My name is Hannah, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time you require operator assistance, please press Star followed by zero, and we will be happy to assist you. Now I will turn the conference over to Lucy Rodriguez, Chief Communications Officer. Please proceed. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our first quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. I hope this call finds you and your families in good health. I'm joined today by Fernando González, our CEO, and Maher Al-Haffar, our CFO. As always, we will spend a few minutes reviewing the business, and then we will be happy to take your questions. I will now hand it over to Fernando. Thanks, Lucy, and good day to everyone. Before we begin, I would like to convey that our thoughts are very much with the people affected by the war in Ukraine as we witness the humanitarian crisis unfolding there. Our corporate purpose is all about building a better future, homes, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and we are saddened to see this destruction and the refugee crisis it has sparked. We are supporting the UN refugee program and coordinating with local authorities in the communities in which we operate across Europe. We will continue to look for additional opportunities to support the people most affected by this crisis. Now, moving on to our key achievements. I'm quite pleased with our first quarter results. We achieved a double-digit growth in sales, with all regions contributing. In a supply chain-constrained world, we have tried very hard to meet customer needs. Our EBITDA was higher than last year, led primarily by EMEA. These results were achieved despite a challenging macro environment to which our management team had to adjust in real time. Growth was driven primarily by pricing, with cement prices up double digits. While significant, the pricing achievement was not sufficient to completely offset inflationary pressures, with margins down year-over-year. Volumes for our three core products increased, with the highest growth rates in Europe and the U.S. Our Urbanization Solutions business grew double digits. We continue to roll out our growth investments, and this quarter we approved over $200 million of additional bolt-on margin enhancement projects. During the quarter, we bought back a total of 1.5% of CEMEX's outstanding shares. Since the initiation of our share buyback program in 2018, we have repurchased more than 6% of the company's shares. We believe that these transactions have been accretive to our shareholders. We continue to post impressive numbers in our climate action efforts. We continue to make great strides in our decarbonization efforts. This quarter, we reduced our carbon emissions by 4%, in line with our reduction in 2021, our largest on record. This performance was a result of a decline in clinker factor as well as an increase in alternative fuels to a new high of 33.3%. Today, seven of our plants are operating below our 2030 CO2 target of 475 kilograms. Sales of our Vertua low-carbon cement and concrete are growing significantly since their introduction in 2020 and currently represent approximately 1/3 of our volumes. By 2025, we expect that Vertua cement and concrete will represent 50% of our volumes. With regard to innovation, we continue to make progress in the quarter. In an innovation born out of our internal open innovation platform, Smart Innovation. We successfully converted, in a lab setting, 50% of the CO2 directly from the flue gases of our kilns into carbon nanomaterials, a material that is used by multiple industries. This is an example on how potentially bad carbon can be converted into good carbon and actually commercialized. We will now move forward on this concept in an industrial pilot. Additionally, we established a new consortium for the Rüdersdorf Carbon Neutral Alliance in Germany, a project to transform our plant into the first-ever net-zero CO2 cement plant by 2030. For more information, please see our website. Finally, we recently published our sixth integrated report in which we highlight the substantive progress we have made in our climate action roadmap, as well as a significant corporate governance improvements. I invite you to access the report on our website. Pricing was the primary driver in our 12% growth in sales, with cement prices up double digits in three of our four regions. As you know, we adjusted our pricing strategy in second quarter 2021 to address the rising inflation clouds that we were seeing coming out of the pandemic lockdown. From the beginning, we view inflation as permanent rather than transitory, and this is serving us well with additional challenges of the Ukraine war. Even with continuing cost pressures as well as the difficult prior year comparison, we delivered a 3% increase in EBITDA. Consolidated margin declined 1.7 percentage points, reflecting the cost as well as geographic and product mix. Free cash flow declined year-over-year due to higher CapEx spending and working capital. Our developed market portfolio continued to enjoy strong demand dynamics, with cement and ready-mix volumes growing high single to double digits. Cement volumes in Mexico declined, reflecting the demand rebalancing that is occurring between the formal and informal construction market as we move out from the pandemic as well as a difficult 2021 comparison base. Throughout the portfolio, we are seeing strong growth in ready-mix, reflecting formal sector demand, while aggregates volumes are increasing in all markets, except for SCA&C. We are quite pleased with the pricing performance. Against the backdrop of the worst inflation headwinds since the eighties, we realized a record sequential cement price growth for cement. Consolidated cement prices were up 12% year-over-year, while ready-mix and aggregates rose 8% and 7% respectively. Importantly, our January price increases saw important traction with sequential consolidated prices up between mid-single to high single digits for all products. All regions contributed to pricing gains. Despite the January pricing achievement, we still have work to do to compensate for rising costs. We have implemented April pricing increases for those markets in the U.S. and Europe that did not have a January increase, and we expect similar results. In addition, we have already announced subsequent increases in many markets for the summer months. Pricing, however, is not the only lever. We remain focused on costs. Our diversified energy supply chain and climate action strategies are paying off. EBITDA for the quarter increased 3%, driven primarily by prices and growth in our EMEA region. EBITDA from Urbanization Solutions grew double digits, and we expect this growth to continue in 2022 as our growth investment portfolio ramps up and more projects come online. The contribution of pricing to EBITDA fully offsets the increase in variable costs and imports. With rising volumes, however, it was not sufficient to maintain year-over-year margins. Consolidated margins declined 1.7 percentage points. In mid-2021, we began to see significant inflation in the business, stemming largely from rising energy and transportation costs. We updated our pricing strategy to take this into account and began to see the benefits of our efforts in fourth quarter. While there is, of course, seasonality in our results, I am pleased that consolidated margins in the first quarter increased sequentially. We are cautious, and we know of the inflation challenges ahead of us, but we are carefully managing costs, and our pricing strategy has been recalibrated to reflect the new cost environment. Our goal is to recover margins in line with our Operation Resilience target of at least 20%. Now back to you, Lucy. Thank you, Fernando. In a largely sold-out domestic market, our U.S. operations experienced impressive growth across all products. Sales expanded 18% on the back of high single-digit volume growth for the three products. This growth reflects strong demand from the residential and industrial sectors as well as milder weather. Pricing gains contributed significantly to sales, with cement prices increasing 10%. Our January increases were highly successful. In markets which account for 40% of our U.S. cement volumes, cement prices rose between 8% and 10%. In April, our remaining markets received their first pricing increase of the year. We are optimistic that traction will be in line with January. We have already announced additional price increases for the summer in all markets, and we have advised customers that further price increases may be necessary. On the cost side, imports, logistics, and energy continue to be the biggest headwinds to margins. With largely sold-out markets and rising shipping rates, our increasing reliance on imports negatively impacts margins. While EBITDA margin declined year-over-year, sequential margins improved almost one percentage point. With today's challenging global shipping market, we will take full advantage of imports by rail and water from our Mexican operations in order to meet customer needs. We remain optimistic with regard to the outlook for the U.S. Despite rising interest rates, we have not seen evidence of softening residential demand in our markets. The industrial and commercial sector shows important recovery due to on-shoring of manufacturing activity and the resurgence of the oil industry. We expect these industrial trends to persist with additional supply chain pressures from the Ukraine war. Finally, for infrastructure, we expect the new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to yield incremental demand for our products towards the end of 2022. In Mexico, net sales grew 5%, driven by a successful pricing strategy. The January cement price announcement saw record traction, with cement prices rising 9% sequentially. Volume dynamics continue to reflect the rebalancing of demand between the informal and formal construction sectors as we move out from pandemic restrictions. Cement volumes declined 8%, reflecting weaker demand in bagged cement, while ready-mix volumes grew 9%. The decline in bagged cement volumes results from a difficult 2021 comparison base with a high level of pandemic home improvements and pre-electoral spending. Going forward, we expect bagged cement volumes to stabilize at a normalized market share. In the formal sector, activity is driven by the industrial and commercial sector and formal residential. We continue to see the build-out of manufacturing and warehousing facilities in northern states, with companies taking advantage of near-shoring opportunities. Demand for industrial space is growing significantly, led by cities such as Tijuana and Monterrey. The commercial sector has been supported by hotel construction in tourism corridors as the industry responds to a post-pandemic influx of tourists. The strong pricing performance was still not sufficient to offset the significant inflation in our operations, driven largely by energy in EBITDA margin. We expect our pricing strategy and cost containment initiatives to address the inflation challenges. We announced a second price increase of 11% in bagged cement effective April 1st. To date, the increase is showing similar traction to our January price action. Our climate action roadmap is also helping us respond to cost pressures. Alternative fuel usage with clear cost advantages over fossil fuels posted new record highs. Efforts to reduce clinker factor and improve thermal efficiency of our plants is also supported. While a sold-out U.S. market not only allows us to support the needs of our U.S. business in a cost-effective manner, but also to maintain high capacity utilization in Mexico. We will continue pushing for additional price increases as necessary to compensate for cost headwinds. EMEA posted excellent results, with sales and EBITDA rising double digits. Top-line growth was driven by double-digit growth in price and mid-single-digit growth in volume from cement. Europe was responsible for much of the improvement, milder winter weather. Prices for our three core products sequentially, reflecting strong January price increases. In April, we implemented price increases in those markets, which represent about 40% of European cement volumes that did not have a January increase. We have already announced a second round of price increases to be implemented during the second quarter. We are fortunate that our business in Europe is relatively insulated from the Ukraine war, both in terms of footprint, supply chain, and cost pressures. As a result of our One Europe strategy implemented in 2019 and the consolidation of our cement footprint, our plant network today runs at high capacity utilization. The business is well-diversified, with our less energy-intensive products other than cement contributing about 50% of regional EBITDA. Within the cement business, alternative fuels account for almost two-thirds of our total fuel mix, allowing us to minimize fossil fuel volatility. Recent modifications to our plants in the UK, Germany, and the Czech Republic will allow us to boost alternative fuels even further, up to 70% by mid-year. We have a surplus of CO₂ allowances that we expect will last through 2025. On the demand side, the renovation wave and other infrastructure programs totaling approximately EUR 1.4 trillion, coupled with expected new investment in energy and defense, should support volumes. Moving to the rest of the region. In the Philippines, cement volumes declined 6%, impacted by disruptions caused by Typhoon Odette in December and COVID lockdown measures. Cement prices improved 3% sequentially, marking four consecutive quarters of growth. For more information, please see our CHP quarterly earnings, which will be available this evening. In Israel, construction activity was strong with ready-mix and aggregate. In Egypt, we continue to see strong EBITDA growth, driven by the industry rationalization plan announced by the government in mid-2021. In our South, Central America and the Caribbean operations, net sales increased 9%. This strong top-line growth was driven by strong pricing. With high capacity utilization in most countries, regional cement prices increased 9% year-over-year. Similar to Mexico, the formal sector continues recovering from the pandemic, while bagged cement growth moderates. The decline in regional EBITDA and margins is mainly due to increases in energy costs. We announced a second round of price increases effective April 1 in markets that represent around 30% of cement volumes. We also are taking full advantage of the ability of our plants to switch between multiple fuels, as well as increasing alternative fuels in order to dampen the effect of rising energy prices. In Colombia, cement volumes increased 4%, supported by housing, self-construction, and infrastructure. The outlook in the country remains positive with the continued rollout of 4G highway projects and a healthy formal housing sector. In the Dominican Republic, cement volumes declined 4%, led by a reduction in bagged cement sales. A difficult comparison base, lower remittances, and higher inflation explain the moderation in activity in the self-construction sector. The formal sector, however, continues to recover, driven by tourism and formal housing. In April, we reopened a kiln in our plant, which will increase our production capacity by a third, underscoring our growth strategy and commitment to the development of the country. With higher global shipping costs in a largely sold out region, we believe our strong logistics network, coupled with our cement capacity additions, will be an important competitive advantage. I invite you to review CLH's quarterly results, which were also published today. Now I will pass the call to Maher to review our financial developments. Thank you, Lucy, and good day to everyone. As Fernando mentioned, we are very pleased with our first quarter performance. Despite higher EBITDA and lower financial expense, free cash flow after maintenance CapEx declined versus the prior year due to higher investment in working capital and maintenance CapEx. Investment in working capital faced supply chain bottlenecks. We have been redesigning and introducing new technologies in our collections processes to make them more efficient. The credit quality and the turnover efficiency of our receivables are at record levels. This has led to a significant improvement in our receivables collection cycle. I would like to highlight that our working capital cycle is seasonal, and investments in the first quarter typically turn around in the early part of the second half. The increase in maintenance CapEx relates primarily to the delayed delivery of mobile equipment originally slated for 2021. This is mostly due to supply chain disruptions. As a result of positive operating performance and lower financial expenses, net income for the quarter more than tripled when compared to that of last year after adjusting for gains from sale of assets. Return on capital employed for the last 12 months stood at 13.7%, excluding goodwill, well above our cost of capital. Inflation for us has been felt mostly in energy in the production of cement, which represents approximately 30% of our total cement production costs. During the quarter, it increased 37% year-over-year due to the increase in petcoke and coal, and partially mitigated by an increase in alternative fuel usage. This quarter, the alternative fuel substitution rate was 33.3%, 7.3 percentage points higher than last year. We expect our substitution rate to further increase during the year. Unitary electricity cost is up 21%, driven principally by our operations in Europe. While we experienced an important increase in the cost of energy, this was mitigated by a combination of factors. First, a portion of our fuel and electricity contracts are negotiated on a fixed price basis, so there's some lag in the repricing of these contracts. Second, as mentioned before, about a third of our fuels are alternative fuels, which have different price dynamics than fossil fuels. Apart from energy used in the production of cement, we're also exposed to energy in the form of transportation needs for all our products. We've had a diesel hedging program in place since 2016, in which we cover our direct diesel exposure for the next 12-24 months, depending on market conditions. Now with respect to our capital structure and risk management, as I commented last quarter, we entered 2022 with a very strong financial position, with no refinancing needs for the next 3 years. A strong liquidity position and minimal exposure to interest rates as 90% of our debt is at fixed rates. We will continue to be prudent in our financial strategy, maintaining an adequate risk profile consistent with an investment-grade capital structure. During the quarter, we executed a series of transactions taking advantage of the current environment. First, with the rise in interest rates, we launched a tender offer to purchase up to $500 million of three of our bonds at very attractive prices. Through the tender process, which closed after the end of the quarter, we repurchased approximately $440 million in notes at an attractive discount. This exercise will result in more than $11 million in annual interest expense savings, and will be funded through our revolving credit facility at a much lower rate than the yield of the notes. We also activated our share buyback program in the quarter, in which we repurchased $111 million of our stock. Since 2018, we have returned approximately. In anticipation of a rising interest rate environment, we executed $300 million in interest rate locks when the ten-year Treasury yield was approximately at 1.7%. As of today, they have a positive mark-to-market. The result of this transaction will be amortized in financial expense over the life of a new potential bond when issued. We continue with our goal to align our capital structure to our sustainability targets. During this quarter, we introduced our sustainability framework into our accounts receivable securitization programs in the UK and France for approximately $215 million. Now back to you, Fernando. We are quite pleased with first quarter performance, which exceeded our expectations underlying our February guidance. To date, we are not seeing signs of slowdown in our operations and pricing has accelerated significantly. We realize that first quarter is not always a good indicator of full-year performance in our industry. We are maintaining our EBITDA guidance of mid-single digit growth. Although given the current environment, there might be some downside risk. However, we are confident that we will grow year-over-year. Growth should be driven primarily by pricing, with flat to mid-single digit consolidated volume increases. Given the successful price traction we have seen as well as additional pricing announcements, we believe that we can continue closing the gap between costs and prices. We are increasing our guidance for energy in the production of cement to 35% on a per ton of cement produced basis, assuming no further escalation in energy costs. We now expect CapEx of $1.2 billion, with $700 million going to maintenance and $500 million going to strategic. If global supply chain issues improve, we could accelerate this CapEx spending. Our strategic CapEx will be primarily directed towards bolt-on margin enhancement projects. We continue to expect $100 million of incremental EBITDA for this year from our growth investments, such as ready-mix block plants in Florida, alternative fuels upgrade at our Rugby plant in the UK, sustainable waste management and mortar production in Mexico, among others. Cash taxes are now expected to be $200 million. We recognize that cost headwinds will be a challenge, but we anticipate a favorable environment with moderate volume growth and strong pricing dynamics supported by high capacity utilization. While it may take longer than we initially expected, we aim to recover margins in line with our Operation Resilience goal. Now back to you, Lucy. Before we go into our Q&A session, I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are based on our current knowledge of markets in which we operate and could change in the future due to a variety of factors beyond our control. In the interest of time and to give other people an opportunity to participate, we kindly ask that you limit yourself to only one question. If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Withdraw your question, press star followed by two. Press star one to begin. The first question comes from Francisco Suarez from Scotiabank. Paco, please go ahead. that allow you to have this positive price over cost this quarter and your sequential margin improvement. That was impressive. My question relates to the cost side of your equation on these levers that you are playing with. Do you see room for upside risk in better fossil fuel substitution rates, perhaps clinker factors, particularly outside Europe? Perhaps this is actually linked to incremental margin improvement investments that you have in the pipeline. Thank you for that, and congrats again. Thank you, Francisco. Let me comment on the cost side, and you were referring particularly, I think, to higher substitutions of alternative fuels and lower clinker factor. The answer to your question is definitely yes. We do have room, and we have been investing and preparing to doing more progress in contributing economically and both contributing to a lower carbon economy. We commented that the increase in alternative fuels on a consolidated basis was seven percentage points. It's from about 27% first quarter last year to 33% this year. Now, that will continue growing. A few explanations. We have already made installations in all our European plants to inject hydrogen to improve the combustion of RDF, our main alternative fuel. That's one reason. The other one is that, it was very recently announced, I think it was this week, a rule in Spain that will be very positive in order to promote the use of RDF in our cement plants in Spain, where we have the lowest substitution rate. The other reason why we will increase is because we have already finished the projects to increase the use of alternative fuels in our, two of our largest plants in Europe, Rüdersdorf in Germany and Rugby in the UK. That is done, and we are starting to see much higher levels of substitution in those plants, close to 80%-90%, similar to what we have in Poland. Now, as you know, substitution rates or the use of alternative fuels in Europe are the ones contributing the most economically. As of the first quarter, our substitution was around 65%, which is at the very high end of the substitution we understand that is in the industry in Europe. Because of the variables I just mentioned, these new rules in Spain, injecting hydrogen to improve combustion and the two projects we just finished, we are gonna be moving around or above 70% substitution in Europe. We don't have info regarding other levels. We understand the average in Europe is around 50%, so with this 70%, we might be leading Europe in the substitution rate of alternative fuels. On the other hand, clinker factor, we continue reducing clinker factor. You know, we've been, for instance, as an example, we've been switching from type one. So we are reducing clinker factor in the U.S. using materials that have a lower cost when compared to clinker itself. To our competitiveness. We have the lowest clinker factor during the first quarter, and we do expect continue reducing it. As we have said before, the driving force in these two main variables is our commitments on CO2 reduction. As you know, last year, we reduced more than 4% first quarter, an additional reduction of 4%. We have a very comprehensive roadmap, and we are executing these projects. Because of the info we are sharing, you can see that it is working. We are moving forward effectively. Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you so much, Fernando. Sorry for that. Do you think that the market might be overlooking those positive potential advantages that you may have in Europe? Well, yeah, hard to know. What I've seen is that there was an expectation of Europe being hard hit for good reasons, meaning for obvious reasons. You know, the war, inflation in fossil fuels, inflation in electricity because of this reference of electricity prices being based on gas prices. What I can comment in our case is in the case of Europe, about 50% of our EBITDA comes from cement. The other 50% comes from ready-mix, aggregates and Urbanization Solutions businesses that are less impacted by inflation in fuels. As I already mentioned, alternative fuels, which in the case of Europe, their cost is much lower than fossil fuels. In most instances, alternative fuels are in. The real impact of inflation in fossil fuels for us in Europe is on 35% of cement production or related to 35% of EBITDA. The potential impact, at least as of first quarter, was because of the inflation in fossil fuels, was 18% of our EBITDA in Europe. What we can expect because of increasing the use of alternative fuels in Europe and in other regions, then will be lower. Hard to say if these facts have been overlooked, but this is what I can comment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Maybe I would just add to that because I think you asked a question about alternative fuel usage even outside of Europe. While we saw a 12% increase, I think year over year in alternative fuel usage in Europe, we shouldn't neglect Mexico, where we've had almost a 10% increase in alternative fuel usage as well year over year. Just to keep that in mind. The next question comes from Paul Roger from BNP Paribas, and this question is from the web, so I'll read it. It's a continuation of Europe. What impact would a gas stoppage in Europe have on CEMEX, assuming it also pushes up power costs? What's the hedging position for European electricity? Has the group seen any project cancellation, and is there a risk of demand disruption due to higher prices? On the first part, first clarification is we don't use gas for cement production, so gas shortages shouldn't impact us directly in our production processes or facilities. As we have said, 65% fossil fuels are RDF, mainly alternative fuels. The rest is petcoke and coal. So gas is not a part of our fuel mix in Europe. Regarding electricity, about 60% of our electricity is contracted for the year. The good news is that in Spain, we do have the very recent news on an agreement made by Spain and Portugal to the European Union or with the European Union regarding this idea of fixing electricity prices based on gas prices. That very recent decision will have a material impact in the prices of electricity in Spain. Material meaning maybe half, to be seen. That's the situation regarding our fuels inflation coverage or the hedge in electricity. There was a second part to the question. Yeah. Has the group seen any project cancellation? Yeah. No, we have not seen material project cancellations. What we have seen through time, but this might not be that new, is that because of supply chain issues, there are delays. There are delays in projects. There are delays in developments, in construction. Now the latest news, latest meaning, conflict between Ukraine and Russia, that might add to that process of delays. So far, order books are strong. We still don't see any sizable deterioration, but of course, we Okay. The next question comes from Alejandro Azar from GBM. Good morning, Fernando, Maher, and Lucy. Mine is on the pricing side. If you could remind us where have you made second price increase, like in Mexico and SCA&C, and where did you already announce one? If there's a possibility of a third price increase later in the year in some of your markets. Thank you. Sure. Thanks for your question. Let me take the opportunity to give a better explanation or a clarification on our pricing strategy because, you know, this year we have very high inflation. Sometimes I already qualify it as hyperinflation in our industry. Pricing strategy is of the most importance. The 7% increase sequentially from December to March that we commented was achieved impacting only 60% of our cement volumes consolidated at a consolidated level. Because of the timing of price increases in different markets. In the case of the U.S., this price increase impacted only 40% of our volumes. In the case of Europe, it's 60%. In April, which is still part of our first half pricing strategy, our pricing strategy is not executed in one single quarter. In April, we are increasing again double-digit increases in 50% of our cement volumes. Now, in the case of the U.S. and Europe, increases in April are the first increases in certain regions. In other countries like Mexico, like Germany, Poland, Croatia, Colombia and other markets, this might be the second price increase, if not in 100% of all cement products in the most relevant part of them. Now, with these price increases in April and some in May and June, we will be completing the first phase of our 2022 pricing strategy. We believe that the same way we achieve price increases, double-digit price increases in the first quarter, that will be the same case, when comparing, December to June, meaning double-digit price increases. That will be half of our pricing strategy. We have already announced price increases for the summer, June, July. In the case of the US and Europe will be the second price increase. In other markets might be a billion EBITDA. Our pricing strategy is based in the idea of recovering margins and recovering 2021 margins, and so far, so good. It is being effectively implemented. Very clear, Fernando. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. The next question comes from Ben Theurer at Barclays. Ben, please go ahead. Perfect. Thank you very much, Lucy. Fernando, Maher, congrats on the results. Wanted to follow up on some of the comments you made during your prepared remarks on the import dynamics from Mexico into the United States and the advantages you have from a proximity point of view, disruption and logistics. I thought some issues because you haven't had contracted enough on the logistics side and hence the import margin came down. Can you share any comments on the dynamics here and where we stand on import margins now, given that you knew about the need for logistics, and maybe you've been able to lock that in. Is there any incremental color here, please? Let me make some general comments, and I will ask Maher to complement if necessary. As you can imagine, serving from Mexico the needs of our customers in the south part of the U.S. is much more convenient because this is a sort of a nearshore supply chain issue. That means response times are much shorter, they are much faster. Transportation is less exposed to nowadays high inflation levels. I'm referring particularly to maritime transportation. Meaning instead of serving these volumes from Mexico, we bring it from Asian countries or from other Middle East or European countries. The exposure to maritime cost is huge. That is very convenient. In that case, both Mexico and for the U.S., margins on these imports or exports are much more attractive than the ones that we do from third parties through maritime transportation. I don't know if you wanna comment anything, Maher, on the cost or the margins specifically. I cannot hear you. Maher. I think you're on mute. While Maher regains his voice, maybe I'll add one comment. Yeah, go ahead, and then I'll add. Sorry about that. I don't know what happened. I must have hit the phone the wrong way or something like that. Sorry, Ben. I mean, one thing, of course, you know, we're expecting imports to grow. In last year, imports into the U.S. were about 2.5 million, close to about 4 million tons of imports. Of course, we, as you know, have ramped up our production for the export market from Mexico significantly through, you know, CPN, Yaqui plant, Tamuín, Torreón. These are all plants that have very good transportation logistics into very attractive markets within the U.S. that are showing probably some of the highest growth and some of the strongest pricing dynamics. Fortunately, we're almost doubling the amount of imports for the year from Mexico directly into the US and capturing, you know, clearly a big chunk of the third party, let's say, profit within consolidated CEMEX profits. I mean, we don't break out the specific details in terms of margins of third party imports and CEMEX imports and all of that, but clearly the imports are, you know, not as profitable as the domestically produced cement. They are very profitable, and it's very important that we are using them to satisfy, you know, demand from our customers, which is extremely important. We're able to. You know, this shortens our supply chain. It gives us, you know, assurance of good quality cement. You know, we've heard of some traders, for instance, because of a lot of reasons, have not been able to deliver on their contracts, so I think that increases the certainty of being able to deliver. You know, because of that, we think it's important that we continue to do that. Mexican imports are probably almost 30% less expensive than third party imports. You could imagine the benefit swing from last year to this year when you see volumes are growing and you see the substitution of third party. I would just add maybe one or two comments. I mean, number one, what's in the United States right now is one of supply, and we are trying our hardest to meet customer demand. This is a very important source for us of our ability to do that in a quicker reaction time. You know, we have some frustrated customers because of these shortages, but we are doing our best to ramp up imports as much as possible. Secondly, I think the other message that I would say here is that in first quarter specifically, you know, last year in first quarter, we weren't importing as much as we did this year in first quarter. The imports that we were bringing in last year, this was before we began to see the ramp-up in transportation and energy costs. It was at a very low cost relative to. We did contract obviously ahead of time for this year, as we always do, so we're seeing better transportation costs, but on a year-over-year basis, we have a hard comp versus first quarter. Just to keep that in mind, Ben. Perfect. Very clear. Thank you very much. Next question comes from Adrian Huerta from JP Morgan. Adrian, please go ahead. Thank you, Lucy. Hi, Maher and Fernando. My question is also with prices. When you gave a guidance after Q4 results and you're reiterating the guidance now, for EBITDA growth of mid-single digits, how much did your price assumption change? I know you don't give guidance on pricing, but how much did the price increase assumption change from then up until now? Let me start with a few comments and then either Maher or Lucy might complement. Adrian, I think we all have seen how things have changed since early last year, meaning we started last year with a regular, now we can call it low inflation, with a very positive outlook. Then at about midyear, we saw an inflection point, meaning inflation started to escalate, particularly power, I mean, fuels and electricity. Growth expectations started to be adjusted to lower levels. When we saw that, we adjusted our strategy as much as you can do it in July or August of a year, but we adjusted our pricing strategy to cope with that newer assumptions of inflation. We did as much as we could, meaning start increasing prices again in July, August, September. We prepared our pricing strategy for this year, and we started executing in January 1st. The trends continue being more or less the same. Just to find out in February, the 24th or the 25th, that there was a war. On top of the humanitarian pain that comes with it, what we saw is these trends, higher inflation and growth deterioration, GDP growth deterioration, being accelerated. The prices we executed in January didn't have yet the full or the current assumptions for inflation that we are updating in this call. Now the rest of price increases in our strategy have been updated to the newest estimates of inflation. As you saw, we are increasing materially the assumption of inflation of fuels. We have adapted our strategy. I think we have considered that for the rest of the year, we will continue having this high level of inflation. We are prepared on the elements of the first phase. I'm calling first phase our full pricing strategy for the first half, second phase, the second price increases in the second half. We are prepared to continue monitoring and continue adjusting our pricing strategy under the base that our aim is to recover margins. That's what we are aiming for. That's what we are adjusting. That's our objective, what we are executing. I hope that answers your question. Thank you, Fernando. The next question comes from Anne Milne from Bank of America. Anne, please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you very much, Fernando, Maher, Lucy. I want to ask a question related to higher interest rates. I know that Fernando, so far you haven't seen, or maybe it was Lucy, an impact on the housing markets in the U.S. and maybe other markets. I was wondering, where do you see the impact of higher interest rates? Maher, I know you said that most of the debt is fixed rate, so until you have, you know, the opportunity to call these or on that small percentage that's floating, where do you see the impact of interest rates on the business? Maybe Maher, could you give the interest rate lock that you discussed? Sure. Fernando, do you want me to address the impact of interest rates? Please. I imagine the impact of interest rate on potential, on one side and then on areas that potentially it could impact is probably more market, but affordability continues to be, I would say, okay. It's less affordable because prices have gone up quite a bit. Rentals have gone up quite a bit. If you take a look at inventories of existing houses, and if you take a look at inventories of new homes, they continue to be very tight. I mean, we certainly have seen a slowdown in refinancings, but demand for housing continues to be quite good. I mean, we haven't seen yet a drop in demand in that perspective. The order book in the U.S. continues to be good. But clearly there is, you know, expected moderation, right? I mean, that clearly is gonna be doing better, frankly, if we take a look at the forward-looking order book. In terms of infrastructure, we also think we're very well positioned when we take a look at our own in the U.S. I mean, you know, D.O.T. budgets for the year are all either stable to growing. I mean, you know, so that's also very. We are not seeing and we're not expecting, you know, any major demand destruction as a consequence of the interest rate environment in the U.S. In Mexico, you know, again, I think the housing area continues to, you know, affordability from a financing perspective continues to be fairly good, fairly affordable. We continue to have the highest risk in terms of interest sensitivity to it. You know, that's not something that in any important way in Europe. The areas that are interest, we're not seeing that being impacted, which is the residential market, frankly, from our perspective. Now, our financing, our debt stack, depending on how you look at the numbers, we're somewhere between 86, 87 to 90% already. Because of the tender offer that we did, our revolving credit facility, which is a portion either from asset sales that are closing or from operating cash flow generation, that amount would be paid throughout the year, and there's really no need for us to be bothering to technically kind of fix that component of our exposure. Now, in terms of, you know, forward-looking, frankly, you know, we don't have any financing needs that we were fairly proactive. Of course, we do expect as how patience kind of came through of higher interest rates going into next year. We took advantage of that, you know, at a very attractive window. We entered into essentially a forward rate locks for 10-year treasuries, you know, starting June of next year, at a rate. I mean, at the time that we did the rate locks, the treasuries were probably at one of their lowest moments in the last few months, and we locked it in between 2.7 and 2.8, 2.9. The expectations maybe is that it would go higher. Now, why did we do that? Because starting next year, we you know excluding you know the discounting of some of our bonds in the market because of market activity, some of our bonds become callable. We wanna position ourselves to do liability management with attractive costs. You know, 300 is better than nothing. That's what we did. I'm not suggesting that we're necessarily going to be calling any bonds. Of course, we continue to see some very interesting pricing in our bonds in the market. I mean, they're continuing to trade at a discount, not because of our creditworthiness, primarily because of the increase in rates, I would say more than anything else. I don't know if that answers your question, Anne. Yes, no, very good. Thanks very much, Maher. Thank you. Lucy, we can't hear you. Hi. I might just add quickly on the U.S. side that volumes in first quarter were up. People would think that that somehow reflects an easy comp, but it doesn't. First quarter 2021 volumes were also up 9%. 2021 in Texas out of our 14 states had the lowest growth rate year-over-year. There's more going on here. It's residential, like Maher said. It's industrial and commercial. We are seeing a lot. There's been a real pickup on that industrial and commercial side, and residential continues to grow. A lot of this is given our footprint because so much of our footprint from migration, pandemic migration. Yes, of course, we're keeping our eyes out for weakness on the residential side in the U.S., but we certainly haven't seen it so far. With that, the next question comes from Yassine Touahri from On Field. Yes. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Just one question for me is, have you seen any postponements or cancellations of construction works in Europe, in the U.S. or in Latin America, because of increasing costs of building or because of building material shortages? Hi, Yassine. As we briefly commented before, the books are strong. What we have seen but is not that new, meaning it didn't started happening in the last couple of months, is that there are several issues. Construction is being impacted by supply chain issues. There are some delays in certain jobs, in certain developments, but not to the point of suspension. Now the context, particularly in the case of Europe because of the war, it is a concern. I mean, what's gonna be happening, and it will depend on the conflict, the duration, on so many things. So far, we have not seen deterioration on or suspension in those type of projects. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we have Yassine. Thanks, Yassine. I think we have time for one last question, this comes from Vanessa Quiroga from Credit Suisse. Vanessa, please go ahead. Hi. Thank you. Congrats on the results. I guess I will ask you about the U.S. because the volumes in the first quarter surprised. Your guidance for the full year is more conservative than that. What do you expect to happen during the rest of the year to get to the guidance? Or do you think your current volume guidance? Thank you. Lucy, I'm gonna let you answer that one. I think, Vanessa, I kind of talked about the strength that we're seeing in this. While we haven't seen any, you know, any weakening, I think it is being cautious, and we are taking into account that there might be some softening of residential, you know, a quarter or two out. I don't think if it does happen, then it's not gonna be immediate because we have a lot of, you know, orders already on the books for residential. Industrial and commercial continues to pick up. You could make a pretty good argument today with what's happening in Europe that supply chain issues are only going to get worse in the future. I would also add that the oil industry, while we don't directly sell, but you are seeing a pickup in West Texas again, on the shale side, and we benefit from that from our aggregates business. Texas was the slower of the growth. We had a lot of other states that contributed more. You know, Arizona I would call out, where there are two chip manufacturing facilities, these are enormous, that are being constructed, and we're involved in either one or both of those. You know, strong demand from on-shoring. I think we're seeing the same thing in Mexico that will benefit. What we're seeing in Europe is only going to make this on-shoring trend even stronger, we believe, going forward. That would be my commentary. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. No, that's great. About the Infra bill, maybe some front loading of projects related to that bill? We are seeing contract awards rising, which of course is, you know, the step before bidding. We are seeing those rise fairly robustly, at least as of February. I think that we're optimistic that towards the end of the year and primarily beginning in 2023, we will start seeing the benefit of that for infrastructure. Remember that this year's guidance is primarily based on, you know, kind of more moderated volume growth in residential and significant growth in industrial and commercial, primarily the industrial piece. For the first time in a number of years, we're seeing that sector, you know, come back. Thank you very much, Lucy. Okay. Thank you. Well, we appreciate you joining us today for our first quarter webcast and conference call. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact investor relations, and we look forward to seeing you again on our second- Thank you for your participation in today's Connect. Good day.