Good morning, welcome to Cemex Day 2026. My name is Lucy Rodriguez, and I am the Chief Communications Officer for Cemex. Whether you've braved this week's bomb cyclone in New York to make it here today, or you're a chicken and joining us from the online, I want to thank you for taking the time to hear our Analyst Day. I usually introduce Cemex Day by stepping back and looking at what has changed since we last met, which was March 2024. At that time, in March of 2024, I talked about the velocity of change and how it has accelerated, and so much was happening so fast. Now, when I look back at that time, it almost seems like it was dial-up internet. The speed of change that we're experiencing is absolutely unprecedented. I never could have imagined what would have happened over the last two years. We've seen geopolitical disruption at a pace not experienced for decades. While many of us initially thought this would be temporary, it certainly seems as though it's structural, signaling a very broad shift in how the global economy operates. The globalization model that shaped trade as well as investment flows for years, 50 years, in fact, is evolving towards a much more multipolar and regionally oriented system. At the same time, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence is reshaping productivity, competitiveness, and national priorities, reinforcing the importance of domestic, industrial, and digital infrastructure. Governments are once again leaning into industrial policy, placing greater emphasis on economic security, energy independence, supply chain resilience, technological leadership, and local manufacturing capacity. Ultimately, all of these trends influence capital allocation, manufacturing investment, and infrastructure spending, all key drivers of construction demand. You all are very lucky, that's all I'm going to say on these topics, and I'm not going into detail. The real point I want to bring you is that against that backdrop, it would be very easy to think that geopolitics has been the primary force shaping CEMEX's outlook. I think if you were to ask most of our employees what has been most important in the development of the past few years, it has been internal: strengthening our capital structure, appointing a new CEO, and launching our transformation plan. Together, these actions have brought renewed clarity, focus, and visibility to CEMEX, positioning us to deliver best-in-class operational performance and shareholder return excellence. For some housekeeping duties. Slides are available on our website. We have Q&A sessions scheduled at the end of the European Decarbonization Landscape and the U.S. Aggregate presentations. In the case of our CEO, Jaime Muguiro, our CFO, Maher Al-Haffar, and our EVP of Strategic Planning, José Antonio González, we will not have Q&A at the end of their presentations, but rather have a wrap-up Q&A as the final event of the day. We ask that you hold your questions until the Q&A sessions. During the session, we ask that you wait to be recognized and also handed a microphone prior to asking the question, and we would suggest, finally, that you stand up to ask the question so you can be captured on the webcast. For those joining us through the webcast, you can submit your questions via email to ir@cemex.com. Please keep in mind that we have a limited amount of time and may not be able to cover every question. You're welcome to reach out to IR. We will try to get answers back to you. As usual, there are no questions that are off-limits, except for those that present disclosure or confidentiality issues. Finally, I am coming to the end. Please note that our presentations today may include forward-looking statements and assumptions based on currently available information. As market conditions change, our views and our forward-looking statements will adjust to incorporate such information. Unless the context indicates otherwise, all references to pricing initiatives, pricing increases or decreases refer to prices for our products. We invite you to read the disclaimer section included at the beginning of each presentation. I dare you to do it. Now, without further delay, it is my pleasure to introduce our first speaker, Jaime Muguiro, our CEO. Good morning, everybody, it's great to have you all here. It's a pity that many more were coming, I think that their traveling arrangements were disrupted because of the weather. Normally, when we organize something in New York, I'm coming, it always snows or something goes wrong. That's why my wife this year decided not to come with me. I'm very excited to be here in my new capacity, together with the rest of my teams. Others from the ExCo didn't come because of our transformation, because we're truly focusing on cost containment, I think that sends an important message. I wanna introduce myself. Some of you do know me, not everybody, many connected on the webcast. I'm Jaime, a simple person, happily married to Conchita. We have three adults, two children. Two of Jaime and Ximena live in New York. My eldest daughter lives in Spain. She's the one married. There is a third baby coming, future Anna, in May. We have been an expat family for 24 years, and I've given my life and that of my family to CEMEX. Next month, I will be celebrating 30 years serving my employees, my colleagues, the board, our customers, and more importantly, our investors. I have had the privilege of doing business in most of our portfolio. I think that that gives me, as the new leader in CEMEX, a competitive advantage, that when you combine it with a very talented group of managers who have also enjoyed and experienced a vast, right, living experience, both in corporate functions and in the business, it sets us as a strong, a talented team to drive this transformation, which as I will elaborate in a minute, it is all about putting the investor at the center on how we manage the company. When I was appointed the CEO, which was a surprise and is indeed an honor to take the job, the first thing I did was to spend a lot of time talking to people. I talked to customers, I talked to investors, and I talked to employees, and all of my colleagues, relentlessly. We learned many things in that discussion. It was a very candid discussion because we were talking about our strengths, and we were talking about our weaknesses. We were talking about what type of company were we taking over after I set up my new team. There were great things from the past, but we understood that there were also things that needed to change. In that journey, right, I'm going to start by telling you today that we have one of the best talented teams in the industry to deliver superior shareholder returns. Number two, I took the baton of a company that had recently reached investment credit rating, a much stronger balance sheet, not yet enough, but a much stronger balance sheet, right? That was undergoing a portfolio rebalancing effort, concentrating geographically in Mexico, the United States, and Europe, and operating additionally in some other positions in the Middle East and LatAm because they deliver above-average growth and very strong free cash flow. Today, I come here to tell you that CEMEX will continue to be a heavy building material provider, concentrated geographically in mainly Mexico, the United States, and Europe, serving our customers across all end markets. We are pursuing this strategy because of the following: We believe we have great teams, very strong positions in well-structured, attractive markets in the short and medium term. Mexico, think about it, is a country that has one of the best demographic pyramids in the world. Very young population, eager to make progress in life and in need for housing, shelter, schooling, infrastructure. Mexico, fixing a few things, is one of the countries that has the great potential to become a great country and deliver very strong growth. Through the cycle, CEMEX has always delivered very strong free cash flow in dollar terms, in the very short term, we do see the recovery of the demand that was affected last year. We began to see that recovery in the second half of 2025, we do see that momentum is building. We do see social housing, we do see infrastructure. When you think about the United States, we believe that it's one of the markets with the strongest steel, with the strongest economic fundamentals. The economy is very resilient, and the midterm outlook continues to be very solid. There is pent-up demand for housing, and I'm pretty sure that as affordability recovers, we will begin to enjoy the single-family home segment of the market in the short term. I don't know long term where the new starts will stabilize, depending on domestic migration and immigration trends. For the time being, there is pent-up demand, and we do expect in the short term, not in 2026, though, but we do expect, right, the recovery of the residential sector in the United States. We also think that infrastructure will continue, and therefore, growth for heavy building materials will be underpinned by infrastructure.p. We're also very excited because we do see opportunities to deploy our growth bolt-on strategy under a new capital allocation framework that I will share with you in a minute, around aggregates and additional adjacent synergetic businesses such as Omega, and we will elaborate about that. That strengthens our value proposition to the targeted end markets. Europe, where we do see recovering volumes underpinned by infrastructure and also residential. What I'm most excited about, despite all the noise about the ETS, and José Antonio Cabrera will elaborate more about that, is that in the short term, we do see a build-up of significant pricing characteristics, favorable pricing characteristics. We do see, we are very strong position because of what we did in the past, we have a very competitive CO2 carbon cost curve relative to the industry and more so importers, as CBAM has been introduced. After confirming who we wanna be and where we wanna play, also in my conversations, we did recognize that there were significant opportunities to improve. One of my main concerns when I took over was that we were not generating any free cash flow, and that needed to change and needed to change immediately. The other aspect was that we were not producing good shareholder returns. Finally, we were not a lean company, and we had excessive cost. Okay? With this in mind, right, when I took over, I took advantage that we had announced Project Cutting Edge, which back then aimed at saving $350 million recurring savings, EBITDA savings by 2027. I decided, together with my team, to leverage Project Cutting Edge to transform, not just to cut costs that is gonna come back again, no, but to substantially transform the company. The transformation is simple. It's about managing the company, putting the investors at the center on how we allocate capital and the decisions we take. This transformation is underpinned by a relentless focus on operational excellence. The transformation is built around four pillars. First one, we want to roar like we used to in the past, which means become the best-in-class operator.n Managing properly the top line, which means being expert on every end market, having our teams understand what is the profitability per customer, per ton, per cubic yard, per cubic meter, per job site, and being very fast and agile, moving from residential to infrastructure, using the right data and moving fast and on real time. Also, being best-in-class operator means becoming very lean, being able to eliminate non-value-added activities, and always keep competitive cost base, and pursue margin expansions leveraging technology. The second pillar is how we assess internally our performance. We introduced new metrics that are more aligned with shareholders. We're not looking anymore only at top-line growth and EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Now we're managing the business using EBIT growth, EBIT margin, free cash flow conversion from operations, fully loaded free cash flow, and ROIC over WACC. Something new that I did was, I decided to run away from five-year business plans because everything that we were putting in front of us first and then in front of you, we never met it because of uncertainty. What I decided to do was to introduce Formula 1 three-year sprints. What I'm doing is, together with my team, we're engaging with the line, relentlessly driving operational excellence in a three-year sprint, where everybody needs to be fit, looking for shareholder returns, maximizing free cash flow, and keeping us very fit, very lean, and very agile. In those business performance reviews, we put every business to test through those new metrics, and particularly ROIC over WACC through the cycle and free cash flow conversion. I will elaborate a little bit later what it means and the opportunities that come along with that effort. The third pillar of our transformation is our new capital allocation framework, I'm really very excited about it. I can tell you right now two things, but then I'll elaborate more. That capital allocation framework is anchored on two things. First, all cash uses compete for risk-adjusted best shareholder returns. That's new to CEMEX. We were not managing the company that way. This is the new way. This is the only way. The second aspect is that investment credit rating status, which it took us so long, is non-negotiable, right. That is there to stay. Maher will elaborate much more about our capital allocation framework and about our investment credit rating. Finally, we are committed, and it's another pillar of our transformation, right. To set a robust shareholder return platform with progressive dividends and share buybacks. As we announced, right, we're making progress. Because we announced, and we will subject to the shareholders meeting in March, the approval for an increase of close to 40% in dividends, and we have already begun share buybacks. In fact, as of yesterday, we had already purchased $100 billion, right. That, I think that it demonstrate that we are saying and executing what we said. Okay. You know, this transformation is not just about finance, it's not about numbers, it's also about our culture. Because if we didn't transform how we operate, how we feel, right, what makes us proud and our culture, we wouldn't be transforming, right. Then we would be seeing costs coming back. What is it that I look for, right? CEMEX is and will become a very agile company, very lean, relentlessly focused on cost and operational excellence, continue putting the customer on our job sites at the center of what we do, okay? Killing bureaucracy, automating processes, killing non-value-added activities. You know what's very exciting? Adopting the owner's mentality, right? What does that mean? It means, you know, allocate capital as if you were the owner, right? That is critical. We are going to pursue operational excellence, which means benchmarking against best-in-class, in every business, in every micro-market, against our peers, but beyond, because there are good benchmarks outside of our industry when it comes to overhead, SG&A, so on and so forth. We are, right, bringing those benchmarks to our business performance reviews, top-down and bottom-up, as I will explain in a minute. I want a company, an organization, and employees who wanna change, who wanna adapt, who are not scared from change and technology. We will continue. We've done great in the past using technology. Now is the time to continue adopting AI, to boost productivity, to support operational excellence through margin expansion, right? For sure, this transformation continues to put safety as our first core value. Let's continue with my presentation. One of the first things that we did when I took over was to move very fast. Again, taking advantage of Project Cutting Edge, right, to propel a structural savings. We had announced a target of $350 million, today, I want to confirm to you all that we're gonna deliver $400 million. What's more exciting is that in the next quarter calls, I'll be updating you that we will be surpassing this target. By how much? I cannot give you today the name, the number, but bear with me, we will do so at least in the second quarter call, okay? I feel very comfortable that there will be more, and it will be material. With that in mind, why am I so sure that at least we're gonna deliver $400 million? Very simple, because the job is done for 50% of the savings. $200 million results from a 23% reduction on global overhead. The job is done. Of that, you know, incrementally, $125 million is already happening. We saw it in January big time, and it's secured. The other $200 million are operating efficiencies linked to operational excellence, and José Antonio González will provide more color on that bucket. We are expecting incrementally $40 million and an additional $35 million by 2027. Do expect more savings as we continue our transformation, and be patient, I'll provide you color in the 2Q call. I also wanna share with you how exciting our business performance reviews are as part of our sprint. What happens there? My operating colleagues, my regional presidents, right, and again, I'm one of them, right? Together with the rest of the Expo members, right, working with me and the staff, travel and go boots on the ground to the line. In those engagements, I always engage with a customer at least to continue learning. One of the things that I'm concerned about is that I end up trapped in offices, losing the understanding of what is going on in the marketplace. That's not gonna happen. I use my business reviews to have boot on the ground. You know, whether we're delivering the right value propositions to the right market segments, to the right customers. The other thing that happens is that we review our performance through the lenses of the new metrics: EBIT, free cash flow conversion from operations, fully loaded free cash flow, and ROIC over WACC. We were not doing that in the past, okay. We do that by business, but also by micro market. We go very detailed. As a result of these reviews, we have identified incremental opportunities that would bring incremental EBITDA between $80 million-$120 million, and would free up free cash flow between $100 million-$150 million. Please note that we have included very little of this lever, if you will, in our commitment by 2027, and the reason for that is because to turn around some of this business, we need to continue transforming and lowering the cost, because our assessments comes fully loaded with overhead by business, which we were not doing in the past, okay. More cost transformation, right? The other thing is that we need a little bit of tailwind, okay, in volumes. Having said that, there will be structurally certain businesses that are not meeting today, are much more demanding financial thresholds, we will let them go. Most of the opportunities are in Ready-Mix in Europe, followed by some in the U.S. The rest of the work in the rest of the portfolio for the most part, is done. As you can imagine, the low-hanging fruit, which means shut the thing down, has been done. It will take a little bit of time, and that's why it's not included in our first spring, because we have vertically integrated positions. Therefore, deconsolidating assets divesting requires delicate move, it requires transacting with others to continue protecting what we have upstream, right, which is admixtures, cement, cementitious, and aggregates. Rest assured that this is a self-help lever. Please note that from this effort, we will bring profits that we will recirculate, helping improve the earnings quality of our portfolio. Okay. Allow me now to share with you the new capital allocation framework, that, as I said, right, is anchored around two critical things, right? Investment credit rating status is not negotiable, and all cash uses compete. Again, I'll say it loudly, for risk-adjusted based shareholder return. Maher, you're gonna explain later, you know, in more detail, our capital allocation framework. Allow me to take you with me through our journey, right? What have we been doing? We've been relentlessly working in the past to pay debt because we were highly levered. You know the story, right? That's the only thing we did. We divested, and all proceeds and free cash flow went to pay debt. From 2020 onwards, we began, CEMEX began approving significant strategic CapEx. Back then, we continued paying debt to delever, aiming at getting investment credit rating, which we did end of 2024, right? Because of that, when you look at 2022–2025, 35% of our cash sources went to pay debt. Before 2022, it was almost everything. 59% went to strategic CapEx to fuel growth. That strategic CapEx is something else that we learned when I had so many conversations, right? Because there are two types of strategic CapEx: margin expansion and greenfields. When you think about risk-adjusted decisions, right, there could be some, you know, that maybe we shouldn't have done because they were exposed to volume. You have strategic CapEx related to margin expansion, which we tend to control more, right? If you look at 2022–2025, we barely provided cash to shareholders. Now is the time for shareholders in CEMEX. That is our transformation, and that is our commitment. I want a capital allocation that by 2030, it provides between 40%-50% of the free cash flow we generate to the shareholders through progressive dividends and share buybacks. I mean it, and we're doing it. In addition, in the very short term, we will continue paying debt, because when you look at our interest expenses per year relative to our EBITDA, it still is high. It is accretive to shareholders to continue to pay debt, to boost free cash flow, which in, at the end, is gonna go 40%, 50% by 2030 to shareholders. Okay? There is a fundamental change on our growth strategy. No more strategic CapEx. We're gonna be reducing it, and will only be used for margin expansion to support operational excellence and for profitable decarbonization at the speed dictated by CO2 prices. José Antonio Cabrera will elaborate more about that because not all this noise, you know, is, and we like the noise, the market doesn't. We will explain why we think we had a great opportunity in Europe on our pricing. Allow me to elaborate a little bit more on growth, José Antonio, you know, will expand.n We're going to be materially reducing CapEx, and we're going to use cash 40%-50% for bolt-ons. We're going to do them primarily in the U.S. in Aggregates and adjacent synergetic businesses. That complement and it strengthens our value proposition to the end market segment. I would like to be more exposed to infrastructure in the U.S., which is a less cyclical end market, right? While also pursuing a value proposition for the building environment, which brings higher earnings, quality businesses, less volatile, with much higher free cash flow conversion. Omega is a great example of that, and José Antonio will elaborate more about that. Finally, after the bolt-ons, as I said a second ago, we will use some strategic CapEx just for margin expansion for the most part, and for profitable decarbonization. Where? In Europe and California. Why? Those are the regions that provide the necessary regulation for continuous profitable decarbonization. Finally, right, we will continue our portfolio rebalancing. Do expect, right, at least $1 billion of divestitures in this sprint, and that will be recycled into bolt-ons in the United States for the time being. We will not let go a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity if we see a very good opportunity for M&A in Mexico and in Europe. Again, I don't wanna confuse my team, I don't wanna confuse you, priority is the United States for the time being. I wanna make a pause here for a second to thank my team for what they did last year. When I took over, and this new team took over, we were facing a very difficult 2025.n Because our two main markets, the United States and Mexico, were facing, right, a material reduction in the demand for our building materials. In the case of the U.S., now, two years, if not three, of soft demand in a row. It was a very difficult year, right? You know, when I was saying, "Oh, my gosh, I've been appointed!" I was like, di-di-di-di-di, right? "What am I gonna say in the first call?" No. We had a plan, we set it up, and we did what we said. One strength that we do have is our capability to execute, and that is very relevant. That's the reason why the second half of the year, right, our top line grew by the 8%, but our EBITDA and our EBITA grew disproportionately by 17% and 25%, right? As you well know. Our EBITDA margin expanded by 160 basis points at times when volumes were dropping. This demonstrated that we were capturing the synergies we promised. This is exactly what's happening right now. Furthermore, last year, we also boosted free cash flow, one of my main concerns. Since I took over, in fact, as I was transitioning in March, I was able already to take some decisions, and the first one I did was stop all capital allocation. We reviewed every CapEx, and we stopped a hell of a lot of them, okay? Because of that, right, we kept doing what it made sense according with our new capital allocation framework, and the rest, gone. Because of that, we were able to improve free cash flow conversion from operations by 15 percentage points when adjusted by the one-off several payments, which were material, $180 million last year, and discontinued operations. Please note that that sets us strong to a path to achieving at least 50% free cash flow conversion from operations. I will show you the numbers in a minute. Furthermore, We already guided you that in 2026, compared to 2024, our CapEx and interest expenses are reducing by $500 million, of which $160 million is interest, annual interest expenses. Maher will continue to do the job to reduce that number over time, and the rest is CapEx, which will be reduced by $327 million in 2026. That will continue to boost free cash flow conversion from operations. Please note that we are transitioning from free cash flow conversion from operations to fully loaded free cash flow, which means free cash flow before discretionary capital allocation, which means growth, debt, shareholders. I will provide the equivalent, you know, of what we're targeting for 2027 in a minute. Allow me to say kudos, as we say that in the U.S., right, Jesus? Kudos to the team. I think we delivered. The message here is we are, as a team, fully committed to delivering best-in-class shareholder returns. I wanna share with you a personal question that I asked myself when I was appointed, that I think some investors have also asked themselves, which is: Can a management team with a long tenure in a company change? I think we can. An incumbent has an advantage, and that advantage is that you know the business inside out. When you have the mentality to say, "Enough of mediocrity, we must transform," you know, we can do it. This team here, and those who didn't travel to save cost, are fully committed to changing, transforming, and executing, and doing what's necessary to achieve best-in-class shareholder returns. Allow me to share with you our targets for, again, first sprint, three years, which began in 2025 and is gonna finish in 2027. Then what we do is that we roll it up 12, no, 12 months. 12 months. This is a race. I like to combine Formula 1 with three-year. Pow! Right? We're already working on 2028, bottom up, top down, where we have operating KPIs connected to financial KPIs and personally to a share price target, which I will not tell you today. What are the targets we're looking for to deliver? We wanna deliver $3.7 billion of EBITDA by 2027. That is a compounded annual growth rate of 10% from 2025, a disproportionately CAGR growth for EBIT, 14%, an expansion of ROIC of 170 basis points, an EBITDA and an EBIT expansion, a margin of 190 points, you know, and sales mid-single-digit CAGR. What it is very relevant is that 55% of this growth relies on self-help measures. Little relies on organic growth. José Antonio will provide more color on the organic growth and the self-help. Please note, I said it before, that we're working, and I'm expecting that by the second quarter, we'll provide more color on structural transformation savings. What those will do is to increase that percent from 55% to something else. We have done very conservative assumptions on organic growth. Please note that we have only considered Couch and Omega in this target. As I will comment in a minute, we will continue to pursue accretive bolt-ons under a very disciplined capital allocation, a framework that I recently, that I just shared with you. The free cash flow, right, will grow exponentially, significantly higher than the rate of our EBITDA and our EBIT, achieving at least 47% free cash flow conversion from operations, which translate into a 38% free cash flow, fully diluted before paying debt, growth, returning cash to shareholders. We aim at a cumulative free cash flow of $3.3 billion from operations. Please also note that we will have $5 billion of available financial capacity to support our strategy. I'm saying this, right, but at the same time, I wanna clarify that we're gonna be very disciplined, and we're not gonna be using $5 billion to do big deals, right? Here, we are including $1 billion of divestitures proceeds that will be recycled. The amount, right, of capital that we can use for our growth strategy is around $2 billion, Maher, José Antonio. Both of them will elaborate more later. Please note that all our decisions, again, will be based on our framework, which commits, and I've already committed, 40%-50% cash return to shareholders by 2030. In the shorter term, I wanna continue paying a bit of debt, lower interest, boost free cash flow, and get us to 50% by 2030. To summarize it, what should investors expect from us? Investors should expect from us that I am, together with my team, at your service, and that we're here to deliver best-in-class shareholder returns. That my team and CEMEX is relentlessly focused on operational excellence. Shoemaker, do shoes!... Don't get distracted, continue serving your customers, be very close to the end markets, to the job sites, and provide the right value propositions. You have my promise that we will turn around those businesses that are not meeting our new financial metrics, and those that we think that we will not make it because volumes might not be there and structurally there might be a better business and asset for somebody else, we will divest. Just be patient. It's delicate, it'll take a bit of time, but it's a self-help lever that has a tremendous upside potential to our EBITDA and free cash flow, and will bring profits that we will recycle, improving the earnings quality of our portfolio. My team and I are totally committed to working relentlessly to boost free cash flow conversion. We're committed to providing to shareholders 40%, 50% of our cash, right? Through dividends and share buybacks. We will deploy a very disciplined capital allocation for M&A under strict financial metrics that José Antonio González will share later. In the U.S., around aggregates and a few other adjacent synergetic businesses, direct synergies upstream, direct synergies customers, and some logistics synergies in between. In the building environment, some of which will have exposure to renovation. Okay, stuccos and mortars is a good example, is for both new construction and renovation, right? Infrastructure. With that, I'll leave you, and I'm gonna pass the word to you, Lucy, who will introduce to José Antonio, and I'll come back later with José Antonio to answer your questions. I have here Jeff Bobolts with Jesus. Jeff Bobolts runs the U.S. Aggregates. He'll talk more about aggregates. I didn't elaborate much. José Antonio won't elaborate too much because Jeff has very exciting things to share with you. I look forward also, José Antonio, to your presentation about our CO2 cost competitiveness, the great job that the team did in Europe, and why we're so excited about our pricing in Europe. Okay. Thank you so much for your interest. I'll be back later. Thank you. Thank you. This will be very quick, but I am pleased to introduce probably someone who many of you know, José Antonio González, who's Head of Planning and Corporate Development for us, to take us into a little more detail into Jaime's business plan. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Lucy, and thank you, Jaime. Well, it's great to be here this morning. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Those who are joining via the webcast, welcome, and thank you for being here. I'm glad to see quite a few familiar faces. Looking forward to meeting some of you that I haven't met before, no? Great, great to be here, and I will, during my presentation, which is about our growth strategy, I will build and elaborate on many of the points that Jaime was or had just made in his presentation. I'd like to focus on two things today. These are, you know, the way we see it, is two main levers of our transformation, of our ongoing transformation, which have a direct— we believe, have a direct impact in our potential to deliver attractive shareholder returns, no? One of them is operational excellence and how we are driving to become a best-in-class operator, with improvement in metrics, improvement in free cash flow, free cash flow conversion, spread between our cost of capital and the returns we get out of our businesses. That's a big topic in our ongoing transformation. The second one has to do with our growth strategy. We have included in our sprint, in our three-year sprint, a few investments that are already executed, most notably Omega, which was announced this morning, and I will elaborate a little bit more on that, as well as an investment in Aggregates in southern United States. We will build or we will develop, in our sprint, financial capacity to undertake additional initiatives for growth, under a very strict investment criteria, under a very clear capital allocation framework, in which capital is competing for the best options that we can comfortably link to shareholder return. Those are the two things that I will elaborate a little bit more on. The business performance reviews, which we have been talking about, I would like to share a little bit of my personal experience undertaking those, because they are quite, they're an important component culturally of the transformation that we are going through right now. You know, first, you know, we had this conceptual view that was developed by this consultation process that Jaime followed with many people in the company, together with, you know, own views. We started on the left side here, establishing metrics that we thought were required to deploy across the company. Deep down to each operating unit that could really tell us how each unit is performing from a shareholder return, from a value creation standpoint. We also established targets. There was a lot of benchmarking going on. There was a lot of data mining, in, you know, tons of public information available, and also comparison against internal benchmarks. All of this allowed us to establish top-down targets, very ambitious targets, but brought down to a very detailed level, almost plant by plant or cluster by cluster, in the case of Ready-Mix zone. The combination of this establishment of these top-down targets, as well as the rollout of these metrics, are tremendous tools that allow us to understand how the business is performing, identify performance gaps, and then, through the business performance reviews, establish the action plans to close these gaps. Other things that go into the business performance review, are how we're doing with our capital deployment. We did allocate substantial CapEx, or capital in multiple projects across our businesses a few years ago. There's a lot of successes, and there's some that haven't worked out yet as we were planning, either because of shortfalls in volumes or changes versus the original assumption. There's a very deep discussion about how we are doing or how we have done to inform our decisions going forward, no? Very importantly, it is about establishing very specific action plans and commitments to close these performance gaps, no? It's been quite a process. A few people from the staff or supporting areas join our colleagues in the operations. We sit around the table for a few days, and we have very deep and detailed discussions, micro market by micro market, business by business, and inevitably, we identify opportunities, no? That creates a basis for an action plan, an agenda, that we then follow up and track going into the future. These performance reviews happen twice a year in each one of our regions. It's we already performed last year, two of them in each of the regions, except for SCAC, only one. It's very interesting to see how the quality of the conversation, especially given all this information and the methodology, how the quality of the conversation improves as everybody sort of as we're leveling our understanding of the business and being able to, based on benchmarks, comparisons, et cetera, we're able to come up with very attractive improvement plans, no? That's, that's a big component of this ongoing transformation, and it's been quite exciting. And on a personal note, you know, While we are doing all of this, and while the conversations are ongoing, while we identify this opportunity space, we create the sprint, which has 10% CAGR for two years. We change the narrative with the markets, of course, inevitably, we get excited about how we see our share price performing, for example, last year, no? We realize that a lot of that is, you know, an anticipation of the results of all of this. In a way, we're getting paid a little bit in advance. That creates in our, in ourselves, a higher degree of commitment to make all of this a reality, no? On the one hand, it's exciting, but it's a realization that we need to deliver, no? What happens when we see units that have important performance gaps, no? Down below, you can see, you know, we've identified assets, units in our portfolio that have an opportunity for improvement. We have estimated the size of the opportunity to be between $80 million-$120 million of EBITDA, $100 million-$150 million in free cash flow. A very small portion of this has been already sort of a, let's say, has already a plan attached to it, and therefore has made it to our sprint. It's only a small portion, because normally the complete solution of a unit that has an opportunity for improvement takes a lot of time. We go through again, part of the review methodology. You know, we go through an analysis of how these businesses are doing relative to the cycle, because, as you know, we have been seeing softish volumes in some of our markets over the last few years. Some assets have a performance gap, probably just because where they are in the cycle. It's very important to understand that, and also that in these assets, we're taking actions to confront profitability challenges because of low part of the cycle. We also look at the vertical integration. You know, we want to see the performance of the assets, each one of them, on a standalone basis, but we cannot ignore that in some instances, these assets, for example, in Ready-Mix, we're selling cement and aggregates through them, which have important profitability, but we don't want to subsidize businesses just because of vertical integration. It's very important to understand for this set of assets, you know, what is going on from a vertical integration standpoint, no? We look at performance improvement plans, like I already mentioned. In some instances, you know, we've already accounted for some of those improvements in the sprint. Small portion, not the full amount that you see here below, no? Ultimately, for some assets, sometimes the best solution involves third parties or a more, let's say, drastic solution. Eventually, you know, we've closed down some assets. Some assets are really, you know, when we look at them, we look at all this analysis, and the best conclusion is, "You know what? Just close them down," and we've done some of that. Others, it's a little bit more complicated. Probably some assets are better owned by other parties because they have more synergies or more vertical integration, so we might decide to divest, and there's some of that already happening. In some instances, it, the solution might be a joint venture because there's probably a great operator that runs assets on a very efficient basis, and putting them together with ours, there are synergies, et cetera. In joint ventures, that's, is the preferred solution whenever we want to retain the vertical integration, part of this angle, no? Also, a very well-structured methodology to address assets that have performance gaps and that can be improved. And we think that there's a lot of a very significant opportunity by approaching this and closing these gaps, no? That was, you know, a little bit of a summary or a little bit more color in terms of how we are approaching operational excellence, and how we want to drive performance and value creation in that process. Now I'd like to address a little bit more detail on how we have built our sprint. This is what we consider to be, you know, an attractive sprint. It considers growth two years in a row of around 10%. Very interestingly, a little bit more than half of this improvement in performance over two years is measures that are more under our control, so self-help measures, no? A very important component here is Project Cutting Edge, which I'm sure you're familiar with. It's a $400 million cost reduction program, out of which $200 million we've already taken the benefit from in 2025, but there's $200 million that we will still allow us to benefit in the sprint. That's an important component inside the self-help. Additionally, you know, we have been making investments in the past. There are some investments that are allowing us to get a margin enhancement, meaning they're not reliant on volumes or other significant elements outside of our control. We've also taken into account the benefits that we expect to get from those investments as part of this self-help bucket. Additionally, we included here executed M&A. Businesses that are up and running, that we have acquired, and that, you know, with a relatively low risk, we believe, you know, will be contributing, no? Most importantly, inside this bucket, we have two important investments. One is Omega, that we announced this morning, I will describe in a little more detail, the other one is Couch Aggregates, which we began consolidating late last year, after having begun with a 49% stake that we did not consolidate, later making an additional investment in order to consolidate that business. On the far right, we have organic growth. Organic growth explains one half or a little bit less than one half of this 10% CAGR, so maybe 5% or a little bit less than 5% CAGR over two years. Basically, behind this is an assumption that volumes are going to grow low single digit, and that our pricing strategy will allow us to compensate for input cost inflation. So that explains this assumption of 5% organic growth in two years. Also supporting the organic growth component is we did complete some investments over the last couple of years that are allowing us to capture the benefits of recovering volumes. Most notably, there's a number of projects in the U.S. in Aggregates that will allow us to increase our volumes, and I will not say much about that because Jeff will be making a, you know, addressing our Aggregates position in the U.S., no? We have that under organic growth because, you know, it's investments that will allow us to benefit from a more robust volume environment. going back, you know, again, a little bit more details in terms of the elements included in our three-year sprint. Here you see $200 million operational efficiencies. I mentioned Project Cutting Edge, $400 million. Out of the $400 million, $200 million have to do with overhead reductions, so personnel reductions. Those are done, but they were implemented in the middle of last year, so we'll have the benefit, part of the benefit we will get between 2025, 2026, sorry, 2026, 2027. There's another component which is not overhead or personnel reduction, which is just operational efficiency. That's another $200 million. Part of that, we already accomplished in 2025, about $120 million, but $80 million incremental benefits from operational efficiencies are included in this sprint from 2025-2027. Some examples, you know, we will have a breakdown, cost optimization activities related to our procurement efforts, optimizing our network, reducing our fixed costs, the business improvement plans that I described, which a small portion of it is already embedded in our three-year sprint, and reduction in cost in energy and fuels. For example, in the U.S., we have increased our production, which is allowing us to reduce imports, and the equation there is very attractive. 6% increase in cement production compared to prior years, allowing us to benefit from the lower cost of production versus imports. Rail network optimization in the U.S., you know, we reviewed the way we are paying for railway services. We used a should-cost approach, conduct negotiations with a lot of information in our hands. That allows us to accomplish some savings in the cost of that we spend on rail carriers. We're transforming our procurement model, both from a capabilities standpoint, but also a process whereby we're looking at every single item we buy or we procure and under a very robust methodology consisting of a lot of benchmarking and a lot of information, where we can compare costs across different suppliers, et cetera, we're accomplishing cost savings from that as well, no? From the business performance reviews, we've already included some components which has to do with consolidation of ready-mix plants, reduction of fixed costs, et cetera, no? Finally, in Mexico, we're continuing to find opportunities that we're taking actions in order to reduce fuel costs and the mix in Mexico, and that also contributes to these savings. Going to the organic growth component of our sprint, as I mentioned, we're assuming low single-digit volume growth across the board after having a couple of years with softish volumes in our main markets. We think this is a conservative assumption. In Mexico, demand is beginning to pick up after a very soft year last year, thanks to a resumption in infrastructure spending. The social housing program from the government that is targeting 1.8 million units. We believe some of that will also be supporting low single-digit demand growth in Mexico. In the United States, continue to be very positive on infrastructure and how that will underpin or support demand growth in the U.S. As you all know, investments in chip manufacturing facilities, data centers, all of that is continuing to support demand. You know, residential spending has been somewhat subdued. We don't think that, at least in the very near term, is going to be driving resumption of growth in the U.S. Thankfully, infrastructure and private investment, we think, is going to be providing very interesting support. In Europe, the story is also recovery. We're very positive on our portfolio in for Eastern Europe, you know, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia. As even Spain, we see very robust activity levels driven by infrastructure, European Union-backed investments. The German infrastructure bill, we believe, will provide some tailwinds. Very importantly, in Europe, and José Antonio Cabrera, my colleague, will elaborate, but we see a robust pricing environment driven by ETS and CBAM. I won't get into that. We think that considering low single-digit volume growth in our two-year, you know, 2026 and 2027, coupled with a pricing strategy that allows us to offset inflation, is realistic, is somewhat conservative, and we're, at this stage, very positive on our ability to or on that materializing and supporting the overall sprint, which, as you know, has 10% growth in 2026, 10% growth in 2027, no? Additionally, I did mention that our growth investments from the past are also allowing us to support our two-year sprint. I have here a few examples, but growth investments from the past, which are already contributing a significant amount of EBITDA in 2025, we think are going to contribute an additional or incremental $200 million between 2026 and 2027. You know, we have mentioned how we are pivoting away from growth CapEx into M&A. We are being, since last year and going forward, very selective with our growth CapEx. We expect to see very moderate amounts of growth CapEx into the future, but we do have this tailwind of the projects that we have been completing since a few years ago, and we're still completing with a much lower CapEx that we're spending, investing this year. We have sort of these three buckets. Projects that are allowing us to benefit from margin expansion, like in our Knoxville plant in the United States. We have, because of investment we made, we have reduced significantly the clinker factor to maximize the production of 1 L cement, reducing CO2 emissions, but allowing us important savings. In Huichapan, which is a low-temperature clinker with a Mexican flag, similar story. We have redesigned the clinker chemistry, adding more gypsum. That allows us to reduce the temperature at the kiln, reducing the clinker factor. With a very moderate investment, we get significant savings. Those are only two examples. In the case of growth, we have commissioned the Four Corners and the plant, allowing us to sell or to produce and sell an incremental 1.2 million tons of commercial sand. Jeff will elaborate on all our investments that we have made to allow us to sell more aggregates in the U.S. In Jamaica, we completed a debottlenecking. By the way, in the organic growth, Ben pointed out to something interesting this morning. I mentioned our organic growth assumptions for Mexico, Europe, the United States, but also in SCAC. In SCAC, we're also very, let's say, confident that a low single-digit volume growth assumption is the right one. There's more confidence, and also, infrastructure investment, no? To that end, we're also very happy that we have completed a debottlenecking in our Jamaica cement plant. Jamaica is booming. We were not being able to satisfy the market needs, so we invested in debottlenecking the plant. We're adding 30% additional capacity to reach about 1.2 million tons, and plant is going. We've been able to replace some imports that we're having to make because of, the tightness in supply, and also we get a little bit more flexibility to export into our system in the Caribbean, no? Very excited about the Jamaica plant and the incremental EBITDA that we will get. If you recall, this component of growth is supporting our organic growth. Again, investments that will allow us to capture the growth in volumes because of market growth, no? Finally, bolt-on M&A, two main acquisitions that we have completed: Couch Aggregates, in which we own a majority stake since late last year, and Omega, which is a stucco, the leading stucco producer in western United States, that we announced the acquisition this morning, and we expect to close by the end of March. Again, all of these elements are supporting our three-year sprint. Now moving on, I would like to elaborate a little bit more going forward, how we are aligning our efforts to produce incremental growth through our bolt-on M&A efforts. The priorities are investing in the U.S. primarily, very selectively in other markets. We're also looking into opportunities with Mexico, Europe, and elsewhere. Overwhelmingly, the priority is going to be the United States, focusing on Aggregates as a high priority in the U.S., selectively, potentially in other markets, and then adjacent businesses. This is again, for bolt-on M&A, adjacent businesses. I will get into a little more details shortly. I won't say a lot about aggregates. Again, Jeff will do it later, but we're very excited about, of course, the fundamentals of aggregates, especially in the U.S. Some key highlights, you know, still highly fragmented, with a lot of opportunities, with the privately owned businesses. You know, we look at Couch as an example of the flexibility that we can provide for partnering with small aggregate producers or privately run companies. Using Couch as an example, you know, the entrepreneurs behind it wanted to run the business still for a few years. That's fine. We re-reached an agreement where we invested a minority stake. We established some goalposts in terms of the performance, and we have supported the management team, the sellers, in this multi-year period in which they're running the business, with a very ambitious business plan. We had incorporated in the contract a pathway to control, to consolidation and eventual control and ownership. That's the kind of flexibility we want to run with as we approach these private companies or privately family-run businesses in aggregates in the U.S., which we, which is. There's a lot of that. Of course, an industry with high entry barriers because of permitting, restrictions and regulations related the land use and the environment. It is an essential material with very attractive pricing discipline that we have seen in the markets, with a very positive demand outlook. In terms of adjacent businesses, we are simplifying, I guess, is the right word, simplifying the way we look at our urbanization solution businesses. We want to focus, or we will focus going forward in four key businesses that meet a number of criteria that we have determined. Number one, highly complementary to our legacy activities, by that, I mean also highly synergistic because of vertical integration, because we might share customers, distribution, or logistics, so highly complementary. The other thing is potential for growth. These are businesses that we think we can scale up and create a larger platform. Number three is that having this business in our portfolio, and because the products are highly complementary to our legacy products, we believe that we will be able to expand our offering to our customer base and therefore be a much more valuable supplier and partner. It's also about being able to enhance our product offering to our customers, no. Finally, end markets. You know, we believe that through these particular businesses, we will be able to increase our exposure to end markets that we want to increase our exposure to, such as infrastructure and repairs and renovations, no. Now, we used to be organized by verticals. I didn't mention, for example, alternative fuels or construction, demolition, excavation materials. We're not stopping those activities. Those activities continue to be very important and core to the things we do, but we have embedded those in the businesses where they are more mostly related to, like, alternative fuels in cement and construction, demolition, excavation has gone back or is being run by our materials businesses, ready-mix aggregates, no? It's about simplifying, it's about focus, and it's about deploying our energy and our resources to grow these businesses: construction chemicals, concrete products, mortars, and asphalt and aggregates, which all of them comply with this set of criteria that I mentioned, no? Construction chemicals, for example, is admixtures. Admixtures is a great business, highly complementary to our legacy business. We, you know, as a very large ready-mix producer, having admixtures allows us to optimize our mixes, optimize our costs, reduce CO2 emissions of our mixes, and when we think about the cement we sell to other ready-mix companies, it allows us to enhance the product offering to our customers, no? That's very attractive. In concrete products, we have a starting base with the concrete products in the U.S., in Europe, in Israel. Again, allows us to enhance the product offering to our customers, but also allows us to gain exposure to infrastructure. This is a very attractive segment that is growing at a very attractive pace. Mortars, highly complementary to our business, allows us to enhance the product offering to our customers. In the case of asphalt, aggregates, this is another avenue to pursue as we think about growing our aggregate business, for example, in the U.S., also Europe. That is more related to infrastructure activity, no? When we consider these businesses we're focusing on, this is going to be sort of the baseline for 2025. As you can see, we have been growing in these particular businesses, growing sales at 7%, EBITDA at 12%. The most important one, from a size standpoint, is construction chemicals or admixtures. The second one right now is concrete products, but with the acquisition we announced this morning, mortars is going to become much more important, which is the dark blue. Asphalt is very small, and it's just a platform where we already have an attractive activity in the U.K., but we think that, you know, there's an opportunity there for us to expand as we think about, again, developing our Aggregate business in the U.S. Immediate efforts that are underway at the moment in construction chemicals or admixtures, we're focused on increasing third-party sales. We'll have significant activity of third-party sales in admixtures in Mexico and Europe, and a huge opportunity to do the same in the United States, which is currently underway. In mortars, announced this morning, the acquisition of Omega, which is a very attractive platform that we can use as a base to grow. We also have an interesting platform with our Multiplast product in Mexico, which is a specialized mortar, which is very attractive and has a lot of draw in the market. That is also a platform from which to grow our Mexican mortar business. In concrete products, continue building the platform in the United States and EMEA. Mortars, because we announced this morning, Omega, just a few words on that. In the U.S., the broad mortars family and the acquisition this morning, Omega, is about one member of the mortars family, which is stuccos. Mortars is a $13 billion industry in the United States, growing at a 6% CAGR between 2021 and 2024, so grows at a faster pace than cement. It includes stuccos or materials to prepare the base so that then more, the final flooring can be placed on top of it, adhesives for tile setting, dry mortars, which go in walls, et cetera, and concrete repairs, to name a few members of the stuccos family. This is all highly complementary and synergistic with our legacy businesses. Again, Omega is now a starting base from which to grow. These businesses have significant vertical integration. For example, the acquisition this morning, Omega, which has four mortars plants, consume the equivalent amount of cement of eight Ready-Mix facilities on average-sized Ready-Mix facilities. We like the vertical integration, coming with much lower capital intensity relative to a concrete plant, for example, no? They have higher free cash flow conversion, low capital intensity, very attractive business, highly complementary to the legacy businesses. A little bit more details. Omega is the leading stucco producer in the Western United States, has the number one recognized brand, and it has national brand recognition, which is very important because as we think about expanding this platform. It has $110 million revenue, $23 million EBITDA before synergy, 65% free cash flow conversion, 150 employees and five locations. That's f our plants in California, Nevada, Colorado. Two in California, one in Nevada, and one in Colorado. Again, very strong vertical integration, synergies related to logistics and procurement, and a cross-selling opportunity with our customer base. The acquisition multiple after synergies is going to be below 7x, and this is a business with 50 years in operation also. In closing, we're very excited about our ongoing transformation. We're very excited about our sprint between 2025 and 2027. We are committed to delivering 10% EBITDA growth every year over the next two years. We're very comfortable in the fact that more than half of these will come from self-help measures, things that are more under our control, and a little bit less than one-half coming from organic growth, where we believe we've made some conservative assumptions. It's all about improving our margins, generating more free cash flow through more free cash flow conversion, increasing our ROIC by almost 200 basis points through decisive actions that we are taking through this methodology and platform of the business performance reviews. We're focus We have a very focused growth strategy around Aggregates in the U.S. and highly synergistic businesses. We're pivoting away from CapEx and into M&A. We will ensure that we take the benefits of our investments in growth CapEx in the past. We will pivot into a very accretive M&A. This we will do, while we have a highly disciplined capital allocation framework, no. That's it for me. Thank you very much. I look forward to interacting with you during the day. Lucy, I think, thank you very much. I think I went over by two or three minutes, sorry about that. Yeah. Thank you very much. One point I just want to highlight, besides the conservative assumptions on organic growth that José Antonio just walked us to, is that we are using a MXN rate of 18.2- 18.50, consistent with our guidance for 2026, for the two-year period. Just to keep that in mind. Well, I think probably the next speaker has the most topical subject to cover. I'm very pleased to introduce José Antonio Cabrera, Head of EMEA, to discuss the European decarbonization landscape. Thank you, Lucy. Thank you very much, Lucy. Good morning to everyone. This is my first time here in this event, so I will do the same. I will introduce myself. I have been working in CEMEX for more than 25 years across different functions, from mainly cement operations, commercial, strategic planning, general management, and I had the opportunity to visit and to be involved in many operations. I began in Europe, but I was working also in the Middle East. I spent six years in Latin America, and now I'm back in Europe, and I have the privilege to run this operation in these, I would say, very exciting times, in which this region will continue to deliver growth for CEMEX. The drivers, as Jaime and José Antonio mentioned before, strong demand recovery, very good operating leverage that we have in the region, more so after our Project Cutting Edge efforts and a very strong pricing environment. Today, I will focus my presentation on decarbonization, on the ETS, on CBAM. My objective today with you is to ensure a clear understanding on regulatory developments in Europe regarding ETS and CBAM, how we see those, and why CEMEX is in a privileged position to continue creating value in this environment. Let me go one step back and remind everyone how the ETS works, no? The ETS has been in place since 2005. It's the largest carbon cap and trade carbon market in the world. It— many sectors are included in the ETS, from heating system, power generation, to heavy industries like glass, refineries, chemicals, steel, and of course, cement, no? Some of the sectors receive free CO2 allocations in order to operate or have been receiving free CO2 allocations to operate, and these allowances are tradable in the carbon trade market, no? These free CO2 allocations are based in a specific benchmark for each and every sector, and that benchmark is calculated just with the 10% best performers in each sector. We have a clinker benchmark that is being reduced. Every phase has been reduced, tightening the supply of the allowances, of the CO2 allowances, and then pushing CO2 prices up. What is happening this year? Why 2026 is so important? Everybody talks about more than the noise about the ETS and what is happening in Europe this year? Three events happening at the same time. The first one is that in this phase, again, the benchmark will be reduced. It will be published at the end of the quarter or beginning of second quarter. We estimate that the benchmark maybe will be reduced between 4%-9% compared to the clinker benchmark that we used to have in the previous phase. Also, this year, two new events are happening for the first time. One of them is the phasing out of the free CO2 allocations for the industries. This means that even if you're running your plants in the 10% best performance, you are not going to have the full 100% allowances of CO2 that you need. That is the first one, because this means that the industries will have a carbon cost from this year or a growing carbon cost from this year. The second very important event that is happening this year is the introduction of CBAM. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is phasing in and is increasing with the same pace as the gradual removal of the free CO2 allocations for the European Union producers. In practical terms, this means that the importers, for the first time, are going to face an import carbon cost as well, no? Let me also comment on how we see this noise or some rumors in the recent weeks regarding the ETS. The ETS was designed since the beginning in phases because it's a noble scheme in order to assess and adjust, and this has been happening since 21 years ago, and is the case right now. For example, CBAM was not in place since the beginning of the ETS. It was because of the demand of some sectors, for example, the steel sector or the cement industry, that the CBAM now is in place and is favorable for the industries in Europe. Probably there will be some adjustments to the system. It has always been there, but probably this will happen in the phases from 2030 onwards, not in the current phase, is what we see. What we know right now is that the current phase in 2026, this system is giving a really competitive advantage to the low carbon producers and to the most efficient producers. What is the size of that advantage? We made this exercise. Here you can see in the blue bars, you can see the estimated carbon cost for a average European Union producer from 2026 onwards. In the green one, you can see the estimated carbon cost for an import coming into the European Union if the customs in the European Union is accepting their verified emissions. If not, the regulation says that what applies is a emission factor by default, depending on the country of origin of that product. That is the dotted line, that is even much higher. Here, what we can see is that there is a gap between the average producers and the average imported of around EUR 9 per ton at a CO2 cost of around EUR 70. But the question is: Is this gonna be sustainable in the short to mid-term? We think that for the most part, yes, it's gonna be sustainable. It's just not a matter of CapEx, that it takes resources, it takes in-investment. It's a matter of changing your process itself in order to adapt. For example, in the case of alternative fuels, to adapt to the new fuels that you are using. It's also a matter of regulatory. In order to have a regulation, a local regulation, for example, the one that we have in Europe, that limits the disposal in the landfill, is not happening in the short to mid-term, and it takes time, no? Finally, in order to develop the supply chain of the alternative fuels to reduce your carbon emissions or your carbon cost, it will take a lot of time. Believe me, I was working in the cement operations two decades back, just when introducing this, and it takes a lot of time to state these regulations, local regulations, and to develop the value chain. We think, and the same happened with other levers, like clinker factor, no? We think that the majority of this advantage from European Union producers to importers is gonna be sustainable in the mid-term. We have another, I would say, a very relevant aspect to understand the dynamics of the industry in the mid-term. That is the overcapacity. Currently, in Europe, this means the European Union, Switzerland, and the U.K., the capacity, the clinker capacity is around 200 million tons. The clinker needs currently are around 120 million tons, so a 30%-40% overcapacity. This overcapacity has been because of the incentives related to maximizing the free CO2 allowances that we can get or the industry can get. In two, three years from now, the market will grow, but as the clinker factor will be reduced, the clinker demand in the European Union probably will be very similar to the current one. What is going to happen? What is the difference? The difference is, like, unlike in the past, after 2028 or 2029, it's no longer worthwhile to keep all the plants running, because the fixed cost to keep those plants running is higher than the benefits of the free CO2 allocations that you can get after that year, no? This will trigger or will accelerate rationalization, probably first among large players, that represents 50% of the clinker capacity right now in Europe. CEMEX, for example, has already begun. We have shut down three plants in the last years, and we will continue to optimize our cement footprint in the future, and we are expecting the rest of the players that probably will do the same.n Again, this is independent on the discussions on what happened in the next phase of the ETS, because this is happening in the current phase, at the end of the current phase, no? But what has CEMEX been doing during these years, no? I mean, CEMEX has been quite a long time decarbonizing. For CEMEX, decarbonization has always been a strategic value more than just a compliance issue, no? We have reduced our emissions by 38% compared to the baseline on 1990, and it has been accelerated in the last years. In the last five years, we have reduced our emissions by 19%. Our current emissions is 507 kl of CO2 per ton of cement. This figure, that is around 430 kl in net terms, because it's 507 in gross, 430 around in net terms, is the objective of the European Cement Association in 2030, without considering any carbon capture technology. We are, right now, five years ahead of the average of the cement industry in Europe. How we got here? First, excelling in alternative fuels. Our alternative fuels substitution in our kilns in Europe right now is close to 70%. Our decarbonated raw materials that we're using in our kilns right now goes from 10%-20%, depending on the kiln. Also with efficiency and clinker factor. Our current clinker factor in the European Union plants is 67%.n We still have some room for improvement because we can go down to 50% in the midterm, no? Another important, very important piece of evidence of our leading position is our bank of European Union allowances, free CO2 allowances that we have. We have always had a surplus in each and every year, and currently, we have 2.9 million allowances of CO2. That is equivalent to around EUR 200 million that we have in the bank. This has been obtained just because of our decarbonization efforts and because of properly managing our supply chain in order to maximize our CO2 allowances. This bank will cover our deficit for the next four years. I mean, deficit, because remember that with the phasing out of the free CO2 allocation every year, we are not going to get free CO2 allocations for the 100% of our emissions. This will cover the next four years. However, given that we made the efforts upfront, it will not influence how we are going to set our cement prices currently and in the future. I think this waterfall represents very well how we are going to make that, no? As you can clearly see here, we have a cost advantage versus the not only versus the importers in the European Union, but also versus the average of the European Union producers.n Our pricing is reflecting our cost, of course, but also our efforts in decarbonization that we did in the past, and we have to continue doing in the future because we want to maintain our competitive advantage. What I can tell you is that, as we speak, we are seeing really strong pricing characteristics in many European Union markets, in the ones that we already announced at the end of last year or January this year, mainly in Southern Europe. We are seeing these very good characteristics. In Central and Northern Europe, after the very harsh winter that we have had in the beginning of this year, probably we will see a similar behavior. Also the U.K., remember that we'll have in place a similar system as CBAM, but from 2027, not from this year. As I mentioned before, we will continue to keep our competitive advantage in Europe, and we will continue to invest in profitable decarbonization projects. Which projects? Well, we have what we call the traditional levers. That is alternative fuels. We still have some room for improvement from 70% go up to 80% of alternative fuels with our current footprint. And we also, we will be reducing our clinker factor. For example, we are using, and I think it's another competitive advantage that we have, we are using our own admixtures that have state-of-the-art products to decarbonize in our roadmap of decarbonization of cement. We are also partnering with our customers in order to use novel concrete mixes that use cements with as low as 50% clinker factor, not only with the slag, but also with calcined clays. We have a couple of projects in Europe and in Egypt, and also with micronization. These two technologies, calcined clay and micronization, the good thing of these two technologies is that, of course, reduces the emission factor, but also we are repurposing idle clinker kilns or idle raw mill grinding mills in order to produce those. Lowering and our CapEx needs and contributing to the free cash flow conversion, that the objective that we have, no. For the long run and for the long term, we will also, we are also developing our options in carbon capture. We have two or three projects in Europe. The most advanced, you know it very well, is Rudersdorf in our plant in Germany, and we are advancing on that. A very clear message is that we are not going to undertake any deep decarbonization project that is not going to create value. Financial metrics will be there before we have a positive FID. As a summary, this industry in Europe, the dynamics of the industry will improve because of rationalization, because of the introduction of CBAM, and CEMEX Europe has a lower carbon cost curve compared to importers and compared to the rest of the European Union producers. Both levers will help us to expand our margins. As a result, decarbonization in Europe will continue to be a source of value creation for the company. That was everything. Lucy, I think I will remain for some Q&A, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I'm hoping for a lively but short discussion here. We could open it up to Q&A, either from the webcast or within the room. Come on. Ben Theurer from Barclays. Oh, please say who you are and where you're from. Thank you. Oh, thanks, Lucy, you just did. Ben Theurer, Barclays. José Antonio, thank you very much for that presentation. There's a lot of news going on in the back and forth, and it seems like that nobody really knows what the European Union actually should aim for, is aiming for. I mean, you have certain member states that are pushing back on the different initiatives. Maybe help us understand, how do these different positions affect you on your decision-making process and how you prepare for that? I mean, clearly, you do have to balance. I mean, we're seeing price reactions short term, just to understand a little bit better, what the different nations want, what’s the big complication and the debate right now? Yes, thank you for the question. I think, of course, we have volatility in the very short term because of the discussions. What we do when we are analyzing projects for the future, of course, is sensitivity analysis with different CO2 prices that we have to take, but this is not new. I mean, five years back, the CO2 price was EUR 5. Now it's around EUR 70. Because in the end, the supply-demand is working, it's tightening the supply of CO2 allowances and is pushing prices up. What is the level? We don't know. Nobody knows. We make those scenarios in order to see what are the profitable projects that we can undertake. Also, take into account that some of the projects that we have, mainly in the traditional levels, are accretive for the company, even in a scenario with all the different CO2 prices, very low CO2 prices. For example, some alternative fuels are really accretive for us, clinker factor reduction or efficient products, no? Yes, we don't see in the short term, we think CBAM is in place, CBAM is working, and any adjustments that will come, will be more for the phase after 2030. It's not necessarily bad because that will give us visibility and predictability to make a proper capital allocation. Thank you. Alejandra? Oh, excuse me, right here in the middle. Thank you. Thank you. Alejandra Obregon from Morgan Stanley. I was wondering if you can talk about what is the sort of level of pricing that you're thinking for the industry with everything that's moving, if there's any sort of indication inside of the company, where that could trend going forward? More importantly, there's a big exports business for CEMEX in Europe. I was just wondering if you can talk about whether CBAM is an opportunity for pricing outside, or whether that's a challenge, and what percentage of your business is exported today? Well, we don't have that much business exporting outside of the European Union because many of the export that we are doing is inside the European Union. That, by the way, they are benefiting this year from the CBAM. Our exports within the European Union are increasing and expanding margins just because of the introduction of CBAM and the carbon cost that the importers will face. No? I think you have another first question before the exports. Pricing. Oh. Yes. Regarding pricing, what I can tell you, I mean, it's very early in the year. What I can tell you is that we are seeing in the countries that we already announced, in the Southern European countries, because of weather conditions that we already announced, we are seeing really good traction, price traction. Probably in future calls, in quarterly calls, Jaime and Lucy can update you on how this develop. So far, it's taking very good traction. Those are, of course, our January pricing increases. We still have other countries that they announce pricing increases for April. Correct. Thank you. I'm the boss, tell you, we're getting some of our markets. The ones in tech. Sorry about that, Lucy. No problem. If we could pass it to Yassine quickly. Okay. Yes. Good morning, Yassine from On Field Investment Research. Just two quick question on your plaque. What is European cement as a percentage of CEMEX EBITDA? If you could give us a ballpark figure. Yeah The European cement EBITDA as a percentage of the group, would be good to get a sense of what it is. The second question on the U.K. I think the CBAM here is delayed until 2027. Any update there and the expected impact in the context where there is a bit of Turkish imports? Yeah, well, the share of the, I mean, the percentage of the European cement business in CEMEX is around 12% with the U.K. Continental Europe is 8% without the U.K. In the U.K., is progressing the conversations. CBAM will be in place from next year. The conversations with the government and the different sectors, I'm very positive that in the short to mid-term, we can have, in the U.K., a similar scheme and converging the scheme to the one that we have in the European Union. If I could just maybe interject here. Yeah. I believe that the 8% that you gave was for E.U. total. Total. He was asking specific to cement, I believe. Cement. Yeah, which I think is probably about 4%, because it's about 50%, I think, of total EBITDA. Cement, yes, it's around 8% without the U.K. That's cement itself? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Antonio, if you could tell us, if pricing power improves due to rationalization, do you see an opportunity to increase volume market share instead of protecting price? If such, where do you see more opportunities, specific countries or regions where this could happen? Well, this is. We are seeing opportunities in the cement business in Europe. I think we are enjoying very good margins, and these margins will continue to improve, and we will be part of the rationalization for sure. Being part of the consolidation, that is what I mean. Probably, we will have some opportunities. We don't have anything clear right now, but we will be definitely part of the rationalization. I think we have time for one last question. Did you want to? What I'd like to complement what Antonio said is that if we have solid market shares that are around what we're targeting in every market, where the good news is that we're not going to lose that as we exercise our unilateral pricing positions in environments. We're going to be able to sustain market share while expanding margins through our pricing. We will continue to work on lowering our CO2 cost curve relative to the rest, so that in the next phase, when they review that 10% of plants in the U.S., we continue to widen the gap between our benchmark, right? The European new future benchmarks and those of, importers and average, local players. Does that make sense That's what we're doing. We're not going to give up our opportunity in pricing just for the sake of volume, but we're going to retain market shares, right, and move forward. Would we ever gain market share? That might happen only if others just shut down capacity because they just lose money. Somebody else will need, right, to supply that. That is too early to conclude whether that is going to happen or not. All right? I hope that that provides a little bit more of color to your question. Thanks. Thank you. I think we may have time for one last question, if there is one, a fairly quick one. Do we have? No? Okay, great. It's time for a break. If we could come back at 11 o'clock, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much. Sorry. Okay. Good job.. Okay, if we could call everyone back. If everyone can take their seats, please. Okay. Well, thank you for coming back, and I'm very pleased to introduce you to a new face for many of you at CEMEX. Not new to us, however, Jeff Bobolts, who runs our U.S. Aggregates business. Jeff? Good morning, I'm Jeff Boboltz. I'm the Senior Vice President for U.S. Aggregates business. Prior to this role, actually, let me say that we recently reorganized this way shortly after Jaime's appointment. Prior to this role, I've run our Arizona Aggregates business, our Florida Aggregates business, and as most recently, the regional president of our integrated Florida business, so that was cement, ready-mix, and excuse me, not cement, ready-mix, and aggregate. On behalf of CEMEX's U.S. Aggregate team and our 8,000 employees, thank you for being with us today. I'll start with an introduction to the business. I'll point out some strengths, and then I'll make a comparison with public data. There's a lot of really good public data available in the aggregate space. After that, I'm going to talk about operational excellence. You've heard of that from Jaime. We'll talk about how we expand margins organically, and then how capital improvement makes a big difference in our business. Following that, we'll get into growth. In terms of an introduction, CEMEX is the sixth-largest aggregate producer in the United States. We produce about 54 million tons of aggregate annually from the footprint that you see on the screen, starting in coastal Georgia, around to Florida, which is a number one position for us, into the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast area. This is new with our joint venture in Couch that Jose Antonio spoke about. Into Texas, where we have our largest co-quarry, Balcones, into Arizona, and a solid position in California. I can't forget our operation in Newfoundland, Canada. This is a newer acquisition in 2024 of Atlantic Minerals. I'll talk more about that, this material travels from Canada by water as far as Brazil. Over that footprint, we're generally vertically integrated into Ready-Mix. About 29% of our volume goes into that Ready-Mix business. We have 90 total sites, 50 of which are operating mines. About the other 40 are terminals, generally, so marine and rail terminals. When you look at the aggregates business, size matters, and breadth, overall count, and network matters. In many cases, what matters more is individual quarry size. The USGS coined the term mega quarry in the U.S. about seven or eight years ago. This is to signify a quarry that produces over five million tons per year. There are about 15 of these throughout the United States. CEMEX operates two: our FEC quarry in Miami and then our Balcones quarry in Texas. Balcones is one of the largest construction aggregate quarries in the United States. This all leads to an EBITDA contribution of 40% of the U.S.'s total EBITDA. I'll jump right into a comparison. This is all produced with public data. I'll explain the slide first. On the vertical axis, the rows that you see, I think the first three are generally pretty self-explanatory. The fourth row, cash gross margin. This is unit gross margin for aggregate. You will see this reported in many of our competitors' public releases. Across the horizontal axis, the first column on the left is going to be an average of two of the larger pure-play aggregate producers in the U.S. On the right-hand side is an average of some of the larger public regional players. We've got CEMEX right in the middle, and we believe that we sit comfortably between these two sets of competitors. Primary reason for that is along the bottom, is margins. We believe that our asset base, our vertical integration, and an excellent team provide us with a fantastic margin that has separated us from many of the regional players, and we're closing the gap to some of the blue bloods. Next, I'm going to talk about operational excellence. Two elements here, organic and then project-based. First, the comparisons that you're going to see, we're going to do an evolution in many of these, is going to be from 2020–2025, right? Over the period, our Aggregates business grew our cash gross margin by unit by over 10% on a CAGR. How do we do that? We look at it from two elements, commercial and operational. On the commercial side, the most visible is obviously price. Over the period, we've grown the average selling price by 8% on a compound aggregate, annual growth rate, please. The next step for us is optimizing product market fit. I told you that we move a lot of material into our Ready-Mix business. When we go to produce aggregate for the Ready-Mix business, we don't just get that type of aggregate. If we put 100 tons of feed into an aggregate plant, we probably get 60 tons of aggregate that's suitable for Ready-Mix. What our team excels at is finding the best and highest use for that other 40 tons. We might blend material together, blend different sizes to produce a specific aggregate for precast. We can scalp the top off and produce a landscape rock, or we might take the bottom end of a natural sand and produce something that makes a beach renourishment sand in Florida. This helps maximize our revenue and improves our working capital. On the operational end, our cost has grown at 4% over this period. Keep in mind, this is going to be one of the heaviest inflationary cycles that many of us have seen. The 4% number is comparable or favorable to many of the public data that we see out there. As I mentioned, we recently reorganized the business. This has allowed us to streamline things, to look at aggregate-specific best practices, operational efficiency. Are we keeping our equipment operating and at maximum throughput at all times? We're also very excited about technology. Our teams developed digital roadmap. We're using drones to fly our stockpiles, ensure that we're sticking to our mine plans. We have semi-autonomous haul trucks running right now, we're using AI to develop maintenance task lists and push them directly to our operators' tablets in the field, they can get the work done right there. Why does that matter? Technology is extremely important. In the last two, I'll use an example. Haul trucks and maintenance. Two of the largest cost categories in any quarry are going to be labor and maintenance. We're using this to leverage that. Now, what does that do for us? Over the period, we've increased our price-cost spread, we've increased our EBITDA margin from 28%-33%. Next, I want to talk about a success story with capital improvement. First off, Balcones. This is, again, our largest quarry, one of the largest in the United States. This covers 4,000 acres. On-site, we have a cement plant. We have an aggregate plant. We have a customer lime kiln. We have customer Ready-Mix plants, asphalt plants. We load hundreds of rail cars every day, we load thousands of trucks. This is an extremely impactful site for us. Before I talk about the project, real quick, and forgive me if this is redundant for anybody, the aggregates mining process. Generally, we're starting on the upper left, we have to extract reserves from the ground, from the mining face. It's hauled to our primary crusher, keep this in mind, it's called a primary crusher for a reason. Once we go through that process, we're going to go to a secondary crusher. We're going to reduce the size to something that's more suitable for the end use. We're going to sort it, we're going to wash it, and put it in product piles. The two important things I want you to take away from this is, number one, this is a sequential process. You can't go to step three without having done step two and one . At a major site, everything goes through the primary crusher. At our Balcones facility, we replaced and upgraded that primary crusher. That's provided tremendous improvement in overall cost, but I'm going to get to that in a second. One of the other things it's done is allowed us to optimize our reserve. We are taking the full depth of our permitted reserve at this facility. When you look at the geology at Balcones, you can see this when you're in the pit. It looks like a layer cake. The top is suitable for construction aggregate. The next layer goes to cement feed. The layer after that, third layer, is suitable for lime, and then the final layer goes to road base and infrastructure. All of it has to get through the primary. The upgrade of the primary crusher allows us to work through this sequentially at a regular basis, so that we're not double handling material, which costs money. It gives us the ability to take that primary down on a scheduled basis 'cause we have enough throughput, so that we can do preventative maintenance. Preventative maintenance is going to cost three times less than corrective maintenance if we have a problem. There's a tremendous value in just that. When we look at variable costs, these are generally, this is labor, this is power, and this is maintenance again. We're saving 28% in the first full year of production with our new primary. This has led to almost a 10-point increase in EBITDA margin at our largest facility. Capital improvement makes a tremendous difference in the aggregate business. I'll finish with growth. You heard José Antonio and Jaime talk about growth and how our team is excited to be part of that. One of the first things we think about is reserve base. Up until about 2020, as you know, CEMEX was working hard to improve our capital position, to get back to investment grade. Most of this journey started right around 2020. It started on the left-hand side of the screen. We've worked our way to today. Over this period of time, when we think about accelerating aggregate replenishment, this is effectively acquiring raw land adjacent to our current quarries that we can then convert into mineable land. The next step, projects. This is an aggregate project in a market we're already doing business. Raw land away from an existing quarry, we're building a plant there. Many of these are just coming online right now. We've got a video we're going to show you. We think we're very excited about these projects. As you've heard, we've begun an M&A activity. In 2023, moving into 2024, our first opportunity was the acquisition of Atlantic Minerals. The combination of these three avenues have led to a net improvement and a net add to our reserve bank of over 400 million tons. Keep in mind, this is net of the 50-55 million tons we're consuming every single year. We're very proud of that. When we think about reserves, the first thing we present, Jaime's talked about the business performance review. We've got our business performance re-review next week. The first thing we will present is safety. The very next thing we present is reserves, every single time. Going over to the left-hand side of the screen, replenishment. Again, two pieces, acquiring raw land, and then we have to convert that land into mineable proven reserves. That takes permitting, that takes drilling, that takes various different environmental approvals. We have geologists, and we have experts in permitting on staff available to do that, and we've demonstrated the ability to move that. Next, projects, and we're very excited about these. As I mentioned, we started a few years ago on this. This adds to our reserve bank and also gives us growth. I told you that size matters in aggregates. Location matters, too. Our Four Corners sand mine is just outside of Orlando, Florida. It's the closest site to many of Orlando's biggest theme parks. You can actually see the castle at one of the theme parks from the top of the tower. Location matters here. Buckeye, Arizona, this is a site that will be operational in the third quarter of this year. It supports the west side of Phoenix. Our Ready-Mix business in that area does many high-tech chip plants, so we're excited about this. The next one is Immokalee, Florida. This is a sand mine in South Florida, and we're highlighting some of those sand mines because the margin is so strong. These are some of our best businesses. Next, moving over to M&A. A big focus for us right now. We have a dedicated U.S.-based, aggregate-focused M&A team on staff working things through this pipeline. We're focused on small to mid-sized companies. We have demonstrated the ability to be flexible and work through acquisitions with small family businesses. That's an important piece for us. I'll highlight two of them, Atlantic Minerals and Couch. Before I do, let me just comment on some of the synergies that we believe we can bring. Beyond typical operational savings from a synergy basis, which we've demonstrated the ability to execute on some of these, we can also bring two unique elements. Number one, we have a big ready-mix business. We consume a lot of aggregate. I told you that 30% of the aggregate that is produced from our business gets consumed by our internal Ready-Mix business. That only satisfies about 60% of their demand. There's another 40% out there, this is millions of tons, that we purchase on the external market. When we think about acquisitions like this, we have the ability, number one, to be a customer, so we can approach in a little bit different fashion, right? Next, we can provide volume, which can reduce fixed costs and provide leverage and performance there. We've done that in both of these cases, Atlantic Minerals and Couch. The other thing we can provide is logistics and cross-selling. We talked about 40 terminals total. The other piece is when you think about it, a customer that buys cement, most customers that are buying cement will buy rock and sand as well. This provides us an opportunity to sell to a customer base that we already have. Two great examples of this, Atlantic Minerals. Atlantic Minerals are the East Coast of the United States, coming from Canada. The example here is Savannah, Georgia. We've had a sand mine in Savannah, Georgia, for years. Our customers asked us, "Can we buy rock from you?" We now land Atlantic Minerals rock in the port of Savannah. We've increased our revenue stream in this market. Couch Aggregates, this business starts in the Alabama area and connects by barge into the Gulf Coast of Florida. Couch was working their way east along the Panhandle coast of Florida. East of Panama City, they were looking for another avenue, another port to come into. CEMEX already has a cement terminal in an area called Freeport. We now land Couch's aggregate at that terminal as well, combine it with cement, we've increased the market base there. That's a tremendous opportunity for us to drive down the multiples of these acquisitions. I should also comment that this isn't necessarily just a short-term growth story. When we think about Atlantic Minerals, it has a tremendous reserve base, number one. Number two, it's unique in the fact that it's one of the only large-scale production facilities on that entire East Coast that is directly on water, as you can see in the picture, has a ship loader. This material can travel even farther than if you're moving it from inland, and again, it goes as far as Brazil. A quick video to highlight some of our aggregates projects. I think somebody will play that for me.n What to expect from us in looking forward? Number One, we believe we've got a very solid foundation with the current aggregates business in the United States. We've got a great asset base, vertical integration makes a difference, and we've got a fantastic team of mining engineers, geologists, miners, commercial, and logistic folks on the ground making this work. Those individuals and those teams have been focused and will continue to focus on operational excellence, improving our margins at both an organic basis and then working for capital investment and improvement from that side of things. We're committed to continue to drive growth. We love the footprint that we have, we're excited about that opportunity to grow, and we believe that we provide some unique opportunities to drive synergies and reduce those purchase multiples. Thank you. With that, I think Lucy is going to take us through some questions. Thank you, Jeff. Before we begin on the Q&A, this is just a great example of that earnings quality and improving earnings quality that Jaime was talking about. I know you all saw that number of 40% of U.S. EBITDA in the first, but Aggregates is rapidly becoming our biggest business, so just to keep that in mind. Now if we could take some fairly quick Q&A. Ben, and then I'll get to you, Paco. Ben Theurer, Barclays. Real quick on the M&A side, in order to expand, and you've talked about the need to replenish, how would you describe yourself, the positioning of CEMEX, and the ability to execute on M&A, just given the valuation discrepancy between where CEMEX is trading at versus some of like the pure-play national peers, obviously do get different multiples. Where is the competitive edge that you try to play in order to be active on M&A? Sure. Thanks for the question, Ben. you know, as I mentioned, we're trying to drive that, you know, that purchase multiple down through network synergies and through many of the things that we're doing. Are we going to go and make a big, large-scale acquisition? Perhaps not. We may bolt -on individual elements within most of the footprint. We have the opportunity to go outside as well, but we think we have that opportunity with the synergies that we laid out specifically, and then with the expertise that our team brings. If we get a microphone over to the corner to Paco. Okay. Hi, Francisco Suarez from Scotiabank. The question is: to what extent you are kind of constrained of doing acquisitions within your footprint or adjacent to your footprint? To what extent would it be worthwhile to look building new ecosystems away from this footprint and considering potentially perhaps the connections and the connectivity on the river system in the U.S.? Thank you. No, thank you. That's a great question. I think when you think about connectivity, it varies from region to region, depending on what that logistics network looks like. You know, the one thing we're encouraged to think about is not right next to you in a network. How far can material travel? How do you connect to that? Perhaps is there a step in between that needs to be filled in? I think Anne Milne, over here on the right. Okay. Let's set that there. Thank you. Hello? Hello, hello. Can you hear me? Okay. Just following up on some of the other questions, I think a lot of this you discussed in your presentation, which was very enlightening, thank you very much, was some of the other conditions for expanding in the Aggregates business. You're at 29% now. How much higher do you think you can go in that number? Are some of these people clients of yours? How big do you think is the universe, for acquisitions or bolt-ons in the U.S.? I know this is the U.S. If there's anyone that can comment on outside of the U.S. Aggregates business, that would be helpful, too. Thank you. Maybe take the first point, and then Jaime can cover the rest of the world. Sure. First off, when we think about vertical integration into ready-mix, I mentioned that, they're consuming 60% of their material from CEMEX's Aggregate business. I don't think we want that to be 100%, but there are specific areas where that's obviously an average, right? In certain areas of the United States, it's much higher. In certain areas, it's much lower. It's an easy way to look at where those opportunities are to integrate in that level. The other piece, as it relates to the ability to acquire, is the vast majority of the aggregates business is still a fragmented, independent base of operators throughout the United States. There are certainly some large markets that have been consolidated, but what we are really looking at is some of those smaller areas in which you haven't seen that enormous consolidation cycle. We believe that that provides plenty of opportunity out there. I'll defer on the. If we- Regarding elsewhere. Can we get a microphone quickly? Thank you. Thank you. Regarding elsewhere, we have a very solid aggregate business in Europe, and that's the region that, because of similar regulatory environments, there are entry barriers, and we have a very good team, good assets, and we do see opportunity, right? Why shouldn't we not become the Vulcans and Martins in Europe? We're also assessing those opportunities. However, for the timing, priority is the U.S. Maybe if we could just pass a microphone to Alejandra. Okay. Alejandra Obregon, Morgan Stanley, thank you for the question. I guess a follow-up on vertical integration. You mentioned all these analyses into making the most value out of your reserves, out of the rock. Just wondering, I mean, we're seeing a lot of pricing power in Aggregates, I'm assuming free cash flow conversion is higher for this product, maybe returns as well. When do you think vertical integration makes sense into the downstream when perhaps pricing power is not as high, and when and where will it not, and what are the reasons or the rationale for vertically integrating, if that sort of makes sense? Sure, that's actually, it's a great question. You saw something in José Antonio's presentation when he was talking about urbanization solutions. He mentioned asphalt. One of the other largest consumers of aggregates is going to be asphalt. CEMEX is not in the asphalt business. Generally, the aggregate that is used for ready-mix and asphalt depends on regionally, sometimes it's the same, sometimes it's different. It's important from a product mix standpoint that we're focusing on multiple different segments and end uses. We also think about just our overall segmentation, how much is going to infrastructure, how much is going to residential, how much is going to public, and we're constantly balancing all of that when we think about what is the best and highest use. As I mentioned, we don't necessarily want to, or we don't want to sell 100% of our aggregates into our internal Ready-Mix business. Right now, we sell 29%, so we see we've demonstrated that flexibility in that respect. Thanks, Jeff. If we could get a mic to Garrett Greenblatt from JP Morgan in the back row, please. Okay, thank you. Thank you for taking my question. As we think about the next five-year outlook or so, how are you thinking about the price-cost spread, the puts and takes to drive that forward and close that gap you have versus national peers? Great question. We continue to push. We've seen that price-cost spread. We've seen a positive variation in that. We don't see that closing to nothing in any way, shape, or form. As I mentioned, our teams work very, very hard on the pricing side of things. You've seen the outlooks there, I think. Those outlooks are generally different than some of our other product lines. The largest concentration that we have, I believe, in the United States in infrastructure sits in aggregates, so that's generally supportive of top-line price. On the cost side, I think over the period, we've demonstrated solid cost control. It's a focus for our teams up and down, and I think we also have the ability to continue to leverage some capital improvement and technology in the business to maintain that spread. Okay, the last question is Gordon. Thank you. Hi, Gordon Lee from BTG. quick question. A competitor of yours that used to be in the U.S. market, that's no longer in the U.S. market, is speaking or is initiating a project where they intend to basically, from quarries in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, sell to U.S. Gulf Coast markets. They think that business can be $100 million-$250 million in EBITDA by 2030. One, I wonder whether you think that's feasible, and two, whether there are similar assets or assets in CEMEX's SCAC footprint where you could maybe think of replenishment through them? Sure. Thanks for the question. you know, I won't comment on, you know, what our competitors' specific plans are. What I will say is that, CEMEX ran through a similar analysis some years ago. As you know, we have operations in the SCAC region, and in those areas. After going through that analysis, the determination was to acquire the Atlantic Minerals Quarry in Canada. At that time, we found that that was a better avenue for investment than making that move. Thanks, Gordon. I think you're at the wrong analyst day. Okay. Thank you very much, Jeff. I think. Thank you. Please. Okay, and to wrap up, I'm very happy to welcome to the stage, Maher Al-Haffar, our CFO. Maher? Thank you. Thank you very much, Lucy. Good to see everyone. I, it's a very nice, intimate room, smaller number of people since we have another meeting afterwards, but it's very good to be here with all of you. This has got to be one of the most exciting analyst meeting that I have attended, and I can tell you, I've attended many of these over the last 25 years of my being at CEMEX, so. It's a really exciting time. Not only are we coming from a period, where several of our markets have underperformed and now are positioned to outperform, but also because of all the things that my colleagues discussed, from our CEO to all of my colleagues discussed, on the things that we are doing. Today, I would like to talk about our financial strategy. Center stage of our financial strategy is capital allocation. This business is a, I don't want to say a cash printing machine, but if you manage it properly, it is a cash printing machine. The challenge becomes: how do you allocate capital for maximum value to shareholders on a per-share basis? Which is very important. Before I get into that, I thought I would like to, and maybe at the risk of being a little redundant, highlight some of the levers that we are managing in this three-year sprint. You know, we have six of them. We have many, of course, but these are the six levers that are moving the needle the most. Number one is managing growth. Number two, earnings quality. Number three, free cash flow. Number four, improving return on capital employed. Of course, capital allocation discipline. The balance sheet, which, you know, as Jaime said, you know, the maintaining an investment-grade capital structure through the cycle is absolutely non-negotiable. In terms of growth, because of all the things that we're doing, because of Project Cutting Edge, there's tremendous operating leverage that is embedded in our business model throughout the sprint. If you take a look at top-line growth, we're expecting 5% growth per annum for sales. That is delivering 10% growth in EBITDA, 14% in EBIT, but very importantly, 20% of free cash flow growth during the period. It's very important to note that free cash flow, and I will talk about free cash flow in a second, and then earnings quality. 85% of our operating cash flow is coming from the U.S., Europe, and Mexico. That's not to say that we don't have a fantastic business in SCAC, but those are businesses where we see maximum amount of growth in the future and where we see earnings quality being the highest in the future. If we take a look at the components, both the U.S. and Europe have been growing over the last five years by mid to high single digits, underpinned by very important demand in infrastructure and residential in those markets. We take a look at Mexico, which some investors sometimes have their have a little difficulty with, that has proven to be a terrific market, actually. You take a look at our EBITDA growth over the last decade, it's been a CAGR of 4%. We take a look at the CAGR EBITDA growth of Mexico, this is in U.S. dollar terms, by the way, because everybody's concerned sometimes about the currency risk and volatility and all of that. In US dollar terms, Mexican EBITDA over the last five years has grown by 9%. Of course, the pricing of our products have been performing very reasonably in excess of some of these numbers in Mexico. Now, if we take a look at free cash flow, as Jaime mentioned, and as several other my colleagues mentioned, we're targeting a 47% free cash flow conversion by the end of 2027. This is free cash flow from operations, okay? This is not the free cash flow number that Jaime highlighted. I wish Jaime was with us here in the room. Oh, there you are. Sorry, I didn't see you. I was looking over here, I didn't see you. As Jaime mentioned, My favorite free cash flow number is the free cash flow number that is available to distribute to shareholders, to lenders, and to invest in. That's what Jaime said. If we take a look at that free cash flow conversion rate, the equivalent of the 47%, it's actually 38%, okay? We're looking at 38% conversion. I think it's very important to put it into perspective, because if we take a look at where we're coming from, in 2024, that number was $650 million, so a 21% conversion. That number in 2025 was actually up to $960 million. I don't wanna go through every year, but if we go from 2025 to 2027, we're talking about slightly under 50% growth in that free cash flow period. The cumulative amount from the 2025 to 2027 is close to$2.5 billion, and I will talk about that. This is, these are powerful numbers that are going to fuel and will continue to fuel our growth going forward. Very importantly, and something I did not mention in the, in the growth, which Jaime mentioned and several of other people alluded to, is that more than half of our growth is coming from self-help programs. That is extremely important because it turbocharges the free cash flow conversion, because after initial investments, in order to put into place those self-help programs, we essentially, you know, everything goes down to free cash flow, in the following years. It's very important that that is one very important tool of really improving the leverage of growth, in free cash flow. Of course, we are going to expand margins by close to 200 basis points for the period. Top line growth, earnings quality, free cash flow, conversion rates, and healthy growth, very important. Then we take a look at return on capital employed, as Jaime mentioned, we're targeting about 170 basis points improvement. Of course, we're working on both sides of the ratio, right? The numerator and the denominator. I'm not gonna go through the BPRs. I've been fortunate that Jaime has asked me to participate. It's translating. One of the biggest contributions is that I'm adding a lot of miles to my flight programs because we have eight of these things during the year. I have never learned and gotten a feel for the business as much as I've gotten through my participation in the BPRs. This whole process, in my view, is translating into a very exciting foundational transformation of the way we do business in the company. I feel that everybody is behaving and adopting a very strong owner's mentality, and it's terrifically rewarding when we see all of us benefiting from how the market is valuing our stock. I don't know if you're aware, but roughly 750 people in the company, top levels of management, both at the global level and in the U.S., receive stock compensation, 750 people. All those people must be ecstatic over last year because they feel like owners. They're making money like owners, and they are impacting that process, which is extremely important. It's a very positive reinforcement on management across the company. In terms of the return on capital employed, you know, as of the end of last year, we have now data, granular data, ROIC, NOPAT, statutory tax on a per asset basis, per plant basis. We've never had that before. In the past, when we looked at some parts of our ready-mix business, we looked at it as at clusters or our aggregates business as clusters. Now, we are able to go down to plant by plant and able to make surgical decisions on what to do with some of these assets, with a view of substantially improving return, which is happening. Capital allocation, as Jaime said, center stage at the capital allocation is returning capital to shareholders. Also center stage is making sure that we are looking at total shareholder returns on a per share basis. You know, that has really never been on the radar screen of management in the company. And that's extremely important because it makes a very different way of looking at the business. Balance sheet. Balance sheet, we have been working very hard over the years to reduce debt, improve our investment-grade ratings. We think we have more to come. My belief is that we should be a solid triple B-rated company through the cycle, very important, and that is also non-negotiable. In terms of the capital allocation framework, it's really starts by anchoring our position by saying that we need to always have an investment-grade capital structure that actually improves. We wanna be, we aspire, and we wanna be, and we're aligning people to be best-in-class stewards of capital. We are going to undertake bolt-on M&A acquisitions and very selective growth investments, as Jaime mentioned, and several of my colleagues also mentioned, based on very strict return criteria. Whatever that criteria is, we will always benchmark. It's like having an angel on our shoulder. We will always check with the angel, "How does that compare to buying back our stock?" That does not mean that we're going to, for long periods of time, not do anything and buy our stock. We'll have a balanced approach, of course, but clearly, we are not gonna chase deals, and we're not gonna invest in transactions that do not compete with the return of our stock. We also realize that, you know, we also are very conscious of the fact that when we're buying back our stock, that has an immediate impact to shareholders. This is the lowest risk activity that we can take in terms of deploying capital. Anything else that we do, we have to make sure that we have a proper buffer of higher return in order to make the cut to be investing. That's, that's a conversation that will be an extraordinarily difficult, tough conversation, and it will be had, you know, at the most senior levels of the company. Jaime said risk-adjusted. That's what I mean by risk-adjusted. Not risk-adjusted because of currency, of course, currency is one of them, but risk-adjusted by execution, adjacency, pricing strategies, and so forth and so on. Always, like I said, we'll talk to the little angel on our right shoulder, "Does it make sense when we compare it to investing in our own stock based on metrics which we can address in the Q&A?" The other thing that is also very new, foundational, in my view, it's a structural pillar, as Jaime said, is returning cash to shareholders. As you saw this year, we announced a 40% increase. We did not grow 40%, as you saw. We barely grew, but yet we increased dividends by 40%. For the year, we announced a $500 million share buyback. As Jaime said this morning, we're happy it's actually not $100 million. Unfortunately, I got a little upset with our treasurer this morning. I said, "Why couldn't you bought a little bit more?" It was 99.9 that we bought. That's roughly at an average price of $12.70. I just did the math on the back of the envelope, based on our the most recent FX rates. $100 we did. We continue to believe there's tremendous value in our stock, which we will take a look at in a second. Lastly, we are super committed, Jaime, as Jaime mentioned, to return by 2030, I'm sorry, returning between 40%-50% of our free cash flow to shareholders through the combination of stable, growing dividends and share buybacks. Now, in terms of investment strategy, or financing strategy, like I said, investment grade, non-negotiable. We've done a lot, and I know there's a lot of shareholders that have been very frustrated with us because we've paid a lot to our debt. Just to put into perspective, in the last decade, we reduced our interest expense by $850 million on an annualized basis. In the last five years, we've reduced it by $200 million, and I expect that we should be able to, in the foreseeable future, in the next two, three years, to reduce it by another $200 million. That will be due to a combination of gross debt reduction, improvement credit risk, liability management that reprices our debt stack, you know, all of that should hopefully translate to a solid BB B rating. One of the key metrics with one of our rating agencies, S&P, is funds from operations. We are probably going to get to that metric in the BB B category by probably the first half of 2027. I'm very excited. I'm looking forward to maybe getting them to cross over. The other thing is that given the sprint and the results of the sprint, that is likely to mean that we will no longer need the subordinated notes as part of our cap structure in the medium term. That will also be another source of saving. Interest expense has been, you know, a big, the big kind of steel ball in the ankles, frankly, for so long. Last year was 16% of EBITDA. Most of our competitors are well below 10%, so that's what we're shooting for. We need to get to below 10% as a percentage of EBITDA, we should be making an important step in that direction. You might say, "Well, why is this so important?" Of course, we're targeting 1.5 x to 2x leverage, more on the lower end of the side. You may say, "Well, why is that so important for shareholders?" It's super important. Everything else being equal, every $1 of debt we pay should go to shareholder value, right? Unless our multiples start going down, right? If they're going up, there's even more leverage. The other thing is lower leverage is lower risk, lower beta, you know, lower cost of equity, more access to a broader shareholder base. It's super important, and that all should translate to a better total shareholder return for our shareholder over time for our shareholders over time. We think we have a very clear plan to get there. We're looking at transforming our maturity profile more in line with an IG investment grade. We're looking this year to double the average life of our debt. Our average life right now is somewhere around four years. We're looking to probably be eight-plus years, very much in line with most of our global peers, especially our U.S. aggregate peers. How do we do that? We need to do that through proactive liability management. We need to do that by de-emphasizing funding through banks, which also is an IG characteristic, by the way, and going to the debt capital markets. For that, we think it's extremely important to become an SEC-registered issuer. We are planning to go to the SEC-registered market. Now, you may say, "Why do you need that? I mean, you've been very successful in getting debt in the 144A market." The 144A market is about $6 trillion-$7 trillion. That's the total market. The SEC-registered market is 10x that much. It's $60 trillion-$70 trillion, with a much broader investor base, especially at the retail level. We think we're going to get much better risk price discovery in the SEC-registered market, not to mention speed of execution, lower cost of execution, and tenor. We think we should be able to get very important tenor. On the FX risk, we will continue to manage our currency exposure through our hedging strategies. It's very important to highlight here, what is the philosophy of CEMEX's hedging strategy? Our strategy is to dampen the volatility that is given to our operators from a pricing perspective. It's giving our operators in Mexico, giving Sergio and his team 12–18 months to recover prices in dollars. That's what we are trying to do. If you take a look, interestingly enough, at, you know, earnings out of Mexico, they have been substantially dollarized. I mean, if you take a look at the peso FX behavior in the last decade, it has depreciated by 0.4% CAGR, 0.4% CAGR for 10 years. In the last five years, it's actually appreciated by 2%, right? It has not been a headwind, it's been a tailwind, and if it has been a headwind, it's been a minor headwind. Quality of earnings in Mexico are super high, super positive, and we're very excited about that. If we take a look at the blueprint for our capital deployment, I am purposefully not going to address the criteria that we're going to use for growth CapEx, because growth CapEx has been substantially de-emphasized. We can address that in the Q&A. I think bolt-on M&A is really where we want to be for a number of reasons. One important reason is it has a much higher certainty of adding to EBITDA, of transforming our portfolio, and improving our free cash flow, and making sure that we go to markets where we want to be in the shortest period of time. Obviously, if we take a look at the right-hand side of this slide, the first thing is strategic fit, right? I mean, I'm not going to go through that because I think all my colleagues, you know, exhausted that. Clearly, first thing we're going to do, we're not going to do anything crazy. We're not going to do anything beyond the strategies that you heard this morning. When we get to financial criteria in making investments, number one criteria, we need to have earnings per share accretion and free cash flow per share accretion in year one. Very powerful filter for investments that we're going to make. The other criteria that is extremely important for us is return on capital employed being over weighted average cost of capital within three years of acquisition. For virtually all investments, with some exceptions, if we're talking about aggregates, investments in the U.S. in particular, depending on strategic importance, fit, quality, many other things that may be very localized, we may tolerate slightly longer than three years achieving that target. Lastly, we don't want to be in a situation where we're paying higher than single-digit multiple EBITDA after we get synergies. If when, you know, when we took a look at the Omega transaction that José Antonio was announcing today, you know, we literally ticked all of the above, including the comparison to accretiveness, to the profitability of our stock price, given where we stand today and given our valuation levels today in the market. The next thing is, of course, the shareholder commitment. As Jaime Muguiro said, it's again, it's another one of those non-negotiables. 40%-50% distributions to shareholders by 2030 in the form of dividends and share buybacks. You know, we're putting our money where our mouth is, like you said. We literally started, I think we reported on a Thursday, and on Monday, our quiet period was over, and we've already bought $100 million worth or $99.9 million worth. We are committed to having a steady, reliable, and progressive dividend payout in the future. Of course, you know, when we do buybacks, we're always keeping an eye on, are we buying within intrinsic value? Are we delivering real value to our shareholders? How does that compare to alternative investment strategies? Clearly, there is a preordained balance that we want to deliver to shareholders, which is a 40%-50% return to cash, to shareholders. That's something that is almost preordained, right? It's not if we have, it's we are going to do that as a primary objective. Now, the story doesn't end here. What I wanted to share with you also is that there's ample capacity to accelerate growth to shareholder returns in the next couple of years. We're expecting, as I mentioned earlier, that free cash flow number, we're expecting to generate $2.5 billion, I'm sorry, free cash flow in 2026 and 2027. I'm expecting that we would end the sprint period with leverage that is more on the lower end of our leverage target, around closer to the 1.5 x. If we want, for whatever reason, to re-leverage because there's an absolutely fantastic opportunity to be had or opportunities to be had, that would add another $2.5 billion of leverage capacity. I'm not suggesting that that's what we plan, intend, or have something to do. If you're wondering, what else can we do? How much capacity do we have? We have close to $5 billion that is for discretionary use, for investments, for return of capital to shareholders, either through dividends or through share buybacks. We feel in addition to the sprint improvement and growth organically and through our self-help, we have this additional, very powerful lever to do that. Bottom line and summarizing, you know, as I said earlier, I believe we are going through a really profound transformation in the company, changing how people behave. I think that, you know, by having best-in-class operational KPIs, and we are doing that, by the way. I mean, we can't go to quarry managers and ready-mix plant managers and say, "I need you to give me this TSR." We have very clear KPIs, operational KPIs, that translate or that map back to all of our EBITDA, EBIT, free cash flow conversion and growth, and return on capital employed. We believe if we achieve all of these things, we should demonstrate to the world a much more capital allocation discipline, and that should hopefully translate and be recognized by the market through improved valuations, and that should contribute very favorably to total shareholder return. My last slide I would like to share with you. This is not just my a slide that I like very much, but I think everybody likes this slide. Not only we've beaten the market, we've also delivered 106% of TSR in the year. We definitely don't want to be overly smug or overly happy. We want to be cautious. We're coming from a lousy valuation that we had. Fortunately, we've improved the valuation by two turns. We have a lot to do. We have a lot to prove. We have a lot to be consistent of over the next two and beyond that. Hopefully, as we do that, we should be able to converge to the players that are doing most of the things that we are aspiring or targeting to do. I really believe that we have a very powerful strategy. We have a fantastic team. I think we have a very precise plan to deliver, and I really believe, we believe, that the best is yet to come, and especially in this sprint. Thank you very much. Maher, don't go anywhere. If we could get the chairs up, and if we could ask Jaime and Jose Antonio to join us on stage. Thanks, Lucy. No, thank you all. Okay, if we could get a mic to Carlos. Oh, thank you. Peyrelongue, please, right here. Oh, that's great. Full water. He seems. Thank you. Ready to go. Okay. You want me to get you water. Just a second. No, it's okay, Maher. No, I got it again. I'm okay. Okay. Let me see a microphone. Thank you, Lucy. Carlos from Bank of America. My question is related to M&A. Comment on the expectation for, you know, the next couple of years in terms of the deploy investments. The criteria that Maher mentioned, you know, seems very solid. Obviously, that might limit some opportunities. Aggregates in the U.S. is quite fragmented, but most likely you have to go for, you know, family businesses, so it's relatively, like you said, bolt-on acquisitions, smaller acquisitions. Any color you can provide as to the opportunities that you are seeing and the ability to deploy, you know, some of that firepower that was mentioned by Maher in the presentation. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to elaborate on that. Carlos, thanks for the question. We are developing the muscle. In the past, we didn't do any M&A as we were delivering. We have rebuilt the teams, and we have a strong team in Monterrey and even a stronger team with Jesus. We hired a M&A head, separate from strategic planning, solely dedicated to knocking on the doors and execute deals. We've been working in the last years to build the pipeline and using the same tools as anyone interested in our space, right? We are locating and identifying appropriate partners to target. And we have a list of 100 and plus, and our idea is to continue strengthening that pipeline. As my team and I elaborated today, we buy a lot of aggregate. That give us a direct relationship, and we know the quality because we are consuming it in our ready mix. That give us a little bit of momentum, at least opportunity, right? To relate to those partners who supply today, right? That will allow us to engage meaningfully, right? Hopefully, we will make good strides. We're also looking beyond where we do business today. Because in aggregates, although the most energetic things are the ones closer to home, as Jeff highlighted, we do wanna grow beyond our footprint. We need a bit of time. We are developing, and sooner or later, we will gain traction, Carlos. That's what we're working on. Can I just add one comment? Please. The, one other comment- Of course, this is a open discussion. The one other comment is that we have broader options in addition to aggregates. Although Aggregates is a priority, the U.S. is a priority, we did mention that in adjacent business, we're looking at developing and growing four different businesses: construction chemicals, concrete products, mortars, and aggregate asphalt. That gives us more avenues to pursue. In the case of mortars, for example, you know, we announced the acquisition today of Omega, $23 million. You know, we have a plan in place to scale that up, and the ambition is, in a relatively short period of time, to grow that from $20 million+ to $100 million EBITDA. I think that by broadening our options also gives us, let's say, more optionality in terms of how to pursue the objective that you described, Carlos. A follow-up, if I may. Jaime, you mentioned, also that in Europe, obviously you're very strong in that regard, and that you're not ruling out the possibility of, you know, becoming the Vulcan or Martin Marietta, of Europe. Does that mean that you're also looking, I guess, at opportunities in Europe? I would presume that's a much more consolidated market, or you think there's also, you know, some family businesses that you could consolidate? Thank you. In our markets where we operate in Europe, the aggregate industry, if your question is around aggregates, is more fragmented, even more fragmented than in the U.S. You need to go micro market by micro market. Unlike in the U.S., because of the scale of some of the quarries where the aggregates travel further, that's not the case in Europe. There are very few large quarries. Is a different game, and the specs differ. While in the U.S., we wash, not necessarily is the case in Europe. When you look at micro market by micro market, the way we think, Carlos, is look at a metropolis where demand, right, exists, the growth demand expectation, and then we look around it, and we try to consolidate by micro market. That's how you build, right, a strong portfolio. That, in Europe, right, it provides ample opportunity. The reason why today we're prioritizing the U.S., right? Is because we have a great footprint, because we don't want to be late, right, in that process. We have more time to do that in Europe. Also because, again, for a great reason, which is growing in the U.S., we want to dilute, right, the weighted of Mexico to our portfolio in terms of EBITDA, free cash flow. We want to grow in dollars in the U.S. We have the team. We're developing the muscle. It will take a little bit of time, but we know our targets, and we are actively engaging. In fact, I'm going to next week, in the next two weeks, I'll be on the road, engaging personally as well with many family-owned owning aggregate assets and a few others around mortars. That's how we are beginning the journey. Okay. Thanks for your question, Carlos. I think José Espitia, did you have a question? We could get a mic over here. Thank you. Hi, everyone, José Espitia from BBVA. My question is, in the context of CEMEX transformational change, what are specific milestones, in terms of operation or market signals, is the company monitoring to determine if a structural move, such as U.S. listing, will be appropriate for the portfolio in this region? Allow me to take that question. I am aware of capital market structures, and we are following up what others have done. The way I think is that for the time being, there is no best substitute to strong shareholder returns, but to deliver in our Chapter 1 transformation on the metrics that we have provided to you. We relentlessly, for the time being, we're going to be working on delivering strong TSR through operational excellence, maximizing free cash flow, fully loaded, right? Getting to our best peers, benchmark performers. There is a Chapter 2. In that Chapter 2, there is a toolkit. In that toolkit, there exist some capital market structures, right? Today, they're not on the table, but in our journey, everything we're doing will prepare the company, right, that at the right time, that type of capital market structures could be an option. Today, we're not deviating our attention. We don't want to get distracted. We're going to deliver on what we said we would. Thanks for the question. Okay, maybe we could just go right next to Paco. That would be great. Okay. Francisco Suarez from Scotiabank once again. Congrats on this wonderful transformation on the business culture in Cemex. It's amazing, it's exciting. I think that my question relates precisely with that. To what extent, if you can elaborate, to what is similar and what is different to what Holcim does in terms of the P&L leadership? What worries me a little bit in these times, where lots of your peers have also substantial free cash flow generation. To what extent this empowerment at the micro level that you are creating within CEMEX, do you feel comfortable with how you are precisely giving enough compensation for these leaders that you have in CEMEX? How is your engagement on the ground when you see these guys and the response on them, and if you think that they are properly compensated? Thank you. Francisco, thanks for the question. I think in CEMEX, we have a best-in-class, approach to compensation. I think that, beyond our industry, we have access to the right data. We define our compensation based on market compensation and market practices, right? We use bands, and then we use penetration, right? We have a obviously basic and then short-term and long-term incentives. I'm very happy that you asked the question, because in my presentation, I said that as part of transformation, we are changing, effective January 1st, our compensation scheme for the close to 800 owners of our stock. What we did was to introduce the new metrics: EBIT, free cash flow conversion, ROIC over WACC, okay, and CO2. Also for the executive commit- That's short term. Cash, and then for the Executive Committee, we also introduced free cash flow per share. All right. Why? Because again, right, we're benchmarking cash usage, risk-adjusted, right, for shareholder returns. The Executive Committee members, right, will apply that capital allocation framework, understanding that free cash flow per share matters, and that connects to share buybacks as a benchmark. That's already in place. We have short-term cash, short-term restricted stock, and then we have long-term restricted stock. The long-term restricted stock is a three-year performance, totally linked to total shareholder return, TSR, relative to a bunch of peers, and then the Mexico Bolsa. With that, with all those modifications, right, we are no longer looking at EBITDA. Top line is about EBIT, is about managing the asset base. Owners' mentality is about ROIC, free cash flow conversion, and then TSR. Just a follow-up on that, if any differences or similarities with what Holcim is doing on their P&L leadership program? Because it kind of resembles in how they empower as well their leaders. Although I read a lot about our competitors, I might not have the details to be able to respond to that. What, what, Francisco, you need to understand on our end is now our P&L leaders have EBIT, free cash flow conversion targets, and ROIC over WACC targets, unlike in the past. Now, they have received, as you explained, Maher, all those details on their asset base, which we were not managing the same way we’re managing today. Right now, everyone knows that these are your assets you’re responsible for, and you better get that return on asset high. Otherwise, get rid of it because it penalizes your pocket. The other important thing is that all of a sudden, our managers hate CapEx. Oh, interesting! Well, that’s a behavioral change. The reason for that is that CapEx is not for free anymore. When you only look at EBITDA growth, right, you can spend a lot of CapEx, grow your EBITDA, but you're not improving free cash flow, fully loaded conversion. That's gone, and therefore, the owner's mentality is, "I need to get to my free cash flow conversion rate. I need to get my ROIC above WACC through the cycle structurally, and I'm now, you know, managing my asset base. I understand my depreciation, and I understand that what the decisions on CapEx do to my depreciation and my asset base." We're also providing the thresholds, again, when benchmarking to risk-adjusted share buybacks, so that everybody understands that either you bring a proposal that is above the threshold or don't even come. That's, that's the transformation that is happening right now. It will take a bit of time, but we're getting there and moving very fast. Great. Thanks, Francisco. Maybe if we could get a mic to Alejandra first, and then we can. Right here in the middle. Okay. Thank you. I guess my question is, you both mentioned this very unique analysis from the bottom up, where you now have details into ROIC and free cash flow at the asset level. I was just wondering if we could get a sneak peek of what that analysis is revealing. When I double-click on that $1 billion of divestments, is that including any sort of decision at the asset-by-asset level? Is that an exit from a full country? What is included in that $1 billion divestment? If we could have potentially timing around that. I know many moving parts, but. Yeah, I, there's two angles to your question. In terms of the information bottom up, I think it's revealing very interesting data that allows for very insightful and deep discussions around the business. Ultimately, I, the way I would describe it to you know, we now can see the look at the dispersion, right? You know, one thing is to look at, you know, how is Ready -Mix in Mexico doing? The other thing is to be able to map out how is each single plant in the Ready -Mix business in Mexico doing, right? As always, you know, there's a normal distribution. You have outliers, we can identify the outliers that are underperforming, where the performance gap is. Because the then the discussion evolves around not only the performance, but also the market, the conditions, you know, the competitive dynamics, vertical integration, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's just, you know, it's like we being able to double or triple or quadruple-click into the performance so that we can see, you know, much more detail, no? To your second question, definitely. I mean, when we think about I think Maher presented as an assumption, when we think about $5 billion investment capacity for either, you know, share buyback, dividends, M&A, pay down debt, $1 billion definitely picks up on this theme. Because when we describe the toolkit that we are using to evaluate assets that have performance gaps, maybe in some of those instances, we will find that, you know, one of the best outcomes for some of those assets is that they're probably better in the hands of somebody else. They have a different operating model, or they have better vertical integration or some other reason, yes, you know, the $1 billion in divestments pick covers the possibility of disposing or divesting some of those assets that meet that criteria, no? I hope I answered your question. The $1 billion, you asked about the timing, Alejandra? We should do that in the next 12– 14 months, so do expect that very soon. If I can just add. Yes. One comment. Again, this is not to be the bean counter in me, but having that granular data on a monthly basis, part of our Executive Committee review, plant by plant, region by region, business by business, let me tell you, it puts an incredible amount of focus on what is going well and what should be going better. That's very powerful, I think, and having that at hand is really a game changer, I think. Regional presidents, please jump in at any time if you wanna provide some color on how you drive the business performance reviews together with us as one team. Great. All right. Can we get a mic to Yassine right here? Okay. Thank you very much. First question, I'm just trying to understand a bit better your fully loaded free cash flow by 2027. I think, well, could you give us some color on what kind of investment in intangible asset do you plan for 2027? I think it was $210 that you're planning for 2026. Also the gross CapEx. I think you're targeting $300 million gross CapEx in 2026. What kind of gross CapEx do you plan for 2027 or midterm? Intangible CapEx investment, 2027 and midterm, and gross CapEx, 2027 and midterm would be very useful. My second question is on the organic EB T growth that you're currently targeting over the next two years. It's about $300 million. It suggests approximately 5% organic EBT growth per year. Do you see upside to that number if you manage to increase prices more than cost inflation in U.S. Aggregates, in Mexico, and in European cement? All right, I'm going to take advantage of your first question and pass the word to Maher to first repeat what we said about free cash flow conversion, fully loaded. I want to please Maher to describe the definition so that there is no misunderstanding with investors. Okay? Then I'll give you guidance on what we expect for total CapEx as we transition from free cash flow from operations, as we used to report, all the way to free cash flow before discretionary decisions. Why don't you refresh again, right, the percent that we will achieve in 2027, right, which will be not yet where we wanna be, okay, but over time, we will get there. I will give you guidance on total CapEx. Right. you know, the historically, what we have reported is free cash flow from operations, and then below that, we had things like the coupons that we pay on the subordinate notes, for instance. There could be some pension fund top-ups. There potentially could be some investments into intangibles, and a few other things, right? Not many things, mostly on the financial side. When you back all of those, which are really not discretionary, okay? Most of those investments are not discretionary. We have to use free cash flow to... In reality, any analyst looking at our numbers would be better guided to take a look at the lower number, which is which essentially taking everything away that is truly non-discretionary and leaving the cash that is available to distribute to shareholders, make investments, or pay down debt. There's a big difference, right, from the, between the free cash flow from operations number and that number. To address what Jaime was suggesting, if you recall, we're targeting 47% free cash flow conversion by 2027. That is the free cash flow conversion from EBITDA to free cash flow from operations. If we take out, if we subtract all of those effectively non-discretionary uses of cash, it takes us down to 38% free cash flow conversion. If we were to take a look at the growth of that free cash flow, that specific definition of free cash flow, then we're talking from the beginning of 2025 to 2027, a 50% growth in that period of that particular free cash, and the cumulative number there is about two and a half billion dollars. $2.5 billion. Yeah. We would be, you know, we'd be more than happy to give you the exact details, frankly, of all the different things, but. Yes There's a few items that are large and it's a big difference, right? I mean, when you go from the free cash flow conversion, from free cash flow from operations down to the, you know, what I would call the clean free cash flow number, it's a big difference, you know, going from 47% conversion to 38%. It's a big number, right? I don't know if there was anything- Regarding... I hope that is clear. Regarding guidance, we will continue. I said in my presentation that when compared to 2024, we guided in, for 2026, a reduction of $500 million. That includes $160 million of less interest payments and $327 million less CapEx, including intangible investments. Please note that we will continue with that journey, we will only provide a strategic CapEx, for the most part, for margin expansion, profitable decarbonization in Europe, in California, and we will continue to do some investments in process and to bring technology and AI to boost operational excellence, it's not gonna be as large as it used to be. When I think about 2027 and beyond, right? The total fully loaded CapEx, including intangibles, right, is going to be around $1 billion, $1.1 billion, no more. What was the number? More than a one and a half. You know, 1.5, 1.6. In intangibles, IT, we were investing $250 million, $200 million the days that we were deploying CEMEX Go. That is already there. That is a sunk cost. It doesn't require anything. The future technology investments are related to artificial intelligence to boost yield and margins. Do expect a very strong reduction in free cash flow. Another key thing, right? I took over in April. In months, we boosted free cash flow. Are we where I wanna be? No. We need to do more work, right? We brought to you great visibility in the very short term, 2026 guided and 2027 targets. The journey continues, right? I do expect to continue improving free cash flow conversion, and I see no reason, as we improve our earnings quality, no reason not to match the best-in-class free cash flow conversion of our peers. That's our mandate, and that's what we're going to be pursuing. Again, we will be transitioning from free cash flow from operations to free cash flow. We will consult, you know, with investors, right, to understand what is exactly the definition that they want us to use, right? We will move to that one. Great. Thanks for the question. On the question on the organic EBITDA growth? Sorry? On the question on the organic EBITDA growth, is there upside to that? There upside in organic. Oh! Oh. Ah. Right, there is upside. What are your estimates, right? What are your estimates? Give me your estimates, and then I'll answer you. This is how we see it. Where are the risks of our target, right? The risk of our target is on the organic side because the 55% of growth is under our control. Right? First thing, what are the upside levers that we're working on? More structural savings out of our transformation. We will provide you more color about that in the 2Q. That's my commitment to you, okay? We're making progress, and do expect a bit of upside risk, right? Even in 2026, because of our transformation, we're gonna bring more savings, okay? That's gonna happen. Second, in organic growth, on prices, right, we are targeting to at least recover input cost inflation. There are certain pockets where we might do better than that, and that could be another upside risk, okay? For the same reason, right, there is volatility, there could be some. I don't know, right? There will always be, on the organic side, outside of our control, volume-driven, whether it's a hurricane or bad weather, such as this first quarter in Europe, right? That is out of our control. The important thing is that, yes, there is some upside risk, all right? We will continue increasing the% of the self-help transformation to get to our target, and you'll hear more from us in the, in the 2Q and 3Q calls, as we make progress. Thank you. Thank you so much. Very important, very good question. Maybe just one point on that. You know, we're assuming low single-digit volume growth, and that's across the entire portfolio. Most of our markets are at a very low point at the moment. Exactly, yeah. You know, I think we are expecting recovery. Yeah. If we could pass the mic to, Ben Theurer. Thank you. I guess that's one for Maher. On the share buybacks, Maher, $99.9 million. As you look at it, the announcement was about to repurchase up to $500 million over the next three years. Right What you had in your presentation, so obviously, having done almost $100 million at an early stage is kind of like already 20% of that, so it's a very fast pace. Yeah. How do you think about going forward in terms of buying back shares? Is this going to be, like, on a pro rata basis, when you're basically able to buy shares, that you just constantly buy, no matter where the price is, or is it more going to be approach in terms of opportunistic share buybacks, versus maybe on a more pro rata basis? What's, like, the approach that you like to call it? I really never liked the word opportunistic. Share buybacks should be programmatic. Investors should almost be able to account for how much free cash is being returned to them as a package, both in the form of dividends, which of course we know doesn't really impact necessarily, you know, the enterprise valuation, right? I'm a big believer that we should be programmatic. We should be constantly taking advantage of undervaluation. I mean, of course, we're not gonna go out there and buy stock if we don't think there's intrinsic value. You saw the, you know, the valuation parameters. We have a significant upside between now... Obviously, we're not gonna, you know, advertise what levels we believe is the right valuation, 'cause the world may change by the time that we get there. Of course, as you know, the, you know, the approval for our program is an annual basis, and to the extent that we think there's opportunity, and we think that from a strategic allocation, we're not investing the capital at rates that we like. I mean, maybe we may reconsider the amount of, you know, share buybacks that we are undertaking. Right now, we don't need to do that. We have, you know, $500 million limit. You know, I can't comment whether we're done or not done, or we're gonna do more because the lawyers will kill me. So I can't do that. You know, obviously, we're going through. There are very clear corridors and restrictions on when, how, what percentage of the daily float we are undertaking. We're not just blindly going in and just, you know, buying back. Obviously, we're selective. We wanted to be very categorical after the quiet period. So we systematically. Again, we were buying at pretty attractive, in my view, pretty attractive valuations, right? Pretty attractive free cash flow yield at the end of the day. If I could just tack on a question from the webcast. We got a question asking if we would be canceling the shares, so it seems like a good time. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. Good, good. Yes. Yes, we are. If I can ask it. Yeah, I mean. Of course. Yes, we are. Yeah. Yes, we are. Yes, sir. Okay. Thanks for your question, Ben. Anne Milne here on the side. I think there's a mic. Thank you. Anne Milne from Bank of America. I have a question for Jaime and a question for Maher. Jaime, fully aware that Cemex's strategy is on Mexico, the U.S., and Europe, a lot of people are asking now if you would consider going back into Venezuela, given that you did have a large presence there in the past, and there is a big reopening in the oil sector at the moment. I'll let you ask that, and then the last- Yes, allow me to answer that question. Thanks for the question. We involuntarily left Venezuela, and we did it in a way that we were not properly compensated for the excellent talent pool and assets that we ran in Venezuela. We were the only company to produce oil well cement, which is necessary to drill, baby drill. We had very competitive, well, locally positioned assets, particularly our Pertigalete plant, very well connected to our Caribbean and the U.S. presence. Under the rule of law, number one, right, you all understand what that means, right? I should not rule out the possibility to at least take a look at our former assets, right? See if it makes sense at the right time and always under, again, a predictable environment, whether we should recover those operations and whether doing so will comply with our capital allocation commitments, right? I like Pertigalete, at least, and we would first need to confirm whether the business would enjoy very competitive natural gas costs, which is what made us very strong in the past. When I was leading SCAC, I had the chance to send a very small team to visit some of our former plants, and they were really destroyed, in horrible shape, dusting everywhere. Safety was a total disaster, and there was population invading, you know, the areas of the mineral reserves. It will be very complex, right? We will take it at least slow, but at least we wanna take a look at the right time and when appropriate and see what happens. We will not enter if it does not make any sense, neither because of uncertainty, right? Or because of financial commitments, financial metrics. Thanks for the question. That's very clear. Thank you very much. Maher, you've made the life of fixed income analysts and investors a little boring with your reduction in leverage right now. Investors are boring. After many years of volatility. Yeah. Congratulations on that. Thank you. One comment that you made here, I know that there will be a lot of questions on this. There's two words in particular that you're not likely to need subordinated notes in the medium term. Could you please define medium term? I mean, I think within it's very difficult to do that, right? But to me, I'm thinking really within the framework of our sprint, right? We're not thinking beyond the sprint. I think there should be an impact within the sprint as we improve free cash flow generation, as we improve FFO for somebody like S&P, for instance. That will make a huge difference, right? That's gonna happen. Yeah. Three years period. Sorry? A three-year period. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, great. Right here. Right behind you. Thank you. Emilio Fuentes from GBM. Regarding earnings quality and the importance or the Urban Solutions business has within that, can you give us a rough estimate on the medium term, how much you expect it to represent for your EBITDA on a consolidated basis? Also, especially giving the role it has on your free cash flow returns platform. We, well, I don't think I can answer that question today, and I apologize, because I don't think what we have detailed, concrete numbers for the midterm. The reason for that, again, is because as I introduced this discussion today, instead of doing five-year business plans and thinking beyond our reach, I wanted to bring forward immediate performance under our new transformation and capital allocation. We will need to do more work to provide you with an answer to your question. Having said that, right, I also said that we will continue to be a heavy building materials company, so cement, cementitious, aggregates, ready-mix concrete, with some adjacent, right, businesses that enhance our value proposition to every market segment. What I can reiterate of what José Antonio said is that in the U.S., for our Martis family of solutions that are very synergetic with cement, sand, aggregates, logistics, and customers, we have a very concrete plan to build through roll-up. A few greenfields in Florida, around $100 million of EBITDA platform, with a free cash flow conversion of around 65%-70%. That's what I can tell you today about urbanization solutions within the next years. Yes. Thank you. If I may add, touching on a really hot topic right now, AI, I know you talked on it on aggregates, but could you give us a little more detail on how this could impact your other businesses? You mean A.I.? AI. Artificial intelligence? Yeah. Yes. When would you expect a material impact? I assume it's not incorporated into your metrics for the current sprint. They're not incorporated into our metrics. We have a, Jesus, you may want to elaborate a little bit about our flagship project in Balcones, Texas, right? Why don't you explain a little bit what we're doing on AI for the cement business, and then I'll tell you a little bit about how we're going to scale it, and then I'm going to elaborate very fast about certain lines of cost, where we will deploy AI to boost margins. It's a little bit too early to provide specifics within this sprint, but we're working on it. Jesus, why don't you provide some light? Yes. We selected our Balcones plant in San Antonio, Texas, as a flagship project for developing all our AI projects. What we're doing there is twofold. Now, we're trying to implement the AI in two categories of margin improvement opportunities. One of them is optimizing maximizing production out of our facilities. We have implemented already, and we are working with those algorithms that help us to maximize production. This is very relevant in our Balcones plant because remember that we're importing cement into Houston, so by increasing production in Balcones, we're going to be able to displace imports now. That's ongoing. I mean, we have been able to run the plant in autonomous AI autopilot condition for several hours already for the whole plant. That's one aspect of what we're doing there. The other aspect is using AI to minimize cost. We can program these algorithms to reduce energy consumption, to reduce electricity consumption, et cetera, no? Depending on the market conditions, we can adjust these algorithms to maximize production or reduce cost and increase efficiencies, no? The idea is to, once we finish with this pilot in Balcones, we're going to start deploying those algorithms based on artificial intelligence, to other plants, not only in the U.S., but across all other operations, no? That's mainly what we're doing with AI, focus on operations, cement operations, no? There are more examples that Jaime can elaborate. To be more specific, in the case of Balcones, we're getting a 10%-15% increase in yield, all right? Which is very meaningful. I think, Jesus, that your next plan is going to be Miami, you have another, which is Brooksville, I believe, you proposed. That's the, how impactful it becomes. You and your team produced incrementally last year, 500,000 short tons, right? This year, you're targeting, incrementally from the same asset, 700,000 short tons. Some of that is a result, will be a result of AI, because what AI does in the, in the cement plant is that it adjusts chemistry and operating parameters on real time, and we don't need to wait to see the results of, breaking a mold to see a strength, performance, waiting for days. You know, we, the system, adjusts, and that provides more reliable operation and lower specific heat consumption, and then higher production. We don't know yet what it means for every plant, because you need to go one by one, but that's one of the applications. Then we do see AI on two fronts.... Back office, overhead, boost productivity, starting with third-party spend, right. Doing more in-house with the same headcount, powered by artificial intelligence, right. That should drive a continuous improvement on overhead cost, right. Then we do see AI on network optimization, logistics network, delivery network optimization, cement, aggregates, right. AI optimizing concrete mixes. We don't know yet, right, by how much. It's too early, right. On and so forth. We have already identified every line. We have hypotheses. Based on our commitment to fully loaded free cash flow, we will be deploying these things, right. Based on business cases, unlike in the past. If there isn't a robust business case that meets the shareholder return thresholds, we will not pursue it. That's how we're thinking, we're thinking about it. I hope that I have answered your question, but because I see interest, we will elaborate in the next months and, you know, about that as we engage with you. Um- Thanks for the question. Sadly, I think that we have gone over already our time. Yeah, but. Okay he's done his best effort raising his hand. He deserves it. I apologize. Very fast. Lucy, I'm sorry that I'm overriding, but. Thank you. Jorel Guilloty from Goldman Sachs. Hopefully, it is a fast question, but I wanted to parse out the 50% free cash flow conversion target. Specifically, I want to think from a markets basis. What are the medium-term free cash flow conversion targets per market? I recall that in the 2024 Investor Day, there was a 90% target for Mexico, for example, in free cash flow conversion. Nine? 90. I wanted to see if there's a proxy to. We're not gonna provide free cash flow conversion by market. I don't think we've ever. I think we've said in the past that Mexico does have a high cash flow conversion. Okay. Yes. We're not. Yeah, I apologize, but we're not gonna be providing a specific free cash flow conversion by region right now. Maybe a proxy for that, where do you see the biggest improvement? Oh, the question is where we see the biggest improvement? Rather, if that cannot be answered, where do you see the biggest improvement in free cash flow conversion in the different markets? Yes, I can tell you where we see the largest improvements are in the U.S., right, EMEA, followed by SCAC. Mexico, right, operates at a very solid free cash flow conversion. Highest. Those are where we have the largest opportunity. Thank you. Thanks, Gerald. Sorry. Okay, thank you all. Yeah, we'll give a round of applause. Thank you very much for your questions. Okay. No, thanks to you for your questions and your interest. Thanks. Thank you, everyone. Please take advantage of finding them in the next few minutes if you have additional questions. I hope that you found today's events informative and an opportunity to get to know part of our senior management team a little better. You will be receiving a survey to evaluate this event. We hope you fill it out. We try to listen to respondents and improve on CEMEX Day. Thank you again for joining us, and we look forward to connecting with you again soon. This finalizes the webcast.