Good morning, welcome to CEMEX Day. My name is Lucy Rodriguez, and I am the Executive Vice President of Corporate Communication, Public Affairs, and Investor Relations for CEMEX. We are pleased to be here today at the New York Stock Exchange, grateful to the Exchange for making their premises available to us during the pandemic. It almost seems like a normal CEMEX Day, minus our guests, unfortunately. As you know, we typically host CEMEX Day annually in the first quarter. Due to the pandemic, we have changed the normal cadence of the event because we felt it was important to update you as visibility improved and market conditions changed. This year, due to the progress we have made on our Operation Resilience strategy, we thought it was important to update you on our outlook and strategy and save a more detailed market-by-market review for what we hope will be an in-person meeting in the fall. In this first virtual meeting, our CEO, Fernando Gonzalez, our CFO, Maher Al-Haffar, and our Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development, Jose Antonio Gonzalez, will discuss our current consolidated outlook and our strategy in the context of our Operation Resilience framework. We think we have a good story to tell today, and we hope you find this event useful and leave here with a clearer understanding of our direction and strategy. We are optimistic and believe the opportunities ahead of us far exceed the challenges. We will keep you informed as we confirm the details for the second part of CEMEX Day 2021, where we will have our regional presidents discuss operations and a detailed review of our climate action goals. Fernando, Maher, and Jose Antonio will each begin with a brief presentation, then we will open it up to a Q&A session with our analysts. 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. Unless the context indicates otherwise, all references to pricing initiatives, price increases, or decreases refer to prices for our products. Now, it is my pleasure to introduce our CEO, Fernando Gonzalez, for the first presentation. Fernando, can you please join us on stage? Thank you, Lucy, a nd thank you all for joining us today, and I hope this event finds you in good health. I wanted to host this CEMEX Day financial and strategic outlook because so much has changed since we last met in September 2020, six months into the pandemic. In second quarter of last year, when coronavirus hit, we had visions of stark demand adjustments in our markets and introduced emergency measures to safeguard our company. As you know, those worst-case scenarios did not come to fruition, and instead, we have experienced important year-over-year growth. As we look forward, we believe this growth is sustainable and the outlook for our business is bright. Our results are not driven simply by market momentum, however. It is also due to the decisive management actions that have reshaped the company. These include cost reduction efforts, efficiency enhancements, liability management, introducing important growth elements to the portfolio while de-risking the business profile. This has allowed us to execute faster on our strategic goals than we previously anticipated. Perhaps the achievements for which I'm proudest is that through our investment strategy, we have injected growth into our portfolio, and that the elusive investment-grade capital structure that we have talked about for so long is now well within reach. This allow us to turn the page on what has been a long chapter for CEMEX and open a new book where we consolidate our recent achievements and shift our strategic balance a bit more towards growth. The world and our industry, however, have not returned to a pre-pandemic normal, and we do not believe that they will, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in climate action. Society has been escalating its demands for climate action over the past few years, but the pandemic has triggered calls for even more aggressive action. Our strategy must adjust not only to the best market outlook that we have had in years, but also to this new normal. That is why I wanted to have this meeting today to update you on what we believe lies ahead and how we are adjusting our strategy to meet these new opportunities and challenges. I would like to quickly review the strategic priorities which I outlined the last time we met, and of course, our Operation Resilience framework was designed to deliver these priorities. We aim to be a building materials and solutions company where the U.S., Europe, and Mexico will constitute a large part of our footprint. We will concentrate on vertically integrated positions near growing metropolises and on our four core businesses, cement, ready-mix, aggregates, and Urbanization Solutions. Our digital platforms and customer centricity efforts are important competitive advantages that will drive customer loyalty over the medium term. Climate action is the biggest challenge of our lifetime, and progress on this front will differentiate players in the industry. We will continue to lead in sustainability, not only because it creates shareholder value, but because it is the right thing to do and builds a better future for the world. Quickly, to recap our achievements over the last few quarters. Due to market recovery and management actions to confront the pandemic, we have enjoyed steady year-over-year growth in consolidated sales and EBITDA since third quarter 2020. The digital marketing strategy that we launched in 2017, with its industry-leading CEMEX Go platform, as well as our extensive distribution network, have been important competitive advantages and allow us to capture market share during the pandemic. Due to the cost and efficiency initiatives we introduced, we have seen increased profitability and strong operating leverage, with EBITDA growing 2.7 times sales growth. Free cash flow and leverage quickly responded to improved market dynamics. Important management actions such as the sale of carbon credits and the issuance of subordinated notes further drove the deleveraging process. On a pro forma basis for the issuance of the notes, first quarter leverage declined 1.4 tons from its recent peak in second quarter of 2020 to 3.2 times. This growth momentum accelerated into first quarter 2021, with cement volumes equal to or outpacing that of first quarter 2019, well before the pandemic. With government lockdown measures significantly affecting volumes in second quarter last year, second quarter of 2021 has an easy growth comparison. Even taking that into consideration, consolidated cement volumes quarter to date may continue to outperform 2019 average daily sales volume. In April, we gave 2021 EBITDA guidance of $2.9 billion. Based on what I'm seeing today, I'm now confident that we can deliver $3.1 billion in 2021, a 26% increase versus prior year. In a cyclical industry, our markets are positioned at an attractive point in the cycle, either coming out of a recent downturn or at a sustainable mid-cycle level. For the next two years, we expect robust GDP growth in our markets as economies recover from the recession and our industry should align against that growth. Due to monetary and fiscal stimulus, as well as vaccination levels, we continue to believe the best growth opportunities will be in the developed markets with important spillover effects for emerging markets, particularly Mexico. After a year of lockdown, economic reopening in advanced economies is the moment when consumers spend again. Some economists estimate that over $2 trillion of fiscal stimulus are sitting on the balance sheet of U.S. households and ready for deployment with economic reopening. As consumers spend, the economy slowly wakes up, and we see this tension between supply and demand that is evident recently in the U.S. with shortages of everything imaginable. Industrial and manufacturing as well as supply chain will respond to these shortages with important investments. Indeed, we are already seeing a significant expansion in global capital expenditures. A recent report from our prominent financial institution predicts global investment to reach 115% of pre-recession levels by the end of 2021. With rising vaccination rates, travel is picking up to tourist meccas such as Orlando, Las Vegas, Cancun, and the Caribbean, and we expect pandemic-delayed construction projects to resume. Finally, additional fiscal stimulus such as the Green Wave and the proposed American Jobs Plan will lead to significant cement-intensive infrastructure spend in late 2022 and beyond. While new waves of coronavirus and low vaccination rates could challenge some of our emerging market portfolio, we do not expect the government response to significantly impact the construction sector. In addition, we have seen that cement demand in these markets has benefited importantly from stimulus and advanced economies in the form of remittances, low interest rates, and a pickup in global trade. In these markets, we expect that demand from the former construction will accelerate in anticipation of economic reopening and more than compensate for potential lower growth in the bag cement segment. Indeed, we are already seeing this behavior in Mexico. As a result of this favorable backdrop, we expect double-digit EBITDA growth in 2022. While it is early and we will update this view as we go through the year, I'm confident that growth is sustainable. In an environment where inorganic growth is at sky-high multiples, I'm proud to say that CEMEX is growing again organically. This growth consists of capacity additions in our key markets as well as our current approved bolt-on and margin enhancement portfolio. In total, we expect to spend $925 million over the next 3 years and generate approximately $400 million in EBITDA by 2023. Let me first talk about the capacity additions, and I will address the bolt-on component during the Operation Resilience review. With most of our markets around the world at a favorable point in the construction cycle, supply-demand dynamics are extremely tight. In terms of cement capacity, we will be introducing around 10 million metric tons by 2023. This is equivalent to approximately 15% of our 2020 global cement volumes. I know you're aware of our legacy projects in Tepeaca, Maceo in Colombia, and Solid Cement in the Philippines, but we also are bringing on additional capacity through reopening of idle capacity, brownfield projects, debottlenecking, and grinding mills in some locations. We are fortunate that all of this expansion is coming on stream in markets with high capacity utilization and positioned at an attractive point in the cycle. I would like to highlight that 75% of this new capacity is located in the Americas, where utilization is particularly high and where our unique footprint and supply chain can shine. These additions should increase the flexibility we have to address incremental demand in the region. The expansions are highly accretive and will be structured to take into consideration our climate action priority. We will be deploying the most modern energy-efficient equipment and technologies. In several cases, this capacity will take the form of grinding mills, which will be used for blended cement, thereby lowering the clinker factor. In addition, the locations of these operations will be carefully chosen to take advantage of the availability of decarbonated or alternative raw materials, carbon capture, and alternative energy sources. Jose Antonio will cover the growth strategy in more detail in his presentation. In September of last year, I rolled out the four pillars of Operation Resilience, EBITDA growth through margin enhancement and investment-grade capital structure, the optimization of our portfolio for growth, and advancing our sustainability agenda. With today's stronger market outlook, our faster-than-expected progression against our target, as well as society's heightened expectations of the role of the private sector, we must adjust our strategy to reflect these changes. Let me update you on each target and where we stand. With regard to the consolidated EBITDA margin, we have experienced a significant year-over-year expansion in margin over the last three quarters. In two of the last three, we have been above 20%. Importantly, this includes the first quarter, which is normally the lowest EBITDA margin of the year due to seasonality. We feel confident that we will achieve this metric this year on an annualized basis. The increase in margin is due to cost reduction initiatives, operating leverage, as well as pricing gains. Of course, the favorable supply-demand dynamics, coupled with rising input costs, should lend themselves to a strong pricing environment. In the first quarter, with the exception of the U.S., where two rounds of 2021 price increases are scheduled for later in the year, we are enjoying mid-single-digit price appreciation in Mexico, Europe, and SCAC sequentially. You should expect that we will push for favorable pricing that will more than offset current input cost inflation, as well as continue to execute cost-saving initiatives. Growing inputs in sold-out markets and bag cement mix may provide headwinds to further margins improvements. In light of this, we will maintain the 20% or greater margin target under Operation Resilience. An investment-grade capital structure of three times leverage has been our goal for a long time. We are confident that it will be achieved by this quarter, 2021. Pro forma for the issuance of the subordinated notes a few weeks ago, our first-quarter leverage ratio would be 3.2x, within striking distance of the 2023 target. We expect that by year-end, based on our new EBITDA guidance, our leverage ratio will be around 2.6x. While a three times leverage has been the goal for a long time, this is not the end of our deleveraging efforts. We recognize that cost of capital is an important competitive advantage in this industry. You should expect additional deleveraging beyond the 3x ratio in order to arrive at our optimal capital structure. We are resetting our new Operation Resilience leverage target to an investment-grade rating. We believe this will open up liability management opportunities throughout the debt stack and will result in significant savings from a cost of capital perspective. Maher will go into additional details on his presentation. Our optimization of the portfolio target includes two levers, our growth investment strategy, as well as opportunistic divestments in emerging markets. Implicit in this strategy is the concept of repositioning our portfolio towards attractive developed markets. On the investment side of the pillar, we began investing in bolt-on investments and margin enhancement projects in 2019. With the introduction of Operation Resilience, we sped up the execution of these investments. We have advanced significantly with the pipeline of approved bolt-on and margin enhancement projects, more than doubling to $600 million as of first quarter 2021. The recent progress we have made in deleveraging, as well as our increased profitability, will allow us to invest even more heavily on this front over the next few years. The diversity level implies potential selective disposals in emerging markets and redeployment of capital towards investments in the U.S. and Europe, as well as deleveraging. However, execution on this front has been slow by the pandemic. We expect the pace of the M&A market to pick up with economic reopening, and we will continue to pursue opportunistic asset sales. From my vantage point today, optimizing the portfolio is less about the need to delever and more about building a lower risk and faster-growing business, as well as assuring optimal valuation of assets sold. The bolt-on and margin enhancing portfolio consists of small to medium-sized projects in markets in which we currently operate and know well, and in products that align against our four core businesses. As of today, the current pipeline of approved projects is $710 million. These investments are highly accretive. We now expect to generate an incremental EBITDA of $150 million in 2021, ramping up to a contribution of $330 million by 2023. Importantly, as you will hear from Jose Antonio, we have plenty of investment opportunities under our growth strategy to keep us busy for the next three years. The pandemic's biggest impact has been on our final target, climate action. The pandemic has served as a powerful reminder of global environmental threats, and it has pushed society, governments, and the private sector to accelerate climate action even more. Over the last year, governments around the world have responded with ever more ambitious climate action targets, as well as an unprecedented amount of green fiscal stimulus to aid the transition to a low carbon world. Indeed, the U.S., our second largest market, has made an important U-turn by rejoining Paris Agreement and President Biden's announcement of his intent for a 50%-52% reduction in carbon by 2030. We welcome these initiatives and acknowledge that our industry has an important role to play in decarbonization. We are harmonizing our own climate action goals to recognize this urgency. We recognize that in today's world, the 24% reduction in carbon that we have achieved to date is not enough and we can do better. In response, I'm proud to announce that we are setting a new, more ambitious target for below 475 kilos of CO2 per ton, a more than 40% reduction in CO2 emissions for 2030. We have already committed to validate this new 2030 goal with a well below 2 degree scenario of the Science Based Targets initiative. We are bringing forward our previous 2030 carbon goal of 520 kilos of CO2 per ton of cementitious materials, representing a 35% reduction in CO2 emissions by five years to 2025, and w e are not stopping there. As the largest concrete manufacturer in the Western world, I'm happy to announce our commitment to a medium-term carbon reduction goal for concrete. While we previously announced our ambition to deliver net-zero concrete by 2050, we are now committing to a target of 165 kilos of CO2 per cubic meter by 2030, equivalent to approximately a 35% reduction versus our 1990 baseline. This is important because concrete is typically the final form in which customers consume our products, and it embodies the full life cycle of carbon emissions. One of the most interesting attributes of concrete is its ability in its built form to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. This quality, combined with the ability to substitute cement with other binders and admixtures, offers additional pathways to eliminate carbon beyond those in cement production. Finally, an intermediate goal of carbon emissions for concrete also offers better transparency to assess our progress against our 2050 ambition to be net-zero in concrete. We will go into a more detailed discussion of the roadmap to the 2025 and 2030 goals at our CEMEX Day in the fall, but let me highlight a few key points here. We have learned a tremendous amount over the last year, and we have seen how far our existing levers can take us in the decarbonization journey, as well as how quickly technology in this area is advancing. To reach our 2025 and 2030 targets, we are relying on known processes, practices, materials, and proven technologies, all of which we have deployed in Europe over the last 17 years. The levers are the same in our previous plan: alternative fuel usage with high biomass content, hydrogen injection, low temperature and low CO2 clinker, and lowering clinker factor, but we are adopting them at an even faster pace. Of course, more aggressive targets will require additional investment. We estimate that approximately $60 million annually of our strategic CapEx will go towards this objective. I'm so confident in our ability to reach this 2025 target that progress against this goal has been included as a factor in variable compensation for our senior management team and regional operations. To give you some sense of the art of the possible, on this slide, we are showcasing our cement plant in Rüdersdorf, Germany, which we expect to be carbon neutral by 2030. In Rüdersdorf, we are working with other industrial and technology companies on a pilot project to create a carbon neutral cluster. We are utilizing alternative fuel substitution, waste heat recovery, green hydrogen, decarbonated raw materials, activated clay, and carbon capture. We are analyzing technologies to potentially transport and store carbon, as well as to transform the carbon produced into green fuels that can be reused in other industrial sectors. During the first five years of the consumption, we will pilot a variety of demonstration projects to test concept and scalability. We have applied for EU as well as local funding designed to support this groundbreaking initiative. To achieve our net-zero ambition by 2050, we are partnering with our cement and concrete peers, as well as other industries, associations, and academia. To reach these goals, development of new technology that is scalable and commercially viable is necessary. We are currently working on approximately 40 projects globally, some of which we are developing in-house, while others are in collaborations with other industry leaders and startups. We are investing in several areas, including carbon capture, usage, and storage, accelerating the carbon absorption qualities of concrete, and hydrogen technology, and we are engaged in six pilots of carbon capture technology. Of those, three are located in Europe, two in the U.S., and one in Mexico. We are partnering with a number of startups, including MTR, Carbon Clean, and Synhelion, and some of these projects have received funding from the European Union and the U.S. Department of Energy. However, we are focused on reducing our carbon footprint throughout our entire value chain. For example, with our collaboration with ENGIE, 100% of our electricity in the U.K. comes from renewable sources, including wind and hydro. I am pleased to announce that we are partnering with Volvo in a CO2 reduction program toward a sustainable fleet. This program includes the use of electric ready-mix trucks, productivity services, among other electro-mobility solutions, such as charging solutions. We recognize that climate action is the biggest challenge facing the world, and that the cement industry offers part of the solution. I would like to highlight the unique contribution our industry can make to the circular economy with its ability to recycle waste and residue from households and industry as alternative energy for its kilns. Due to the characteristics of the production process, a cement plant can recover and revalue energy from waste materials. Not only does this reduce carbon emissions, but it can alleviate one of society's most intractable problems, the treatment of municipal waste. In terms of repurposing waste from other industries such as steel and utilities, in 2020, we processed close to 9 million metric tons of industrial residues. In 2020 alone, with an alternative fuel usage of 25% and a clinker factor of 77%, CEMEX recycled 50 times the waste that we generate. We could grow this contribution even more if the concept of a green and circular economy was universally adopted. From our 30-year experience of operating in Europe, we know what needs to be done to create a circular economy. In many markets outside of Europe, the regulatory framework does not promote the recycling of waste or the use of zero or low-carbon products in construction. We will actively advocate in our markets for the rapid adoption of a green and circular economy and the updating of construction codes to accommodate low-CO2 products. We will collaborate with cement and ready-mix associations and other industrial groups in our various geographies to promote these changes. Concrete, the second most widely consumed material in the world after water and with no real substitutes, can be an important part of the climate solution. In summary, here are our new Operation Resilience goals. Maintain EBITDA margins greater than 20%, achieve an investment-grade rating, accelerate our growth strategy, and continue leading the industry in climate action. While we have delivered on a significant part of Operation Resilience, we still have work to do. I would suggest that the next few years for us are a period of consolidation and resumption of profitable growth, in which we continue to deliver, and capital allocation looks fairly similar to where we are today. Except that we will devote a growing percentage of free cash flow to our growth strategy, consisting of our bolt-on and margin enhancement investments, as well as capacity expansions. Of course, in this consolidation period, we will look to introduce a sustainable return to shareholders in the form of a sustainable dividend program in the short term. Of course, a dividend requires both board and shareholder approval. Finally, we will invest to achieve our 2025 and 2030 carbon goals as well as in R&D to reach our 2050 ambition of net zero carbon concrete. We believe that we currently have the best market outlook that we have seen in years, and that we are entering a period of sustainable growth. We will use this time to consolidate our recent achievements and advance even further against our strategic initiatives. EBITDA growth will benefit from robust market conditions and be enhanced by our growth investment strategy. We will strengthen our capital structure and achieve an investment-grade rating, providing a significant competitive advantage in a capital-intensive business and opening up liability management opportunities. Finally, you should expect that CEMEX will continue being a leader in the industry in carbon reduction efforts. I firmly believe that this will be an important differentiating factor in the industry going forward, and that the future of the world lies in climate action, and that the better future CEMEX is building must be sustainable. Now I will pass it on to Jose Antonio. Jose Antonio? Thank you, Fernando, and thank you all for joining us today in CEMEX Day. We hope the information we are sharing with you today is useful and also interesting for you. As Fernando already mentioned, the positive momentum we have been experiencing has brought us to an investment-grade capital structure, one of our pillars under Operation Resilience. As a result, we can now accelerate even further our growth investment strategy. We would like to share with you our approach to developing our investment pipeline and how it will fuel growth over the next years. We are methodically identifying and evaluating these opportunities by looking at how to better leverage our existing business, and also looking at possibilities of adding assets that are adjacent to our existing business or that complement our footprint. In terms of geography, our bias, as we think about these new investments, is to focus in the U.S. and Europe, as well as selective investments in Mexico, which is our home market. Within these geographies, we focus on high-growth metropolitan areas where our products and solutions can serve the urbanization needs of these markets. These areas represent around 70% of the population and around 80% of the construction GDP in our footprint. An important driver for our growth pipeline is sustainability, and in particular, CO2 reduction, as described by Fernando. We are excited about bringing products and solutions to the market which contribute to sustainable construction, and also excited about investing in CO2 reduction initiatives, which, by the way, happen to have attractive financial metrics. Our growth pipeline follows a robust process of identifying opportunities, evaluating those opportunities, prioritizing, and we follow both financial KPIs as well as strategic and risk criteria. We started this investment-driven growth strategy in 2019. Of course, right now, we are accelerating this process. The criteria that we are applying as we evaluate these projects include projects must be complementary to our existing footprint in all businesses. Like I said, with a bias towards developed markets like the U.S. and Europe. A great number of the projects that we have been approving happen to have paybacks of around four years and IRRs that start at 20% or above. Our current ongoing portfolio of investments, ones we are working on right now to complete, can be summarized as shown in the slide. We have two main components. On the one hand, we have large cement projects, and on the other hand, we have bolt-on and margin enhancement investments. We'll try to break these two, and provide you with more details. Our cement capacity projects, all of which should be brought online by the end of 2023 or before, represent around $425 million of incremental investments between 2021 and 2023 and will contribute to CEMEX adding approximately 10 million tons to total capacity. These investments, we expect, will bring an annual EBITDA contribution of $170 million on a steady-state basis. On the other hand, we have our bolt-on and margin enhancement portfolio. Right now, we have approved projects under implementation of $500 million, and once completed, we expect they will bring incremental EBITDA of $350 million on a steady-state basis annually. I do want to stress that this is the status of the growth initiative as of today, but this is dynamic. We continue to evaluate projects as we go along, these numbers will be changing. Let me get a little bit more specific in terms of the cement capacity additions. In cement, the industry is experiencing robust demand in markets like the U.S., Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean. In Mexico, industry capacity utilization today is running at the highest level we have seen in many years. South America and the Caribbean has returned to growth mode after a challenging year last year, with high capacity utilizations right now in markets like Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Jamaica. Our investments in cement capacity are focused, of course, in addressing the requirements of these markets. Also we have legacy investments, cement investments that we started some years ago in Mexico, Colombia, and the Philippines. Those projects will bring on 4.3 million metric tons of capacity over the next year and a half. We expect these projects to start delivering production by 2022 and should be running at a steady state within a few years. Additionally, we expect to bring 5.7 million metric tons with ongoing debottlenecking investments, brownfields, additional grinding mills, and also reopening of idle capacity. These ongoing projects, which are in addition to the legacy projects, require relatively small investments. Let me break it out. They will provide additional cement capacity of around 3.5 million metric tons in Mexico. This consists of one and a half million tons of additional grinding capacity in our Tepeaca plant, a half a million ton expansion in our Huichapan plant in the state of Hidalgo, and one and a half million tons of additional capacity by bringing online both lines at our formerly idle CPN plant in Sonora, which by the way, one of those lines is already producing cement. In the U.S. and Europe, we expect to add 1.2 million metric tons, including expanding grinding capacity in two plants in Europe, which we will detail in due course. Finally, another one million metric ton of additional capacity in South America, which includes restarting a kiln in the Dominican Republic for half a million tons, and a new half a million ton grinding mill in Guatemala. Importantly, I would like to highlight that due to our robust supply chain, several of these investments in the region, such as the reactivation of our CPN plant in Sonora, will allow us to serve incremental demand in the U.S. Let me talk a little bit about our bolt-on investment strategy. Our bolt-on strategy is diversified across our four core businesses and our geographical footprint. The U.S. and Europe account for around three-quarters of the investments that are currently underway and will contribute, we expect, around 70% of the steady-state EBITDA generation. Let me go through some examples in each of the businesses so that we can get a better picture of these bolt-on investments. In addition to the cement capacity, which I already covered, inside the bolt-on investment strategy, we also have cement projects. These projects are focused on improving operational efficiency across our plants and also in reducing our CO2 footprint. Our investments in operational efficiency will contribute to improve our cement margin, and these projects have very quick paybacks and are relatively low risk. Regarding our CO2 reduction investments, these are directed mostly towards increasing the use of alternative fuels and also at reducing our clinker factor. These initiatives that we have been approving also generate attractive returns. As mentioned by Fernando, we expect to invest at a rate of around $60 million per year in carbon reduction initiatives. Right now in our pipeline approved and projects under implementation, we have around $9 million in CO2 reduction initiatives. All of them have favorable returns. A couple of interesting examples include an investment of $36 million in our Rugby plant in the U.K., which we call Climafuel System, where we will be able to increase our alternative fuel substitution rate from approximately 50% to more than 90%. A similar project in our Rudniki plant in Poland, where we have invested $38 million, and w e will be increasing alternative fuel substitution rate from a level of 55% to more than 90%. In this regard also, other examples of investments include high-efficiency separators for the cement mills in several plants that will allow us to decrease energy consumption in the milling process, and also because of the quality of the product, we will be able to reduce a clinker factor. In addition to these projects, across many of our plants, we are right now implementing hydrogen injection, which further reduce energy consumption and allows us to increase alternative fuel substitution. Turning into aggregates. Developing our aggregates footprint is our high priority for us. Aggregate investments represent around 35% of our bolt-on and margin enhancement portfolio, and two-thirds of these investments by size are in the U.S., and one-third is in Europe. Let me provide some examples of our investments in these two important markets. Let me start, for example, with the U.S. In Florida, our new Four Corners site in Orlando, as well as our new Immokalee site in Fort Myers, will enhance our ability to provide sand for these important markets. We will be adding 70 million tons of reserves just in these two sites. In Texas, for example, we are investing in our Balcones Quarry to enhance our production capacity and logistic capability so that we can better serve the Houston and San Antonio markets and reduce operating costs. Another example is Atlanta, a very important and attractive metro market. We recently acquired a rail terminal, which will allow us to serve this market. In Europe, we are building a network that will provide us with a better position to supply the Grand Paris project. We recently announced the agreement to acquire some aggregates and logistics assets in the north of Paris and upgraded capacity in our Gudmont Quarry. That together with barge, the logistics system based on barge that we have developed in the last years in the River Seine, will contribute to the transformation of the Paris metro area into a 21st century city. Let's talk a little bit about ready-mix. In the case of ready-mix, 20% of our current bolt-on portfolio is directed to this business. These investments are split between the U.S. and Europe. What we want to accomplish with these investments is higher degree of vertical integration and optimizing our network. For example, in the U.S., we recently announced an acquisition of 4 ready-mix plants in San Antonio, Texas, which will serve as a platform to further develop our presence in this metro market, which is supported by our Balcones Cement plant. We continue to enhance our fleet of portable ready-mix plants in the U.S. to take advantage of ongoing project work and to be prepared for a future infrastructure program. In our EMEA region, we are adding more than 20 plants to meet growing demand across our markets. An interesting example is the HS2 high-speed rail project in the U.K., an ambitious initiative we are proud to be supporting by supplying products where we have added ready-mix batching capabilities among other solutions to supply low carbon concrete products for this project. Another example is our ready-mix plant in La Courneuve in Paris, will support sustainable construction targets of the Olympics project. Urbanization Solutions is our fourth core business. We already have an interesting base in Urbanization Solutions. This year, the current portfolio is expected to generate around $200 million in EBITDA. It's an interesting growth compared to the prior year, which provides us with a great platform from which to expand. We aim to capitalize on our expertise in building materials to offer complementary solutions that build the sustainable cities of the future. In Urbanization Solutions, we're organized around three verticals. One of them is Performance Materials, the other one is Construction Systems, and the other one is Circularity. Let me talk briefly about each one. In Performance Materials, we are investing to develop our positions in admixtures and mortars as we seek to enhance our offering as a provider of sustainable building envelope and interior solutions. Our global footprint with more than 30 plants and a large portfolio of applications allows us to be growing within our customer base. In admixtures, our 200,000 tons supplied each year cover 90% of our own internal requirement for admixtures in our concrete business. Also we serve a broad range of clients in the construction space. Third-party sales of admixtures is a growing business and now accounts for about 15% of our admixtures revenue. Our more than 40 families of products serve different needs and functions. Recent products introduced in our priority markets are enabling water and carbon reduction of up to 50% in concrete mix designs. Our mortars and special mortars technology has become essential for the increasing building rehabilitation and energy efficiency needs for sustainable and resilient cities of today and tomorrow. Ongoing investments in state-of-the-art plants in Europe, the U.S., and Mexico will allow CEMEX to further support this need. Today, our more than 600,000 tons of mortars and special mortars delivered every year to our clients already cover a wide range of systems for insulation, adherence, and protection. Let's talk about construction systems. Construction systems are evolving towards off-site industrialized solutions in order to address the most pressing challenges of the construction industry today, such as resource and labor scarcity, productivity, sustainability, and affordability. This business line provides solutions for urban development such as landscaping products, building blocks in the United States and Europe, mobility projects like railway sleepers that we manufacture in our Rochester factory in the U.K. For example, net zero buildings that we contribute to building with our new factory for integrated residential concrete panels, in Spain called Wallex. We're also developing circular solutions, which actively contribute to construction sustainability through the recycling and revaluation of construction waste. A good example is our platform in Gennevilliers, Paris, that optimizes construction and demolition waste streams, as well as resolves for the very challenging logistics in a city like Paris, in an urban environment. To close, let me recap and come back to the key messages of our growth strategy. We're driving growth through bolt-on investments in high growth metro areas with a bias to the U.S. and Europe. We have currently under implementation projects with CapEx of $925 million, and we're closely tracking this, so that we can ensure delivery of expected results. We will continue to apply a rigorous capital allocation criteria. For the future, we currently have around $4 billion in opportunities that we are evaluating and analyzing. These opportunities will continue to fuel our investments going forward and will contribute to further enhancing our profitable growth. Under the bolt-on margin enhancement strategy, we do expect as we move forward that we will be evaluating somewhat larger investment opportunities. With larger projects, we might see somewhat longer payback periods to what we have seen with the smaller projects that we have been implementing. You should expect that we will remain highly disciplined in our approach to capital allocation as we continue evaluating projects going forward. As commented by Fernando, we will be making investments to achieve our CO2 reduction roadmap. We look forward to continue discussing our progress on this front in the future. Thank you, everyone. Now I will pass it on to Maher. Maher? Thank you, Jose Antonio, good day, everyone. Thank you for your interest in CEMEX. As we accelerate towards a more robust capital structure, we would like to today to walk you through on how we think about capital allocation through the cycle, and what are the levers that we are prioritizing to create value for our shareholders. If we can start, let's move to the first slide, please. As you can see on the left-hand side of this slide, we show our priorities and the building blocks for creating value for our shareholders from a financial management perspective. First, as you have seen from our results, we are on the path to achieving investment-grade rating sooner than expected. Our goal is not just getting there. We intend on maintaining an investment-grade rating through economic cycles and through our growth cycles. As you saw in Jose Antonio's presentation, we have a very robust pipeline of projects that will allow us to grow our EBITDA significantly. It's important to stress that we will not jeopardize our path to an investment-grade rating in the process. Why is this important? An IG rating means we have a more flexible capital structure that can sustain the ebb and flow of economic cycles, and which translates into a lower cost of capital. As you know, our business is a very capital-intensive business. Every percentage point we reduce out of our cost of capital translates directly into a higher valuation for our company. If you think about it, each quarter of a point decline in our weighted average cost of capital should translate into roughly a $1 increase in our share value. A rerating of our cost of capital allows us to free up to more free cash flow for either investing in high growth projects or returning capital to shareholders. We expect in the medium term, interest expense will represent less than 10% of our EBITDA. Everything else being equal, of course. As a reference, and based on our latest guidance, interest expense this year will be about 19%. This in turn creates a positive cycle in which we can direct more free cash flow to reduce our stock of debt, further reducing interest expense and increasing our free cash flow to EBITDA conversion rate even more. We expect to reach a free cash flow to EBITDA conversion rate in excess of 50% in the medium term. This should allow us to introduce a sustainable dividend policy reflective of our performance and the robustness of our capital structure, and t his is a very important point here. We believe this will be well-received by our shareholders and is very likely to broaden our investor base. 2021 represents an important inflection point in our results and capital structure. As Fernando mentioned earlier, we are on track to meet our objectives sooner than what we had anticipated. We're seeing an important inflection point in our results, driven by strong operating leverage in our business and healthy underlying demand in most of our markets. Topline growth is complemented by a record low level in the cost of operating our business due to decisive actions taken by our management team. This year, we expect to reduce net debt by about $2 billion, driven by strong free cash flow generation, the sale of CO2 credits earlier this year, and the issuance of $1 billion in subordinated notes, which are deeply subordinated and are only senior to equity, and therefore excluded from our debt metrics. Earlier this year, we issued the largest and lowest cost US dollar funding in our history, which allowed us to take out more expensive debt due in 2024 and 2025, and further extending our average life of debt. The liability management actions that we've taken this year, plus a lower average debt balance, and lower average cost of funding, will translate into savings of about $120 million in interest expense this year. This is very important because based on our current free cash flow to EBITDA conversion rate, this reduction in interest expense is equivalent in impact to having an additional $350 million in EBITDA. All of this is accelerating our glide path towards investment-grade rating. By end of 2022, we expect to be in strong IG territory with leverage in the 2 x range, give or take, of course, a few points. As you saw in Fernando's presentation, we expect to end our second quarter, which ends in a few days, with leverage of about 3x, a reduction of slightly more than 1 turn versus 2020, which is two years ahead of our original schedule. This is driven by the sale of CO2 credits plus the slice of subordinated debt we introduced in our capital structure. For purposes of our bank debt leverage covenant, our subordinated debt gets full equity credit and is therefore excluded from the calculation. As we get into the second half of the year, when our working capital cycle turns positive for us, we expect to further reduce leverage well below 3 x by the end of the year. The leverage metric that you see on this slide is the one that we report in our quarterly results and the one that our banks and senior lenders look at. However, as you know, rating agencies take a tighter approach to calculating our leverage. For example, they only give us 50% equity credit for the subordinated debt, which is equivalent to adding about 0.2 times to our leverage ratio. They also make some other adjustments. Now, of course, while leverage is a very important component for obtaining investment-grade rating, the rating agencies take other things into consideration, such as delivery of results and the robustness of the market where we operate, among others, of course. We expect to deliver on all of these metrics by 2022, which we expect will translate into an investment-grade rating soon thereafter. The slide shows you the building blocks of our leverage ratio in the next 18 months. We expect that debt reduction in 2021 and 2022 will lead to about a 1 ton decline in leverage, give or take a few points. As Fernando mentioned in his presentation, we expect EBITDA of $3.1 billion in 2021, and a double-digit growth in 2022. This increase, or this expected increase, I should say, in EBITDA would translate to a decline of roughly 0.9 x of a turn in our leverage. This would put us comfortably in investment-grade territory, even with the stricter parameters of the rating agencies. Here, as you can see, we have a debt profile with very manageable maturities for the foreseeable future, with ample potential for improvement of our debt stack. We have an average life of debt of about 6 years, our expected free cash flow generation alone would be sufficient to meet our maturities. What you're seeing on the slide is our maturity profile as of the end of the first quarter of this year, giving pro forma effect to the partial redemption of EUR 450 million of our 2.75% notes due in 2024, which, as you're aware, were announced last week, as well as the prepayment of slightly less than $400 million of our bank debt during May. As regards our liquidity, we have about $1.5 billion between cash and our committed revolving credit facility throughout most of the year. Adjusting, of course, for the typical cyclicality of our business. To put into perspective, this is enough to cover by about 2.5x Our negative working capital cycle at the beginning of each year. As mentioned earlier, we are in a capital-intensive business, and as such, we pay very close attention to the stock of capital we use to run our business and the return we provide to our shareholders. We aim to improve the Return on Capital Employed to levels well in excess of our average Cost of Capital, which analysts estimate to be roughly in the 8%- 8.5% r ange. We expect to achieve a positive gap this year, 2021, and continue improving it as we work our way various initiatives to improve EBITDA and reduce debt. On the numerator side, earnings after tax, you've heard from Fernando that we are aiming for a $3.1 billion in EBITDA for this year. As he said, this represents about 26% growth versus last year, grow at a double-digit rate in 2022. We expect to achieve this with better asset efficiency, which is extremely important here, and I'd like to stress that point. On the cost side, we continue aggressively targeting all elements of our cost structure and expect to further reduce it with the help of new technologies and best practice sharing in both our operations and our administrative functions. We expect to improve our EBITDA margin by more than 1 percentage point this year to end the year above 20% and maintain a margin in excess of 20% going forward, as mentioned by Fernando in his presentation. We are currently deploying a new initiative we're calling Working Smarter, aimed at making our administrative processes even more efficient. We will be introducing new technologies and ways of working, and expect to capture recurring savings for up to $100 million I meant to say, starting next year. We also aim to improve our discipline in working capital management. As you know, we have reduced, in a very significant way, our working capital balance, and we continue making improvements in all components of working capital to be even more efficient. For example, the collections front. We are working on reducing the risk profile of our receivables by partnering with third parties that are using artificial intelligence and other technologies to speed up and automate our credit assessment process by better analyzing our clients' credit metrics and behaviors, and improve and speed up the complete sales to collection process. Just as a matter of reference point, as of May, year to date, the credit quality and the turnover efficiency of our receivables are at record levels. On this slide, I would just like to share some food for thought. If we exclude goodwill out of our return on capital employed calculation, which is represented by the white dots that you see on the screen here, our return on capital employed is expected to be in the mid-teens percent range in the next two years, almost double our weighted average cost of capital. Now, as you may have gathered from my presentation, we aim to have a simple, no-frills financial management that supports growth with the ultimate goal of increasing value for our shareholders. As we reduce debt, deliver on results, and obtain an investment-grade rating, our capital allocation framework will increasingly shift towards a bias for growth and returning capital to shareholders. As you heard from Fernando and Jose Antonio, we have a very accretive investment pipeline which we expect will add tremendously to our bottom line in the next three years. In fact, we expect it to add somewhere in the order of $400 million in additional or incremental EBITDA. As I mentioned earlier, one of our main targets is to reduce our cost of capital, which we are accomplishing this year and expect to continue to do so going forward. In this framework of reducing leverage, improving free cash flow, and achieving an investment-grade rating, we will evaluate how and when we can put in place a sustainable dividend policy based on performance and our capital structure robustness. With this, I would like to close my presentation for today, and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have in the Q&A session. Thank you, now back to Lucy. Thank you, Maher. I would like to ask Fernando, Jose Antonio, and Maher to join us on stage for our Q&A session. Before we start, I'd like to review a few of the ground rules. I'd like to remind the sell-side analysts who would like to ask a question to click on the raise hand button that is enabled on your screen. Please wait until your name is called for a question, and then we will ask that you unmute yourself and make sure your camera is on. With that, we are ready to begin. Thank you. I think we're ready for Q&A. I'm having a little trouble getting the panel to take their seats. Our first question comes from Ben Theurer at Barclays. Ben, if you could go ahead, please. Perfect. Thank you very much, Lucy, and Fernando and Maher. Jose Antonio, thank you very much for the presentation. Just a quick one to follow up on the focus on ESG, Fernando. You've talked a lot about investments that you're going to do and the focus to bring down the carbon footprint to invest your $60 million per annum. Could you elaborate more on the type of investments, the return profile you're expecting from those? Also in light of that, you've nicely showcased the Berlin facility. Could you elaborate like how easy or not it would be to replicate some of the investments that are made there at other facilities, particularly in emerging markets, which I think are not as state of the art as maybe a facility in Germany? Thank you very much. Sure. Yes, Ben, thanks for the question. I think investments through time might be evolving or changing. For sure, we want to invest first in the type of adjustments or changes we can make in our plants fast, things that are known, meaning technologies that are known, proved, materials, processes. Those, as you can imagine, most of them are related either to the use of alternative fuels with high contents of biomass, which is normally known as RDF, at least in the case of Europe or Climafuel in the case of the U.K., and also ways for us to reduce our clinker factor. Most of the investments done in the first few years are going to be related to those. For example, we are very soon going to be starting up two projects of alternative fuels in Rugby in the U.K. and Rüdersdorf in Germany to move those plants up to 90% or more than 90% of RDF as fuel for those plants. They've been in 50%, 60% or so for the last few years. All those type of projects are the ones that we continue executing. As you may know, particularly in the case of Europe, these projects are not sunk costs, meaning this is not an investment that is going to be lost to the idea of reducing CO2. Reducing CO2 is moving towards a green economy, and the green economy is profitable. If the green economy is not sustainable, it doesn't make sense. All our investments in alternative fuels are profitable. Again, the most profitable ones, because of current waste directives and circular economy rules, are the ones in Europe. In Europe and the U.K., our largest cost, which is fuels, is turned into an income. That is the relevance of the circular economy. There are other geographies, other markets in which we don't have the same rules, but that's why we are saying we are going to be advocating in a pretty well-organized manner for us to promote the idea of norms that conduce economies into circular economies. Even with current rules, in Mexico and the U.S., we have 20%, 25% of alternative fuels, and that can be increased. We're just starting up another four projects of alternative fuels for the U.S. Profitable, current rules. That's most of the investments that we are going to be doing in the next few years. Together with that, we have, let's say, newer practices. In our case, we have been mentioning that we are using hydrogen in small portions in our cement plants to improve combustion of RDF. It's not to use hydrogen as the only fuel, but it's supporting better combustion processes of RDF with the use of hydrogen. I think you were asking, is that doable everywhere? Is it applicable? There are for sure issues that are very local to a cement plant. If it happens that in a cement plant you have a place where you can store CO2, that's a particularity of that cement plant. That might not be the case in a different cement plant without that opportunity. Right now, we are using hydrogen in all our cement plants in Europe, and we are on our way to use it in all our cement plants worldwide. That can be done. That is one of the practices that we believe can be replicated. As you know, we have commented this before in other type of exercises. That's what we do. Our model in CEMEX is the replication model. That's how we move from zero alternative fuels to be the leader in alternative fuels after understanding, learning, and replicating the possibilities of using RDF as alternative fuel. Most of the practices, with the exception of some particularities, can be replicated all over the company. It might take some time, but it can be done. On top of alternative fuels, there are other smaller investments like cement separators, some bypasses to be able to increase the amount of RDF, but I think alternative fuels will be at least for the first few years, the main investment. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ben. Now we're going to move on to the next analyst. I believe it's Adrian Huerta from JP Morgan, who is on deck. Adrian, are you with us? Yes. Thank you, Lucy. Hi, Fernando, Antonio, Maher. Congrats on the presentation. I guess you made it a little bit difficult to ask questions given all the details that you guys gave. Okay. I gave it my best to try to find something a little bit different, which is within the same topics, and it's regarding CEMEX Ventures. Can you just give us some more details on the investments you have done so far? What are you planning going forward in terms of new investments? What are the key ones that you see good potential going forward on what you have seen so far on this? Well, thanks, Adrian. CEMEX Ventures has been already in motion for close to four years or so, and through time, we have been making different type of investments. You know that the profile of these investments are kind of startups, meaning they are not very large investments. It is just finding out partners or companies that we can integrate into our objectives of either sustainability or business diversification. We have different type of examples. Some of them are related to Urbanization Solutions, which is the new core business we are developing, meaning it's an emerging core business that we have put in place already for a year and a half or two. Examples are investments in modular construction, for instance, in the case of Spain. CEMEX Ventures is also supporting us in our digital transformation strategy. What CEMEX Ventures is doing for us on that regard is for us to better understand the value chain of the construction space and how we can integrate and develop additional businesses in that space, as long as there are new business models enabled by the application of new technologies. Put it in a different manner. We have a platform already developed, CEMEX Go. We can sell, we can deliver, we can inform our customer, w e can do everything with our CEMEX platform. The opportunity is for us to extend and to integrate the CEMEX Go platform to other platforms in the construction industry. For instance, platforms managing logistics in construction sites, just to use an example. CEMEX Ventures is also helping us on that front. I think it's mainly diversification, which means mainly Urbanization Solutions. Some of it is sustainability and this digital space in construction. On top of that, through CEMEX Ventures, we are organizing our internal innovation process, meaning it's a very well-organized process in which all over the company, we do have activities in order to identify, to select, to support, and to develop ideas from our own employees. CEMEX Ventures is like the entity for us to develop networks on innovation. In this case, I'm describing our internal innovation process, there are also external innovation processes that CEMEX Ventures organizes through hackathons with different companies or entrepreneurs for the same issues I already described. That's more or less what CEMEX Ventures is nowadays. Excellent. Thank you, Fernando. Thanks again. Thank you, Adrian Thank you, Adrian. We're moving on. We have Paul Roger from Exane BNP. Paul, please go ahead. Hi. Thanks, Lucy. Hello, Fernando and team, and c ongratulations. Hello, Paul. Hi. I'll stick with the ESG theme as well then. Maybe a question specifically on your green products. You've clearly got quite a lot of these, like Vertua. What I'd be interested in is to understand how the margin profile compares to more traditional cement and concrete, and I guess linked to that, whether you're seeing evidence of a green premium in some of the markets. I'm not sure I understood the question, but let me start answering, and you tell me if I didn't understand the question. Okay. Our Vertua family of products is products with a lower content of CO2. Let me make first a clarification. Low-CO2 products, when compared to type 1 cement, they have been existing in the market, meaning this is not introducing a product with less than 95% clinker factor. That's one clarification. The products we are identifying as Vertua are the ones that comply with the different categories we have in this family, which is reduction of 20% or much more until getting to the point of 0 CO2 in a ready-mix product. We are positioning the product in the market. We started doing it in 2018. We did it originally or initially in concrete. That's why there is still many people thinking that Vertua is only applicable to concrete. We have done that already all over CEMEX, meaning that new family of products is already replicated worldwide. We have already started last year to introduce Vertua also for cement or cementitious products. In some instances, there are pricing differences or strategies towards these products. In other cases, there are not necessarily a different pricing strategy for them. I don't see a material difference in margins on those products because production costs are not necessarily that different. What I do see is that, and it's a surprise, at least to me, is that in most of the markets, we were expecting a positive reaction in some markets. Europe, for instance, we were expecting a good reaction, and there is a good reaction. It's everywhere. Emerging markets, there has been a very relevant reaction towards these low CO2 products. Nowadays, regardless of regulations, regardless of different practices, what is required or not required because of codes, construction codes or whatever, there is a mass of customers, there is a number of customers, highly interested in these low CO2 products. That's a force that is pulling us to increase as fast as possible the portfolio of Vertua. Very positive welcome from customers. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next on deck, we have Nick Lippmann from Morgan Stanley. Hi, Nick. You can go ahead. Hi there. Hi, everyone. Hi, Nick. for doing this. Congratulations on, you're clearly seeing some strong momentum. My question relates to the momentum. If you can go through where you're seeing the change or increase in the guidance. I might have just heard you wrong, but I think I heard you say two price increases towards the second half. Maybe, is it one, maybe two price increases in the U.S. full year, so you have another price increase to go in the second half. If you can just clarify that and then just address in what geographies, where exactly have you seen the biggest change in the market so far that caused you to have the confidence to change the guidance? Yeah, thank you very much. Again, congrats. Can you take it, Maher? Sure, yeah. Thanks, Nick for your question. If you're referring to the U.S. nod, if you're referring to overall consolidated portfolio nod twice, I will try to answer. As far as the U.S. is concerned, pricing, as you know. Can you hear me, Nick? Great. Pricing, as you know, in the U.S. is announced typically on a cycle of being prior year, sometime in the fall. Our pricing increases cover, in January, essentially the Florida market, and then in April, they cover the rest of the markets. That's roughly about 10% in January and then 90% in April. The pricing increase did go through April. We've gotten some very good traction there. As things got tighter, as we're sold out in the U.S. and there are several markets that are on allocation, we've announced a second pricing increase for July. Just to put it into perspective, we have not seen a second pricing increase like this historically for a long while, and the last one that we saw was only in one market in Texas in 2015. It's really an indication, I would say, in terms of the strength of the supply-demand dynamics in the U.S., and we're optimistic. Of course, you see all of the economic indicators on what's happening in terms of the residential market, which has underpinned the growth, industrial and commercial, which is beginning to pick up, and infrastructure has been flattish. That's as far as the U.S. is concerned. I don't know if you want me to cover Mexico at all or not. Quick, what's the magnitude of that July price increase in the U.S.? Sorry. It's mid-single digits percentage of price increases. It's in a variety of markets, and we've seen some response in some of the markets from our competitors. We're reasonably optimistic that we're going to get good traction for the second half of the year. Appreciate it. If you can touch on Mexico, This is basically a comment. Right Interested in hearing about. What's happening in Mexico? As you know, in Mexico, we're always trying to keep up with input cost inflation. We seem to be a little bit behind it, although pricing has been very good in Mexico, I would say. As you know, 1st quarter, we were up 5%, and we have announced pricing increases for both bulk and bag cement. We're optimistic that, again, supply-demand dynamics there are very attractive. I don't know, Fernando, if you would like to comment on just the general dynamic. No. Nowadays, the cement industry in Mexico seems to be very busy. As Maher said, we continually follow our objective of gaining back the inflation that is hitting us in Mexico. We decided to announce a price increase for July, again, about mid-single digit on top of what has already happened in the last few months of this year. Let's see how it goes. For sure, if we decided to launch these price increases because we believe we will get some traction on it. For sure, we will be commenting on this on additional conversations. Thank you. It's positive. Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Nick. Okay. Next we have Alan Alanis from Santander. Alan, please go ahead. Thank you, Lucy. Congratulations, Maher, Fernando, Jose Antonio. I guess today marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Really congratulations. I'm sure it took a lot of effort and perseverance to get back to where we are right now in terms of investment grades. My question is, I'm going to shift gears a little bit, I'm going to ask a question around the geographical footprint of CEMEX in the current way and form. I understand that you want to emphasize the work that you want to do in North America and Europe and the metropolitan areas. Your current footprint is much more diverse than that. Could you speak a little bit about how will CEMEX look, I don't know, three, five years from now in terms of its presence in Asia and in Latin America and in the Middle East? We're seeing equity capital market activity in Brazil right now, meaning that there are willing sellers. I know that that's a market that in the past CEMEX has been interested. I'm sure that you're getting, or you could be listening to offers from Chinese companies into your Philippine assets and so forth. How are you thinking in terms of your existing assets, in terms of divestitures and acquisitions outside of what you already indicated? Can you take that one? Sure, absolutely. As we think about CEMEX going forward, we do like the fundamentals of developed markets. That's where we are focusing as we think about marginal investments going forward. Of course, also attractive metropolis, for example, in Mexico as well. You ask about three to five years. We think that capital deployed will influence that composition as we go forward, with a bias towards U.S. and Mexico, that will make that portion of the portfolio grow. As we have been stating since last year, when we think about in addition to incremental investments, if we think about proactively managing the portfolio composition, we would be open to reducing exposure to emerging markets at the right conditions. In the past, when we have decided to dispose assets, we have been very selective, always identifying another party whose footprint is perhaps even better suited for a particular asset. If we find those conditions for our emerging market assets, we may consider doing something like that, and that will even add more to this evolution of the portfolio composition. The one thing we know right now is that selling assets for the purpose of deleveraging is no longer a driver. The driver would be portfolio recomposition at the right terms. Going back to your comments at the beginning, I think they do ring a bell in terms of end of an era, the way we refer to it in many ways in the company, but turning the page, transitioning from playing defense to playing offense. That is pretty reflective of the mood right now in the company, and it's very exciting. The future looks quite exciting. Thank you very much. I don't know if I answered your question or if. You did. Okay, thank you very much. You did, and you earned this. This is the beginning of a new era, so congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Great. I think next we have from the fixed income side, Anne Milne from Bank of America. Good morning. I would just echo the comments of Alan. This is a real big page-turning, surpassing the three billion mark. That's a really big achievement. My questions are really fairly similar to his, I'll just take it to a little different perspective. In the past, sometimes the rating agencies have commented that they prefer to see a more developed market emphasis in the portfolio, maybe because of lower volatility. Also, as we know, rating agencies are very slow to upgrade and slow to downgrade sometimes as well. Assuming that you reach this, let's say, mid-tier leverage in the next year or two, have they made any comments in terms of the diversification of the portfolio or how long of a cycle they would like to see before they make a ratings decision? Thank you. Before passing it to Maher for comments from a rating agency potential comments. What I can tell you is that seems like we are aligned with the idea. We've been already commenting several times that we would like to enlarge the focus on U.S. and Europe as our priorities for additional investments. I wonder to some extent what is different now to what we have done through time, because the last $20 billion that CEMEX has invested through acquisitions, they were in the U.S. and Europe. Unfortunately, we did some before 2007. Yes, we want to grow, and as you have been hearing now in this event, yes, we want to continue making this emphasis in the U.S. and in Europe. On specific comments from rating agencies, I will pass it to Maher. Sure. Thanks, Anne. Obviously, as you know, we're in constant contact with the rating agencies and As you saw from the presentation that we made, we feel fairly confident based on our expectations for performance and investments and use of free cash flow to get to within the sweet spot of their investment grade, maybe on the lower end of the investment grade parameters by the end of 2022. There's a bit of a difference between S&P. This is not a dig into either of the rating agencies, but S&P has a slightly higher hurdle in the way that they take a look at leverage. We think, frankly, based on our expectations, that we should be in that sweet spot for them, which is higher than the other agency that follows us, other than Fitch, by the end of 2022. When is there likely to be action? As you know, they take a look at two-pronged kind of choices. They take a look at financial analysis. There they take a look at leverage. They take a look at essentially free cash flow as a percentage of the debt. I think that, again, as I probably commented in my remarks earlier in the webcast, is that we're going to be there on both of those two metrics by the end of 2022. Potentially a little bit later, potentially a bit less, who knows? The other part, they take a look at the industry, where we are, and certainly the volatility. I think that given the volatility of what we've seen in the markets last year, they're probably going to take a little bit of time, but I think what's really important to take a look at is how the rest of the market is looking at the value of our credit risk, essentially. You know better than anybody what our pricing is and our yield, certainly on the latest bond that we did, the 10-year bond. We're fairly confident that they're going to come around. They may be cautious in their timing, but I would say end of 2022, early 2023, we should see an action from them. Not the first action, because as you know, their outlook that they can change, and then in the case of S&P, we got to go from BB to BB plus and then investment grade, but I'm optimistic. From the conversations that we've seen, and if we deliver this kind of growth and the predictability, I think that's going to go a long way into comforting them that things have definitely turned a page in terms of the risk factors of the company. Thank you. It sounds like you'll, at least for a while, keep your leverage ratio in somewhere between two and three times. Yeah. That is the way we think that's the way to deliver best value for our shareholders from our view. That should not impact our investment capacity going forward. I think we will comfortably be able to take care of our investment opportunities. Thank you very much. Excellent presentation today. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Nice library. Thank you. Next we have Yassine Touahri from On Field. Hi, Yassine. Hi. I just could have one question. In Europe, we have seen many industrial companies buying CO2 allowance ahead of a potential change in regulations. You decided in the first quarter, actually, to sell $600 million of CO2 allowance, which was a bit of a surprise to some. Could you explain to us what was the rationale of this decision? Sure. Well, maybe I should comment on a couple of factors. The first one is for sure the most relevant, which is we used to have the largest CO2 portfolio in Europe among all cement companies. It was a long position. It was sufficient enough to cover all CO2 needs for all the phase until 2030. We thought that was a very long position that we could partially monetize. As far as I know, and I know it because of public reports, there is only one additional company with a long position on CO2. The rest, the majors, they don't have CO2 credits already. They are already buying, or they are about to start buying in one or two years. Taking the position from industrial competition and how long our position was, we decided to partially monetize that position. Which part we monetize, we made our calculations, and we are keeping what we believe is going to be enough until 2025 or 2026, which is still longer than other CO2 positions in the industry in Europe. That's one factor. The second factor is very simple to explain, is pricing. We thought the price when we sold this position was attractive enough. It was around $50, $51 per- Per ton. When you combine both things, it was a sort of a no-brainer for us. The investment's going into a reduction of carbon as well, no? Well, exactly. I mean, the proceeds, it's $600 million. We are going to be using them together with all the cash we are generating for our CO2 investments and other investments because this is $600 million, and we're going to be doing like $60 per year. Funds from that are going to be partially used for speeding up the process that we already described. It's anticipating our targets and developing more challenging targets for 2030. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Yassine Next we have Adam Thalhimer from Thompson Davis & Co. Adam, are you with us? Hey, good morning, guys. Okay. Hi. The question I've gotten most from clients this morning is on the 2022 guidance, and they're just curious, sitting here in June of 2021, what gives you the confidence that you can do double-digit EBITDA growth next year? Jose Antonio, can you take it? Yes. Well, look, first of all, we are seeing a robust activity, and w e think that environment will remain at least for the foreseeable future. Maher already covered also how we are proactively managing pricing and, of course, taking into account this kind of demand environments. We continue to be very vigilant with costs, and ensuring that we're running an efficient and a smooth operation. Of course, a very important component as we think about growth is our growth pipeline. We did mention that we are ramping up investments. Our guidance for CapEx, expansion CapEx this year is half a billion dollars, whereas for the last couple of years, it was around $200. We believe we will be getting incremental EBITDA coming out of these projects. Now, we did mention $150 for 2021, and we think there's another incremental, even higher than $150 coming for 2022. That's another important component that gives us the confidence to talk about this kind of guidance for 2022. Good answer. Thanks, guys. Can I just add, Adam, I mean, just to put some additional numbers. As Jose Antonio said, the EBITDA contribution from our bolt-on investments is $150. The Working Smarter program that we put into place last year, frankly, we expect to ramp that up to probably close to $100 million worth of savings. There are other opportunities that we are looking at. If we take a look at the kind of the supply-demand dynamics in the U.S. and Mexico, to a lesser extent in Europe, they're all pointing towards attractive pricing dynamics for a variety of reasons. I'm not going to highlight all of them right now, but there's a variety of reasons in each one of the markets that argue for better pricing. In the U.S., frankly, we're very excited about the announcement that came out yesterday from the Senate about the bipartisan agreement about the fiscal stimulus, $1.2 billion with a fairly sizable chunk, and they seem to be consensus also on the size that is earmarked for infrastructure. We guesstimate, I mean, not just ourselves, but talking to a lot of folks that look at the markets, that that's going to translate to a big growth in demand for cement in 2022 and 2023 in the U.S. market, in a market that is very difficult to add capacity to. When you add all of those pieces together, that's what gives us the comfort and the visibility of our outlook. Great. Thanks, Maher. Thank you. Thanks, Adam. Thank you very much. Okay. Next we have Daniel Sasson from Itaú. Daniel? Yes. Hi, Lucy. Good morning, Jose Antonio and Maher. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. I miss talking to you guys in person. My question is more from a strategic standpoint. You provided a very detailed plan in terms of the organic growth and bolt-on projects. Can you comment a bit about the possibility of engaging in M&A transactions, maybe talking a bit about the regions you'd like maybe to be exposed, or what characteristics would you consider attractive when you analyze the markets? If you found good alternatives for attractive prices, where would you most likely be interested in entering? My second question, really quickly, you are really reaching, or you're almost at the 3x net-to-EBITDA. Would you consider setting a target of net debt in absolute terms so that you would, even in periods when your EBITDA could decline through the cycle, you would not be above three times ever again? Did you consider having a formal net debt target in absolute terms instead of a ratio? Thank you. Let me take the second one, and Jose Antonio might take. Sure M&A part. Okay. Time ago, we did agree with our board on the criteria to be used for growth once we were in a position of growing. We are just getting into the type of capital structure we've been looking for. The way I see it is that what is coming is consolidating that position. Even though we have a criteria on what to do, how much to increase the leverage, we're not thinking that is what we would like to do, and that is not what you can expect from us in the next few months and years. As you saw with all the info, all the presentation from Jose Antonio on growth opportunities, we do have plenty of business opportunities that we consider low risk, because all of them are related to businesses related to our portfolio, mainly U.S. and Europe, some in Mexico. They are investments with high returns because sometimes they are complementary to our current business activity. They do have short paybacks, less than four years or about four years, with exception of the large cement integrated plants. The rest, the bolt-on type of investments, have those characteristics. We believe that in this moment in the cycle, it will be much more profitable to invest in green and brown field businesses instead of buying. Are we not going to make any transaction? No. For sure, if we find opportunities that accommodate to this bolt-on type of strategy, we will do them. We just did a small ready-mix plant in Texas, in San Antonio, I think about $20 million or so. Not the idea of large transactions. We're not there. We are very busy trying to develop the portfolio that you just saw. It's hundreds of projects in cement, ready-mix aggregates, and Urbanization Solutions. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. Perhaps just to add to that, the bias you asked about geographies, I think we've been very clear. We have a bias towards U.S. and Europe. The portfolio that Fernando described is comprised of projects that are highly complementary to the existing footprint that we have. We can take advantage of our existing capabilities, and that's what makes them, from a risk-return profile, very attractive. That part of the question, I think, is covered. The other part of the question was about setting an absolute target for the debt level. We have not discussed, let's say, targeting an absolute debt level as a goal to include. I think we believe, of course, we will be in a very dynamic mode over the years to come. We think that the relationship between debt and the cash generation of the company is probably more appropriate to determine sort of the goalposts. I think what we are guiding to, and if you look at our guidance for 2022, the leverage ratio that we have accomplished already, and the kind of investments that we will make, as Fernando mentioned, not big transactions, perhaps small to medium size. I think all that points still to further deleveraging from a debt to EBITDA perspective, and that addresses the risks component that you have addressed. Now, what happens if things change and we are committed to getting to the investment-Grade credit rating. Yeah. I'd like to just mention one thing. While we don't have a formal target, I think, as Fernando said, one of the key pillars of the value proposition to our shareholders is the getting to investment-grade rating and maintaining that investment-grade rating. That by itself gives you very clear guardrails of what kind of capital structure we're looking at getting to and maintaining. We certainly don't want to do something that takes us out of that comfort zone for us and for the rating agency, so that gives you a very clear, I'd be more than happy to have a discussion later about that with you. Perfect. To clarify that. Absolutely. Thanks a lot for the question. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. We have time for one last question. Alejandro Azar from GBM the stage is yours. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Lucy, g ood morning to everyone. I believe this is a follow-up from Daniel. I was thinking, how does CEMEX think about those $4 billion in investments? Do you guys think about size? Do you guys think about profitability? Are you thinking about adding new geographies to your footprint? The second one is the opposite. Are you willing or are you looking or analyzing or divesting entirely from a region in emerging markets that you mentioned? What an example could be, what is the rationale behind CEMEX maintaining your stake in GCC, for example? Want to take that one? Yes. Right now, our growth pipeline, as mentioned, covers $925 million that we expect to be invested between 2021 and 2023. We're very busy with that. I did mention that the process and the strategy is not static, right? We continue to evaluate the projects, and we will be adding to our pipeline. Where do we add from? Well, for that purpose, we do have this expanded, let's say, opportunities that we have eyed or identified worth for $4 billion. I think the current pipeline of $925 million is very reflective of the pipeline of $4 billion. It's spread between our four core businesses, and it has a little bit of a bias towards U.S., Europe. More geared towards regions in the U.S. and Europe where we're already present. There would be very little of projects identified in this expanded growth pipeline away from our areas where we're already present. What do we do first and what do we do later? This is like a funnel, right? There's a lot of projects, and our job, and this is a lot of people involved. Of course, our colleagues from the operations in the regions together with the central team that coordinates the process. There's a lot of prioritization that goes on. It has to do with market dynamics. Clearly, we are quick in identifying the more pressing needs or the more urgent needs, and that's what gets prioritized. Of course, in the prioritization, we measure the potential financial returns, the strategic merits of how it influences our footprint, and of course, risk. I think that tells you a little bit about that. Cement, ready-mix, aggregates, and Urbanization Solutions, everything along those lines is of interest to us. Regarding divestments, I mentioned earlier, yes, we are open to divestments in our emerging market portfolio. That's something we would do under the right conditions because there's a highly motivated counterparty where this particular asset might fit their footprint nicely. Regarding GCC, I would say that we did have, about four years ago, a significant restructuring that resulted in us selling a 23% stake in GCC, but we remain as an indirect holder of 20% of the company. Our view in this company is long-term. We are long-term partners. We like the company's footprint, and we have a very close relationship, and we view that as a long-term investment. I don't know if you want to add anything, Fernando, Maher. No. That's me. Thank you. Thank you, Jose Antonio, I think that's great. Again, congrats on the new guidance and the presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. All right, well, I think that brings us to the end of our program today. Thank you all for joining us. I know that two hours on Zoom these days is a little more tedious than it used to be. We're very hopeful that the next time we will physically meet in person in the fall for a review of our regional operations with our regional presidents, as well as for continued discussion on our climate action goals. If you have any questions, of course, please contact investor relations at CEMEX, and we thank you all for joining us today. I don't know if you all want to quickly say thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hope to see you in person. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you.