be defining this scenario for the cement industry. The previous targets we used to have for 2030, we moved them forward to 2025. The new ones, Juan is going to elaborate on all of them, are the ones aligned currently to the Paris Agreement. Another important comment is, most probably, this will continue being a moving target. Who knows what is going to be coming out from Glasgow? Okay. We're paying attention. But for the time being, this is as far and as ambitious as we can be. Now, I'm not going to get deeper into precisely what Juan is going to be commenting. A few issues, key variables for us. Low-carbon products. We need to better serve the construction industry, our customers. We need to provide them with a much more comprehensive value offer on low-carbon products. We're doing it. Our Vertua family of products, yeah, but we need to do much more. That's one thing. Another thing is we need to take more advantage of a circular economy. We have been taking advantage of the circular economy. Let me give you a piece of info. Last year, our reduction of CO2 in Europe was 35% when compared to 1990, Kyoto Protocol. The rest of CEMEX, 20%. My explanation of the difference: it is not that we were paying more attention in Europe and less attention in the U.S., Mexico, and other markets. It's circular economy. So household and industrial waste recovering the energy content in it instead of landfilling it. That's an example. Using waste from other industries, fly ash, slag, alternative raw materials that could be wasted from other industries. Availability of clean energy. So all those issues that are related to circular economy are key in this effort. And the other one is innovation. And I think we will need to make much more emphasis ourselves through association and other industries on trying to move public policy into facilitating this process. Now, the good news is that in order to achieve our targets, we are not dependent on any changes in public policy. We are not dependent on any new technologies that are not available today. We have what we are calling our roadmap from today to 2030, plant per plant. And what we need to do is doing more and faster than what we have done. We have cement plants in Europe using 90% of alternative fuels. Not all our plants are using 90% alternative fuels. Okay. So okay. That's the gap that we will be covering. And again, Juan is going to be detailing on that. Innovation. We engaged like four years ago. Our corporate venture entity, CEMEX Ventures, is now one of the best-known open innovation networks in the construction industry. Through them, through CEMEX Ventures, we have detected, we have invested, and we have worked with a number of startups related to the new technologies that we will be needing in the next few years, at the latest in nine years before 2030. And then with the roadmaps, with innovation, and hopefully with some success in public policy, we will move to the last phase of our decarbonization strategy after 2030. And I will leave it like that. Juan, again, is going to comment on more specific issues in this regard. Last one is technology, digital technology. We've been talking about this already. Now, it seems like we knew the pandemic was coming and we developed CEMEX Go before the pandemic. That is not true. That was not the case. But it happened that it was very convenient that we finished developing a full digital commercial platform. When I say full, I mean from lead to cash is the whole process. It's not pieces of it. It's not tracking the trucks. Yes, we do that, but it's not only that. It's not just ordering. Yes, we do that, but not only that. It's invoices, it's reviewing, it's delivering. It's the whole spectrum of the commercial relation. And we have that for cement, for ready mix, for aggregates, and it's available all over CEMEX markets. There is a small exception there because of IT issues, but it is available everywhere. It took us two years to develop the platform and to launch and replicate the platform all over CEMEX. Nowadays, it's a reality that has been enriched precisely because of customer feedback, because new technology is applied to it. So we are very pleased with this IT platform. We believe it's the first full digital platform in our industry. We've seen different efforts. I think clearly it is a trend now in not only our industry. I see it as a recent trend in the business-to-business type of digital platforms. Of course, this is not new for us when we get into Amazon and start buying and get the credit card and end of the story. But a business-to-business digital platform is a completely different story if you want to integrate everything, even confirming, even delivering, and doing everything. Now, I'm making much more emphasis in this part that we have three because of two reasons. I believe that digital technologies have proved to be the technologies with the highest power to transform business models, and either in all the cases or in most of the cases, that transformation happens when customer experience is improved. So, those are the main reasons why making that much emphasis in our digital commercial platform. We decided to develop a superior customer experience when compared to the experience we used to provide to customers and hopefully superior to whatever experience is available in the market. When we started enabling that experience with the digital platform, we also started measuring our Net Promoter Score, NPS, which is a very well-known methodology. When we started, we were below 50 points in NPS. Last review, last quarter, 70 points. It's been a very material improvement on customer experience. We are very pleased for two reasons. First one, because 70 points is big leagues as far as I understand when compared to other industries. But I'm particularly pleased because of all the feedback we get from customers through the use of this methodology. So our detractors, if you are familiar with that way to measure, our detractors are telling us, "I don't appreciate you not being on time," or X. So we get lots of feedback from our customers, and that is helping us to continue improving that relation. The other two are also very important, operations and digitization of managerial processes. Again, they are also very important. It will help us to be more efficient, to reduce costs, to be more agile, to better respond to internal customers on financial info and a number of processes. But again, I have to make emphasis particularly in our desire to develop a superior customer experience enabled by this very comprehensive digital platform. And I think I have to stop here. Hopefully, I did it well with my minutes. I don't know. That was not looking at my. But as you know, we will continue with the event. I will be around, and at the end, I will be available for conversations, Q&A. Thank you. Thank you, Fernando. Thank you very much, Fernando. And now we're going to move on to the regional presentations. First joining us virtually, I hope, technology permitting, is Sergio Menéndez, President of EMEA. Thank you. Thank you, Lucy. Hello, everyone. My name is Sergio Menéndez. I am the President of CEMEX in the EMEA region. Let me start by sharing with you the results of the first half of this year. Yeah, thank you. We had a strong performance in the first half of this year, growing as a region 25% compared to the first half of the previous year and in comparable basis, around 16%. We had a strong recovery in volumes, as mentioned by Fernando, and pretty much across all our markets. We are in this despite a harsh winter in the first quarter of this year in Central Europe, so volumes are recovering well. We expect to reach 2019 levels by the end of the year, so most of our markets with strong fundamentals. Prices are also moving well. For the first time in many years, we have implemented a second round of price increases in most of our markets, and that is helping us offset significant input cost increases, especially in electricity and fuels in some of our markets, and we expect in the coming months to continue working on this and fully recover the input costs, as mentioned by Fernando as well. If you look at the fixed and other costs, we continue to drive efficiencies on top of the performance of last year. In absolute terms, we continue to drive efficiencies in costs despite the inflation, and all in all, we are achieving a 50 basis points margin improvement in the first half of the year, and it's important to note as well that last year, we have several one-offs included in our results that are not happening this year. For example, the furlough, some government incentives, and so on. So when we do the like-for-like considering this, we would be growing seven points more than last year. So it would be something around 32% or around 23% like-for-like. You move to the next slide, please. Now, in terms of our portfolio on the left side of the slide, I would like just to remind you EMEA is composed of 11 countries, and we have really a balanced portfolio where four of our countries represent around 20% of our EBITDA: Philippines, the U.K., France, and Israel. It's complemented by the countries in Central Europe and Egypt with the rest of the contribution. Now, the second pie chart on the bottom explains 80% of our portfolio is developed markets, mainly Europe and Israel. So in that 80% of our portfolio, we do have a balanced portfolio in terms of business lines. For example, aggregates and Urbanization Solutions represent 50% of our EBITDA in that part of the portfolio, complemented by cement and ready mix. And there are some countries, for example, in the U.K. or Israel, where urban solutions represent more than 25% of our EBITDA already. Now, on the right hand of the slide, talking a little bit about the outlook of the different countries. Well, first, in the case of Europe, let me share that we have completed our One Europe reorganization. We used to have an organization that was based in countries, was a geographically based organization. We moved to a product-based organization, driving significant efficiencies in a leaner organization across the continent. So we manage Europe as one unit, and it's also giving us much more efficiency in terms of implementation and execution of projects. As part of this reorganization, we completed investments of around $1 billion in peripheral assets. We also mothballed kilns in Spain, Croatia, and U.K. in anticipation of phase four of the European Trading Scheme. So all of these actions have delivered our target. When we started this in 2019, we had an objective of achieving 150 basis points in margin improvement, and that is done as of today. Going forward, we see positive demand fundamentals across Europe, strong public spending plans that I will detail in a minute, and also we see high utilization rates. Central Europe has very high utilization rates. The U.K. has very high utilization rates. So that bodes well as well for our efforts to recover input cost increases. And something that we're also working strongly is on a pipeline for bolt-on investments and margin improvement. We have identified over 100 projects that we are already executing. So in the next three years, we already earmarked around $300 million, and we have identified around $500 million for reinvestments across the region and highly profitable projects that have on average four or five years' payback. Very attractive complement to our portfolios. In the case of Israel, the market is super hot, strong for all our business lines, and we do see attractive growth opportunities as well. Egypt had an important piece of news a couple of months ago. The government announced a new regulation that restricts capacity. So we see this as the beginning of the recovery. We expect a gradual recovery in the industry and for Egypt to take a larger part of contribution in our portfolio in EMEA in the coming months and the coming years. This is very positive news for the industry in Egypt. And in the case of the Philippines, it's also a sold-out market. The total demand in the Philippines is around 7% higher than 2019 already, despite being one of the countries most heavily affected by COVID. We see strong public infrastructure plans, and also next year, there are presidential elections in the Philippines. So fundamentals for our portfolio in EMEA are positive, and we see EMEA as a growth engine for CEMEX going forward. You move to the next slide, please. This is just to illustrate the infrastructure pipeline that is already being built in Europe. There are EUR 1.4 trillion earmarked for infrastructure projects up to 2030, and this includes around EUR 750 billion for the EU Renovation Wave that aims to renovate around 35 million buildings by 2030, and these projects, for example, include on the left the Olympic Games in Paris, the Grand Paris Express, a full revamp of the metro in Paris, the HS2 train in the U.K., high-speed train over GBP 100 billion. All of this is already ongoing, and we are participating in most of these projects with our four business lines: cement, ready mix, aggregates, and some of our additives, mortars, and so on. In the case of Germany, Poland, Croatia, all across Europe, we see several very relevant projects, and these are multi-year projects, and on top of this, we're starting to see more and more climate-resilient projects to protect coastal areas, river banks, water preservation, and so on. So we see these are part of the fundamental support in growing demand in Europe in the coming years. You go to the next slide, please. And just finally, this slide is just to share with you the progress that we have in Europe on climate action. We're very proud of the progress that we are achieving. In the last three years, we have accelerated the speed of reduction of CO2 emissions. We have reached, as you know, already a 35% reduction in CO2 emissions versus 1990. This is 10 years ahead of our original target for Europe. And as I mentioned, 25% of that reduction happened in the last three years thanks to dozens of projects that we are implementing to accelerate as much as possible. This is also a result of the implementation of One Europe, in which we are managing all these projects centralized in Europe and moving at the same time across geographies in our seven geographies. And also, as a result of that, we have updated our target, and our new target is 55% reductions. We're the first company in Europe to match the European Union aspiration of 55% reduction in emissions by 2030. This is already public, and we have a plan to achieve that. It's part of the plans certified by SBTi that Fernando mentioned. And just to illustrate as well some of the specifics that are delivering these results, for example, we were the first company to introduce hydrogen as part of the combustion. In a matter of 12 months. We expect also to reach a new record, internal record on alternative fuels. We expect to reach around 70% by the end of the year. This compares to around 45% of the average of the industry in Europe. So we are among the highest, if not the highest, in alternative fuels. And this is helping us turn one of the largest input costs into an income stream. We already have two cement plants where fuel is an income stream in Europe. And by the end of the year, we will have two more. So that means four plants where fuel is actually an income stream. And we expect this to happen in all our plants in Europe going forward. We are also the first company in Europe to introduce a carbon-neutral concrete. This was in January 2020 under our Vertua brand. And we are already supplying significant projects. For example, one of the latest ones is the Manchester Arena. We're supplying 3,000 cubic meters of carbon-neutral concrete, and this is part of our full suite of Vertua products that are designed for renovation, for sustainable construction, and so on, and includes not only concrete, but also cement. For example, we have a high-strength blended cement that was introduced this year in the market across Europe as well. We introduced it in all countries at the same time thanks to our One Europe organization. Also, in the case of aggregates, we have recycled aggregates that are used in cement, that are used in concrete, mortars, also additives that help reduce CO2 in construction, especially concrete products, for example, Insularis that helps reduce energy consumption in buildings, so it's a full suite of sustainable products that we are developing with and that we are innovating as well. We launched more than 20 products in the last 18 months in our four business lines. Just to complement today, more than 60% of our cement sales are low-carbon cements, are blended cements. For example, countries like Spain are already more than 80% of the cement we sell. This has changed significantly in the last couple of years. We used to be below 50%. Now it's more than 60%. In the case of Spain, it was around 50%. Now it's 80%. It's moving really fast across Europe. All of this is also helping us build a portfolio of CO2 allowances. We used to have until 2025. Now it's until 2026. We continue to build that excess portfolio of allowances. This means that we don't need to buy CO2 credits in the market at least until 2026. We expect to continue to develop this portfolio through the reductions that we are achieving across our operations. Linked to this, we have more than 50 ongoing climate and innovation projects. One of the most visible ones is the ones in our Rüdersdorf plant in Germany. This is one of the largest cement plants in Germany. There we have launched a flagship project to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. We have signed alliances. We have over 20 partners, public and private, and we are running demonstration projects. The objective is by 2025 to have an industrial demonstration project where we are capturing and using CO2 and to have a full-scale implementation by 2030. That is the ambition. That's the target for our Rüdersdorf plant. So I wanted to share with you this summary as well. We're leading the industry in Europe and also leading in cement. All of these actions are being shared across the company. And we're also learning from other actions that are implemented elsewhere. But this is one of our highest priorities going forward. So with that, I would like to stop and just be happy to take your comments and questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sergio. We're going to take the first question from the room. And Paul Rogers, please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Sergio. It's Paul Rogers from Exane BNP Paribas. I've got a couple of questions on the impact that CO2 permit prices at EURO 65 might have. Obviously, you're long to 2026, but quite a lot of your competitors are not. Do you expect capacity closures? And also, what impact could it have on exports? Thank you, Paul. Yes, we expect some additional closures when you see the capacity that you have in places like Spain, Italy, and so on. It has been happening. There has been more plants, kilns, mothballed, but we expect a bit more of that, and we do expect to have an impact in exports in the short term, export for European markets. And that translates into a tighter market for low-carbon cement that we're already starting to see, not only for increases in shipping costs, also because of the demand recovery in Turkey. So right now, the overall market for low-carbon cement exports is tight. And this will contribute to that, less exports from European markets. A nd now the next question is from the webcast from our virtual audience. Sorry. Francisco Suárez, please go ahead from Scotiabank. Thank you so much and congrats. Quite impressive substitution rates that you have achieved. What can you tell us about the possible headwinds on logistics and how you are able to cope with the sourcing of the alternative fuels? Does that have an impact in your margins, or that can actually be compensated by the value-added products that are low-carbon tax? Thank you so much. Hi, Francisco. Thank you. And thank you for the question. On the logistics and, let's say, other input costs, on one side, you see fuel prices increase and also shortage of drivers, as we have seen lately in the U.K. and so on. Now, that part is not affecting our alternative fuel strategy. We have long-term contracts because this is also tied up with investments. So we have long-term contracts. Many times, the processing facilities are close to our operating facilities. So that hasn't really been an issue. There's huge pressure to continue advancing on reducing landfill in Europe. Landfill in Europe, there's a lot of progress, but still, it's around 40%-50%. There's still a lot of landfilling happening in Europe, and the goal is to reduce that significantly. We expect to have more availability of alternative fuels going forward in the case of Europe. Thank you, Sergio. Any other questions from the audience? Okay. If not, thank you very m uch, Sergio, for joining us from Europe and great presentation. Thank you. Now we're very pleased to move on to the U.S., and Jaime Muguiro, President of CEMEX USA, will be speaking. Not President of the United States, but sorry. I definitely don't want that job. I'm good leading the CEMEX USA team. Very good morning. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you, Lucy. As you all know, during the first semester, our EBITDA grew by 13%, and our EBITDA margin expanded by 0.7%. This EBITDA performance was mainly driven by very strong cement and ready-mix volumes. We also saw contributions, positive contributions from manufacturing variable and freight costs and from the price increases that we implemented during the first semester. Let me give you some color of the context in which we have operated in the third quarter and how we see the short term. With regards to the demand, the demand continues to be very strong. And across most of our states, supply and demand is pretty in balance. However, during the summer, we lost a lot of volume incremental opportunity to very bad weather, extremely rainy weather in Texas. We also lost incremental volume because of a few days lost in the Mid-South and in Florida because of hurricanes and tropical storms. But when it's not raining, the demand continues to be very strong, and supply and demand continues to be very tight. What has changed, though, is the very significant headwinds of very rapid inflationary pressure. We didn't face those in the first quarter. We began to solve them in the second quarter. As you can see in the first semester, we had a negative impact to EBITDA growth of $41 million coming from incremental cement volume, incremental clinker imports at much higher cost. Only in the second quarter, that affected our margins by 3.2 percentage points. Let me talk to you about two of where we see that inflation happening very rapidly. One is fuels. In the U.S., natural gas, coal, and petcoke prices are very, very high, and there are disruptions to supply chains of petcoke from local refineries. That is affecting us. The other one, for a great reason, very strong demand, we continue to increase our imports, but when we had to tap the spot market, we found that shipping rates increased on average 104%. So today, the landing cost of a ton of cement across the U.S. in our markets is $35 higher than it was a year ago, and as you can imagine, that is having an impact. What are we doing about it? During the summer, we successfully implemented a second round of price increases across the board, across most of our states in cement and in ready-mix. You already saw a sequential increase of 3% in the second quarter in cement prices. That was pretty good. Please do expect sequential increases from June to December. Had we not faced this dramatic inflation, I would have said that our pricing performance would have been damn good, but I must tell you that it's not enough, and those will not yet allow us to pass on to end users the inflation that we see, and we do see these headwinds well into 2022 because my expectation is that shipping rates don't look like they're coming down anytime soon. As a result, we are very much focused on passing on to end users this inflation through next year's price increases. The markets continue to be very tight. Supply and demand is in balance, and as a result, together with very high import parity cost, we do see great momentum for our price increases. This year, we were able to increase prices twice. The last time that we did that was 15 years ago. We expect to replicate that strategy next year. Let me give you now, moving forward, some color about how we see the U.S. midcycle, and I'm very excited. I'm very positive about it for the following reasons. First, with regards to the residential segment, it continues to fly. It's very strong. However, I do expect a moderation in its growth rate going forward. Across our states, there is still pent-up demand. The economy is creating jobs. Consumer confidence is high, and inventories of existing homes for sale are extremely low, a month, much lower than historical levels, and also, newly constructed single-family homes are at very low inventory levels relative to historical, so we do expect a moderate growth going forward, but still, residential will contribute to significant demand for our building materials at a very strong level. With regards to the industrial and commercial segment, this is the segment that underperformed in the last two, three years. But I see a turning point. With regards to the industrial segment, we see very strong construction of warehouses, logistics hubs, and e-commerce-related infrastructure. With regards to commercial, the increase in vaccination penetration and the fact that soon we will see much less restrictions to traveling, including international traveling. And with the conversations we're having with developers, they're telling us that they are beginning to think to resume commercial projects, particularly in the tourism sector. And we're very excited about that because we're exposed to two large commercial markets in the U.S., Orlando and Vegas. And finally, with regards to the infrastructure segment of the market that, as you know, accounts for 55% of the cement demand, I'm pretty positive. I guess as excited as you are to see the House of Representatives finally approving the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bipartisan bill that was approved by the Senate back in August. If approved, that'll be an incremental funding of around close to $550 billion that will indeed have a positive impact to demand. Within that number, I like the line about bridges, highways, streets, and roads accounting for $110 billion. That $110 billion will increase cement demand by around 33 million tons at least. Why? That's the most cement intensive. And the ratio I'm using is an incremental 300,000 tons per every $1 billion of incremental funding. But that's not the only thing because in that bill, you've got two other lines: transit, airports, and water management infrastructure. And both, they account for around $200 billion. They will also, although at a lower cement intensity, add demand for the U.S. in the midcycle. The U.S. midcycle looks very positive. Demand will continue to be strong, supply and demand pretty much tight. It is in that context that I want to share with you how exciting we are, my team, with our bolt-on investment portfolio that's going to support EBITDA growth in the next three, four years. We're investing $410 million in the next three, four years. Up to 50% of the portfolio relates to our aggregate business. There, we're not only replenishing mineral reserves, we're also commissioning new aggregate quarries. Let me give you a few examples. Two sand mines in Florida that we will be commissioning end of next year in Immokalee, Four Corners. Upgrade of capacity in Balcones that's going to allow us to increase supply of lime feed to a new lime kiln that a customer is setting in their vicinities. We are opening a hard rock quarry in Central Alabama, and we just acquired a rail-connected aggregate yard in Atlanta. We continue to invest to strengthen our supply chain. In this respect, we upgraded terminals across Florida, particularly one in Pensacola. I'm very excited about that. It's going to help us fuel growth in the next years in the Mid-South. We're also investing to upgrade our rail outbound capabilities out of Brooksville North Cement Plant so that we're going to be able to grow to the Carolinas. We just upgraded our Fort Worth terminal in Dallas. We're going to be able to dispatch one million tons, shipping that cement by rail from Balcones. That's not all. We continue to leverage our unique cement supply chain capabilities out of Mexico with Ricardo and his team. It's thanks to the recommissioning of one of the lines, CPN, and then we continue to leverage Yaqui. That very recently, we were awarded two very large construction projects to support building two chip processing factories in Arizona. We're going to be pouring 1.5 million cubic meters in just 18 months. That represents around 6% of our annual average concrete production. We were awarded that because of that unique supply chain reliability, supported by the Mexican team. Because in this portfolio, we also invested in ready-mix portable capabilities. We're setting up ready-mix portable in those projects, and we're ready to do the same as soon as the infrastructure bill is approved to serve remote projects. With regards to climate action, we are heavily investing to introduce blended cements, low CO2 products similar to what Sergio explained in Europe. That requires an upgrade to our grinding capacity, so we're investing in grinding capacity. And that's great because not only we're going to reduce CO2 per ton of cement, but because we're going to lower the clinker factor, therefore releasing clinker, increasing cement production that's going to replace partially very highly expensive cement imports, so that is very aggressive indeed, and we want to move very fast. We're also investing on alternative fuels and introducing hydrogen, learning from our experience in Europe. We're now at 20%. We want to be at 45% and then get to the 90s. Why not? We are also exploring de-bottlenecking some of our cement plants because we think it's great business. With little investment, we will also increase clinker production in some plants and cement production, and that should also allow in the next three years to replace partially some of the very expensive imports. With regards to our Urbanization Solutions portfolio, we are heavily investing in our block business, particularly in Florida. It's booming as a result of the very strong single-family homes market in Florida, and we're also taking full advantage of our admixtures investments where we see significant EBITDA growth in that business, not only supplying internally, but also beginning to supply to third-party customers, so overall, the summary is I'm very positive about the U.S. midcycle. We see organic growth. The portfolio I just shared with you will also help us increase EBITDA in the midterm, and in the very short term, the key is my pricing. We're fully committed to recovering and more than offset the very headwind that we found during the year because of the very high shipping rates. And that's something that for sure we need to accomplish. And with that, I'm open to your questions. I was so excited, Lucy, to come back that I forgot to remove the bloody mask. I wasn't sure if you wanted to. No, no, no. Sorry about that. This morning, I look good. Why should I be wearing the mask? Crazy. Sorry about that. Okay. Questions, please. We're going to start with Alan. Go ahead, please, Alan from Santander. This one? Yes. Hi, this is Alan Alanis with Santander. Congratulations on the presentation and the results. Could you speak about the capacity utilization that you have right now in the United States, both for yourself and for the industry, and what that means in terms of the outlook for imports? And how will you take advantage of that? Okay. We are sold out. The industry is pretty tight. And there'll be a new kiln in the Mid-South next year from an industry player. That's the only capacity else, nothing else. And with regards to imports, in this midcycle, the U.S. will rely much more on imports. Year-to-date July, imports for the whole industry increased by 37%. They account for 19% of all demand. And in our states, it's already 24%. But back in the old days, at the peak in 2005, they accounted for 25%. 30 million metric tons were imported in the country. All right? Last year, 15 million. So that's going to happen. The import parity cost is around $135 per ton. That's the current situation. Thank you for your question. The next question is going to come from the virtual audience. It is from Adrian Huerta at JPMorgan. Adrian, please go ahead. Thank you, Lucy. Hi, Jaime. Adrian. Talking about the import capabilitie s, can you tell us a little bit the capabilities that CEMEX has on ports and how they compare to peers? And if you see an environment where soon we can start seeing cement prices increasing strongly in the U.S. like we saw back in 2005 and 2006, which when we saw double-digit growth on cement prices. Okay, Adrian. Thank you for the question. Let me tell you about our capabilities. We've got almost nine million tons of cement import capacity. Last year, we only imported 1.7 million tons. We still have a long way to go. That's why we're upgrading our terminals, Adrian. With regards to your second question, which is a great question, let me give you. I'm going to talk about my prices, right? And let me give you a few examples. Northern California, during this summer, to offset the inflationary pressures, we implemented a price increase of $13 per ton. And it was very successful. Our customers didn't push back because there is no cement. And in that market, the cement is 100% of the demand after one competitor shut down a plant. It's all imports. And so we did get a very good traction during the summer. As many more markets rely on imports and more industry players rely on imports as part of their total portfolio, they're going to face dramatic shipping headwinds if the shipping rates continue at those levels. So, with regards to, Adrian, our prices in those markets that rely a lot on imports, we've seen great pricing traction. This is the first year in 15 years that we've been able to implement two price increases. And we're going to do exactly the same thing next year. The only difference is going to be that next year, my price increases are going to be much higher. And because we do see supply and demand tight, we do see good momentum. In this midcycle, the more competitors rely on imports, the more the demand will be covered through imports. If imports continue at this high level, I'm confident that I'll be able to increase my prices materially. And I wouldn't expect that much pushback from my customers when they try to go shopping elsewhere because of the tightness of the demand. I'm sorry that I'm taking too long, but I think this is important. If you look at another market like Houston, Houston relies on imports around 80% of the whole demand, but there, our pricing, although pretty solid, was not as interesting as the one in the Northern California. Why? Because of the horrible weather and, in the very short term, what has happened is that the vessels, when you cannot unload, the demurrage cost is huge. It costs you per day $60,000, and so there were discounts in the market to try to move that cement because the demand came down because of the horrible rain, but when it's not raining in a market that relies 80% on imports and imports are going through the roof, my expectation is that I'm going to be very successful next year to increase prices very materially in those markets. That's not the situation everywhere. We need to wait a little bit more so that imports continue to increase the weight of the overall demand of the market. Thank you, Adrian, for your questions. Okay. We have a lot of questions, and I don't think we're going to be able to get to all of them, but the next one is from the room. And Vanessa Quiroga from Credit Suisse, please go ahead. Sorry about that. Thanks. There's Mike. Thank you. My question is regarding the possibilities to expand capacity, Jaime, because you mentioned lower clinker factor. How fast can you do that, actually, to respond to this cost inflation? And also, how probable is it to restart operations at a couple of plants that were mothballed some years ago in Brooksville and Wampum? Right. We're not planning to recommission those plants for the time being. Our investments to de-bottleneck our current plants that are running are much more aggressive. Our priorities are Balcones and the Mid-South, particularly the Mid-South. It's going to take us three years. But you need to separate two things. One is clinker increase production. The other thing is milling capacity. But overall, between permits and execution and also the delays in the supply of spare parts, equipment, and steel, it's going to take us some time to get there. Which means, Vanessa, that for 2022 and 2023, although you will see an increase in production because we've been investing in the last two years to eliminate some obsolescence in some of our plants, it's going to take us two to three years to see a material increase that will allow us to partially replace imports. Meanwhile, we will continue to import, and we just have to materially increase our price. Thank you for your question, Vanessa. Okay. And now we're going to go back to the virtual analyst audience. Alberto Valerio from UBS, please go ahead. Thank you, Lucy. Hi, Jaime. Thank you for taking my question. A quick one on my side. Should we expect the incremental volume margin to be lower than the previous margin like we had in the second quarter, that the marginal volume comes at a lower EBITDA margin than the previous one? And just a complementary, how much we need to increase price to offset completely this if this is the case? Thank you. Okay, Alberto, thank you for your question. With regards to your first question, the answer is straightforward. Yes. Last year, in 2020, our margin of our import business was very, very good. And we see that deterioration. It incrementally adds EBITDA, but as it weighs more to the overall dispatches and will lose this $35 margin at the margin, you're going to see, obviously, that impact. And as I said, I'm pretty happy with the price traction, but it's by no means enough. With regards to your second question, I cannot answer it because I'll be guiding you, I think, and I'd rather prefer not to. But please count on double-digit increases next year every time we do a price increase. Some markets in January and July, other markets April and the fall, similar to wha t we did this year. And that gives you sort of a hint to where we need to go. Thank you for your question. Okay. I'm going to take two more questions. One more from the room if anyone has a follow-up question. I think you in the back, yes? Okay. Yes. Sorry. Thank you, Lucy. Yes. No problem. This is Pedro Huerta from Crédit Agricole. Two-part question. My first question is, in terms of your Urbanization Solutions for the U.S., will you anticipate developing that in the southern part of the U.S. where you guys have presence, or think of moving to different areas, I don't know, the Northeast, Northwest, California? And the second question is in terms of ESG initiatives. How do you see the U.S. compared with the initiatives that are taking place in Europe for CEMEX, where they spearhead most of the efforts sometimes? Let m e start with your second question, Pedro, right? Sure. We do have a very specific roadmap for climate action, as robust as any other region in CEMEX to support the global aspiration that Juan will present later on. We have very specific CO2 reduction targets for 2030, and then the same aspiration for carbon neutrality by 2050 across the value chain. We've got that plant by plant, and we've got an ambition investment portfolio, parts of which I explained today that will support the roadmap. A lot of work to do going forward. The good news is that I've got the experience from Europe. I come from there, and we work as one team, and we have to learn from the experiences of Europe. Clinker factor reduction, energy efficiency, alternative fuels, alternative decarbonated raw materials in the short term, and then we're doing two carbon capture projects, one in Balcones and one in Victorville. Victorville implementing in mind a technology to carbon capture that should be up and running, small-scale prototype by 2024, and then developing membrane technology engineering in Balcones for a feasibility study, both supported by DOE grants. With regards to your first question, we're right now exploring our Urbanization Solutions portfolio across the states where we operate. We have already deployed investment for our ad mixtures all across our states from California to Florida. So that's almost done. With regards to blocks, we've got business in Vegas and in Florida. And we are now, as part of the investments, investing in a mortar business, particularly in Florida to start with. We will continue to extend across the states where we operate. That's our main goal right now. Thank you for your questions. Okay. And the last question is coming from our virtual analyst, Carlos Peyrelongue from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Carlos. Thank you, Lucy. Hi, Jaime. Thank you for taking my question. Actually, the pricing will be. Carlos, we're losing you. Very tight market, increasing. Can you hear me? You're breaking, Carlos. Can you hear me there, Jaime? I can see you, but you're breaking. Try again. Okay. Let me try again. My question is related to pricing. You mentioned that the market is extremely tight with higher energy costs and higher shipping costs. The question is, are you now moving, I understand, to a strategy of raising prices twice a year? And if I understood correctly, the increases that you will announce are likely to be in the double digits. Is that correct? That is correct, Carlos. Let me give you one example. For Florida, we have already announced for all our customer segments a $12 increase for January. That's in short terms. So that's going to be around $14, $13 on a point per metric ton for January. And we communicated to all our customers a second price increase in the month of July. So that gives you an example. And my expectation will be that it'll be double-digit as well. Let's see how it goes and how much traction we get out of that announcement. And we will then move to the rest of the regions, communicating similar price increases market by market in April and then in the fall. And in the case of very specific markets, Carlos, such as Northern California, my expectation is a very, very solid increase. I hope that I have answered your question, Carlos. Unfortunately, I think we have to break here. Anyone who has additional questions? I saw Nik, and I saw somebody else. But we can talk. Yes. I think there's opportunity to speak for the people that are in the room. And virtually, if you have additional questions, please submit them to Investor Relations, and we'd be happy to address them. Th ank y ou very much, Carlos. Thank you, Lucy, for your time. Thank you. And now I am very pleased to present without a mask, Luis Hernández, EVP of Digital and Organizational Development. Thank you, Lucy. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Good morning and welcome to CEMEX Day. I would like to share with you the evolution of our digital strategy. As many of you know, CEMEX has a long history of adopting digital technology. Years ago, we were pioneers in implementing satellite communication to connect our plants, which soon after enabled us to consolidate our enterprise management systems into a centralized data centers. A decade ago, we created a comprehensive global service organization to provide back-office services worldwide. More recently, when Fernando became CEO, we adjusted our digital strategy to place the customer at the center with a clear objective of building a superior customer experience enabled by technology. Today, our digital strategy is fully embedded in our business strategy, addressing our commercial, production, and management process, and building more value for customers, reducing costs, and enabling profitable growth. Where our technology efforts are more visible to you, on our commercial CEMEX Go digital platform, which we launched in 2017, becoming the first omnichannel platform in our industry to cover the complete customer journey for all our customers in all our geographies, seamlessly integrated with our back-end systems. It enables our customers to search for products, place orders, track deliveries, manage invoices, and pay online. During the pandemic, it has proven to be an important competitive advantage. In production, we have been applying artificial intelligence and augmented reality in all business lines to enhance operational efficiency, improve safety performance, and minimize CO2 emissions. On the back-office processes, we have increased the scope of centralized services with the use of automation technology. At the moment, we're in the midst of a rollout of our Working Smarter initiative, which will evolve the way we deliver services globally, bringing significant savings. An effective digital transformation for any company is more than developing pieces of technology. It also requires sound business processes and an agile culture that can rapidly incorporate feedback from our customers and adopt best practices on a global scale. Our replication model drives standardization across our businesses, giving us speed and cost advantages that are very difficult to match by our competitors. This model allows us to accelerate our digital transformation without significantly impacting our IT spend. To give you a more visual representation of the digital solutions operating today across our businesses, I would like to share a brief video with you. Please. Digital technology is rapidly reshaping the work industry. Leading companies have evolved and adapted to the changes, leveraging and expanding their digital capabilities. The construction industry is also joining the digital race to leverage new business opportunities that will reshape the future of the industry. CEMEX has succeeded at being the first within the industry to undergo a complete digital transformation. Technology has taken us on an exciting and challenging journey and has played a key role in finding innovative solutions to reshape the way we work, the way we operate, and most importantly, the way we serve our customers. In 2017, we launched CEMEX Go, the first digital commercial platform in the industry that covers the entire customer journey. Today, CEMEX Go has evolved, bringing customer service to the next level. Placing and confirming customer orders, once a time-consuming and complex process, is now a simple one-click task. To achieve this, we transformed our supply chain by incorporating breakthrough digital capabilities that allow our customers to create, schedule, and modify orders at any time, obtaining immediate confirmation of delivery times. Furthermore, as pioneers within the industry in leveraging data, we have applied artificial intelligence and machine learning models to optimize delivery routes and schedules and reduce CO2 emissions, while also giving us the flexibility to adapt rapidly to changes. This allows us to provide an even faster, more reliable, and sustainable service to our customers. At CEMEX, we have unlocked new digital business opportunities to help our customers manage their construction projects. The CEMEX Go Developer Center is the digital solution that enables a seamless integration and collaboration between our customers' internal systems and CEMEX, accelerating the evolution of digital capabilities and promoting new business models. Welcome to the Plant of the Future. The fourth industrial revolution has opened endless opportunities to experiment with disruptive technologies. Artificial intelligence-assisted operations have helped our plants achieve higher production capacity and product quality, lowering energy consumption. Today, the use of machine learning to operate our production equipment and drones to manage our inventories on-site is already a reality. Through advanced analytics models and the Internet of Things sensors, we predict failures, perform preventive maintenance, and optimize processes in real time, resulting in considerable cost reductions. This transformation goes beyond. By harnessing the power of virtual work environments and the ever-increasing digitalization of our customers' journey, we are striving to create a revamped employee experience through strategic partnerships and a new generation of global business services that will better respond to market demands. As we have done in the past, we will continue to lead the industry in its digital transformation journey, moving faster than ever to continue building a better future. From the portfolio of digital solutions that you've seen in the video, many of them have leveraged our ecosystem of technical partners. However, in those core processes that we believe drive our competitive advantage, we have developed our own solutions with the support of Neoris, our IT subsidiary. One example of such solution is Arkik, our cloud-based ready-mix management system that integrates with CEMEX Go. It has been in permanent evolution since its conception over a decade ago. Today, most of our ready-mix plants run on this platform. Arkik combines data with artificial intelligence to enable services such as digital confirmation of orders, availability of delivery slots, smart order booking, real-time logistic optimization, and soon, dynamic pricing. This type of functionality has no precedent in our industry. In a world where e-commerce is part of our daily lives, this may not seem like a big achievement, but I ask you to think about the ordering and delivery process of a ready-mix, which is extremely complex. Ready-mix offerings include hundreds of different products with distinct recipes. The product we deliver is highly perishable. Delivery within three hours or is obsolete. Our product is part of the construction site supply chain that involves many other vendors. Finally, ready-mix orders are subject to constant last-minute changes, which in a given day, around 50% of them suffer modifications. How are all these efforts translated into business impact? In our commercial processes, our CEMEX Go platform is used by 40,000 of our current customers, which represent 90% of our global sales volume. Its value gets manifested in the high level of adoption across all digital services, such as invoicing, order tracking, and payment. In one of the most complex services, which is ordering, over 60% of our global sales are being placed directly by our customers in CEMEX Go. The value of CEMEX Go digital services for our customers has contributed to the significant improvement in our Net Promoter Score. In our management processes, through our Working Smarter initiative, we're increasing the scope of the service covered, extending standardization and automation, as well as further leveraging external providers. Our daily operations will be more efficient and more responsive to customer needs, and we estimate savings of up to $100 million annually when we get to steady states. In our production processes, we're implementing a number of promising initiatives within our operations. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and Internet of Things are helping run better cement plants, optimizing energy efficiency, CO2 generation, and output in our kilns. They're also helping us to schedule maintenance more effectively and monitor equipment for signs of failure or obsolescence on a real-time basis. We expect all of these initiatives combined will allow us to reduce our operational expense in 10% over the next three years. In short, our digital strategy is helping to provide a superior customer experience to our customer while at the same time improving profitability and enabling growth in our core businesses. While we have been applying digital technology to improve our customers' operations, many challenges remain in the broader ecosystem. Some estimation value of this potential losses related to waste, delays, and logistics to be over $1 trillion. We are extending our internal innovation processes to incorporate innovative ideas from the outside through Neoris and from our open innovation efforts led by CEMEX Ventures. We're constantly mapping the emergence of new players, addressing new digital businesses. We have actively invested in building a selected portfolio of startups and have launched new business incubations such as Arkik, which is currently running 750 ready-mix plants and being commercialized to a third-party independent ready-mix companies as a software solution. Some of our other startup companies include Arkik Truck, an innovative end-to-end fleet management digital solution that includes tracking, safety, and vehicle telematics that today work integrated into CEMEX Go in over 3,500 trucks. Finally, recognizing the challenges faced by last-mile delivery in the building material distribution market, we are investing to scale selected Uber-like startups in key markets. In summary, our digital strategy is an integral part of our business strategy, enabling the unique way in which we sell, produce, and manage the company. And it's a key source of competitive advantage. We believe that every successful company is, in a way, a software company. And thanks for your time, and now I'll be open for questions. Thank you, Luis. The first question is from the real audience, Nik Lippmann from Morgan Stanley. Thank you very much. So if I go on CEMEX Go, to what degree can I sort of have an auction for price? Say Benjamin and I don't both want to buy ready-mix concrete, but he's willing to pay X price and I'm willing to pay X plus 10. Can you have auction? You're running out of capacity in the United States. Can you use this as a pricing tool as well as basic? No, we do not have an auction functionality today. We are working on and building a pricing of slots so that we can put the slots in a way or for value. If someone is willing to take a lesser-used slot, that could be priced at a different level as a high-end slot. Yeah, but not as an open bidding process. Okay. I am not seeing any questions from the virtual audience, so I will take the next question from Ben Theurer from Barclays right next to Nik, who's paying $100 a ton for cement. Okay. Doing $105, Nik. Now, jokes aside, thanks for that, Luis. The question is, within the connectivity with the customers and basically the delivery of those products, which is managed through the digital solution, how much have you actually managed to optimize the deliveries in order to reduce loss at the customer level? And how much do you think this has increased, in turn, the level of satisfaction among your customers just because they have less shrinkage, because they perfectly know when the truck's supposed to come? That's the way I understand it. Is that correct? Can you go back and rephrase it a bit? Okay. Let's rephrase it. More specific. I order that concrete. I need it delivered at 11:00 A.M. because that's right when I want to pour something and I want to fill something, and you actually delivered it at 11:00 A.M. Now, beforehand, because I need to make space and so on, and it doesn't come too late, so I can perfectly plan around it, as obviously I would assume causes a higher level of satisfaction among your customers. Have you tried to measure the benefit of having this on-time delivery so customers can actually better plan around and then repeat purchases and just continue to engage with you by having reduced their losses? Yes. We have not quantified directly the savings that that can provide to them, but we do know that it's one of the main pain points that they have when it doesn't happen. Because when you're pouring amounts of cement, the delay has all of the crew waiting, and that's a significant cost for them. We do know that it has a significant impact on the way they perceive our services. I think it's one of the, I would say, the largest factors in terms of our service arriving on time. Now, on their side, it's very common that things happen on the site, and they need to move the time for the deliveries or space it a bit more. And having the convenience to the platform to be able to, in a very short notice, reschedule, rechange, change the timing of the deliveries from the job site directly from the foreman who is working there is also a piece of functionality that's very valuable. Thank you. We do have some questions from our online audience. The first is from Paco Suárez from Scotiabank. Thank you, Luis. Yeah, the question is about what about the applications related with sourcing and avoiding the potential disruptions in value chains, either from the sourcing of your raw materials, ad mixtures, any other thing that has happened in the previous year? Have you already detected some opportunities on that? And if that actually connects with what is happening with demand, with the type of products that you have in your pipeline? Yes. There are several construction software products that are looking after becoming platforms so that they can consolidate traffic from their customers in the product side of the software that they have and move it upstream so that they have the direct connection with higher places in the supply chain. We have several projects ourselves related to that. We have a platform that I didn't mention here that is built out of a Construrama Supply. Basically, what it's doing is trying to solve the supply chain issues from our distribution network in the Construrama stores and building an aggregate demand so that they can buy out of that. So that's kind of an ecosystem play that you can figure out. There's other participants that are also trying to establish themselves as the leaders of an ecosystem. You have the case of Command, for example, that are moving from being a product company. They want to establish to the Command platform upstream in the supply chain as well. So you have movements like that. It's a very complex undertaking. It's very difficult that one player can actually do it. We're working with other partners ourselves to see if we can together build an ecosystem that can resolve a lot of the cost that is associated with a lack of orchestration in the supply chain of our construction sites. There's a huge opportunity there. Ourselves, for example, and our customers, every time that we need to place an order, they have to place an order. We have no visibility about what's going on in the construction site. So we can open that so that there's more transparency. There will be a lot more efficiencies in the way building material companies and others can supply the products to the construction sites. So that's happening slowly, but it's happening. Okay. And the next question comes from the audience. Alan, please go ahead. Thank you again, Alan. There's something there. Just to be clear, no one has dynamic pricing capabilities right now in cement and ready-mix in the main territories where you operate. Is that correct? Yes. Not that we know. Not that you know. And how soon do you think you can start rolling out that capability? That would be the first question. And the second question is, how do you connect that, or how do you use your digital strategies to anticipate demand of cement and ready-mix both short-term and medium-term? Yes. On the first question on the timing, we're running pilots right now in different places to see how does the system work and how can we actually anticipate the costing of the different slots. So that's happening as we speak. And I think we could kind of start enlarging the pilots next year, but we'll see how far we can go in terms of scaling up globally. Yeah. Because that can give you a great opportunity to gain more market share. I guess that's where you're going with that. Yes. And I think you all know that a lot of the slots that are more valuable are always over-demanded. And throughout the day, then you have lower demand in other slots. And having a price differential between slots can help us move some of the excess demand in some time of the day to lesser ones. Exactly. And the second question has to do with how do you use digital strategies to anticipate demand, or how it gives you an advantage to anticipate demand? I think you mentioned it during your presentation. Well, just data that is coming into the system in the way that people are buying can just help you out to kind of extrapolate how is demand going to evolve in the future. It just complements some of the other measures of intelligence that the operations have to make predictions about how the volume will evolve. I think we have another question that we need to go to online. Sorry, Alan. And Adrian Huerta from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Thank you, Luis. Hi, Luis. Quick question. Can you just tell us a little bit how the Arkik strategy that you have, this subsidiary, com pares to Command Alkon where Heidelberg made an investment recently? Yes. When you compare it product by product or the portfolio products that they have, we believe that Arkik has a functionality that Command doesn't have. And they're working on it, but it doesn't have, especially what has to do with the ready-mix business. They do have also products that serve the dispatching for cement and aggregates as well. But when you compare product to product, we believe we have a much, much better product. And we know them because we are customers of them in the U.S. for now. And we can compare very clearly how our system operates in our plants in the rest of the world versus the ones in the U.S. They are very much located in the U.S. They have a good presence. But I think they're investing more of their time now in building the next platform. And I think they're lagging a bit on the product itself. But there's the functionality that I mentioned here that it's still not being offered to customers that we know. Yeah. Okay. And any other questions from the internal audience? Yes. Go ahead, please, Alex. Hi. Alejandro Azar from GBM. Quick question. Are you seeing your smaller competitors or, let's say, the more regional ones investing in this competence? I don't know, perhaps with Azul or maybe Holcim? And do you see or are you already seeing this competence in CEMEX or their larger players giving you more access to the market, or perhaps this will allow you to gain is allowing you to gain market share or will allow you to gain market share in the future? Yes. I think when you're developing a software, scale matters a lot. So the bigger you are, the more you can leverage across. And then also, the more standardized you are in your internal processes, the easier for you is to deploy any version that comes out there every other month to the rest of the portfolio. So for smaller players, I think it's more difficult than for larger ones. Now, in terms of the value, the competitive value of this, if we are providing special service to our customers, for example, through Arkik, that we are now offering them the use of this software to run their plants. So independent ready mixers are also customers of us because they buy our cement in bulk and aggregate as well. And now they have a software that they can use to improve their operations on one side, but it also helps us have more visibility on the volumes that are consuming cement aggregates. We can have a more direct connection to our ordering system. So in a way, eventually, they will not need to order because we have visibility of their inventory, so we can just replenish as they consume. And that, I think, makes them more loyal and more tied to us. And that strengthens our distribution system as well. So it's a strategic value for us, and it's a lot of value for them as well in the way they improve their operations. Okay. Unfortunately, I think that we have to end with that. I can see there's still a lot of questions for Luis. He is available both during breaks. And if you submit your questions to Investor Relations, we will make sure they get answered. We are taking a 20-minute break, a much-deserved 20-minute break. We will be back at 11:05 A.M. Thank you. Thank you very much. I used to believe we were burning on the edge of something beautiful, something beautiful. Selling a dream, smoke and mirrors, keep us waiting on a miracle, on a miracle. Said, "Go through the darkest of days, having to heartbreak away. Never let you go, never let me down. Oh, it's been a hell of a ride driving the edge of a knife. Never let you go, never let me down. Don't you give up, nah, nah, nah. I won't give up, nah, nah, nah. Let me love you, let me love you. Don't you give up, nah, nah, nah. I won't give up, nah, nah, nah. Let me love you, let me love you." So far we've seen that the way we got a million miles ahead of us, miles ahead of us. All that we need is a rude awakening, and know, we're good enough, yeah, we're good enough. Said, "Go through the darkest of days, having to heartbreak away. Never let you go, never let me down. Oh, it's been a hell of a ride driving the edge of a knife. Never let you go, never let me down. Don't you give up, nah, nah, nah. I won't give up, nah, nah, nah. Let me love you, let me love you. Don't you give up, nah, nah, nah. I won't give up, nah, nah, nah. Let me love you, let me love you." Yeah, yeah. Don't you give up, nah, nah, nah. I won't give up, nah, nah, nah. Let me love you, let me love you. Don't you give up, nah, nah, nah. I won't give up, nah, nah, nah. Let me love you, let me love you. Oh no, see you walking around like it's a funeral. Not so serious, girl, why those feet cold? We just getting started, don't you tiptoe, tiptoe. Waste time with a masterpiece, waste time with a masterpiece. You should be rolling me, you should be rolling me. You're a real-life fantasy, you're a real-life fantasy. But you're moving so carefully, let's start living dangerously. Talk to me, baby. I'm rolling up a little sweet tooth, baby. Let's lose our minds and go crazy, crazy. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Walk for me, baby. I'll be pretty, you'll be my only one. Let's lose our minds and go crazy, crazy. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Hot damn, see you licking frozen from your own hand. One another taste of making ends meant. I'm tired of all this candy on the dry land, dry land. Waste time with a masterpiece, waste time with a masterpiece. You should be rolling me, you should be rolling me. You're a real-life fantasy, you're a real-life fantasy. But you're moving so carefully, let's start living dangerously. Talk to me, baby. I'm rolling up a little sweet tooth, baby. Let's lose our minds and go crazy, crazy. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Walk for me, baby. I'll be pretty, you'll be my only one. Let's lose our minds and go crazy, crazy. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Talk to me, baby. I'm rolling up a little sweet tooth, baby. Let's lose our minds and go crazy, crazy. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. Walk for me, baby. I'll be pretty, you'll be my only one. Let's lose our minds and go crazy, crazy. Ayayayayaya, keep on hoping. We can take by the ocean. First things first, I'ma say all the words inside my head. I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been. Oh, ooh, the way that things have been. Oh, ooh. Second thing, second, don't you tell me what you think that I can be. I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea. Oh, ooh, the master of my sea. Oh, ooh. I was broken from a young age, taking my soak into the masses, writing my poems for the few that look at me, check on me, shook on me, feeling me, singing from heartache, from the pain, taking my message from the veins, speaking my lesson from the brain, seeing the beauty through the. Hey, you've burned me up, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Hey, you've burned me down, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Rain, let the waters dry, oh, let it rain. My love, my love, my darling, came from. Hey, you've burned me up, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Third thing's third, send a prayer to the ones up above. All the hate that you've heard has turned your spirit to a dove. Oh, ooh, your spirit up above. Oh, ooh. I was choking in the ground, building my brain up in the cloud, falling like ashes to the ground, hoping my feelings they would drown, but they never did, ever did, deafening flowing inhibited, limited, till it broke open and rained down, it rained down like rain. You've burned me up, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Hey, you've burned me down, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Rain, let the waters dry, oh, let it rain. My love, my love, my darling, came from. Hey, you've burned me up, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Last things last by the grace of the fire and the flames. You're the face of the future, the blood in my veins. Oh, ooh, the blood in my veins. Oh, ooh. But they never did, ever did, deafening flowing inhibited, limited, till it broke open and rained down, it rained down like rain. You've burned me up, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Hey, you've burned me down, you've burned me up, believer, believer. Rain, let the waters dry, oh, let it rain. My love, my love, my darling, came from. Hey, you've burned me up, you've burned me up, believer, believer. If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea, I'll sail the world to find you. If you ever find yourself lost in the dark and you can't see, I'll be the light to guide you. Find out what we're made of, what we are called to help our friends in need. You can count on me like one, two, three, I'll be there. And I know when I need it, I can count on you like four, three, two, and you'll be there. 'Cause that's what friends are supposed to do, oh yeah. Ooh, ooh, yeah, if you're there. Ooh, ooh, yeah, you'll always have my shoulder when you cry. I'll never let go, never say goodbye. You know you can count on me like one, two, three, I'll be there. And I know when I need it, I can count on you like four, three, two, and you'll be there. 'Cause that's what friends are supposed to do, oh yeah. Ooh, ooh, you can count on me 'cause I can count on you. Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you. Every single day, every word you say, every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you. Oh, can't you see you belong to me? I'm a fool who aches for every step you take, every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I'll be watching you. Since you've gone, I've been lost without a trace. I dream at night, I can only see your face. I look around, but it's you I can't replace. I feel so cold and I long for your embrace. I keep crying, baby, baby, please. Oh, can't you see you belong to me? I'm a fool who aches for every step you take, every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake. I'll be watching you. Every move you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you. I'll be watching you every move you take, every vow you make, every claim you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you every step you take, every move you stake, every claim you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you every move you make, every vow you make, every smile you fake, every claim you make, every step you take, every claim you make, every move you stake, every claim you make. I'll be watching you every move you make, every claim you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you every step you take, every claim you stake, every claim you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you every move you make, every vow you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you every move you take, every claim you make, every step you take. I'll be watching you every step you take. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Take me to a party, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Ride, pull up, pull up, pull up, just close your eyes, girl, smile and tell me where you're at. Can everyone please take their seats? Okay, thank you, everyone. And now I am very pleased to present Jesús González, who is the President of South, Central America and the Caribbean. Please, thank you, Jesús. Thank you, Lucy. Good day to everyone. Another González in the room, so... Maybe you are a little bit confused about so many González, but okay. I'm the one in charge of the South Central American and Caribbean region, just for clarification. Okay, let me start with very good news, and I'm extremely proud of these results, and I think the team in the SCAC region has done a tremendous job. You see the performance so far this year with close to 60% growth in EBITDA on a like-for-like basis and 54% on a reported basis, driven mainly by a huge increase in volumes, 28% on a year-to-date basis, plus price increases. I think we have done also a good job increasing prices in the region, like other regions, 3% on a like-for-like basis. Remember, this region has on average a higher price compared to other regions, so that's an additional challenge. On the cost side, you see that both variable and fixed costs, we've been able to keep those costs flat. It's not that we don't have the inflation that other regions are experiencing. We do have that inflation, but we've been able to compensate that inflation with also additional cost reduction initiatives. Also we have the impact of higher imports, which I will elaborate a little bit more later. Of course, you may think that, okay, this is easy because last year we had a huge negative effect in the SCAC region. Remember, it was the region that was the most affected by the pandemic. I'm going to compare these numbers with 2019, pre-COVID levels. So compared to 2019, volumes are 3% up, so we are ahead of pre-COVID levels. Prices are 9% above on a like-for-like basis, and EBITDA is 35% above 2019 on a like-for-like basis, 23% on a reported basis. So this is not just the base effect. This is real growth in the region compared to pre-COVID levels. How do we see things going forward? Of course, we have the same pressure on inflation, especially on the fuel side. Fuel. We use a lot of petcoke in this region, and it's going up, high single digits, double digits in some cases. Electricity, we are covered because we have secured long-term contracts in most of our operations, so we are not so concerned about electricity. And of course, trade costs impacting our import operations. So overall, challenging times, but I would say that in this region, higher import costs is an opportunity more than a challenge. We are a domestic producer in most of our markets. We are an incumbent. We do like higher import parity prices because that's the way we make money. So in that terms, it's an opportunity more than a challenge. So next message, our region is growing again after several years in the past cycle where we experienced a reduction on EBITDA. And you see on the left-hand side of the slide that our bottom of the cycle was in 2018, where we were 33% below the average EBITDA for the cycle. This year, or the last 12 months, we have increased EBITDA by 18% compared to that bottom. So the region is growing again. You see the performance by quarter. You see that we were growing before COVID, 5% in the fourth quarter of 2019. We had the huge decrease because of the lockdowns in our markets. In many countries, operations were shut down for several weeks, even months. And then they rebounded after the lockdowns with a huge impact due to informal cement or bag cement. We had a dramatic increase in consumption from the informal segment, driven by higher remittances and higher expenses, discretionary expenses going to self-construction. And then another very important message is not just that the region is growing again, it's that it's a more diversified region. You see the graph comparing our portfolio today compared to 2013. In 2013, more than 70% of the EBITDA was coming from two single countries, okay? Colombia and Panama. You see the portfolio today is more diversified. There is no one single country with more than 30% of EBITDA. In fact, Dominican Republic, and I will spend a little bit more time talking about that operation, is the highest contributor to our EBITDA in the region. So more diversified means less risk, which is also good in terms of portfolio management. Let me talk a little bit about the region. And I would like you to consider our region as a network. We're in 15 countries in the region, believe it or not. And it's not just a list of countries that operate standalone. This is a network. It works as a network. And that's very important because that gives us additional opportunities, additional value. One of the advantages of this network is that it's interconnected. So for example, we're sending cement from our plants in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago to the Caribbean islands and to Guyana. In Central America, we have a system and connect Costa Rica up to Guatemala. Dominican Republic is also a hub to export cement into Haiti. We're going to start doing that into Puerto Rico. And very recently in Panama, which is one of the markets that was the most affected by the pandemic, we have been able to develop an export operation, and we're exporting more than 200,000 tons as of today, connecting to the Caribbean and to Central America. So this is a network, okay? That's very important. Second, it's a network that is at very tight supply-demand conditions. Now we have to import into this network 2 million tons. Out of 10 million tons that we're selling, we import cement or clinker, 2 million tons, okay? 60% are coming from overseas, the Mediterranean or Southeast Asia, and 40% are coming from this network. So that's something that is representative of how tight the region is in terms of supply-demand dynamics. And you see some of the squares on the map with the capacity utilization. You see Guatemala 117, Jamaica 98, Dominican Republic 102, Colombia 92. The system is very tight, okay? Which is good, again, from our supply-demand balance because that's an opportunity to increase prices. And because of that situation, we're doing those projects that you see on the slide to increase our capacity. In total, we're planning to increase capacity of around 2.7 million tons. It's around 20% of our domestic capacity in projects that are very accretive, okay? On average, the additional CapEx to capture that capacity is around $66 per ton of capacity. Okay? We have a big project, which is Maceo. We just need to finish that project. But the other three projects in Dominican Republic, in Guatemala, and Jamaica, we're restarting an old kiln in Dominican Republic. That's going to happen early next year. In Guatemala, sold-out market, a new grinding mill. And in Jamaica, another fantastic market that is doing very well. We're the bottleneck in our kiln. So very fast projects to implement that are going to help us to capture the additional growth that we're seeing in the market, plus offset part of those imports that I mentioned to you that we're bringing from Turkey, Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia. So that's also good news for the region. And this is a competitive advantage compared to other competitors in the region. Having this network, this system, is helping us to maximize capacity utilization and also has helped us a lot this year to react fast to incremental demand instead of bringing that demand on a spot basis from overseas, paying a higher freight cost. So good news in that sense too as well. And finally, I'm going to tell you more about the secret jewel of the region, is Dominican Republic. You always ask questions about Colombia, about Panama. You don't ask questions about Dominican Republic. I don't know why, but you should ask more questions because, first of all, it's the largest market in the region now. And second, it's a market that is very interesting. Let me give you some additional data. First, EBITDA, double in three years, okay? Now, it's not only the largest market in the region. It's, I would say, around 4%-5% of the EBITDA of the company. And you see the expansion in margins, 134 basis points in three years. This is driven by some price increases, but believe me, prices in Dominican Republic are very close to import parity. We are not talking about crazy prices. It's a very competitive market with six competitors, but we are the market leader, and we are the most efficient producer in the supply chain, on the supply curve. So that's giving us an advantage. With regards to demand, as you can see, demand is growing 9% on a compound basis. And there is a shortage of clinker in the island. I'm including Haiti because it works as a network. It's Dominican Republic and Haiti. So that is why we're starting this new kiln in the Dominican Republic. It's $15 per ton of incremental capacity. That's the investment that we're doing. With $15 per ton, we are putting 700,000 tons in the market and capturing that extra growth. Fundamentals, very strong informal market, which is 50% of the demand, driven by remittances. 10%, 11% of the GDP in Dominican Republic is driven by remittances. On the formal side segment, $7 billion in construction projects. Housing is bouncing back with mortgages going up 11%. Tourism is already at pre-COVID levels. This is GDP also of this country is driven by tourism. There are new hotels in construction. And then as well, this is a key market for our network. Remember what I mentioned about our network? We're going to start importing more into Haiti or exporting more from Dominican Republic into Haiti and displacing imports from Turkey, very expensive imports, and also complementing our clinker supply into Puerto Rico, which is right away. So lesson learned is Dominican Republic, guys. This is something that is doing very well, and that's why we're investing in this country. So that's my presentation. And now I would like to take some questions if you have any. Thank you, Jesús. Okay, analysts, I think he is expecting some questions on the Dominican Republic, so let's get our act together. Okay. I'm going to start with a question in the room from Gordon Lee. Hi, Gordon Lee from BTG Pactual. So I guess you're making the push to move your headquarters to. Oh, nice. One question I had, if you look at the region at the previous boom, let's say, prior to the downturn that you showed us, one of the things that I think made the downturn worse was that in that boom, in various markets, and I'm thinking more of Colombia and Panama, the industry allowed imports, which were then difficult to remove. In this boom, and given how much the region generally relies on imports, what can you do as an incumbent producer to make sure that those imports are managed by incumbents and that they don't become a problem when a downturn occurs? Okay. Thank you, Gordon. Well, what we're doing is, first of all, we have the advantage of freight costs today, which in some of these markets that you mentioned, we are $30, $25 below import parity. So that's giving us a cushion compared to independent imports. But we have to compete. The answer is we have to compete. We have to be better than importers. I think on the commercial side, Fernando mentioned this morning that our NPS has grown up 30 percentage points. It's the same situation in this region. We've been able to be better than our competitors. And when they struggle supplying cement to the customers, they think twice to go and do business with independent importers. And also be very flexible. Be sure that our customers, they don't run out of cement. We need to go one step ahead of them. In many cases, these importers, independent importers, have had very serious problems with disruptions in the value chain, and we're taking advantage of that. So in summary, we need to beat our competitors and do better. That's the secret. It's nothing more than that. Thank you. Now we're going to take a question from the virtual audience, Paco Suárez from Scotiabank. Thank you, Lucy. No worries, Jesús. I'm not going to bug you with questions on Colombia or Panama. It's actually on the, yeah, the Dominican Republic. It's an odd market. A lot of players over there, you are clearly the most efficient player over there. You have also the logistics and the scale. So the question for you would be, is that not a natural pathway for M&A in Dominican for you guys to consolidate that market? That part, the M&A part, you know that it's managing CEMEX as a portfolio, not a regional portfolio or local portfolio, it's managed as a global portfolio. That's something that obviously our planning department and my cousin González, Antonio González, is in charge of that. And we are all the time looking for opportunities on the M&A side. So if there's an opportunity, we're going to capture it. Great. And let's see, are there any other questions? Yes, Anne Milne from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Okay, Anne Milne, Bank of America. So talking a little bit about logistics, I know that you have a big part of it, as you said, is the trading activity between different countries. How do you manage the costs now that we're seeing increased prices and lack of availability throughout the region? And maybe are you having to stop exporting to certain markets, or are there some that are growing faster than others? Well, how are we managing working as a network? As I explained, that's a very important concept. Each country used to be, many years ago, isolated, and we didn't have the markets interconnected. So, for example, I'm going back to the Panama example. Panama has helped us to cover shortages of cement in other parts of the Caribbean and react very fast. So working as a network, we've been able to manage the storm, and you saw the impact on the cost side is very little and reacting very fast. So we are very close, working very close with our trading arm. They are part of the team. They're always on all the meetings, and we react very fast. But working as a network, now Colombia is connected with the rest, the Caribbean, Central America, and this gives us an opportunity and an advantage over our competitors that they don't have this network. And on the shipping costs? Shipping costs, of course, we are exposed as others to high shipping costs. We tend to negotiate shipping costs in advance the year before. So part of the imports into the region were already negotiated at lower shipping rates. We have to renegotiate for next year. So that's part of the rationale of the incremental capacity is going to help us to mitigate that effect. But overall, again, I want to insist we have more things to win in the region with higher shipping costs at lower shipping costs. I'm extremely excited about that situation because it's going to help us to exercise pricing power, which is something that we do really need in the region. Thank you, Anne. Sorry, we have a call online. Sorry, Vanessa, we'll wait just one second. We have another question from the virtual audience, Carlos Peyrelongue, again from Bank of America. Okay, your camera is on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lucy. The question is, again, on shipping costs. Can you give us an idea of what percentage of the market roughly is serviced by imports? You mentioned that this potentially gives you a lot of pricing power, which is quite clear. But just to get a sense of the magnitude, what percentage of the market is serviced by imports? Well, speaking about our region, as I said, we're selling more than 10 million tons. 20% of those 10 million tons are either supplied from imports with imports or we buy clinker that we process in our brand new facilities. So 20% of that. But out of that 20%, 60% is coming from overseas, which is where we're experiencing these higher freight costs, and 40% is internal trading within the region. So overall, it's around 12% of the market that is exposed to these higher freight costs. Those numbers are for you, correctly? Sorry? Those numbers are for your operations. But my question was more related to your competitors. For the overall market, roughly, do you have an idea of how much is serviced by imports? Just to get a sense of the pressure from your competitor side. I don't have the number aggregated for the whole region. There are some markets that are less exposed to imports, like Colombia. Colombia, today, there's no imports at all. Some clinker, but no cement. And other markets, they can go up to 10%. But the figure for the whole region, I don't have it, Carlos. Okay. And a second question, if I may, related to growth over the medium term. You mentioned that first half, you have high double-digit growth rates. Can you comment on the sustainability of growth going forward? Obviously, you have big investments coming in, expanding your capacity by close to three million tons. Can you give us an idea of what are the key drivers of cement demand over the next two years? Next two, three years? Yes. Of course, we are not expecting, and that part is included in our guidance. We're not expecting to continue growing in the second half of the year at 20%-25% growth. We do expect the informal segment to continue growing, and we still see very strong remittances in the countries where we participate. Remember that some of these countries, like I mentioned, Dominican Republic, but also Central America, they depend a lot on these remittances. We still see good fundamentals in the U.S. for that. Probably we're going to, as I said, grow more on the single digit. But something that we're expecting to partially offset this potential going from very hot, as Fernando said, to hot market is the formal segment. Formal segment is rebounding. Housing in some of these markets, especially social housing, is going fast, very high in Colombia, in Dominican Republic, in Guatemala, in certain countries in Central America. And also infrastructure. We have several projects in these markets that are also offsetting the potential slowdown on demand on the informal segment. So overall, again, we're not planning to continue growing at these very high levels of more than 20%, but we see a decent 3%-4% increase going forward. And the segmentation is going to change, but still, we believe that there is growth in the region. And that's why we're expanding capacity, not only to compensate imports, but also to keep up with the growth. Thank you. Do we have any more questions in the room? Okay. Yes. Vanessa Quiroga from Credit Suisse, please go ahead. Thank you, Jesús. Given the exposure of the region, SCAC, to Mediterranean imports, have you seen any change in those dynamics, any increase in supply as an indirect effect of the deceleration of the construction market in Asia? On the contrary, there are, because it's more difficult to get the imports from those countries, there are importers in the Caribbean that they have declared that they are going to stop doing business in some of these islands. That's happening now in Trinidad and Tobago, for example. So that's why I insist on the opportunity more than the challenge of the high import costs. We haven't seen more product coming. On the contrary, it's more expensive, and importers are either not participating in the market or raising prices as well. That's happening in Central America as well. So the other thing that we're doing, we participate also in markets where we are also importers. That's a very interesting region. For example, in Haiti, everybody is importing, and what is happening is prices are going up $30-$40 because everybody is passing that cost into the market. And in dollar terms, not in local currency. So again, I see good supply demand dynamics in the region becau se of that. And we have another call, sorry, virtual analyst, Adrian Huerta from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Thank you. Can you comment a little bit on how prices compare across the different countries? Where are they at the moment and where do you see the largest opportunities for price increases? You mentioned that prices in some countries are below import parity prices. We have seen strong pricing growth in Dominican Republic. I think it was around 18% up in the first six months. Panama has been down, Costa Rica up, low single digits. Where prices are right now, and where do you think we can see the largest increases going forward? Can we comment on prices by country or not? I think it's difficult. I think you could talk supply-demand conditions maybe by country. Okay. All right. Well, I think we have an average price in the region that is probably around $125, but you have a big range up and down that price. So there are certain countries in Central America and the Caribbean that prices are about that level, and we have the opportunity to push prices up to compensate for the additional import costs, as I explained before. There are challenges, and I have to talk also about the other part of the equation, the countries with prices below the average, like Colombia. In Colombia, we need to, as an industry, continue looking for opportunities to raise prices and pass the input costs into the market, especially now that import parity prices are very high and input costs are going up as well. That's probably the highest challenge that we have in the region, being able to continue increasing prices, which is something that we did in 2020, and this year we have not been able to keep that traction. We had this big strike in May that put the industry in some kind of standstill in Colombia, and we need to get back to where we were before that strike. I'm sorry to do this, but I am going to take one more call from the virtual audience because at least the people in the room have the ability to catch Jesús during breaks. So we have a question from Arnaud Pinatel from On Field. You're on mute. I think you were on mute. I believe you're on mute. I cannot hear you. Are there any problems on our side? No. Okay. If you would like to send the question via text or no, you could do that to me if you have my cell number. Maybe he's joining. Okay. Well, so let's take one more question from the audience. Who has one? Alex, why don't you go ahead? Hi, Jesús. What can you tell us about CO2 regulation across your markets? Specifically, because we've been hearing about maybe import tariffs in Europe for carbon polluting industries and California also in the U.S. What can you tell us about that in your markets? It still is not as developed as in California and Europe, but it's coming. I would say that the most advanced countries are probably Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Colombia, there is some kind of tax into carbon, very low today. That's why it's so important to accelerate our CO2 roadmap. As you know, this is not a roadmap for Europe. It's for all regions. We have very aggressive targets like in the rest of the regions to get ready for that future that is coming. It's a question of time. We need to be sure that the carbon markets that they develop in these countries are the right ones. The experience from Europe is a good one to follow, and we are very actively participating in the discussions in this government with the governments through associations and CEMEX on creating these carbon markets, but so far, just a little bit in Colombia. And there is no timeline, like for example, I don't know, Mexico that it's piloting a program or? Not yet. I know there is a pilot in Mexico for three years. Not yet. Probably that would be the case and the right way to implement this with following the approach in Mexico. I think it was a good approach, but so far, there is no certain timeline in place in any country, but it will come. Thank you. We're getting ready for that. Thank you very much, Jesús. Thank you. A nd so now, given my typos, I'm just going to read the title before I fall over. I'm very pleased to introduce Juan Romero, who's the EVP of Sustainability, Commercial, and Operations Development. Welcome. Thank you very much, Lucy, and good morning all. Let me start by summarizing what Fernando said at the beginning. Our purpose is to build a better future. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our times. In the past, we have significantly accelerated our climate action ambitions due to our own decarbonization experience, technological advancement, and growing acceptance of the urgency of the climate change. We have reaffirmed our commitment to net zero by 2050 by signing to the Business Ambition for 1.5°C of the We Mean Business Coalition and the United Nations Race to Zero. We have also accelerated our midterm goals to be the most ambitious in the industry, recently validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative. We acknowledge that our industry has an important role to play in any climate action agenda. To give us some sense of the cement industry, it is responsible for 5%-7% of the carbon emissions in the world. Unlike some industries with significant carbon emissions. However, they are not substitutes for the strength, resiliency, and affordability of concrete, and it remains an essential ingredient of the construction. Concrete is everywhere in our society and is the second most widely used material in the world after water. This implies that concrete will remain as much-needed construction material and that our industry, therefore, must come up with ways to mitigate its carbon footprint. Importantly, CEMEX and the industry recognize this responsibility early on and have been working on carbon reduction for more than 20 years. At CEMEX, we began measuring and monitoring CO2 in 1997. We recognize that a coordinated approach was needed. In 1999, we worked with other industry peers to form the Cement Sustainability Initiative, the first industry group in the world to work together on sustainability. It did not stop here. Recognizing that measuring was the key to management, the cement industry was the first to develop a standard for the calculation of carbon emissions to monitor and publicly report the data, as well as to create a global database of CO2 emissions. CEMEX played a pioneering role in all this effort. In 2005, we established our first medium-term carbon reduction goal. We were the first global cement player to publish and integrate a report allowing our stakeholders to better understand how our climate action program contributes to value creation at CEMEX. In 2018, we helped create the Global Cement and Concrete Association, a global industry platform to facilitate the sustainable development of the cement and concrete sector, recognizing the need to extend the decarbonization effort across the entire value chain, as well as the unique pathways that concrete, the end product that is used by our consumer, offer on the road to net zero. With this extension in scope, CEMEX announced in 2020 our ambition to deliver net zero concrete globally to all customers by 2050, and as the pandemic made even more apparent the urgency of climate action in June of this year, we announced the most ambitious 2030 targets in the industry to accelerate our path to net zero by 2050. We have signed the Business Ambition for 1.5°C commitment, and we have joined the Race to Zero Initiative, a global effort by which government and the private sector come together to create a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. To summarize these new targets, we have established in 2030 carbon emission goal for cement of 475 kilos of CO2, which is equivalent to 165 kilos of CO2 per cubic meter of concrete. We have also set a new Scope 2 goal of 55% of clean energy by 2030, up from our previous goal of 40%. I am happy to report these targets have been validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative that I said before, under the well below two degree scenario, currently the most ambitious pathway available for the industry. All of these targets give transparency to our ultimate goal of providing net zero concrete globally by 2050. To ensure we reach these targets, we have developed a plan-by-plan roadmap which relies on proven carbon reduction levels that we have been using in Europe for many years. As Fernando mentioned, the technology, material, costs, and public policy landscape necessary to achieve our 2030 targets are known to us, and it is simply a matter of execution. We are rolling out this level across our operation as fast as possible. As you know, Europe has been our showcase for our climate action initiatives. This is a function of the leadership of European Union have shown in developing a circular and low carbon economy. This framework has allowed us to have already reduced our carbon emission in Europe by 35%, as Sergio said. It is this achievement that gives us the confidence in reaching our 2030 goals. The two main levers in the roadmap are alternative fuels with high biomass content and reduction of clinker factor. There are other tools such as decarbonated raw materials, novel clinker, and hydrogen injection would also play an important role. In June, we gave an initial estimate of $60 million annual spend on average to reach our 2030 carbon goals. With a more detailed roadmap in hand, we are updating our cost estimates and also considering the more front-ended nature of the capital expenditure. We believe the adjustment not to be material, and we will share with you as more information becomes available. Our climate action plan must also focus on commercial offering and increasing customer preference of low carbon products in many geographies. We have developed a family of products under the global brand Vertua to enable our customers with solutions to reduce the environmental impact of their projects. I am proud to say that we were the first in the industry to have introduced a net zero CO2 concrete in 2020. Of course, local regulatory frameworks and consumer preferences in each region are not always as supportive of a low carbon environment as Europe. Our regional goals under the roadmap reflect what is possible under the current local environment. Part of our work will include advocacy and customer education. So what gives us confidence that we can deliver on this roadmap? We have already achieved the target level of the key CO2 reduction level in some of our local operations. Let me give you some examples. For our carbon emission 2030 targets of 475 kilos of CO2, we have already reached this level at 14% of our clinker production. By 2030, 40% of our plants are expected to have alternative fuels rates below 70%. We currently have plants in Poland, Czech Republic, and Germany already operating at that level. In fact, our two plants in Poland have a substitution rate above 90%. For our 2030 targets of clinker factor at or below 65%, we are already achieving that level in some of our plants in Mexico, Poland, and Colombia. Finally, you should expect that we will use emerging technology to progress even faster toward our 2030 goals. A good example is hydrogen injection. We recently discovered a way to use hydrogen injection in our kiln allowing us to further increase alternative fuel usage while reducing heat consumption. For 2020, in one year, we converted all of our European plants, that means 20% of our total plants, to allow for hydrogen injection and now are rolling out through the rest of our operations. With regards to our ambition to reach the net zero CO2 concrete globally by 2050, we have identified the levels that we have to get there. Some of these levels rely on further advancement of the same proven technology for cement and concrete that you have saw in our 2030 roadmaps. But importantly, the majority of the reduction needed to reach carbon neutrality for concrete relies on new technologies that are still in an early stage of development. We expect the larger contribution will come from carbon capture, utilization, and storage, and recarbonation. Let me explain this concept of recarbonation. As an industry, we have known for years that concrete in its built form has a unique attribute. Concrete structure actually absorbs CO2 from the air during the life cycle. In the latest United Nations Climate Change Report, a top climate scientist recognized for the first time that built concrete structure operates as a carbon sink. We estimate the rate of absorbed CO2 could be between 10%-25% of total direct emission. We include this recarbonation attribute as a lever in our pathway to net zero concrete by 2050, and we are researching ways to accelerate this property. Finally, our 2050 roadmap incorporates Scope 2 and 3 emissions as well. We are looking at initiatives to further increase the use of clean electricity, developing energy storage technology, and reducing transportation emissions. In regards to our research and development effort, we have adopted an open innovation approach in which we collaborate with a wide variety of companies, startups, and research institutions. Our CEMEX Ventures unit, which was created in 2017, and our global research and development team are leading the way in this effort. We have many important achievements today, but perhaps the most visible is Energy Vault, our first unicorn, which is currently being merged into a SPAC with a market capitalization of $1.1 billion. This technology uses gravity to store renewable energy via concrete blocks and will contribute to our Scope 2 goals. We currently have more than 30 active research and development projects in our pipeline focused on our 2050 net zero climate goals. We assess projects based on two different time horizons. The first, which can be fully implemented as early as 2030, and the second with more disruptive and first of its kind of technology that has a larger maturity process for development and full execution. Our approach is to establish and assess a diversified portfolio of solutions as we believe that the road to net zero will include multiple technologies. The answer must factor in plant technology and location, available infrastructure, scalability, and cost. We are collaborating with startups and other industries to tap into the knowledge base and adapt it to our production process. To illustrate the approach, we would like to highlight several of our carbon capture projects. We currently have seven industrial scale pilots in development that should commence operation between 2023 and 2024. In the case of our pilots in California, Germany, and Poland, we are partnering with Carbon Clean, a company that has developed carbon capture techniques applicable to the oil and gas, steel, and chemical sector. In fact, Carbon Clean participated in one of the world's first industrial scale carbon capture plants. We are working with them to transfer this technology to our cement plants and believe that at scale, this technology could deliver an operating cost below $30 per ton. In terms of the longer-term horizon projects, I would like to highlight the Synhelion partnership. Synhelion is a startup who has developed a unique and interesting technology to turn concentrated solar energy into synthetic fuels. We are adapting their technology to completely decarbonize our production process, eliminating fuels and efficiently capturing CO2 process emissions. Once captured, the CO2 can be converted into synthetic fuels for other industries such as aviation. It is very relevant to mention that several of these projects had confidential arrangements in place with governments. In addition to our partnership, we are sharing the upfront cost of developing those technologies. I hope you walk away from this presentation with a good appreciation of our ambition, the scope of our climate action targets, and a clear sense of our plan to achieve them. We believe strongly that our industry can make an important contribution in the transition to a circular and low carbon economy, and we intend to be a major force in that transition. Now, I'm happy to take your question. Thank you. Thank you very much, Juan. So we could open it up for questions. Okay. Ben Theurer from Barclays, please go ahead. Thank you very much. Juan, the question actually is around the opportunities in emerging markets. Clearly, you've laid out all the opportunities you had already in some of the developed markets where you obviously have easier access maybe to fuel alternatives, where you actually get paid to use waste. What are the biggest challenges for you to actually source these alternatives in emerging markets, be it Central America, be it Southeast Asia, Egypt, Mexico? And how can you overcome those? We are applying different technologies that we have been discovering during the time. Probably in the emerging markets in which we operate, the most advanced today is probably Mexico, in which we start to separate the waste and make different things in the landfill, try to obtain the waste that we can use in our kilns. I think that we are really taking advantage of the experience we have in Europe on one side, and the experience that we have been developing in Mexico and in other countries, trying to do as much as we can. We have developed some technologies and also the machinery to separate or to benefit in the best way the waste and different things, and also we are trying to develop long-term contracts to have or to secure the sources we have today for alternative fuels. I think that we have a lot of experience. Of course, it's much more difficult for us to do these kinds of things in Mexico or in other emerging economies than in Europe, that the waste is classified in the house and is coming clean in some way, but we have been developing different technologies. It's easy to manage up to today. Just to have an example, we have plants today in Mexico, over 40% use of alternative fuels that is increasing, mainly speaking about urban waste as the main source. We aren't going to split up the dynamic duo. I think Nik Lippmann has a question, so if you could just pass the mic. Thank you very much. A couple of questions. It seems like there's a shift in demand. It's very much demand-driven, sort of the green cement, the Vertua product. Can you talk a little bit about in which regions you're seeing this in particular, also how you're pricing the product, how much of a premium, what is the range perhaps in terms of price per ton? And then finally, you had a slide which in percentages when you were showing the product, what and sorry for being slow. What do the percentages represent? What do they signal? The percentages of the slide? No, the percentage of Vertua, and then it can be 20%, 40%, or 50%. Okay. This is the percentage or product of our total sales that we are selling today as a Vertua. That's the percentage. Yes, regarding the Vertua product, of course, the places in which we have a higher level of demand is in Europe, in which people find more by the time that they have been working in environment, in CO2 reduction, they are the ones who have the but also we have been having the demand in other countries. It just depends what we are talking about. We have been with very high level of Vertua products in cement in developed countries because it's in some way easy to sell blended cement in the emerging markets, in bagged cement, and in others. We have in all of us, also in the U.S., the demand of those products is starting to grow. We have many customers asking for Vertua products and trying to see how they can really contribute to have more sustainable buildings and different things. The demand is coming from our customers. Also in South America, the demand is increasing in some countries like Colombia. In Mexico also, we are really growing much faster than we were thinking at the beginning. All those products are in some way mainly in ready-mix. All those products have a price premium that covers much more than the price or the extra cost you can have. In many situations, we are coming from our customer price premium to consider the Vertua products. Is the price premium a double? No, no, it's not a double. We are speaking of. You're talking about the Vertua stuff. Is this a residential product? Is it for certain corporations that have a green profile and they're building a warehouse, et cetera? No, no, it's for all customers. We are having requests of Vertua products for all of them. There's no bias in terms of demand that it comes more from a? No, not too m uch. I'm going to take a question online. Paco Suá rez from Scotiabank, please go ahead. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Juan. You mentioned that one of your levers to meet your targets for 2030 relates with clinker factors. So what about the challenge on the lower availability of slag, fly ash, and other components for that admixture? If you can actually answer this question in the sense that for sure in the U.S., that's the low-hanging fruit, but in other places, we already have a very robust clinker factor. So how you're going to replace the fly ash, slag, and other components that are not going to be there and that may be economical to do so? Yes, there are different things. As you said before, I think that every time it will be much more scarce the slag or maybe the fly ash. Fly ash, there is a lot of fly ash in landfills in many different plants, but otherwise, what is coming is mainly limestone and pozzolans and other calcined clays. I think that there are different substitutions that we can use to make or to produce the blended cement in different parts of the world. Some of them. We have a lot of experience. The Portland cement in Mexico, we have been developing Portland for more than 30 years, probably. And it is the strategy we are following also in the U.S. Trying to stay in the first step, all those blended cement that are authorized in the country. As you know, in the U.S., there is not one regulation for the whole country. You have local regulation, government by government. And in major part of them, we can use the limestone cement, the Type IL limestone cement. That is the first one that we are introducing in the U.S. right now. And in all of them, we can use also the Portland cement, the Type I P cement that is also today authorized in many different countries, in many different governments. We are expecting that others will do that just to reduce the footprint of those products. There are different possibilities to do that, for sure. We'll take another question from the audience. Anne Milne from Bank of America, please. Thank you, Lucy. Thank you, Juan. Thank you. You've recently announced the investment that CEMEX is going to make in all of your sustainable efforts of $60 million a year. I guess the question is, where will most of that be spent? Or maybe what are the top areas? How comfortable are you with that $60 million figure? And are there risks that it could cost substantially more than that? Well, different things. As I said before, the main investment is just to facilitate the strategy we have. The first one is regarding alternative fuels, in which we need to invest in different things in our kilns, just to increase the level of consumption we have of alternative fuels today. Going forward, trying to increase the level of those ones as a waste, and all those that have a higher level of biomass inside. The other important investments are coming from the reduction of the clinker factor, in which we need to manage different other materials, as we had said before, to do that. Those are the main investments we have. We have some other investments like hydrogen injection that we are finished Europe that we are starting right now with Mexico and the U.S. and other countries. This is another investment. Other investments that are coming in different other things. But they are the most relevant one in some way. If there are some things relevant. We are now prioritizing all the investments we need to do within the next nine to 10 years. The prioritization process is to do different things. First one is what of these investments have the high impact in CO2 reduction. And also, what of those investments have the best return for our company? Because really, something that's happened is that I said all of them, almost all of them have a return. That is the most relevant thing. That means that we are not only investing to do something that it will be an incremental cost. We are investing in something that we produce advantage for the company and savings in the short term. That's the thing. If I am comfortable with the $60 million average, I'm comfortable right now. As I said before, I think that we are under review, many different things, prioritizing different other things. But I think that if there are some changes, it will be no material. Otherwise, we will know, but it will happen with technology, and probably in some years or maybe months, because the technology is moving much faster than we are thinking right now, maybe we will discover different things to do in this regard. And we will see what happens there. But I don't really think that the level of investment will change in material way. Thank you. And maybe I would just add to that, Anne, that as Fernando told us this morning, climate action is evolving very, very quickly. So with this most recent roadmap, that 60 million, as Juan was saying, we are currently looking at the cost of this new roadmap. So there will be some adjustment. And I think in general that these investments will be under review all the time based on what's happening. Okay. Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. And Vanessa Quiroga from Credit Suisse. Thank you, Juan. This could be a very quick one. When do you expect to have to buy carbon credits in the future? What? Yeah. Well, in Europe, we have covered until 2026. That means that from now to 2026, we don't really need to buy any credits in Europe up to date. Because if we can save more during today to 26, maybe we have the possibility to go further to buy some additional credits. And in other countries, we will see what happens. Up to date, we don't need to buy credits. We are mobilizing different things. We have some credits that we have for free in Mexico for the electricity plant that we have. There are some possibilities to use part of them. But up to date, we don't need to have any credits to buy up till 2026 in Europe. And we will see what happens with the regulation in other countries. Because as you said before, up to date, we don't really have a visibility of what will happen in the next future. But for sure, something will happen in our countries. Thank you. Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. And I think Juan made a very good segue into Mexico, which is next. So I'm pleased to present Ricardo Naya, President of CEMEX Mexico. Thank you, Lucy. And by the way, congratulations, Lucy. You're doing a terrific time managing our agenda. You were right on time. And it is a pleasure to be again in front of you. Last time I spoke with you was back in early 2019. And back then, I had been recently appointed to this position. And I still remember the phone call that Fernando gave me early in 2019, telling me that I was going to join the team. That was the good news. But the other news is that in 2019, we were expecting already a very challenging year. And it ended up being much, much harder than that, 2019. And then the pandemic hit us in 2020. So it has been quite a journey. But more than talking about the journey that we have experienced or that I have experienced since the last time I was in front of you, I want to draw your attention to these two extraordinary events that took place in Mexico. The 2019 downturn and then the pandemic, which you can draw true conclusions. On one hand, and very importantly, is the resiliency of the Mexican industry. But most importantly, our ability to execute regardless of the context. So I think now, similar to my colleagues, I'm going to start with our performance so far. And in this graph, I think that you can see the essence on how we manage the business. Because we are able to deliver good results in very adverse conditions, such as the first half of last year. We're also able to deliver great results in good conditions, such as the first half of this year. How do we do that? By simply focusing on the variables that are under our control. I think we have a tremendous team that is very focused and is able to deliver despite the circumstances. Let us not forget what happened last year. Because it was quite a shocking experience in the pandemic. Our organization, our team, our customer base was heavily impacted by the pandemic. This extraordinary team adapted very quickly. We prepared for the worst. We also stayed tuned to capture any potential opportunity as they emerged. As demand conditions started to improve, I think that we were able to capture a lot of opportunities that are reflected and behind the tremendous growth that you see on this slide. The type of actions that we have implemented so far, and that I want to highlight is, first, our pricing strategy. It's not new that in Mexico, we have been able to deliver a successful pricing strategy. We have a commitment to maintain sustainable and healthy price levels. As conditions change, such as the inflationary environment that we're facing, our tactics must also evolve, which are aligned with our value creation mindset. So again, when inflationary pressures are presented, we need to move in that direction. We're happy with our performance so far because so far we have implemented a price increase close to 7%. But we know that there are still headwinds. Those headwinds, we are going to mitigate the efforts in the next rounds of price increases towards the end of the year. Also, very importantly, preparing for 2022. The second thing that we are very proud of is how the team responded, was on cost containment efforts. We have done an amazing job trying to mitigate all those inflationary pressures, and I think that the team has done a fantastic job, and let me give you one specific data point. During the first half of the year, for the first time ever, we were able to experience deflation of our distribution costs under a very difficult environment. Because we were running at very high utilization levels, and it was quite challenging to experience deflation in our distribution costs for the first time ever, so that is a very concrete example of how we manage our cost base, but third, we are also addressing our operating model. We are transforming how we run the business from back office to front office or middle office. And we're learning how to work remotely, how to work more efficiently. And we're learning how to do it leveraging the use of technology. And we are capturing savings in fees, rentals, travel expenses, so on and so forth. And we're also learning new ways of working that we believe that is going to make our operating model leaner and faster and more nimble. And last but not least, which is not seen in this graph, is that we're taking this opportunity to take even further and faster the execution of our strategic priorities. As you know, customer centricity is our most important priority after the health and safety of our employees. And we are happy to also share, similar to our colleagues, the tremendous performance that we have been able to deliver in our customer centricity priority. Since we started measuring the Net Promoter Score, we have been improving quarter after quarter after quarter, and this year, we're again breaking records of the Net Promoter Score. But when you look beyond the Net Promoter Score, when we look at other commercial KPIs, such as the CEMEX Go online order adoption, on-time complaint resolutions, or on-time deliveries, we have tremendous performance in most commercial KPIs. Now, this does not happen by chance. It is a massive effort of hundreds of colleagues that are constantly focusing on micro improvements over time. And this is how we move the needle, by these micro improvements consistently over time to make sure that our customers are surprised and they receive the best experience every time, everywhere, leveraging the use of technology, so all in all, in closing, it's been a great year so far. We are very happy with our performance. But we're not satisfied. Because we know that we're facing challenges. We know that we still have opportunities. And we're very focused on making sure that we learn and that we deliver. Now, if we raise, let's say, the view a little bit more towards the medium term, I want to, let's say, give you, similar to Jaime, what I would call a very optimistic view of the future. Because when you look at each of the different components or each of the different segments of the cement demand in Mexico, they look very attractive, very solid. And I will start with the self-construction. Self-construction turned out to be quite resilient during the last contraction and actually improved quite rapidly. But when you look, let's say, on the main drivers of performance of the self-construction segment, they still look very solid towards the midterm. First of all, remittances. Remittances, I mean, for seven straight years, are setting records. Seven straight years. Even President López Obrador says a lot about remittances. But just this week, the last data point for August came up to $4.7 billion for the month of August, which is a 32% year-over-year growth. And again, 2021 is going to be another record year for remittances. But on top of that, on top of the remittances, the current administration is putting in place a lot of social programs that actually favor self-construction. When you look at the 2022 budget for the federal government, it includes already a double-digit increase in federal spending on programs that are related to self-construction. So again, this segment has performed quite well. And it looks very favorable towards the future. Next segment is the industrial and commercial segment, which is a segment that is already benefiting from nearshoring investments in Mexico. This is a reality. It is not a phenomenon that we think is going to happen eventually. It is happening already. When you look at what is happening in the country, there's a lot of distribution centers, logistics hubs, and many industrial activities going on. There's factories being built in Mexico or expanded. And not only in the automotive industry, which is quite visible, but in other industries, such as electronics, manufacturing. And not only big companies, but also medium-sized companies, which is super, super positive. But in addition to that, another important driver of growth for the sector is the tourism sector. Finally, after certain travel restrictions are, let's say, are easy, we're seeing a lot of more capital being deployed again to build hotels and condominiums in most major destinations. So again, industrial and commercial segment, also with very strong signals for the medium term. Now, formal housing. Formal housing is also showing signs of improvement. Actually, as of July, permits have increased 35% because mainly commercial banking conditions are at very healthy levels compared to the past. And that is triggering the untapped or unserved demand for formal housing. Because let's remember that half of the population in Mexico is younger than 29 years old. Household formation in Mexico is more than 500,000 per year. So that is a tremendous demand that is still there. And we believe that in the future, it will remain still very solid. So as labor conditions and employment improve, real wages also improve, this should serve as a main driver for growth for formal housing. And last but not least, infrastructure. I hope that infrastructure could have the same weight that it has in the U.S. industry. In Mexico, it has the lowest weight. But we believe it is very important for the competitiveness of the country. You are very well informed every Monday with the Mañaneras on the development of the Mexico City Airport and the Dos Bocas refinery, which are entering the final phases of ready-mix and cement consumption. But we are also very aware of the Mayan Train and the Interoceanic Corridor, how they're going to start increasing their consumptions in the coming months. So the federal government has been delivering and performing quite well on those flagship projects that are, let's say, very visible. But more than discussing the flagship projects, I want to talk about the privately funded infrastructure projects, which are also very important. There's a lot of activity regarding highway concessions and airport expansions. Just as a data point, there's approximately 10 airport expansions happening nowadays. That says a lot about the activity that has probably less coverage on the media. All in all, when you look at each of the different components of the cement demand, they look very attractive. We don't expect to see, again, double-digit demand growth like the ones we are experiencing this year. But again, we're very optimistic going forward on how healthy, how resilient, and how it looks forward the demand for the coming years. Now, similar to our colleagues, profitable EBITDA is also a key priority for us. We have different sources that will fuel growth going forward. On one hand, and very important, is the strong fundamentals of our business. Not only because of the demand dynamics that I already mentioned, because also on top of that, we have proven our strategic priority to make sure our prices and our profitability remains at very healthy levels, but on top of that, we are investing and developing the business going forward, and let me give you some examples on how we are deploying that type of capital. First of all, we're expanding cement production capacity in a timely manner and in the places where capacity is actually needed. We're increasing capacity for local production. You are aware about our Tepeyac expansion and Huichapan expansion that will help us serve the Central and Southeast region, which are actually the two regions that are growing the fastest nowadays, and they are very, let's say, tight in terms of cement utilization. On top of that, we are investing to serve our colleagues in the north. Jaime is keeping us super busy. Actually, this year, we will have record-breaking exports, record-breaking that we had not experienced since 2006. We're looking forward for the export program for 2022. Super excited about our export program. You can see that the liaisons between Mexico and the U.S. are becoming tighter, not only because of the remittances, but also the supply chain dynamics that happened between the two countries. We're investing in expanding the production capacity again in a profitable way, in the right timing, and in the right locations. Now, on top of that, we're also scaling up the Urbanization Solutions business here in Mexico. We're super happy that the performance this year of Urbanization Solutions is actually growing triple digit, triple digit this year. Super excited about the performance. But I want to give you a highlight of the type of portfolio that we are investing. I think that in the past, you have heard about Construrama Supply. You have heard about admixtures. But let me elaborate a little bit on a vertical that is quite interesting, which is waste management under the Urbanization Solutions umbrella. We have a business in Mexico which is called Proambiente. It's not a new business. Actually, it's a company that was created back in 1993. But we're taking Proambiente to different levels of performance. Proambiente will become the leader in waste management solutions in Mexico. And actually, just to give you some interesting data points. This year alone, via Proambiente, we will co-process 1.3 million tons of municipal and industrial waste. For some of you, might say, "Well, 1.3 million tons, how much is that? Is that a lot or not?" So I can tell you that is a lot of waste. We are going to be the leaders on co-processing municipal waste. And let me give you some examples. Mexico City. Today, in Mexico City, we are able to co-process 13% of all the waste that is produced in Mexico City. So instead of going to landfills, nowadays, 13% of that waste is being co-processed in our manufacturing facilities. But we have a target, and we have a plan to get to 25% to co-process one of every ton, one of every four tons of municipal waste that is produced in Mexico City. That is our plan, and we're going to deliver. So we're super excited about the development of this vertical, which is aligned with the last point that I want to elaborate, which is our ambitious plan to reduce carbon footprint. You are aware about our Future in Action program, which has, on one hand, at least in Mexico, the most ambitious reduction target ever declared by any industry competitor. So we not only have the most ambitious target, but I believe that we have an action plan that we are going to be able to deliver. And these projects or these initiatives are not only sustainable, are very profitable. And let me give you one example. Juan mentioned our Huichapan cement plant. Huichapan cement plant, which is located right in the middle between Querétaro and Mexico City, is the best example on how we are deploying capital targeted to our CO2 roadmap. And those investments have been super profitable. Huichapan cement plant now uses a little bit more than 40% alternative fuels. Actually, I call it friendly fuels, not alternative fuels. Those are friendly fuels, not fossil fuels. So 40% alternative fuels, less than 65% clinker factor. And Huichapan nowadays has a CO2 footprint similar to the one that we want to achieve in 2030 for the overall cement production facilities in Mexico. So we have a concrete example within our hands on how we can actually deliver on that roadmap by deploying capital in a profitable way. And by the way, Huichapan has one of the lowest production costs that we have in the system. So this is the type of investments that we're deploying. And we are super excited about our plant. So also, we're confident that we are going to deliver. Now, in closing, I want to say that we are very optimistic about the future performance of our business. Because on one hand, we have strong industry fundamentals. But on top of that, we have a growth strategy that should continue delivering value for our shareholders. But on a final note, I want to emphasize something, that our performance has been and will continue to be purpose-driven. We take our purpose very seriously, building a better future. And it all starts with all the colleagues, all the employees that work in the company. We do our best to make sure that they are building a better future for themselves and for their families. So they can help us build a better future for our customers, for our shareholders, and for the communities where we operate. So this is what motivates and drives our purpose-driven performance. Thank you very much. Okay. I think Ricardo was just that energy infusion we needed for this point in the morning. So maybe with that, we could open it up to questions in the audience. Rodolfo, why don't we start with you? Thank you, Lucy. My question is on the energy side. What are you expecting, or if you can give us a little bit of color on the pressures that you're seeing on energy broadly, petcoke, and also on the electricity front? Because I think this also ties well with all of your goals on CO2 reduction and your ESG goals. But particularly as to how this bill that was introduced recently in Mexico could affect your operations. And any color there would be great. Okay. First of all, regarding petcoke, of course, we're also exposed because of the high volatility of petcoke prices. Nowadays, about 70% of our coke needs are served via the international spot prices, and the rest are via the contracts that we have with Pemex. So whatever is happening with our petcoke volatility, we're trying to transfer into the prices because that is the formula that we must apply. That is very simple. Now, regarding the new law that you mentioned, of course, right now, we are analyzing the potential implications of what is written or included in the language of that law. That law needs to go through a rigorous approval process. As you know, it requires constitutional changes, which is a qualified majority, not only in the Congress, but also it requires the approval in 17 state legislatures. I would say it is too early to say what is going to be the final outcome of that law. But what I can tell you is that we're working with chambers and associations to try to inform or give alternative views on what are the potential implications of that law, especially regarding our climate action agenda. As you know, we have Scope 1 and Scope 2 target reductions. The Scope 2 are the indirect emissions. We want to favor more and more the use of renewables as part of our energy needs. Nowadays, close to 25% of our energy needs are coming from renewables, especially wind and some solar. And we want to almost double that amount. Of course, we will have to understand the implications of that law, what sort of conditions would create to accomplish that Scope 2 reductions. But I think it is too early to tell at this point. Thank you. Thank you. And now, I think I will take a call. I mean, I will take a question from the virtual audience. Carlos Peyrelongue from Bank of America, please go ahead. Thank you, Lucy. Thank you, Ricardo, for taking the question. First one is related to electricity as well. It gives us an idea of your total cost, how much of that is electricity. And of your electricity consumption, how much is coming from private companies and how much from the CFE? And the second is related to prices. I believe you mentioned that there's a possibility for another price increase before the year is over. Is that correct? And would that be for cement, for both bag and bulk? Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. I will be very direct. About 30% of our energy right now that we consume comes from CFE. The rest is sourced via our contracts that we have either with TEG or with the renewables, as I mentioned, so again, about 30% comes from CFE. Regarding prices, typically, how we have been managing prices, we have a different approach between bulk and bag for cement. Typically, in bulk, we execute two price increases a year. One, which is typically the most successful one, is at the beginning of the year, and then the other is in the summer, and in bag prices, we typically have different windows of opportunities, and actually, in October last year, we implemented a price increase in bag cement, and we are right now more or less understanding what sort of a window of opportunities will be presented to increase prices. I believe that we will increase prices before the end of the year on bag cement. We still need to, let's say, finalize the timing and the amount. But what you should expect is towards the beginning of 2022, the next window of opportunity to raise, let's say, prices for both bulk and bags. Thank you, Carlos. In terms of your utilization of the country, can you give us the number of current utilization? Utilization rates? Capital and capacity? Capacity utilization. This is a very good question, Carlos, because when you look at our production for this year, actually, we're going to reach record production since 2005. No, since 2008, to be more precise. Because of our export program and because we're not only, let's say, producing the typical gray cement, we're also producing mortars, white cement, Multiplast, and other special cement products. So production has been very solid. Right now, it's in the 90-plus, 90-plus for the full year. But when you look at the seasonality, there has been a couple of months, sometimes weeks, where we have been operating at full capacity. This is very exciting for us. But let me tell you a little bit of our guidance that we gave you of about 10% volume growth for the full year. Because implicit on that guidance, you are seeing that growth rates for the second half of the year will moderate. Because right now, as of June, you have seen our performance of about 20% volume growth. And we gave you, I don't know if it was in June or in June, the guidance of 10%. So we're expecting growth rates to moderate. And that is also providing us a little bit of oxygen for the capacity utilization as we were expecting, Carlos. Okay? Just to be clear, those are growth rates on a year-over-year basis with harder comps, obviously, in the back half. Okay? Any other questions from this audience? Yes, Gordon Lee from BTG. Hi, Gordon Lee from BTG. Really, it's a question on the competitive environment. In the past, your competitors have not always been especially rational sometimes in terms of pricing. Is that a concern that you're, as you push through price increases, do you feel that the competitors will follow typically, given their own utilizations? Related to that, could you mention of any projects that you've identified or that you're aware of from the competition for expansions, for cement expansions in Mexico? Regarding prices or the competitive environment, we operate under a very challenging competitive landscape in Mexico. It is true that supply-demand balance has been tight for everyone. It is also a fact that inflation is affecting everyone. I cannot speak how they're going to react. I can speak on how we are going to react and how we have been, let's say, implementing a successful price increase. As of today, we have implemented a 7% price increase, which is successful. And when you look at the price levels that we have in Mexico, they're also healthy and sustainable. Again, we're looking at inflationary pressures, and we're going to try to mitigate them as much as possible. But we will do our best, and we'll see what happens. We hope that the best will be the outcome. Now, regarding expansion capacities for the competitors, you saw that Holcim increased a grant or put a grinding capacity in the Yucatán Peninsula, as well as Fortaleza. So those are two types of investments that we have not seen in the past, let's say, isolated or non-integrated cement capacities. And on top of that, Cruz Azul is investing in a new line in their Oaxaca plant that they're putting on stream, let's say, recently. But we believe or we heard that they have also obsolete capacity that they might shut down. So that's more or less the competitive landscape as we understand it today. Now, when you look at the industry as a whole, when you have an industry that is about, I don't know, 40-million-ton-plus industry, and with the growth rates, organic growth rates that are expected, capacity expansions should be normal in this market. So I don't expect to see any major disruption on that front. Thank you, Gordon. We've gone a little beyond. I'm going to take one last question. Sorry, Lucy. But no, no, no, no, no, not at all. No. But I'd like to take one last question from Adrian Huerta from JPMorg an. Okay. Hola, Ricardo. Hola. Quick question on the Urbanization Solutions that you mentioned. Grow in triple digits. And it seems like the growth started since the second quarter of last year. How much are they representing out of total revenues now? And what is the growth outlook for next year from this? That's a, well, I'll get back to you because the consolidated, well, I can tell you more or less the overall EBITDA for the expected EBITDA for the year, which is close to $50 million in EBITDA. Revenues, I will probably need to get back to you. But, for example, Construrama Supply, which is the largest in terms of revenues within the Urbanization Solution s, I remember that we have revenues close to $450 million, $450 million in Construrama Supply. But probably we need to get back to Adrian on the consolidated figures for Urbanization S olutions. No problem there. Ricardo, thank you very much for that great presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And now I am very pleased to have a Q&A with our CEO, Fernando González. Okay. So who would like to kick off? Thank you very much. Is it working? Yeah, it is working. If you have any questions about the Dominican Republic, it's still here. Great. Maybe I will start, Alex, with you with the first question, please. I'm sorry. If questions are too direct to a region or to the subjects, I might ask the support of my colleagues, given that they are much more knowledgeable than I am, so. This is an easy one. Perfect. Fernando. It seems that you're moving from a delivery phase to a growing phase and an investment phase. But how should we expect or when should we expect perhaps a dividend policy, CEMEX moving more towards giving cash back to shareholders? You've been very active in the last few years on buybacks. But how about divid ends? Well, we did some, but I think we need a much more stable trajectory, let's say, under the three times leverage that we are in, in order to define a sort of a policy or a dividend that we can sort of guarantee through time. And we don't want to do a one-time thing with it. Now, that needs to be approved by our board. So we might try starting next year, and let's see how it goes. Again, we need to be sure that we can deliver systematically a dividend. Okay. And the next question also we'll take from the room from Alan Alanis. Ok ay. Thank you so much, Fernando. Could you walk us through the change that you're thinking in terms of the changing strategy from many years, decades, where CEMEX had global aspirations to now basically being much more focused in North America and Europe, and I think you went as specific as going into certain regions and certain metropolitan areas. What are the opportunities and risks of that major shift in strategy? Yeah, well, let me start by reminding the latest adjustments with it that you are describing them. We want to grow and to invest mainly in the U.S. and Europe to some extent in Mexico. And we want to shorten our position in emerging markets. That's the main adjustment that we are doing. Now, I think in a couple of decades, we were perceived as the emerging market company, the global, but the emerging one because of our origins, Mexican companies emerging. So we are emerging. But you know what? The last $25 billion we invested, we invested in the U.S. and Europe. So we are clarifying this adjustment, but it's not that different to what we were doing. What is different? That we are clearly stating that we are not inclined anymore to add additional flags to our collection. There was a time, and a long time, 30, 40, 50 years of globals growing globally. Now that is changing because the way portfolios are perceived are different to the way they were perceived decades ago. What kind of play are we? Or what kind of play is other competitors in the sector? Our preference now is to focus and simplify and concentrate in the markets and countries that we have committed. Now, on growing, we need to take into account cycles and situations. Has it been easy to divest in emerging markets in the last year and a half? You know the answer. What about investments in the U.S. and Europe? We are focusing on bolt-on, greenfield, small acquisitions type of investments. Are we willing to pay high multiples at something that might be close to the top of the cycle? Not necessarily. Is that changing our strategy? No. Strategy is the same, but we need to take and to develop opportunities at the right price in both sides, investments and divestments. So this strategy or the idea of divesting and investing nowadays has nothing to do with the leveraging. That's behind us. I mean, we still have a way to go, but meaning it's not the driver of the driver is really managing our portfolio towards this type of strategy that I already desc ribed. And now we will take a question from our virtual audience. Alberto Valerio from UBS again, please. Thank you, Lucy. Hi, Fernando. Thank you for the presentation. It has been amazing to be this morning with you guys. My question is about the guidance. You said in the beginning of the presentation that nothing changed since the last report and the guidance that the guy provides. My question is, how confident are you about the guidance in 2021 and the 10% or more increase for EBITDA in 2022? And if that $100 million that you mentioned that you'll be impacted by the inflation would be removed for the $3.1 billion EBITDA guidance for this year. Thank you. Sure. From what I think I said before is that because of high inflation, because of supply chain issues, because inflation, particularly in fuels, electricity, whatever, our own inflation, we believe on a preliminary basis, we still don't have the full third quarter analyzed. We need a little bit more time, and we will comment that during our call three weeks from now. But on a preliminary basis, what we're saying, what we already saw happening in the last two, three months is that growth is slowing down marginally. I mean, the U.S., I think it has been adjusted by 0.5 percentage points. Okay. It's not moving from growing six to not growing or growing three. It's a marginal adjustment so far. But inflation is the one that is going up more than what we thought, as I think Jaime said. In the case of the U.S., and for good reasons, we're importing more cement. Volumes are growing. Capacity is utilized at 100%. So we need more volumes. But we need more volumes than the ones we thought we were going to need, meaning we are paying spot prices in shipping costs, bulk shipping costs, which have been very, very high. So because of that and because of some impact on FX effects, if you remember, our guidance was communicated at FX effects prevailing at the end of June. So there is also some impact, mainly because of the Mexican peso. We believe, again, preliminary basis that our expectation is now $100 million less on EBITDA. It's $100 million less. We're going to continue looking at our numbers, particularly the latest ones, the September numbers. And during our third quarter call, we might come back with more precise estimates or conclusions on how this inflation, supply chain issues can impact us. I also mentioned just I think it's an interesting piece of info is that for the first eight months, not the first nine, not because the ninth month is not the case, it's because we have not done it. We have not finished. But the first eight months, our contribution margins are holding or increasing compared to last year. Meaning the first eight months, we are okay and on track to our expectations. We see these great clouds coming. So we are kind of estimating, making preliminary estimations, and that's what we wanted to communicate today. Okay. And maybe if we can kind of keep it to the medium term, which really is the purpose of CEMEX Day, that would be great. Vanessa, do you want to go ahead with a question? It's just a very quick follow-up on that, Fernando. There is $100 million. I'm going to take the mic back. Launch is ready. Are you referring to 2021 or 2022? 2021. 2021. Now, by reviewing 2021, I mean, if we adjust our expectation by 100 million, I think we will need some additional time. When we provided guidance, we thought uncertainty was not necessarily high. Now what we're saying, yes, we're going to provide definite numbers on our expectation for the year. I'm not sure what is it that we're going to do with 2022. It's 10%. Yeah, 10%. But let's see how it goes. And with two, three months, what happens with this adjustment on general GDP growth? What happens in our markets? So we need to evaluate that. Okay. I'm going to leave the mic before Lucy. Maybe we could pass it to Gordon Lee from BTG. Thank you. Thank you. If I could focus on the third quarter. A couple of questions on the climate side of things. The first, you mentioned in your initial remarks that maybe the difference between the results you've seen in Europe and what you've seen elsewhere has to do with sort of the circular economy taking hold. I was wondering how much of the gap in the other markets towards that attainment of that same level of circular economy has to do with regulation and how much it has to do more with customers and just sort of non-regulatory sides of the business. Then the second question on the bridge that Juan showed in terms of the reduction from 2030 to net zero by 2050, is it only the carbon capture portion that requires a technological breakthrough, or are there other? Carbon capture. Carbon capture. There might be others, but the elephant in the room is carbon capture and use for our industry and other industrial sectors. On the first question, Gordon, I think it's a combination. What I see is that I don't know exactly how to express it, but climate change has changed. We're speaking about climate change after 30 years of speaking about climate change. So what is new? Why is it that we wanted to talk about climate change? What is new is that nowadays there is a momentum, which by the way, I think is a very positive momentum in which more stakeholders have joined the idea of acting against climate change. And those stakeholders are creating a huge critical mass, motivating businesses and governments to move forward. And to some extent, on top of motivating, it's kind of letting us know what can happen if we don't do the job kind of thing. Okay? So that's what it's different. So why is it that we decided to make the adjustments? Well, we look at what is it that we need to do after realizing this new momentum to continue being leaders in our industry? Why is it that we want to continue being leaders in the industry? Because we believe that from now on, we don't know when, but from now on, investors are going to get selective in their investments. So I have to assume that investors are going to say, "Which company in the cement or the ready-mix business is the leader?" Or, "Which companies are the leader and as good as the leader?" Because those are the companies that will see inflows. The rest will see outflows. So that's why it's really important. I think it's the variable nowadays that will define our future. So here we are talking about climate change after 30 years, but the meaning of climate change nowadays is completely different. That's why we adopted the scenarios that are the most ambitious ones nowadays. We started, of course, declaring our net zero for 2050. I already commented that, yes, but it's still years to go. So we adopted the well below two degrees, which is the scenario that has its very specific. Meaning if we want to be aligned to the Paris Agreement, we have to subscribe to this well below two degrees scenario, which is the numbers you saw for our new 2030 targets are the ones aligned to that scenario. And now it is not only us saying, "We are aligned." It's SBTi saying, "These guys are aligned." They analyze all the time, make their numbers and everything, and they say, "Check. They are on their way to contribute to the well below two degrees scenario." And on top of that, we subscribe to the one and a half. So it's like different elements or pieces in the equation that we started developing. And the one and a half scenario is right now, the way I understand it, it's more an aspiration or an intent. At least in the cement industry, we still don't have specific criteria that we have to comply with. That is being developed as we speak. And I think I mentioned we're very pleased because members of our company were invited to participate in the committees developing the definition of the one and a half scenario, which will be important more, let's say, beyond 2030. So that's what we understand on this new meaning of climate change. Now, why is Europe different to the rest? One possibility is that we've been paying more attention to Europe, but I don't think so. Definitely, there are impacts because of different regulations. In my opinion, the European Union and/or several countries in the European Union, even before the European Union existed, they've been working on environmental issues and CO2 issues. And nowadays, the European Union and the U.K., which continues to have the same philosophy, is the economy that is closer to the circular economy version. Green economy has to be green and has to be economy. I mean, the idea of everybody failing because we need to spend more or invest more for a future economy that doesn't work is nonsense. So the green economy that is profitable, the green economy that will work has to be circular. And in that economy, what we have to do is even more profitable than what we do nowadays. So yes, there are several rules in the U.K. very aligned to a circular economy that are not existent in other countries, developed or emerging. No difference. So that's one thing about rules. Example, alternative fuels. The original waste directives in Germany, the Netherlands, and that part of Central Europe were adopted by the European Union. Nowadays, you have to pay more than GBP 100 to landfill a ton of waste in the U.K. Or you cannot landfill more than, I don't remember, 4% or 5% in Germany and the Netherlands. So what happens? That after decades, a new business sector was developed. The sector, the really the realist of the world, that sector. So to us, nowadays, instead of having our highest costs getting higher, as Sergio mentioned, now it's an income stream thanks to that portion of the circular economy in that region. Now, so region, I mean, rules do impact and do have a role. So does that mean that we need to change the rules in the U.S. or in Mexico or in the Philippines? Not necessarily. We can achieve what we have achieved in Europe with the current rules. What we're saying, we can do it faster, and we can better serve society, and we can be even more profitable if we manage to speed up the process of current rules prevailing in different states in the U.S. or in Mexico or whatever to something similar to that. I think Ricardo mentioned we are co-processing 25%-30% of alternative fuels in Mexico without any major changes in the rules. So that's because of rules. Now, let me refer back to the momentum. And during the break, I was hearing some anecdotes. Because this momentum is covering 360. Investors in the U.S. are nowadays really on top of climate change and climate action. That's my appreciation. Customers. We were saying we need to improve, to enlarge our value offer of low-carbon products to our customers. Our customers want to build with lower-carbon products. So I was saying an anecdote that was told to me. Our regional president in Alabama was a meeting we were having with Jaime and his team. He shared with us, "You know what? I just received a call from one of our most important customers asking if Vertua is already available in Alabama." Like saying, "Wow." Meaning it's not going to be only a push type of effort, but customers are already asking. And by the way, he said, "And if it is happening in Alabama, it's happening everywhere." So this is both. It's rules. And I did mention we need to find a way to better inform, try to influence, promote, collaborate in these rules moving towards a circular economy. And we also need to work with stakeholders in general. This example of customers, Mexico, the response of Vertua in Mexico has been huge. We were not expecting that it's an emerging market. But it is happening. I think we have time for one more question. A couple, a couple. A couple? Okay. So we have time for a couple. The next one we're going to. Before she takes my microphone. People think I'm really aggressive. We're going to take a question from Carlos Peyrelongue from the virtual audience. Please go ahead, Carlos. Thank you, Lucy. Thank you, Fernando. Hello, Carlos. Considering your focus on bolt-on acquisitions and expanding capacity in some of the countries with new facilities, expansion topics, the possibility of a sustainable dividend, is there a steady-state target to leverage that you are considering going forward? And is there a ceiling that you don't want to surpass? No, we don't have a specific target yet because we don't have a specific proposal or action to be taken in dividends. But for sure, it has to continue being below three times. But hopefully, even well below, like the scenario, well below three times. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. Great. Ben Theurer from sorry, I'm losing it here. From inside the room, please go ahead, Ben. Inside the room. Okay. So that's more of a follow-up question. I know it's been asked in the past, but you have made some changes on management compensation and alignment to these ESG goals. As you move forward in the different regions, do you think there is a need to further adjust those, or are you comfortable where you stand right now? Thanks for asking, Benjamin, because we had not addressed that point at all during this morning. By the way, there are so many issues we wanted to address, but there is so much you can do in the time that we have with you. We started in July a trial or an experiment on modifying our variable compensation system of the first, whatever, four or five levels of the company, adding the impact of CO2. Meaning, as any other objective, it's adding the, for instance, we have this year an objective of CO2 reduction, and we will cut next year. So it's an annual plan. It's not just 25 and 30 and 2050. So we are making this trial. People are informed. I think after looking at some numbers a couple of months, I think we need to make some adjustments because we started saying senior executives in Europe will use CO2 price in Europe, and they have their plans. So if they comply or if they are below. By the way, I told them no way to be below the target. But anyhow, if they are below or they are not, so it makes the numbers with the cost of or the price of CO2 in Europe, what I saw is that there is a sizable impact. For the rest of the world, we use as a proxy the price of CO2 in California, which is slightly below $20, and the impact is minimum. It's negligible, so I think we're going to be changing that to use for the whole company the value of the ETS in Europe. At the same time, let me take the advantage of your question to address something else. We're doing exactly the same thing on evaluating investments. There are no requirements in, you name it, Colombia or the Philippines, but we are considering CO2 prices in our investments because we believe that we are going to be moving from the current status. Currently, about 60% of our cement capacity is in some sort of regulation on CO2, and that is not moving backwards. That is moving forward, so we better consider the implications. For instance, we were saying expanding cement capacity. We better consider that factor in how a new cement plant should be built and what are the expected economics when including a price for CO2. Very simple stuff. Type I cement is produced with 95% clinker, 5% gypsum, just as standard cement plant. A blended cement plant is 60%-70% clinker. You need a much bigger grinding mill. So in the plant of the future, we will need to use 90% alternative fuels. We need electrification, and we need to put the plant wherever alternative fuel is available, and so there are so many changes that little by little will be adopted in the industry, but referring to CO2 compensation, it will start. The trial lasts until December the 31st, so January the 1st next year, it's already part of our compensation system. And in investments, we're kind of also in software trials because, again, $18, yeah, it does make a difference, but we want that if that is the price that we should use for investment that are going to last 20 years. As a follow-up, within the different regions, have you difficulty actually measuring the CO2 savings? Or is it across the board the same? No, we've been engaged in how to measure CO2 as well as some relevant emissions like NOx, SOx in real time. So right now, I cannot tell you it's 100%, but it might be 94%-95% of our capacity that is in which we have already this type of emissions real time. Maybe I'd just add to that point, Ben, that the cement industry, one of the points that we went through, was actually the first industry to come up with rules in place on how to calculate CO2 emissions. There are still industries, believe it or not, I believe oil and gas is one of those that do not have rules or standardization of disclosure around CO2 emissions. And do you have a little more time? Okay. One more time. Okay. Paco Suárez from Scotiabank, virtually, please. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Lucy. And thank you, Fernando. Quite exciting conversation. Precisely on the same subject, we have seen some of your peers doing transformational and major acquisitions like the Bridgestone acquisition made by Holcim. And on the other hand, we are seeing these wonderful initiatives of waste management in Mexico. So on capital allocation, do you plan to go to push forward further to conduct more and more investments in these sort of new avenues of growth, or perhaps it is not something that you have on your radar screen at the moment? No, thanks, Francisco. I think it's kind of simple. Let me start. You already know what's our firepower, meaning resources away or on top of what we need to continue our delivery ratio. So we need to devote some of our free cash flow to do that. So that means that we don't have a huge free cash flow for us to invest. So we need to balance the equation. The reason why we decided since last year on bolt-on acquisitions was not by chance. That's what we can do. And at the same time, we thought that it was the right thing to do because of the hundreds of opportunities we knew were around our businesses that with a marginal effort and with a marginal investment could help us to, on top of our organic growth, to support EBITDA growth, which is what we were missing. So we've been already investing this year. We will be investing next year. Maybe with this bolt-on strategy, we will invest like about three years. But you know what? There's so far you can get with this type of very small investments. So through time, I think the number of these opportunities will start declining, and our balance sheet will be much better. So we will be moving from this bolt-on acquisition strategy towards a much larger transformation of our portfolio. Now, again, you know the numbers of the company. And if we wanted to invest heavily already in the very short term, we need to divest. And as I mentioned, in M&A, in emerging markets, in our industry, it doesn't seem that there has been plenty of opportunities. I'm not saying there has not been transactions. What I'm saying is the transactions that we have tried, because we have tried many, we thought that we could create more value keeping those assets than selling at the prices on the offers we received. Again, this is consistent with our strategy, but our strategy is not a concept only. We need to take into account cycles. I already say it. So if we have to wait, we will wait. But we're not waiting, meaning doing nothing. We're moving our bolt-on strategy. We'll increase our EBITDA $330 million of EBITDA by 2023, 2024. I think it's a sizable opportunity. So we will be cautious. Something that I can add to that is that we have learned lots of lessons. We still don't forget the lessons we learned in 2008 or 2009. We are not afraid of anything. We just want to manage risk in a different manner. So we know our position. We're very happy because after 14 years, our leverage is below three times. But we don't want to rush into something similar. Little by little, bolt-on, low risk, give us some time. And from there, we will start increasing our or speeding up the execution of our strategy. Thank you very much, Fernando. And thank you, everyone in the audience, for attending. I, in particular, would like to thank the presenters who were told they had three slides to present regions and topics like climate action and technology, which is not an easy task at all. And they did a great job and complied with it. So thank you all very much. And for those of you virtually, we hope that we will see you on the quarterly call. And for everyone else, we do have the opportunity to meet outside for a few minutes. Thank you.