Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CRH Trading Update Call. For the duration of the call, you will be on listen only. However, 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 morning, everyone. Albert Manifold here, CRH Group Chief Executive, you are all very welcome to our conference call and webcast presentation, which accompanies the release of our trading update this morning. Joining me on the call is Jim Mintern, our Group Finance Director, Frank Heisterkamp, Director of Capital Markets & ESG, Tom Holmes, Head of Investor Relations. At the outset, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the ongoing commitment and resilience of our people across the group as we navigate the challenges and uncertainties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. As always, the health and safety of our employees, contractors, and customers remains paramount and is a core focus for us every day. Over the next 20 minutes or so, Jim and I will take you through some of the main points of this morning's announcement, highlighting the key drivers of our trading performance for the first nine months of the year, as well as providing you with an indication of our expectations for the year as a whole. First, on slide one, I would like to take a moment to mention a few of the key highlights from this morning's statement. With regard to our trading performance, I am pleased to report that the good underlying momentum in the first half has continued into the third quarter. For the first nine months of the year, our business has delivered further improvement in sales, profit, and margin. Total group sales of $22.8 billion were 11% ahead, reflecting the positive underlying demand environment across North America and Europe during the first nine months. This translates into EBITDA of $3.9 billion, 15% ahead, a further 50 basis points of margin improvement, a good performance in the context of an inflationary input cost environment and some significant weather disruption in certain key markets during the third quarter of the year. Turning to slide two. In addition to good underlying demand across core markets, our nine-month performance reflects the benefits of our strategic reshaping and repositioning of our business in recent years, becoming a fully integrated provider of materials, products, and services, value-added building solutions that enable us to better serve the changing needs of our customers and society. We will also continue to focus on the efficient and disciplined allocation of our capital to maximize value for our shareholders. In this regard, I am pleased to see the pace of our acquisition activity increasing as visibility improves across our markets. In the year to date, we've spent approximately $1.4 billion on 17 bolt-on acquisitions, representing an average multiple of 7x EBITDA, further strengthening our integrated solutions model. I will expand on that a little later on. In addition to investing in our business for growth and value creation, the strength of our balance sheet and our cash generation also enables us to increase cash returns to shareholders. Our ongoing share buyback program has returned close to $800 million in the year to date, and the completion of the current tranche of our program will take us to a total of $900 million for the full year. Turning to slide three, before I take you through the divisional trading performances, I'll briefly outline our thoughts on the market backdrop and trading environment across our major markets over the course of the year so far. In North America and Europe, construction demand remains robust despite an inflationary input cost environment in the areas of energy, raw material, labor, and logistics. There is broad-based support for increased infrastructure investment across our markets, we are pleased to see that in the U.S., Congress has passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This includes $350 billion dedicated to federal highway funding alone, representing an approximately 50% increase compared to existing funding levels and underpinning demand in the years ahead. As the largest building materials business in North America, we are very well positioned to benefit from this significant increase in infrastructure investment, not just in roads, but also in other areas including water, power, and technology infrastructure. U.S. residential construction activity remains robust, particularly in the single-family segment, supported by low mortgage rates, low inventory levels, and ongoing migration trends. RMI activity also remains positive as people continue to invest in their homes and outdoor living areas. In non-residential, one of the sectors most impacted by the pandemic, there are some early signs of recovery, and we're encouraged by the improving trends in leading indicators such as the ABI, which has now been in positive territory for nine consecutive months. Turning to our divisional performances. First to CRH Americas Materials on slide four. Our business delivered like-for-like sales and EBITDA growth of 3% and 5% respectively during the first nine months of the year. A good performance despite some very challenging weather conditions, which impacted our operations in the North of the U.S. during the third quarter of the year. The underlying demand environment remains positive, as we look ahead to the remainder of the year, it's encouraging to see that translating into good momentum in our backlogs. Disciplined commercial management across our businesses continues to underpin positive pricing across all products, despite some inflationary cost pressures, I am pleased to see further improvement in our margins. Overall, another good performance for CRH Americas Materials, benefiting from our increased exposures to high-growth markets in the South and West of the U.S. over the last number of years and our integrated model really coming through and delivering for our business. Next to the performance of our CRH Europe Materials business on slide five, which continued to recover during the third quarter of the year with further improvement in sales, profit, and margin. Construction demand in our Eastern European markets remains robust with our businesses in Poland, Romania, and Serbia continuing to perform well. In the U.K., an improving trading environment combined with strong cost control are delivering a significant recovery and profitability. I'm also pleased to see good pricing momentum continuing in Europe, with improvements across all our major markets. Against an inflationary input cost environment, strong commercial discipline across our businesses has enabled us to deliver further improvement in our margin. Overall, our nine-month like-to-like sales and EBITDA were up 13% and 28% respectively, well ahead of the prior year period, which of course, was heavily impacted by the pandemic restrictions in a number of our Western European markets. They are also well ahead compared to the first nine months of 2019, a much more normalized trading period, demonstrating the strong recovery and good delivery of our Europe Materials business. Turning to slide six and building products, which delivered a solid third quarter performance despite a challenging prior year comparative. Our architectural products business, with its complementary range of concrete hardscapes and outdoor living solutions, continues to be supported by robust residential repair and maintenance demand. Our infrastructure products business also continues to perform well with sales and EBITDA ahead of prior year. This business continues to benefit from the increasing demand for value-added products and solutions for critical utility infrastructure in both North America and Europe, particularly in the area of water management, energy, and technology. Our building envelopes business, primarily exposed to U.S. non-residential construction, has delivered a resilient performance with sales and EBITDA ahead of the prior year period. Overall, nine-month like-to-like sales were 6% ahead, while EBITDA increased by 9%, reflecting further margin expansion, supported by our continued focus on cost control and pricing discipline. On slide seven, I'd like to take a moment to update you on our recent acquisition activity. Since our last update in August, we have spent a further $500 million on six acquisitions. The largest of these was National Pipe & Plastics, a leading water and energy infrastructure solutions business in the eastern region of the United States. This business has significant overlap with our existing infrastructure products business. In fact, our closure systems are often installed alongside National's products on the same projects. Combining these businesses will further strengthen our capability to provide integrated, value-added solutions to our customers, particularly in the area of water management and energy infrastructure. We also acquired PebbleTec, a leading provider of outdoor living solutions in the United States, representing a strategic entry into the adjacent outdoor living category, complementing our existing suite of products and solutions in our architectural products business. Overall, we have invested approximately $1.4 billion on 17 acquisitions in the year to date. The average multiple of these deals was 7 times EBITDA, that's before any synergies or savings we will achieve through the integration of these businesses into our existing portfolio. The vast majority of these acquisitions reflect the ongoing development of our integrated solutions model. We will continue to build on this going forward. There are opportunities out there. We have a very healthy pipeline. You can rest assured we will never lose our discipline and value-focused mindset. At this point, I'll hand you over to Jim to take you through our cash performance and year-end balance sheet expectations. Thanks, Albert, and good morning, everyone. On slide eight, you can see the key components underpinning our expectations for our year-end net debt position. I am pleased to say that we expect to end the year with a very healthy balance sheet as a result of our continued focus on financial discipline and strong cash generation. Let me briefly take you through some of the key components, working from left to right on the slide. We ended 2020 with a net debt position of $5.9 billion and net debt to EBITDA of 1.3 times. We expect 2021 to represent another year of strong cash generation and cash conversion for the group. This has enabled us to continue to invest in our business for further growth while increasing cash returns to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. In the year to date, we have spent approximately $1.4 billion in acquisitions, which net of proceeds from divestments, results in an overall net cash outflow of approximately $1.4 billion. We also expect to invest a total of $1.4 billion on capital expenditure in 2021 to support further growth in our existing businesses. In addition, we expect to return approximately $1.8 billion to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Our ongoing share buyback program is on track to return $900 million through the full year. The current tranche of our program is well underway and will be completed no later than the 23rd of December. Taking all of this into account, assuming no further material development activity for the remainder of 2021, we expect to finish the year with a net debt of approximately $6.1 billion or 1.2 times net debt to EBITDA, providing us with significant optionality for further value creation going forward. Thanks, Jim. A good summary there of our financial discipline over the course of 2021 and the strong cash generation capability of the group. Moving now to outlook on slide nine and our full year EBITDA expectations. In Americas Materials and building products, we've delivered good performance during the first nine months of the year with like-to-like EBITDA 5% and 9% ahead, respectively. Broadly speaking, we would expect these businesses to deliver a similar pace of like-to-like EBITDA growth for the full year. In Europe Materials, we're continuing to experience strong recovery and profitability and expect full year EBITDA to be well ahead of the prior year. Taking all this into account for the group as a whole, we expect to deliver another record performance in 2021 with full year EBITDA in excess of $5.25 billion and further margin expansion representing another year of progress for CRH. On slide 10, while it is too early to give specific guidance for 2022, we're encouraged by the positive underlying demand backdrop and the strength of our business going forward. Through the active management of our portfolio in recent years, we've become a simpler and more focused business. We will continue to reshape and refine our business to deliver superior growth, returns, and cash generation for our shareholders. At CRH, we place sustainability at the core of our strategy. Through our unique offering of value-added products and solutions for our customers, we are continuing to adapt our business to address the future needs of construction. We are committed to reducing the impact of construction on our environment, and we are taking full responsibility as the leader in our industry to help deliver a more resilient and sustainable built environment for everyone, providing significant societal value in the process. We have also the benefit of high-quality assets in attractive growth markets, including the South and West of the U.S. and Central and Eastern Europe, markets with strong fundamentals, growing populations, and significant construction needs. All of this is underpinned by our relentless focus on financial discipline. We have a strong and flexible balance sheet, providing us with significant optionality for future value creation, whether that's through investments for growth or cash returns to shareholders. Before I hand over to Q&A, let me take a brief moment to share our planned investor communications for the first half of 2022. Along with our customary results announcement in AGM, we would like to set aside some time away from results to have a more engaged conversation with our shareholders, an open forum to discuss a number of important items that are at the core of our strategy going forward. There's no big reveal, it's just a conversation. We want to provide you with an update on our portfolio strategy, our thoughts and priorities around capital allocation, our sustainability and carbon strategy, and a more detailed discussion around the benefits of our integrated solutions model. To that end, we are planning to hold a virtual investor update on Thursday, the 21st of April. A more detailed agenda will follow in due course, but for now, please hold that date in your diaries. We look forward to updating you all again in the new year. That concludes our presentation this morning, and we're now happy to take your questions. May I ask you, please, state your name and the institution that you represent before 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, please, to limit your questions to one each where possible. I will now hand you back to the moderator to coordinate the Q&A session of our call. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Robert Gardiner from Davy. Please ask your question. Morning, all. Thanks for taking my question. Hope everyone's keeping well. I'll stick to the one. It's been a pretty weak quarter across the sector, and generally margins have been firmly in reverse in both Europe and North America, with obviously a lot of cost inflation cited for that. Maybe you might help us understand how you've managed to grow or expand your margins in that environment. What are the key differences here in terms of how CRH is executing versus a lot of the sector peers? Thanks. Thanks, Bob, and good morning to you. Yes, you're right, it's been a tough quarter three, and indeed extended to quarter four across the sector, and most of our peers, if not all of our peers, reporting margin declines. We don't. There's a very simple reason for that, is that the business we have is very different to the commoditized type business that most of our peers have. CRH has moved a long way from being a price taker, commodity type business. Our business now is so much more than just a business that just buys and sells materials and manufactures aggregates and cement. We talk so much about the solutions business that we have. Effectively what we do is, so much more of our business now is how we take the materials, the base materials that we have, and we convert them into products. We do so using our technical expertise, our design knowledge, and to create innovative, bespoke product solutions, working in conjunction with engineers and planners and architects to innovate and plan and manufacture and put in place, in very many cases, the products we actually manufacture. There's so much more value in the solutions model than just the materials we work with because each individual project is unique. That's the thing about construction. You very rarely get standardized manufacturing of materials. Each road is different. Each water supply system is different. Each power and technology enclosure is different. They have to be designed in such a way, and we use our experience and our knowledge. We're able to provide value, solve problems for our customers, and they pay us for that. We're no longer a price taker. We're kind of a price maker in the market, that allows us, dislocates the relations between what we charge our customers for the solutions we solve and what we pay to manufacture our products. That really is fundamentally at, I put that at the core of our margin improvement for the last number of years, and it will continue so in the years ahead. We do so in a way which is at the core of what we do, is sustainability and circularity, which is tapping into really the zeitgeist of the times where people want to build the world of tomorrow. That's very clear. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please ask your question. Hi, good morning. Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Couple of questions, if that's all right. The first one is just looking at your slide on cash and debt. I seem to remember you talking about sort of 2 times leverage through cycle. You're obviously far below that. You're throwing off EUR 4 billion-ish of cash. Could you just maybe lay out for us how you intend to allocate that in the future? Obviously this year you've done sort of a combo of M&A and shareholder returns, but be interested to see how you see that going forward, and if there's perhaps an appetite to increase the leverage a little bit from the very low levels that they're at right now. Then the second question is, obviously you've given sort of an early sneak preview, if you want, for next year. I just want to get a sense for what kind of gives you the confidence for further progress. I'm guessing you're seeing trends into October, November being pretty good. Cost inflation. There's obviously various components, but just give us a little bit of a sense what gives you the confidence to say that you can make progress. Thank you. Thanks, Gregor. Just two questions there. I'll let Jim deal with the question first of all with regard to cash, then I'll come back at the end of that to talk to you about 2022 and our thoughts on that. Morning, Gregor. Firstly, on the leverage side, we're forecasting for the end of December to have a net debt to EBITDA 1.2 times. That's the level I'm comfortable with. We still have a complex unwind of COVID situation right now. In terms of cash generation, we're forecasting there'll be, again, a cash conversion in excess of 80% for this year. That represents about EUR 2 billion in terms of returns to our shareholders, which is a combination of dividends and share buybacks. We're also going to invest approximately EUR 2 billion between our M&A activity and also our expansionary CapEx. That's in total about EUR 4 billion, or indeed if you look at it's 75% in every dollar of EBITDA, we're either returning to our shareholders or in fact reinvesting in their business for the future growth of the business. In terms of the leverage at 1.2 times, as I said, I'm comfortable with it. It gives me optionality and capability for undertaking value-accretive transactions, whether that's expansionary CapEx, whether that's M&A, whether that's dividends or indeed the share buyback program. In the current year, as you know, we've stepped up the M&A to EUR 1.4 billion year to date. We could have undertaken significantly more in terms of M&A transactions in the current year. As ever, all capital allocation decisions are looked through the lens of shareholder value accretion, and you can rest assured that we'll remain disciplined and controlled allocators of capital into the future. Thanks, Jim. Gregor, looking into my crystal ball, which I don't have with regard to 2022, all I can do is tell you what I see in front of me in terms of the facts that we have. Look, our order books are good. Our backlogs are good at this moment in time as we look into 2022, both in Europe and in the United States. We have got additional support of the new infrastructure build in North America, in the United States. Of course, that really won't kick in till the back end of next year at the earliest, but it's supportive because it gives people sort of a longer timeframe. There are of course cost headwinds. They're not going to go away. They're going to continue on into next year, and that creates challenges for all businesses, ourselves included. There's no question about it that the way the end of COVID has been pushed out has really had. I think it's taken the wind out of the sails for a number of people, and it may impact the. My sense is it may impact some of the confidence for people to invest because of the uncertainty involved in that. Look, we've been through 2021, where we've had almost unprecedented cost increases, and CRH has managed to deliver in that period. We've grown our sales, our profits and our margins. We lived through 2020, where we had unprecedented disruption in our major markets with regard to COVID stoppages, and CRH delivered increased sales, increased profit, increased margins in our business. I think the challenges may remain, but we're CRH and we're different. We have a different model. We deliver. We're disciplined and our solutions model continues to deliver. We think we'll continue to deliver into 2022 in advance next year ahead. That's all I can tell you. That's all I can see in front of me at the moment. Thanks a lot, Albert Manifold. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of David O'Brien from Goodbody. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, in the context of a strong pipeline of acquisitions, I wonder if you could give some color on what your priorities there, or where you see potential gaps in the portfolio. Also, on slide 10 you make the comment, look, you're placing sustainable construction at the core of your strategy. Just wonder how that's influencing kind of day-to-day or strategic decisions and therefore the future direction of the company over a longer time horizon. Hi, David. Good morning. Two questions there, somewhat linked really in a way to some extent. Look, I'm happy to say that this year we've upped the pace on acquisitions. It's a deliberate upping of the pace as the future has sort of got greater clarity and sort of the uncertainty lessened with regard to where the world is going in a post-COVID-19 world. Up from last year, we kept it down to about half a billion, up to about EUR 1.4 billion. It'll be north of EUR 1.4 billion by the end of the year. It could have been a multiple of that, but as Jim Mintern talked earlier on, we keep our discipline, we keep our focus, we're slowly building back what we see that the pace of acquisitions could be, we've got the capacity to do so. Where that focus will be, it'll be in two main areas. If you look at the deals we have done this year, about 75%-80% of those deals are focused very much in solutions. Solutions is very much at the end of the value chain, whereby the materials that we are converting are converted into something. The materials we're manufacturing, the cement and aggregates, are being converted into some other product of value. That's where a lot of our focus is and where our focus has been. We highlighted a couple of deals there this morning, which kind of set that out for you, how that National Pipe business effectively providing us an additional add-on to our infrastructure business in North America and the Pavatex business is a build-out of the product range we have in our APG business. Really it's an expansion of ourselves, our products, to provide a better range of options for our customers, listening to what they want and how we can solve their problems. Also, I wouldn't forget how important it is to keep buying platforms to build the range out from. I think it's geographically and product-wise continuing, but all the way following down that solutions approach there. With regards to the comment with regard to how sustainability is very much at the core of what we do, it is absolutely. We almost look at it in three different ways as we go forward. We look at it under the whole area of climate and how we, as a company, are responsible citizens and our attitude and how we think about our CO2 footprint. Sometimes it frustrates me when I hear companies, not just in our sector but in other sectors, because they play fast and loose with some of the numbers, and they kind of categorize and talk about kgs per ton of clinker and this, that, and the other. I think corporates have a responsibility to come out and give a clear, absolute, transparent emissions target. We come out and we talk, we produce 46 million tons of CO2 every year. Full stop. I'm not interested in how many kgs per ton of clinker. I'm interested in how we're going to reduce that 46 million tons. As our stakeholders, they should know from us exactly how we're going to reduce that, the timeframe which we're going to reduce that, the cost of which we're going to reduce that, and every year, they should say, "Where are you on track of your plan to reduce that?" When we come back in the new year, we fully intend to do that, be very clear and explicit. Here's what we produce, here's what we emit, here's what we're going to reduce it to, here's how we're going to do it, and here's what it's going to cost. I think climate's at the core of what we do. That's the carbon part of the entire part of the ESG. With regard to the ESG, I think that's down to, from my opinion, it's down to circularity in terms of how we use the scarce resources we have in our planet. From our point of view, it's about the aggregates we use, that's recycling and circularity. We've said it before, and we'll say it again. At the core of our strategy is we embrace circularity. We are the largest recycler of any product in North America. We recycle more product than anybody else. What do we recycle? Well, look, we're the largest road builder in the world. In the United States, we pave the world five times. We go around the globe five times every year. Half of that is actually digging up old road. We repave road. What do we do with that material? Most people actually dump that material in landfill. For the last 25 years, we've been working on technologies and investing EUR millions in getting that material and reprocessing that material back into our roads. Now we reprocess 100% of all our waste asphalt that we dig up. The largest road manufacturer in the whole world reprocesses all its road waste. 25% of all the roads we built are built with recycled material. Now, we want to increase that every year, and we have plans to do that. It gives us a unique advantage because, again, it's lower cost for us. It actually provides lower cost roads for our customers. It actually improves our margins. It does so in a much more sustainable way. That is how we embrace that. Of course, we're working on a recycled concrete as well, taking all the technology we have in Europe over to the United States, a very significant part of some of the deals that we did, particularly the Angel Brothers deals down in Texas. That was a big part of recycled asphalt and in particular, recycled concrete. The last bit is the role that we play, and we take this very seriously, is the contribution to society that we seek to bring as we innovate new sustainable solutions to build the world of tomorrow. Very simply, we talk about that in a series because we uniquely convert basic commodity materials, cement, and aggregates into products that are largely designed for bespoke building solutions. Each road, each water system, each power technology structure has to be specifically designed. We provide technical services, design services to supply these solutions. We do so in a sustainable way, and it contributes to a much more circular, sustainable world as we build the environment to work for tomorrow. That is how we embrace it at the core of our strategy. That's what the solution business is. That's great color. Thanks, Albert. Your next question comes from the line of Paul Roger from BNP Paribas. Morning, gentlemen. Congratulations on the results. I'll stick to one then, I'll focus on U.S. infrastructure. Obviously, we've now got more details of the plan. I think on the last call, you said it was too early to do any scenario analysis. I wonder if you've actually done that now and looked at what impact this could have in the outer years. Also, maybe just as a follow-up, there's a lot of money going into highways, which obviously helps. To what extent could the other money for things like green infrastructure and wind farms and things like that also benefit CRH? Thanks, Paul. Good morning. Look, you're right. Excuse me, last time we spoke in the summertime, we didn't have any real detail. Now we have a lot more. Just to put some numbers that matter with regards to our industry, there's obviously a $1.2 trillion headline number with regard to stimulus packages going forward for the next number of years. How that breaks down to us, let me just give you some numbers, how it breaks down to road building in the U.S. and other areas that you referred to in terms of investing in power, et cetera. Over the last five years, the federal government have invested about $240 billion in highway funding across the U.S. With the new infrastructure bill coming forward, indeed, the FAST Act being rolled into that as well, that will increase to $350 billion. It's an increase of about $110 billion, about a 50% increase. That works out, and it kicks in probably, in our views, you might just start to get some work at the tail end of 2022. Because even though the federal money has been allocated, now the states have to decide exactly how much they're going to match. Historically speaking, it's been 50/50. Recently speaking, the states have been more supportive. It's been 60/40. But on the assumption it will remain at 50/50, we would assume that that would start to come in. They would start to bid and plan work, longer-term work, and you would see that probably kicking in with an increased funding of about 8% CAGR for the next five or six years. That's probably what it feeds into our industry. Of course, as the largest building materials business in the United States, it will feed directly into our business. Now, some of that will be taken up by price increases, but a lot of it will be on volume. Of course, again, the states also have their own role to play. That's how it translates specifically on highways. The other part of your question relates to some of the lower value contributions that's going to be made for infrastructure spending going forward. If we look down through the list of supports they're going to give specifically for CRH, it's on power, which you touched on, gray power, but it's broadly speaking, power, broadband technology, and also in water systems, water and sewage. They are parts of our business, which are materials business, but particularly our infrastructure products business in the United States is specifically focused on. Just to say, you would know that I think that a large part of what we do in our infrastructure business is focus very much on the provision of water and sewage systems. Large scale engineered systems that provide solutions, moving the water from the reservoirs all the way to the home. I referred to the National Pipe business I bought this year. We could take it to the community system up to that point in time. Now with National Pipe, we can take it all the way to the domestic dwelling itself. Power and electricity, again, vital utilities that are being moved underground, whether it's wildfires out west, flooding in the east, or indeed in Europe again. A lot of the power systems throughout Europe and the United States are being rebuilt underground. Again, there's federal support for that. Again, our products business provides the structures and the support systems for that. Finally, crucially, technology. I mean, the whole idea of broadband telecommunications. You're putting machinery that costs millions of dollars underground, and it has to be protected in utility-type vault structures that protect it. Again, significant federal support for that. Again, we would expect to see a strong push both through our materials business, but in particular in our products business, in the coming years. Paul, I would say the strong agent of growth in our building products business the last three or four years has been our APG business, which has doubled in the last three or four years. In my opinion, the next three or four years are going to be the time for the infrastructure products business. That's the one that's really going to zing on the back of this stuff here as well. It sets us up well for the next few years, for sure, in the U.S. Perfect. Thank you. Your next question comes from Elodie Rall from J.P. Morgan. Well, hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just first, a follow-up on the previous theme on infra in the U.S. It's looking really good for the next few years, starting at the end of next year. Can you just give us your views on the backdrop for 2022, actually on the infra front? Could we see some disappointment at first before seeing bill kicking in? My second question is on cost inflation and your views on the inflationary environment, and if that has changed your hedging strategy, given the magnitude of the cost increase that we're seeing, and what kind of price increases you need to push through into next year in your view in the different businesses. Thank you. Thanks, Elodie. Three questions there. First of all, with regards to the infrastructure, the impact of what we see 2022 with regard to infrastructure spend next year, I think we very much see it as a continuation at current levels. There may be some positive surprises towards the back end of the year as the infrastructure work coming through as a result of the stimulus package starts to kick in. I think it would be supportive, though, of pricing as well, because people know that there's good volume environments coming in place, and I think it'll be very important to ensure that you're putting in place the capacity in the right places and the right products to be ready for that. For instance, whilst we didn't know the size and scale of the infrastructure to build, it was a probability something was going to come through. We've been putting in place in, I mean, our three of our big states of Texas, Florida, and New Jersey. That gets more than 20% of the federal money along those three states. We've been really doubling down building our capacity in anticipation for that now. It gives companies like ourselves, a great position to be in for when we go to the authorities and say, "Look, we're bidding for work. Not only are we bidding on price, we're bidding," of course, I talked about circularity, "We're bidding on security of supply." It puts us in a good position for that. For 2022, I think it's pretty much more of the same pace of advance we saw in 2021. With regard to the inflation environment we're in, I think it's going to continue on as is. It's going to be difficult and it's going to be challenging. For us, actually, believe it or not, as I said, we're more a price maker than a price taker these days. We get so much more value for supplying those engineering, planning, and skills, the technical expertise and the design knowledge. We're very much working in our customers' offices these days, helping solve their solutions with the products we manufacture. As I said, there's so much more value in the solution model than the materials we work with. It's more the software than the hardware that drives the value for us. I'm not as concerned about costs as maybe some of the more commoditized people in the industry might be as such. I think we'll deal with that. With regard to our hedging strategy, look, we don't try and beat the market. The only area where we probably have a natural advantage is in bitumen in North America, where our winter fuel program, where we buy 40% of our bitumen through the winter season, where it has been for the last 27 years, at a lower price during the winter season than the summer season. Why wouldn't it be? The refineries are maxed out. They need to empty their tanks, and we're there with our tanks, and we just buy from the low prices. That's probably the only hedging strategy that where we beat the market. The rest of it is we just try to be the markets, and we've got very professional procurement professionals across all of our businesses working at that. Then, so does everybody else. Again, our business is not really. We're not really pricing up on cost anymore. We're a price maker as we build out the solutions model. Okay, thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Arnaud Lehmann from Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Firstly, just to follow up on your U.S. asphalt business. We saw some of your peers under some sort of pressure, including on the margin side from cost inflation. They mentioned some supply chain issues. You seem to be faring a lot better. Could you maybe give us a bit of color on this as a follow-up to your last comment? Secondly, sorry, just on lower CO2 products, we've seen some of your peers in the building materials world coming up with lower CO2 products and solutions up to 100% less CO2, either in cement or in concrete solutions. Do you have the equivalent that you are planning on rolling out in Europe or North America? Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks, Arnaud. Two questions there. I'll deal with the second question first with lower CO2 products. Look, I suppose Yes is the answer to your question, do we have equivalent products? Because nobody has unique capability or technology here that anybody else doesn't have. There's no proprietary technology yet. Everyone knows what it is. When you don't have anything else to talk about, all you do is talk about lower CO2. We talk about the fact that we're trying to build out more sustainable solutions. We're also more honest when we talk about, here's what our emissions must be, and if you're going to try and sequester CO2, or you're going to try and inject CO2 into some of the products you make, that only is a small part. The key game in CO2 and reducing your carbon footprint will be how we look at the fuels we use in cement kilns and how we deal with some concept of carbon capture, and that will happen over time. This is not going to be solved in three months, six months or nine months. I understand people have got to have a sales pitch to sell their story, the reality of life is, just thinking of the big picture here. Small CO2 injections into materials or lower CO2 cements, they don't exist yet. They will exist because people like us, serious people who spend time, effort and money trying to innovate, will find the solutions to these problems. We'll find it together as an industry, not as individuals. Going back to the other question you asked me about the margin with regard to asphalt. You may as well ask me about the price of coal in our cement businesses, or the price of electricity and our power in our generations that power our crushing and aggregates businesses. That's only a small part of what we do. We don't sell rock anymore, Arnaud. We sell roads. We sell the whole solution. We take the rock, we turn it into asphalt. Our contractors, they lay it, and then we maintain it. No one ever asked me about what's the margin in your road contracting business. As we look at that, of course, there are pressures across the business with regard to cost. We have significant recycling. We're the largest road builder in the U.S. We've got significant scale, and we've invested for years in making it a very integrated system. In doing that, we've seen this year our Americas Materials business, which is primarily focused on building roads, the margin has increased this year because we plan across the whole of that business. It's an integrated solution where we provide the whole road to everybody. Picking at one piece, like whether looking at asphalt or bitumen or the cost of electricity you buy for your crushing plants or the cost per margin you make in contracting, that's only part of the story. You've got to look at the whole integrated way we do so. We win contracts because we bid for the whole road. We win contracts because we've got increased recycling and circularity. We win contracts because we've got increased sustainability. We do so because we're experienced at doing so. We've got good reputations, and all of that is turning into higher margins year-on-year, better returns and better cash. Very clear. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from the line of Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Thanks very much. Hi, Albert. I've got a question on your transition to the solution provider approach. What% of your sales today would you say are still in the more commoditized space? Then are there parts of your portfolio upstream which don't necessarily fit within the group going forward? In other words, as you move more to a solution provider approach, do you actually need to own all the upstream assets? Is the value really in the conversion solution approach, et cetera? Would it make more sense to divest some of those upstream assets and focus rather on that conversion solution opportunity? Thank you. Hi, Cedar. Good morning to you. Two questions. In relation to your first question, I would say that we're probably down to about 30% of our products are basically the commoditized type products now. 65%-70% are solutions type products, and that's going to keep on going because that's the part of the business we now know is the much more sustainable model. I've been working here for 25 years, and I remember the business that I joined was very much kind of a cyclical play where you try to manage your costs. Over the last 25 years, Cedar, just changed very much. We're now, as I say to you, almost 70% of our business is in solutions type businesses, where we're selling so much more value other than the kind of commodity product itself, and that will continue to go so. I think your second question relates to the platforms we have and do we need to own all the upstream businesses. The answer to that question, I suppose, is the fact that we're continually working our portfolio, and one of the reasons we look at our portfolio is exactly the reason that you highlight. We sell very good businesses sometimes just because they just don't fit our model going forward. We recycle that capital into business that do fit our model going forward. Our model going forward is very much one of integrated value add all the way down through the chain, providing that extra business. If you look at our businesses this year, what we've done this year is a very good example to illustrate what I said to you. We had a good business in Brazil, actually. It was a fine business, but it was kind of a commodity cement business. We sold that business this year and it's a good business. We could have kept it, but we sold it and we recycled that capital back into primarily solutions business. Almost 75%-80% of the business we bought this year have been solutions-focused businesses. What we're doing is where we find, quote unquote, stranded assets or where we find assets that don't integrate, we do exactly as you suggest. We sell them, but we recycle back into the solutions business because that's where the value, the cash, the margins, and the returns are going to be. We're living the story, and it's going to carry on. Great. Thanks very much. Thanks, Cedar. Your next question comes from the line of Nabil Ahmed from Barclays. Good morning, guys. Sorry, I will come back on the U.S. infra spending. There has been a lot of focus, for a good reason, on Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act approved by the Congress. Could you talk about the other side of the funding equation from local and state budget, please? What do you see in your key states? Also maybe, I think you alluded to it in an answer to an earlier question, but given the inflationary pressure and that the DOT are on a fixed budget, how do you see the risk that incremental funding will essentially cover inflation and that maybe volume could disappoint over time? Okay. I think that there is two questions there. Well, you are right to focus and highlight on the state part of the equation because what has just been announced, the federal part, as I said earlier on, that has, if we go back over 10 years, it tended to be 50% of the total supply of funds and the other 50% came from the states. That went to 60/40 in recent years as the states' needs increased. It also went to 60/40 because the state's finances permitted and allowed. I think the robust condition of the state's finances probably answers the question that you asked is, have the states got the capacity and the capability, and indeed the want to invest in infrastructure under the individual states? I think the answer to that question over the last number of years has been yes. My own sense is the states have been watching what's been going on in Washington for the last six or nine months. They knew there was some significant type of funding package coming through. I'm not saying there was an air pocket, I suspect it held their hand back on committing to long-term projects because if there was federal government money coming, that was going to pay for some of their local expenditure. Remember, the federal monies are spent on large federal projects, and particularly with roads, that means big, large interstates. Of course, the state money is spent on small roads that feed into those. Really the large federal money actually begets further state funding because you can't just build a freeway. You've got to build the on-ramps, the off-ramps, the bridges, all that stuff that the state money goes to. Given the robust condition of most of the state financing, particularly the big states for us, which are in pretty good condition, we would expect it to come through and support the federal monies that are actually there. With regard to your second comment with regard to inflationary pressures easing up as additional funding coming through, there are inflation pressures out there, and they will ease up some of that funding. When we talked about the increase in spending over the next five years, it was almost a 50% increase in funding in the next five years over the last five years. No matter how bad the inflation is going to be, it's not going to ease that whole 50% up. I couldn't guess what inflation is going to be for the next number of years, clearly the Fed will move in if it gets out of control. There's significant headroom there for volume, despite even if it was very strong inflationary cost pressures. There's still a lot of headroom there for strong volume increases. That's very clear. Thanks, Albert. Our last question for today comes from the line of Tobias Woerner from Stifel. Good morning. Can you hear me? Tobias, hi. Good morning. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you. Thanks for taking the question. Just very quickly, one question with a sub-question maybe. When you look around your CRH world by country and product, where do you feel you have high capacity utilization, and you need to do something to capture the volumes? Where do you feel you have significant overcapacity, and how do you deal with that there? Hi, Tobias. Okay. Well, I think you're asking me where we're tight in capacity and where we got capacity headroom. Is that the question, Tobias? That's correct, yes. Just how you deal with those and just to give us a sense. Yeah What% of your world is at high capacity utilization, and which is at low capacity utilization? Probably the only part of our world where we'll be tight in capacity now would be the cement side in the U.K., where we're a significant importer. Now we have ways of dealing with the cement. The U.K. imports a lot of cement, we import a lot of cement into the U.K. for our operations. We're tight on cement in the U.K., we can solve that by imports significantly from Ireland, actually, by the way. The rest of the business, gosh, we haven't been sitting on our hands for the last five years. The world's pretty much new, particularly since the new administration has been elected into the United States, that there was going to be some sort of package coming through to support the government. We have been working really on the ground with states and indeed with Washington to understand exactly what the extent of that might be and where the money might be. We have plenty of capacity all across our U.S. businesses for the next 5 to 10 years. There's no problem there whatsoever, and we can flex that capacity very quickly either through process or indeed small incremental CapEx. Also, again, the other big driver of growth for CRH in the next 5 years will be Central and Eastern Europe. Our positions that we have from Finland all the way down to the Baltic States, all the way down to the Black Sea, it's preeminent by country mile we're the biggest and we're the most profitable. I think as I look what's there and the growth that's coming there in the next 5 years on the back of significant EU funds being committed there for infrastructure, strong economic growth both in the big countries there, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, where we're sort of number 1, number 2 players, and our capacity there to supply those markets for both residential and non-residential demand, again, is very strong. I don't have any real concerns with regard to capacity there. Our big growth markets where we've got to really drive the growth of CRH going forward for the next decade, which will be the United States and Central and Eastern Europe, we're fine. Thank you. If I may follow up just quickly, when you look at your building products division, how do you perceive your pricing power within that division, in the context of inflation? I'd be especially interested in your APG business. The answer is in the margins of that business over the last 5 years, Tobias. You should pull them out and look at them across your desk there. If we continually improve margins there, we've had significant cost pressures, I can assure you, in that business. Our pricing power there is the fact, as I said to you, we're not a price taker, we're a price maker. The range of products that we supply into our main markets across the United States and increasingly across Europe as well, which is a really strong and attractive part, this growing part of the business, is very good. People pay us for the range and quality of our products, so we don't price on cost. We have invested significantly over the last 20 years in building out a full nationwide manufacturing footprint across North America. We supply just in time for both the professional channel and for Lowe's and Home Depot, where they get basically 24 hours service, and again, across the full range of products. Even if somebody else came up with an identical product, our ability to service our customers, because again, we sit down and work with them, whereby, "What do you want?" We're like a hand in glove. We fit into their supply system. We need them, and they need us, and we're very happy to provide that service, and we get paid for that, and they make money out of us as well. That's happening across Europe now as well. That's what's been driving the APG business, and you can see it in the margin, and I think it'll go forward again. As I said to you, we're more a price maker than a price taker in that kind of business. Thank you very much. Okay. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, let me thank you for your time this morning. That's all we have time for, and thank you for your attention. I hope we've managed to answer all of your questions, but as always, if you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to get in touch with our investor relations teams. We look forward to talking to you again on the third of March next year when we report our full year results for 2021. Thanks for your attention today. Stay safe and have a good day. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.