Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CRH plc trading update. For the duration of the call, you will be on listen only. You may submit your question at any point during the call. Press star one to queue for a question after the presentation. The next voice you will hear will be Albert Manifold. Good afternoon, everyone. Albert Manifold here, CRH Group Chief Executive, you're all very welcome to our conference call, which accompanies the release of our trading update earlier today. Joining me on the call is Senan Murphy, our Group Finance Director, Jim Mintern, our Finance Director Designate, Frank Heisterkamp, Director of Capital Markets and ESG, and Tom Holmes, Head of Investor Relations. Following some short opening remarks, we will be available to take any questions you may have on our announcements. All told, we aim to finish up in about 30 minutes or so. Before I take you through the key points of our announcements, I'd like to take the opportunity to recognize the dedication and resilience of our people across the group as we continue to navigate the challenges and uncertainties arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. As always, the safety of our employees, contractors, and customers remains paramount at CRH and is a core focus for us in everything we do. Our announcement today provides details of our trading performance for the first three months of 2021, as well as an update on our recent capital allocation activity. We will also provide you with an indication of our EBITDA expectations for the first six months of the year and our initial reports on the outlook for the second half. Beginning with our first quarter trading performance, and overall, it's been a positive start to the year for CRH. Group sales for the first quarter of the year were 3% ahead on a like-for-like basis, a reflection of good underlying demand across core markets and further progress on pricing and commercial management. Let me briefly take you through the trading trends for the first quarter of 2021 across our individual businesses. Starting with our Americas Materials division, first quarter like-for-like sales were broadly in line with the prior year. Our businesses experienced some extremely cold and disruptive weather conditions in the month of February, impacting our operations in the Northeast, Midwest, and Texas in particular. For the division as a whole, first quarter aggregates and asphalt volumes were behind a strong prior year comparatives. In contrast, our cement and ready-mix concrete volumes were 5% and 2% ahead respectively, with good demands, particularly in the Western region of the United States. Of course, it's worth noting that our materials business is particularly seasonal, and the first quarter typically only accounts for between 10% and 20% of our annual volumes. With the continued focus on strong commercial management, we made good progress on pricing in aggregates, cement, and ready-mix concrete. Despite lower pricing in our asphalt business, margins expanded due to lower input costs. Although it's still very early in the season, the bidding environment remains broadly stable, and there is positive momentum with regard to further infrastructure stimulus measures in the United States. Infrastructure funding remains a bipartisan issue, and whilst there are some uncertainties regarding the quantum and the timing of any such funding plans, we're confident that a viable multi-year program can and will be put in place. Turning to Europe Materials, our like-for-like sales were slightly ahead of the prior year as more seasonal weather patterns during January and February were offset by improved trading conditions in March. In Western Europe, our like-for-like sales were broadly in line. Volumes across most products in the U.K. and France were ahead of the prior year, which was heavily impacted by COVID-19 related shutdowns. Germany, Switzerland, and Finland were impacted by adverse weather and more resilient prior year comparatives. In Eastern Europe, more normal weather conditions impacted volumes in Poland and Romania, partially offset by resilient demand in Hungary and Serbia. In the Philippines, cement volumes were well ahead in the first quarter in a competitive pricing environment. With regard to pricing for the division as a whole, we continued to deliver improved pricing during the period with good progress across our major markets. Finally, to our Building Products business, where like-for-like sales for the first quarter were 12% ahead of 2020, reflecting strong demand for residential construction, particularly in North America, partially offset by lower activity levels in the non-residential sector. Like-for-like sales in Architectural Products were 27% ahead, reflecting strong underlying demand for outdoor living products and good early-season purchasing by home centers in advance of the key spring trading period. In our Building Envelope business, like-for-like sales were behind as a result of lower non-residential activity due to the impact of COVID-19 related uncertainty and lower backlogs entering the year. In our Infrastructure Products business, like-for-like sales were ahead as a result of good demand in the telecom and energy sectors in both Europe and North America. For the group as a whole, it's been a good start to the year, notwithstanding the impact of more normal seasonal weather patterns across many of our markets compared to the relatively milder conditions we experienced in 2020. Before I go into our outlook in further detail, let me touch briefly on a few other items from today's announcements. First, for our development activities. In the year to date, we have completed four bolt-on acquisitions with total consideration of $180 million, the largest of which was the precast concrete business, which expands our Infrastructure Products footprint in the U.S. Midwest. Our acquisition pipeline remains robust. The strength of our balance sheet, combined with our continued focus on financial discipline, will enable us to capitalize on these opportunities to create further value for our shareholders. We've also completed the divestment of our Brazil cement business with total proceeds of over $200 million, representing a good outcome for our shareholders and further progress in becoming a simpler and more focused business going forward. In light of our robust balance sheets and continued strong cash generation, in March, we announced our intention to recommence our share buyback program with a further tranche of up to $300 million. That current tranche is now well underway and will be completed before the end of June. Now turning to our outlook. Following a positive start to the year, we expect first half profitability to be well ahead of the prior year period, which experienced a heavily disrupted second quarter due to the pandemic-related restrictions across many of our key markets. Sitting here on the 20th of April with our most important trading period ahead of us, it's very difficult to be more specific at this stage, but we'll of course, update you on our expectations as the year unfolds. As we look into the second half, we expect further normalization in our markets as the health situation continues to improve. There remain, however, significant near-term uncertainties that we need to be mindful of, particularly the complex unwind of COVID-19 across our markets. We must be patient, and we must be careful. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it will take time. Looking beyond the near-term uncertainties, however, we expect significant public and private support for construction activity going forward. Given the resilience of our business model and the strength of our balance sheet, we remain well-positioned to benefit from the growth opportunities that lie ahead. As always, we remain laser-focused on the continued execution of our long-term strategy to deliver higher margins, returns, and cash for our shareholders. Now, before we return over to Q&A, let me take a moment to update you on a few items that have been on our minds since we last spoke to you in early March. First, with regard to U.S. infrastructure. We have seen further developments in recent weeks with a number of proposals being put forward for consideration and discussion. As I mentioned earlier, although there are uncertainties around the scale and timing of these plans, we believe we are headed in the right direction and that a solution can and will be found. Clearly, there are politics involved, so it's very hard to predict how it'll play out. We believe there is broad-based, bipartisan support for increased infrastructure investment, which will be very beneficial for CRH as the largest building materials business in North America. Another important development arises from last week's Climate Summit, with the United States committing to an over 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. These are critically important commitments and are to be welcomed. We are all citizens of this world, and delivering on these commitments is essential for the future of society. Not only is it the right thing to do, from a business perspective, we also think these commitments should be embraced. As North America's largest recycler and as a leading provider of integrated building solutions with global technical expertise in these areas, we believe these climate commitments represent significant opportunities for CRH. As you know, in our industry, there's a lot of focus on carbon emissions, particularly in cement. Cement is only part of the story, and as such, I, as President of the GCCA, the Global Cement and Concrete Association, representing not only CRH, but the largest cement companies in the world, including LafargeHolcim, Heidelberg, Cemex, and almost half of the cement and concrete industry around the world. Let me just lay out a few simple facts. Cement is used for only one purpose, and that is to make concrete. Cement is a significant emitter of CO2. However, the product that it makes, concrete, is a carbon sink. It actually absorbs CO2 like trees absorb CO2. In fact, over its life cycle, approximately 25% of all the CO2 emissions during the manufacturing process is actually reabsorbed back from the atmosphere by concrete. Of course, reducing the carbon footprint of cement is crucial for our world, and significant progress has already been made by the industry to date. All across our industry, there are specific plans in place for further reductions out to 2030. As an industry, through the GCCA, we are committed to further reducing emissions to ensure we will all be producing carbon-neutral concrete by 2050, in line with commitments made to the Paris Agreement. This is an industry effort. Nobody's ahead of the game. Let me assure you that as an industry, we take this matter very seriously, and we are all working together in collaboration to address this specific challenge. As I mentioned earlier, it's not just about carbon emissions. It's about reducing the impact of construction on our environment and our world. It's about improving the quality of construction, building safer, cleaner, and better. Improving the thermal efficiency of buildings, prolonging their life cycles, increasing the use of recycled materials, and becoming a greater contributor to the circular economy. This is where the world is going, and over the last number of years, we at CRH have significantly shaped, repositioned, and adapted our business in line with these trends. We have been working in partnership with our customers to better understand their individual needs. Over time, we have developed a much more integrated offering, uniquely combining base materials, value-added products, and innovative solutions to better serve our customers' needs while capturing more value in the process. Our integrated offering makes us more deeply embedded with our customers, creating long-term partnerships and building barriers to switching. This change strategy has been fundamental to delivering increased profitability, improved returns, and higher cash generation. It is less capital-intensive, requiring less capital expenditure, and brings both reduced cyclicality and higher growth opportunities. The world of construction is changing, and by providing more integrated and innovative solutions to our customers, we are playing our part in helping to reinvent the way our world is being built. With that, I will now hand you over to Q&A. I believe we have some questions on the line. May I ask you to state your name and the institution you represent when posing your questions? In consideration of others on the line and to make the best use of the time we have available, could I ask you to please limit your questions to one each where possible. I'll now hand you back to the moderator to coordinate the question and answer session of our call. Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, it's star one on your phones if you wish to ask a question. Our first for today is from Robert Gardiner from Davy. Please go ahead. Good morning, all. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I'll be quick. One, I was just wondering, could you give us a sense of the momentum in the business after the weather cleared up? How you kind of traded through March and into April in both Europe and North America. Two, I was wondering, could you talk about your acquisition pipeline, what kind of opportunities you're seeing, and how perhaps we should think about your comments just there around integrated building solutions. How should we think about that in terms of acquisition or growth CapEx? How does that fit into the capital allocation strategy? Thank you. Hi, Bob. Two questions there. I'll take both of them. Look, we've set out this morning how the first quarter has done, and you've seen the numbers there. With regards to the current run rates and how business is trading, actually, we've had a good April. If I just start in the United States and look at the overall market there, with the improving health situation in the United States, the economy is starting to move over. The three sectors that we serve, the residential, the non-residential, the infrastructure, moving ahead quite well. I'd have to say the residential sector is going from strength to strength. Good demands, low interest rates and housing stocks are probably as low as I've seen them, and that is underpinning good strength into the residential market. That's been seen by coming through with the parts of our business that are most exposed to that, primarily at this time of the year, it's the APG business. Non-res actually is turning out to be a better story than we had anticipated. We felt that last year, the decline would continue into this year, and we felt it would bottom out this year, which I think it will do. It seems to us at this stage now that it's probably a shallower and shorter dip this year than we would have envisaged. I think that we'll be returning back to growth in non-res by the back end of this year at the latest. A nice surprise there. A positive surprise. With regards to infrastructure, early season, yes, it was slow during January and February, but of course, it's very quiet time of year. I have to say activity levels are starting to build in the order books. It's still quite early in the season in the U.S., but activity levels are beginning to build, and we're quite pleased with the pace of the take-up and quite pleased with the margins in that. The U.S. seems to be in fairly good and robust shape. Switching back to Europe, and with regard to Europe, again, there was some significant weather impacts both in East and Western Europe in February in particular. Again, good momentum once the weather shifted and April, again, we've had a good month across pretty much all markets. Again, as the situation starts to recover and the shutdowns are being lifted, people are getting back to work and you're getting that catch-up effect. Also underlying activity is good and pricing is good in Europe, continues on ahead. Quite pleased with the performance as we sit here today on the 28th of April for the month of April, and the momentum looks fairly good in Europe as well. With regards to the M&A pipeline, four bolt-on deals that are done in the first quarter of the year, $ 200 million. As I said to you, we have, before, the pipeline is quite strong. We're just keeping our discipline. We're looking at a number of deals. Most importantly is to do deals that not only bring value to our shareholders but fit with our overall long-term strategy. That strategy, as you know, is focused very much on North America and in Europe. There's the areas we're looking at. Clearly, we're not looking at the developing world. Also, as you rightly indicate, the build-out of the building products and the extension of the product solutions, which have been a key driver of not only pull-through of our materials, but also the continuous success, as you say, again, of the Building Products business. Following that trend where we can effectively extend our base materials into the manufacture of products and the delivery of the services with those products as well. That full extension is where construction is going, and we will tap into those areas there again. Again, a lot of deals there. I'd expect to see a ramp-up in our M&A during the course of this year. Also, I think we're getting to the point whereby we're looking at the opportunities where we're seeing growth of development CapEx, effectively capital expenditure, which we're actually rolling out rather than going and buying businesses with expansionary CapEx, particularly in some of our growth markets in Eastern Europe and across the U.S., which will be higher than normal and probably will lead to us having a higher CapEx than you would normally expect by a couple of hundred million at least in this year. It's just a question. We can either do M&A or we can do internal CapEx and expanding our existing capacity in existing locations. It's cheaper for us to do this. It's higher returning, it's more reliable, and we've always said that the best returning investments we make are internal CapEx. There's increased expansionary CapEx. M&A pipeline is good and strong. We just need to hold our discipline and roll it out over the next few years. This is a multi-year program. We're not looking to flip any light switches in quarters here. Just take a strong progressive view of it. Pleased about the performance of the first quarter. Pleased about the run rate. M&A pipeline is good. With the discipline, I would expect it to move on and accelerate during the course of this year. That's great, yeah. Thanks. Makes sense. Thank you. Our next question is from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I'll limit myself to the one I think I'm supposed to ask. I'm going to ask your sort of final comments there on sort of sustainability carbon. I guess I'm interested specifically what you think will happen in the U.S., which obviously has been lagging behind compared to Europe. Do you think there will be changes to regulation, the building code, perhaps to lower clinker ratios? What are your plans, if any, for carbon capture? I think the U.S. is relatively suitable for that. It'd be interesting to sort of hear strategy on sort of decarbonizing the American business, please. Thank you. Thanks, Gregor. Yes, I totally agree with you. First of all, as I said to you, as individuals, as a corporate, we welcome the announcement of the United States by President Biden to obviously cut emissions by 50% to 2030. It should be noted, of course, that already the reduction from the 2005 base year has already been 21%, so there's a further 29% to go in that. I think it will bring significant changes in the way of life in the United States and in particular, with regard to building materials, not just on CO2, which we talked about. Specifically to your question, Regulations will come in to permit different types of cement, because largely speaking, in the United States, they're using one type of cement, the cement that uses the most clinker. Of course, in Europe we have sometimes two, three and even four different types of cement, where we use lower clinker ratios, which lowers the CO2 footprint. I expect that they will be brought in progressively over time. I think the other thing that will happen is there will be a greater focus on using alternative fuels. We tend not to use alternative fuels in the United States because the customer practice is not to use them. There's no advantage in using them. By putting targets in place, thus the regulators and the cement companies and associations have agreed to in Europe, by doing something similar in the United States, that also will reduce down the CO2 footprint. I think that's very important with regard to that. Thirdly, I think actually the way we are actually using and constructing buildings, I think that also further regulations, which is coming in Europe, which is where our product solutions are going, I think that too will also reduce the CO2 footprint. As part of the PCA, as part of the Global Cement and Concrete Association, we're right in the middle of the mix, working with regulators to help shape the next stage of increased regulation or increased modernization of the industry here. We're a very large cement business across not only Canada and the United States as well as Europe. I think the experiences that we have in Europe will really stand to us as we roll out these plans across the U.S. because effectively what we will be doing, much as we did when we bought the Ash Grove business, is taking the expertise and experience that we have for the last 15, 20 years in Europe and bringing it into North America. I think that will bode well both for the company but also in terms for society over here as well. Thank you. Thanks, Gregor. Our next question is from Paul Roger from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon, Albert. Hello, team. Hope you're well, and congratulations on the start. I'll also limit myself to one question then and focus on the Building Products division. I mean, obviously you've had a really strong Q1. I'm just trying to understand really the sustainability of that growth momentum. I guess the extent to which it's benefiting from things like people doing up their gardens when they're working from home, and whether that type of tailwind could sort of fade as we go through 2021. Paul, good question. I might be worried, but if I look at the facts, it doesn't bear up because the Building Products has been growing with sustained growth maybe for the last six or seven years at this stage. It's not only been top line, it's been bottom line, it's been margin, it's been cash, and it's been led by the three legs of the stool, all of them with different markets. Actually, the principle by which they are delivering that value is in this way of providing a broader solution and services to our customers. The APG business, you're absolutely right, has been focused on the outdoor living. Outdoor living has been a growing space in the U.S. maybe for the last six and seven years. Our role and our part in that has not only been providing the products, but also working with our customers to broaden out the offering to our customers with a full product range, and then working with the professional installers as to how they should put that in, what are the best solutions for them. That didn't just start from COVID hit last year. That's been going on since 2014 and 2015, and it continues to go on. The footprint expands. Likewise with our Infrastructure Products, again, that tag us, it's nothing to do with COVID at all. It's to do with the idea of the transportation of vital utilities, particularly storm water and water management. Again, that's the problem in all of the developed world because we have not invested as we have as we built up our urban environments and water is a vital scarce resource. The protection and transportation of it is hugely important. That's been a strong growth. That's not a COVID-19 item. That's a strong trend that will continue on for decades. Likewise, the OBE business, where again, looks very similar to strategy whereby we started out with just basically being a glass business that now is a much more integrated offering to the glazing customer, providing all the products they need, not only the hardware, the glass, but also the aluminum, the home-friendly windows and all the associated products to go with it. You become the one-stop shop and looking at further plans as to how to expand and build out that platform. It's more the success of the business model, the integrated solution, rather than anything to do with COVID, because all of those trends have been evident if you go back to the numbers, Paul, since 2013, 2014 when we started out on this road. That's great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Paul. Our next question is from Elodie Rall from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, Albert. Thanks for taking my question. I'll limit to one as well. Maybe on pricing, since we haven't discussed that yet. You've had a good start of the year in the U.S. with pricing up 3%, 4%, I think you said on aggregate and cement. You mentioned good pricing development in Europe, pretty much everywhere except I think Asia, in Q1 tail. How do we think about pricing for the rest of the year? Do you see more increase to come in any region? How do we think about that in light of cost inflation, which is ramping up, as we all know? Thanks. Thanks, Elodie. Nice to talk to you. Elodie, I'll take the talk on behalf of the U.S., and Jim Mintern, our Finance Director Designate, is on the call. Jim really worked closely within our European business over the last number of years, and he's got a good handle on the European pricing environment. I'll ask him to come in after I do on European pricing. Look, the market in the U.S. is well-seasoned to having normal, regular, and necessary price increases to offset cost increases as they come through. We manage our business very much on a margin basis. Underpinning the strong demand and the sustained strong demand over the last number of years has underpinned good pricing. I don't see that dynamic changing in the current year. Again, I think it has to be moderate and sensible. I see that across all businesses. The cement and concrete as well, flagged. I think that'll be solid and steady along the lines that we've spoken about there, that you've mentioned, at 4%-5%. Aggregates probably in at the 2%-3%. Of course, pricing is not the correct measure in asphalts. It's about how you manage our margin. We're very pleased to see an expansion in the margin in the first quarter of the year, although it's only at very early days yet. We will do that. The U.S. perspective looks fairly solid. With regard to Europe, Jim, you might give us your thoughts on that. Yeah. Hi, Elodie. Europe, as I said, in the past, Europe is really in a catch-up phase when we compare to our business in North America. Building on a couple of good years in 2019 and 2020, we've had a good pricing season in Europe, and we are actually seeing positive direction in 13 out of the 15 countries that we're operating in. Specifically asked about recovering the cost side of it, too, Elodie. Yeah, the pricing, we'd be confident. We are seeing some cost inflation. It's small, but we're confident in terms of pushing on and expanding margins and getting the pricing to offset that cost side of it also. A good pricing discipline in Europe. Good start to the season. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. The next question is from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Hi, Albert. If we think about the changing demands of the building industry that you alluded to, can you talk about what you're actually observing? Then if there are any parts of your portfolio or business areas that you feel you may be underrepresented in in terms of going into that changing market environment and if you'd need to fill those gaps with M&A. Thank you. Thank you. A good question. First of all, the changes that we're seeing are being forced on our customers and to contractors by the changing needs of the world. With increased urbanization, we're starting to see the fact that people want less impact in terms of how construction impacts upon their day-to-day life. People want construction to be quicker, number one. Number two, we're seeing people want to see less construction done actually on site, and they want to see more of the materials used in construction prefabricated in designated safer and specific environments. Manufacturing environments that are built to deal with noise, waste, fumes, and then brought to the construction site. Much more modular-type assembly. Not only quicker, but off-site modular-type construction. Underpinning that is they want to see less dirt, less impact on the environment. They want to see less noise on the environment that's actually there building the housing. The type of materials being used, more and more the specification is to have materials that are less intrusive on the environment as they're being constructed. Of course, the push to obviously reduce CO2 use in cement and also to increase the use of concrete, which has lower levels of CO2 cement within it as such. That deals with some of the questions I dealt with earlier on with regards to the changes that will come in the U.S. I think the last thing is the ability for you to provide more of an integrated service and solution. You're not just a provider of materials, you're involved in helping to design and engineer the materials to specific circumstances, and then to deliver and put in place with partners in how you do that. We find ourselves more and more, although not in actual commercial partnership, in a business-type partnership with some of the major contractors, whereby we are working hand-in-hand with them on major projects on delivery of specified-type materials, specified-type products. Now, we tend to focus more on large horizontal or heavy construction projects. Most of our materials actually go underground or once you go 1 meter above the ground, that's primarily where we do most of our work. It's only really when we get into some very high-rise that we use concrete in the high-rise. Most of the stuff we do is you don't necessarily see the specification required in it, but it's quite highly specified. What I would say to you very quickly, it's the changes are people want us. We have to work hand-in-hand with architects and engineers and customers to help find a solution, an engineering solution to their problem, and we're part of that solution. Not the only part of it, but we are part of it. They want construction that has to be done quicker, it has to be done cleaner, it has to be done safer, and more and more of it's being done off-site. What that means for us is that it more and more pushes down the route of turning our base materials into an interim value-added product, and the service we provide with that is in helping to design that product for the specific application. Of course, we have the advantage in that whilst we may deal with one customer, one specific application, we may have seen that application 25 times in the previous year and can bring our expertise and knowledge to that. We're not only manufacturers, we bring our engineering skills and expertise to provide those services to them. That's the direction where we're building out our business. Look, there are many new trends that are opening and are evident to us as well, where we think it's attractive. In 20 years' time, CRH may be a different-shaped business. For this moment in time, I think the core business that we are in are known technology to us. We see strong growth in these areas, and we've a long way to run within our current sandbox, and I don't anticipate any huge build-out into new platforms or new areas. I think the extension of what we do offers us ample opportunities in strong growth markets, and the focus is to follow that growth, but also to maximize performance in terms of profitability, high returns and cash. Great. Thank you very much. Our next question is from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thank you. Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. My question is on, I guess, cement as a product. As I'm sure you've seen, it's not the most popular product anymore with investors due to its high CO2 emissions, and I appreciate you're doing already quite a lot to improve that. How does this kind of investor perception influence your capital allocation strategy? Do you still consider buying more cement plants if there were some opportunities to consolidate or some of your markets or improve vertical integration? On the other hand, would you consider some capacity closure or even some disposals of the cement business to reduce the share of its sales or profits in the overall group? Good question, Arnaud. First of all, cement in itself is nothing. You can't build anything from cement. Cement is only an entry material that is used to produce concrete. One must look at the entirety of the complete product cycles, not just look at cement. Because actually, as I said in my introduction, that concrete itself, which people don't really know, is actually a carbon sink. It actually reabsorbs back in 25% of the CO2 that emits under the current production process. If there was an alternative out there to cement, one would go and look at that. At this moment on, there are no alternatives to cement. If magically tomorrow the regulators were to say, "Okay, I'm going to make the production of cement illegal because it emits CO2," what would we do? Is there another product we can use off the shelf? There isn't. Unfortunately, we need cement, we need concrete in our world to live, because we have to build shelter, we have to build modes of transportation for our modern life to exist. The plan that is in place, which has been agreed with the regulators, and there is a plan in place to take us to 2050, where we will have carbon-neutral concrete, which is in line with the Paris Accord and in line with the two degree scenario, takes us there. The key plan is to ensure that we work to reduce the CO2 in process. The amount of CO2 that is reabsorbed by the concrete will be greater than the actual CO2 that is emitted during the cement process. The real focus has to be on reducing the CO2 that is emitted during the manufacturing process of clinker and or cement. In the timeframe that we have, we believe we will get there. There are specific plans in place to continue to reduce it to 2030, specifically in place. All the cement companies will get there. Over time, we believe that ultimately you will turn it into a scenario whereby the whole cycle, cement to concrete, will be carbon neutral, which will take away and remove the risks associated with it. Thank you very much. Your last point, sorry. Your last point, Arnaud, sorry. Is it a core product for us or is it something we would sell? Look, cement is very important to us, as is concrete. It's a key material that we use in our manufacturing process, and we think we are far better off embracing the challenge and looking for the opportunities in that than running away from it. This is an issue which is in vogue at the moment. It's an issue which the industry is dealing with and the industry will solve. That's very clear. Thank you, Albert. Our final question for today is from Will Jones from Redburn. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon. Perhaps I could just ask for a general update on your margin improvement savings program, please. I appreciate this is now a rolling program as opposed to anything with a fixed timeline. Are there any areas you might highlight to us that are a particular focus in 2021? Any initiatives you've got on, I'm thinking the process procurement buckets from a couple of years ago. Anything to help us understand that would be great. Thank you. Hi, Will. Look, clearly work continues on. We put targets in place a few years ago. Of course, the business shape and size was the business shape and size for those targets, and we're not entirely dependent upon ourselves to deliver those margin increases. We've shown good margin improvement over the last couple of years, and I'm very pleased with that. There are a number of things impacting upon that. Of course, it's not only in terms of producing more efficiently, lowering our unit costs, working on pricing and reshaping the business. The macro environment is very important to us as well. Last year, we hadn't anticipated COVID. We had not anticipated taking a step back in revenues, and that impacted upon things for sure in terms of our growth rate. The one thing I would say is that, well, just continue to think about CRH as a business that year on year improves the margin in this business and becomes more efficient and more effective. We also have to be sensible about the conversation and say, look, the strength of the health in the business is not just measured by margin. It's measured by growth in the top line. It's measured by improved profitability, the conversion of profitability into cash, the increase in the margins, and crucially, the improvement in returns. Also being transparent with shareholders about, here's our plan, here's our strategy, here's what we're doing. Shareholders can understand exactly what you're doing through the years, and we communicate that in a transparent, open, and managed way. All of those things we think are important in delivering the overall value to shareholders. Margin is one component and a very important part of that. It will continue to increase as I would expect our cash, our top line, our bottom line, and our returns to increase. I hope the transparency and the clarity with which we communicate our plans as we go forward, hence we talk so openly and often about the product solutions offering us the greatest growth opportunities going forward for value for our shareholders. Thank you. Okay. Listen, I think we've run over our time there for quite a few minutes here. That's all we have time for this morning. I'd like to thank you for your attention, and as always, if you have any follow-up questions, just please feel free to get in touch with our investor relations team. We look forward to talking to you again on the 26th of August when we report our interim results for the first six months of 2021. Thank you very much, and have a good day. Thank you. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you everyone for taking part. You may now disconnect.