[Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning everyone and a warm welcome to our full year results presentation of wholesim i'm here in our conference room at holsim with our cfo geraldine pico and we are very excited to present some more details on our year in closing uh also on the outlook and then of course to have your questions and comments before i start with the highlights um i think i would like to convey that our sympathy and our hearts go to the ukraine this morning uh with everything what happening there since yesterday morning um i think um our sympathy is with ukraine and the people and even that wholesome has no operations there i think we are all concerned and follow up very closely on the next developments and i'm sure we're going to talk maybe in a bit with more background later in the q and a session for now i would like to start to talk a bit about the results uh the highlights and especially about the progress uh we were making uh with our strategy with building up our new segment solutions and products and also our portfolio transformation 2021 was a record year we um we were able to uh do everything we promised in our strategy 2022 and i think we achieved a fantastic results uh throughout the year with um a high growth level going back even beyond the pre-crisis level in swiss francs then high ebit growth of more than 25 percent and also then achieving new records on the profitability earnings per share reaching uh three swiss strings 98 a record return on invested capital of 8.9 percent um and for the third consecutive year uh cash flow which is uh above three billion swiss francs and also representing a new record for the year at 3.26 billion swiss francs and while we made quite a couple of important acquisitions thanks to the cash flow and the good finance management we maintained our debt leverage at 1.4 times which gives us the right base now to do the next steps in our new strategy 2025 let me go into some details on the strategy side and i think first i want to share with you um the targets now we achieved one year in advance you see this is what we promised to you in march 2018 to put the company on a profitable growth trajectory this is what we have done we have grown the business and we achieved over overproportional growth in ebit then we promised you we're going to fix the cash conversion above 40 and now looks like that our new level will be more around 50 percent cash conversion and very happy to have now for the third consecutive year such strong cash flows and this is something now we are confident to deliver to you also in the years to come he fixed the return on invested capital that was always a topic if you remember back and very happy now we are well above our capital costs and uh that's also well achieved and then we also promise to you that we're gonna de-leverage the company to lower uh debt levels and also this we delivered here one year in advance so i'm very happy and uh that's a strong foundation now to go into the next chapter of growth for wholesome that's why we call our new strategy 2025 accelerating green growth when we look at the strategic direction we're going to take here we want to build up our fourth segment solutions and products and last 12 months we made some super inroads here first with the acquisition of firestone then following up on malachi another company focusing on roofing only these two uh acquisitions they will already deliver three billion dollars of sales in this current business here so we're very happy that we not only found the right targets but we really hit the ground running with double-digit growth rates uh from day one we then entered into a second technology platform of forsade waters insulation with the french prb group and then also followed up with the belgian ptb group so also here very promising field where we talk also about renovation energy efficiency sustainability and double digit growth rates so very excited we could enter you see here the first results already in the last year with only nine months of firestone we could already expand solutions and products we almost doubled it and from eight percent of group sales then to 13 and of course now with the new acquisitions signed we expect now that we are moving close to i don't know 20 percent maybe already this year and then the target for 2025 is 30 percent is within our reach and we have more many more targets we look at and we will here um accelerate the expansion you look a bit in the details roofing super exciting segment why is that because you have a lot of pricing innovation power you have growth all the roofs are functional nowadays they're insulated they're solar roofs they're green roofs a huge demand for re-roofing that's where you want to be especially in the markets of europe and north america you want to be in refurbishment and repair and we have already the firestone more than 60 of the sales is re-roofing and with malarkey it's even at 90 percent of sales is re-roofing compared to new buildings so very exciting growth platform we established uh growing uh like uh crazy now we expect a high double digit growth for this year for these two companies and i think we're going to have a very uh value creative here uh element of our strategy uh we have then uh the second platform we establish with the prb group so they are into the sales with mortars with insulation very exciting right in the sweet spot of renovating europe to make housing more energy efficient and also this one we have full order books many new products to come and i'm very excited here to follow up we made already the next acquisition that field in belgium the ptb group and you can expect also here more to come from our site a very positive second element of this solutions and product segment is that we were able to acquire the roofing companies with a key focus on the us market and the u.s market is the single most attractive market for building materials with growth with different segmentations a lot of pricing power and and you notice here that just within the last two acquisitions we go now from four billion dollars of sales in the us to more than seven billion dollars in just one step and you see also the portfolio how we shift solutions and products is now already our largest business segment with more than 40 of our sales so this is very rewarding for us and shows how much traction we have now with our strategy and with entering here solutions and products going into the future we have on the m a side so i talked already about solutions and products with these four acquisitions kick-starting our ambition to become a leader in solutions and products we are also very active on the bold ons so all these valuable smaller companies in the local markets to strengthen our aggregates business to strengthen our already mixed concrete business and you see here we made 12 transactions last year this is a i would say a record number for us since we started with this bolt-on strategy so and very rewarding acquisitions here in the local markets then you also see the divestments uh we have signed a divestment for brazil uh we have already sold northern ireland zambia malawi and the indian ocean they are all closed so you see here we are active to uh to get a bit lighter on emerging cement markets and transform wholesim into solutions and products but also strengthen our aggregates and ready mix concrete business into uh into uh their mature markets europe and north america so i'm very happy here and for those of you who have been with us at the capitol market days you could also see that we did very i would say value accretive transactions so we were we are divesting for good multiples and we are actually acquiring for attractive multiples now um sustainability is um the next huge pillar for our strategy going forward we make a lot of progress here you have seen our target setting from net zero targets to science-based target initiatives and and maybe today i want to share with you two areas which i'm the most excited about the first one is the lounge of our green product ranges eco-packed ecoplanet and then the circular construction which we are in the middle of making it the reality and i want to share with you uh two more backgrounds here uh first on the global rollout of eco packed our green concrete we just started to launch it in 2020 already now it's in all our key markets so in the 24 biggest markets eco pack is a reality and already quite some traction we sold more than 1 million cubic meters last year which is more than 600 ready-mix trucks every single working day delivered to the customer so quite a lot of traction this will be ramped up now and we set the target to be at 25 of concrete sales from the eco-packed green concrete range so very happy how we do this it's a it's very much appreciated by our customers by the green city councils by any company who has green procurement in place and i'm i'm very proud that our people are able here to follow up so fast now with the green solutions going forward the second area i want to share with you is our scaling up of circular construction and this will be a huge part of wholesome's future and it's actually already a huge part of wholesome today we have last year recycled 54 million tons of waste 54 million tons makes us in the top three of all waste recyclers in the world and we do we use it as raw materials alternative fuel we use it into cement into concrete and one of the most exciting areas we are taking construction demolition waste and recycle it straight into new products it's probably one of the easiest and best products to be recycled is concrete is cementitious products you can recycle 100 and this is what we already do so last year alone we did 6.6 million tons of construction demolition waste which was recycled and putting back into our cemeteries products and this is simply more than 000 full truck loads every working day so you see we are really scaling this up we set ambitious targets we want to be now in the next years doubling our the recycling of the waste so while we already had a 17 growth just last year we target that growth rate now going forward and we want to reach 100 million tons of recycled waste as soon as possible and that's going to be very exciting as a big part of the future of wholesaling we are scaling up everywhere is it in recycling centers is it to put the the waste back in the products and processes and here you can expect a lot from us going into the future this was um a bit the highlights i wanted to change with you from record results to the progress we make in the strategy from sustainability uh fourth segment solutions and products to circular construction and now i pass on to geraldine who gives us more details on numbers results but also on the regions thank you jan and good morning ladies and gentlemen i'm very pleased to share with you some more details on our achievements in 2021 and just not only with regards to the financials but also the sustainability kpis in view our strategy 2025 accelerating green growth 2021 has been a record year and has been a year of strong growth our net sales were up by more than 11 percent on the like for like basis driven by both volume and price rises also boosted by a strong pricing and cost control our recurring ebit grew over proportionally by close to 26 percent like for like our earning per share before impairment and divestment followed the same trend ending at 3.98 swiss francs per share this is 30 percent above the level of 2020 and once again we achieved a high cash conversion at 50 percent we generated 3.3 billion of free cash flow which is above the records which were set the two preceding years let's move to the volumes and cement or volume grew by five percent like for like and all the regions contributed to this growth with some countries recording an excellent performance such as india which benefited from a strong volume growth after the severe lockdowns of 2020 but also latin america recorded an outstanding performance with key markets of mexico argentina ecuador all experiencing strong volume growth from infrastructure projects our aggregate business lines in volume grew by 3.9 percent and to be noted here the good performance of the uk and the high double digit growth of china already mixed concrete business line grew by 7.3 percent driven by the key markets of india france and mexico let's move on to our net sales we are proud to report that we reached 26.8 billion swiss francs of net sales up 16 compared to 2020 and above the level of 2019. if we look at the price at the scope effect to start with the scope effect of almost 1.6 billion here this is mainly attributable to the nine months of consolidation of our student building products that we acquired beginning of q2 2021 but also all the bolt-ons we have acquired during the last 12 months contributed to this positive impact the like for lie growth amounted to 11.3 percent and this reflects the rises in prices and in volumes the pricing impact account for 5.2 percent the volume impact accounts for 5.1 percent finally the currency translation was negative and that was mainly uh due to the argentinian peso and the nigerian era it accounts for minus 2.2 percent let's go to the profitability we here have also recorded um a record growth and a record level of a bit in total our recurring ebit grew by 25.5 percent and it was driven by an impressive like for like gross of 25.7 percent representing 943 million swiss francs the volume performance of 603 million swiss francs is a first contributor to this impressive result also reflecting the stone pricing we have a price of a cost that is positive for 2021 at 317 million swiss ranks a very solid result achieved despite an energy cost inflation of 24 throughout the 2021 year the scope effect you can see here of 154 million swiss francs represent a growth of 4.2 percent and it's mainly attributable to firestone and we have a negative forex impact of minus 4.4 percent that is mainly attributable to the argentinian peso if we look at our performance across all business segments here well you can see that all the business segments grew organically with another proportional recurring a bit growth and a positive price of a cost for all business segments our net sales grew by 13.3 percent and here you have a volume impact of 5 percent and an appreciable impressive strong pricing impact of six point seven percent on aggregate's business line uh in volumes grew by three point nine percent and the price impact accounted for one percent on average on the ready mix concrete business line we grew in volume by 7.3 percent and here the price increase accounted for 2.9 percent and on our solutions and products well with the recent acquisition of firestone building product the net sales of solution and product represents actually 15 of the total group net sales in q4 with the recent uh announced acquisition of prb and malarkey this share is going to increase further as we embark on our strategy 2025. if we look at the regions now well all the regions have expanded their margins and i will now comment into more detail let's start with north america north america had an outstanding performance in the year and in q4 especially with a strong volume strong volume demand in q4 that has been across all the business segment that was boosted by an expanding economy in the u.s the strong pricing trends were also experienced in q4 was noting that the price of the cost was positive in north america and q4 and we look forward to another great year for the region here as we can see it's fully supported by a full order book and also with the pipelines the boltons we have in our pipelines if i go to latin america the region delivered a very strong performance here the market demand as in previous quarters was boosted by residential and infrastructure projects additionally we have added new production lines in mexico and in argentina and we are continuing to roll out all the gecko firestone products the liquid applied membranes through the descends our retail network if we move on to europe europe also delivered a very good set of results and uh and the demand has been strong in europe for the year quite strong in western europe even stronger growth we've seen in eastern europe we had a positive price of a cost for the full year in europe which helped to contain the power inflation in q4 we had a strong execution of our green capex they're going to also deliver good results in 2022 as well as the bolton pipeline that we're having that gonna help to fuel growth let's now move on to middle east and africa we had here also a solid set of results uh in q4 and for the entire year solid and good market trends were seen in nigeria and in kenya for the q4 egypt saw a significant price improvement despite being impacted by the production quotas for cement output the region achieved a positive price of a cost in q4 on the back of a strong pricing let's now move on to a park a park delivered a resilient set of results in 2021 the volume grew across all business segments we also achieved a positive pricing in the region which helped to partially offset the cost inflation in q4 worth noting in china we experienced significant price highs hike of above 40 percent in q4 let's now look at the full p l before impairment and capital gain or losses on our divestments the recurring ebit grew by 25 percent representing 936 million swiss francs in total as i mentioned before then our restructuring litigation and other non-recurring items grew by 105 million swiss francs due to a litigation one-off we have continued to reduce our financial expenses despite the acquisition of firestone we have generated 67 million of savings our effective tax rate has remained stable at 25 percent and finally uh the results of our subsidiaries with minority shareholders have improved especially india this is why the net income attributable to the non-controlling interest have increased well all in all earning pressures amounted to 3.98 swiss francs per share this is a gross of 30 percent compared to 2020 which is over proportional to the a bit growth let's go to the free cash flow and here we are super proud to report a record a free cash flow of 3 264 million swiss francs this is 50 of the fbta and effectively the bta with the recovery and volume and the strong prices has increased significantly but this was mechanically offset by higher working capital and higher capex as a business activity rebounded but worth noting that with regards to the working capital actually in terms of numbers of days we've improved slightly compared to december 2020 showing that this is still an area of focus even as our markets return to growth so we incurred a non-recurring litigation item we paid more tax due to there being higher taxable profits and this was partially mitigated by reduced financial expenses so all in all a record free cash flow 14 million above the record of last year as you can see here this is the third consecutive year where we generate a free cash flow of both three billion swiss ranks in total we are above 9.5 billion of free cash flow generated for the last three years let's go to the net debt our net debt is below 10 billion swiss francs we have generated 3.3 billion of free cash flow we have spent 3.4 billion in acquisitions mainly firestone and the boltons we have distributed close to 1.4 billion of dividends 1.2 a little bit more than 1.2 to the wholesome shareholders and 0.1 billion to the minority shareholders of our controlled subsidiaries if i go to the leverage here uh well we have maintained our leverage at 1.4 we've reached the same level as 2020 and this despite the acquisition of firestone uh building products that leaves us with a very strong balance sheet that will allow us to continue our acquisitions if i go to the return on invested capital here you can see that in 2020 the continuous improvement has been temporarily stopped due to the crisis but in 2021 we did a strong catch up to 8.9 therefore here our target of the strategy 2022 of eight percent is significantly exceeded one year in advance following these excellent and record results uh we're happy here to confirm that we will propose an increased dividend to the agm of 2.2 swiss francs per share it will be a cash dividend fully paid out from the foreign contribution capital contribution reserve and as you know it will not be subject to swiss withholding tax and last but not least let's go to our sustainability kpis here we have continues to improve and to uh to remain the leader of our industry by improving here uh the footprint our co2 have a co2 emitted baton have reduced by one percent uh the increase therefore that we made during 2021 in green capex will deliver even more results in 2022. the recycled waste has increased by 17 which is above the cement production and this is also demonstrating or what we do in circular economy which is fully embedded in our strategy about fresh water consumption actually uh we have continued there with a five percent reduction of fresh water withdrawn we are well on track to reach our 2025 target and our 2030 target and last but not least we have significantly improved here the money we spent on uh social initiatives and social projects with this i hand over to yann yeah um thank you geraldine we come to the outlook and to the guidance for this business year 2022. uh we are very confident about the year the this year 2022 is about growing wholesome we have good demand levels in all our key markets so we expect very healthy growth in our traditional business then in addition our expansion in solutions and products will show uh significant results by taking the acquisitions in but also by double digit growth rates here from this segment so uh 2022 will be about growth will be about further acceleration uh towards our sustainability targets i'm very excited now to scale up our green products ranges eco-packed eco-planet and also making a circular construction a reality this will be a big part of the wholesome future here to build new with old and we have everything in place to make this happen we are also positive on the operating profit growth we we will see another increase in profit at this early stage of the year we uh we cannot give a precise guidance on this we also have cost inflation where we are confident um we will balance them out like we did in 2021 but nevertheless i think we have to wait here a little bit more till we give a more precise guidance where we are giving a guidance already as of today is on the free cash flow after three years of more than 3 billion of free cash flow we are confident that this is also the right level for this business here so we are guiding that we will have a free cash flow of above 3 billion swiss francs also for 2021 i think with this i'm excited to open the floor for your questions and comments the first question comes from the line of el diral with jp morgan please go ahead madam oh hi thanks for taking my question good morning um i have two questions if i may i'm sure we'll come back to uh the price cuts and volume discussion and all that but since i was first first a question i just would like to have an update on syria uh if there is any news on your discussion uh on going with the doj and second um i'd like to ask about your growth ambition in india because we've seen that acc and ambuja in their call last week have planned to take capacities for each of the companies to 50 million ton in the next three years um versus like 30 ish million ton at the moment respectively so that implies like 35 million capacity addition of the next three years which is really big um so i was a bit surprised by that so if you could comment on uh your ambition in india thank you very much uh thank you elodie and good morning to you um i start with the second question and then i think uh geraldine can complete your first question um yes uh you notice in india we are we are back on growth we just are completing two new uh plants in india we want to participate here in the market development i think in india the forecast is uh that cementitious products will double over the next 12 years or so and we are as the number two player in a good position here to to take also advantage so we have now the first two new plants commissioned and we will plan the the next steps here how to participate in this market growth yes lod so about your um question on uh on syria of course as you know this is a legacy issue related to the alleged conduct of the lafarge subsidiary in syria prior to wholesome's merger with lavage in 2015 uh of course the alleged conduct as you know is in stock contrast with everything that wholesome stands for um look we are as disclosed in the annual report uh discussions continue uh with the doj concerning a potential resolution but at this stage as we speak we cannot make an assessment as to the timing or as to the outcome of those discussions so we don't have any further comment thank you very much the next question comes from the line of las velve with credit suisse please go ahead thank you just want to focus in a bit on the solutions business and specifically firestone of course you have very strong growth you're talking about double digit and malarkey may be the same can you comment anything about your profitability in that business how that is progressing if that is following and if there's or any meaningful synergies coming through in that business and of course the obvious question how do you think generally price over cost in 2022 over well in 2022 which you were pretty good at neutralizing and actually slightly ahead in 21. thank you yeah hey good morning glass um thank you for the questions so uh we are very excited about the fires on the malarkey business as it's growing from day one so that's fantastic to see we will continue to grow and on the other hand we still have a lot potential for margin improvement we see that now it was last year was a challenging year as the the raw materials we use for those roofing systems increased very sharply so we uh we had to also make the the necessary adaptions in the pricing with a bit of delay but now we see in quarter four and going into this here we have a significant margin improvement and this is what we want to see from those business we not only want to see the double digit growth we also want to see an over proportional improvement in margins for both business if you benchmark and you can benchmark that with a little bit of available public data you see that there is a a very nice and attractive margin differential we are going after so we are doing exactly what you are what your question points to we will have a very profitable growth in these new businesses on price over cost i think first we managed well last year which was was a challenge we had high cost inflation starting already in may so we had a year where we had a high number of price adaptations in our key markets not only beginning of the year or something we were had to be very agile and we also made sure that we start this year 2022 on the right pricing levels in our market so uh i think we did a very good job and uh makes me confident that the further increased prices we see on energy but maybe also on logistics in other areas will be covered from our site through cost mitigation but also through pricing that looks very promising here beginning of 2022 thank you the next question comes from the line of yuri serve with red burn please go ahead yes good morning two questions please um the first one if i may just ask one and then next one after you answer when i look at your page five um which shows your the pie chart of the future composition of the business obviously you're planning to increase solutions and products to 30 percent but if i look at the cement part it shrinks quite a lot are you planning to sell cement assets i know that you have sold cement assets in emerging markets a few small ones in africa and a bigger one in brazil but can we expect that wholesome will sell anything in core markets like in north america and europe is that something that we should expect uh yeah i said i yeah thank you and good morning i i think uh what you have seen from us we have this one slide where you see the solutions and products acquisitions you see the bolt-ons and you see the divestments you of course realize the divestments are basically in emerging cement markets and i have no announcement to make uh today but but you see the portfolio it was shifted in the last three years of divestments in emerging cement and then we invest in europe latin america and europe i would say these are our core regions both for the boulder acquisitions in aggregates in concrete but also of course for solutions and products so you will see that shift doesn't necessarily mean we have now a big we didn't have a big sell-off of cement we had very selected assets and you can expect that from us also going forward and the rest of the differential will also come from growth we we want to see wholesome grow right and this will be a year of growth here where we will be significantly higher in the net sales than in previous years and you can see that also from our guidance which we already lifted more than six percent of sales growth compared to our strategy where we talk about three to five percent growth okay so what i'm hearing from you is that we should not expect you to get to 30 percent of solutions and product by actually selling down your cement assets you know they make something for those worries oh yeah yeah no that's clear said that we want to grow solutions and products so we're very proud that you've seen last year we almost doubled solutions and products i think this here with the new acquisitions coming in maybe it's realistic we're going to reach around 5 billion swiss francs for this segment and we're going to bring that segment somewhere to 9 to 10 billion swiss franc that's our target here the nine to ten you said yep okay um next question if i may so other companies in the sector start off or proceeding with share buybacks you can see that from pretty much everyone what is your view on this well i mean i think first of all i'm a ceo for shareholders so i we have a great focus on the shareholders um this is why it was also important for us now to have a uh to show that we also increase the dividend by 10 um because we have all the financials and the development to do so um on the share buyback i think maybe it's not obviously we have not announced anything i think it's maybe not the right time we have a couple of interesting projects in the pipeline and maybe in the future there will be a point if we are too successful in reducing the debt or the reducing the leverage or bringing in high cash flows so i i don't exclude share buybacks for the future just at the moment i think the timing is we have some attractive opportunities we would like to pursue okay thank you next question comes from the line of cedar ekblom with morgan stanley please go ahead thanks very much hiyan hi geraldine um i've got a quick question on the green products in the last quarter you've seen quite a lot of your competitors pushing their green offering to customers so i'd like to understand are you seeing any competition in your core markets and can you talk about then what your value proposition is for the customer aside from the product just being low co2 seemingly with more of these products available on the market basically trying to understand how you think you can retain that pricing premium in those products as they become more mainstream and then just on the product itself does it matter to the customer if the green credentials come from recycled demolition waste or blast furnace flag being used or fly ash you know does it really matter or is it just that it's lower co2 thank you hey santa good morning uh thank you look i think probably the last two years we saw a big shift in interest from the customer to really start to implement green solutions for buildings which is one part is to build greener so to have less co2 footprint in the in the building materials but then the bigger part is even to be more energy efficient throughout the lifetime of the building because that's the bigger part of the co2 footprint and and we see now a big shift from owners architects to really make this a reality and and this is why we launched our green product ranges right eco-packed ecoplanet and we have a huge demand and a huge interest for those solutions and i'm i'm glad that through this global branding we have the right framework uh to also properly inform actually the customer that they can already make a choice today to build more sustainable and as you point out the customer is interested in bofa in the circular construction but also of course in the decarbonization they go hand in hand but you are right in some instances uh circular construction doesn't mean the co2 footprint necessarily is is much improved so that goes hand in hand together and we're very happy here to lead the development you've seen our numbers right we are already at more than 600 trucks a day on eco packed concrete we are already more than 1 000 truck loads a day on demolition construction demolition race so very happy about this now you're saying that some people are maybe following um i i welcome that i think we have a mission in to make circular construction and decarbonization a reality in uh in the world for buildings for infrastructure and and i just welcome everyone to follow us because that's the right path to go and a lot of effort needs to be uh needs to be taken this is why on the slides we just uh try to translate it into truck loads because that shows you what tremendous volumes are behind that and you can imagine to adjust our supply chain now to to take in 1 000 trucks a day with construction demolition waste that needs proper terminals that needs proper recycling then we get different grades of recycling out of that you know some go into road construction some go into concrete some go into cement so so that's our that's our our roadmap to make it happen and anyone joining us is more than welcome because that has to be the future of construction to make it circular and sustainable the next question comes from the telephone and is from mr emorosa with the helvetica bank please go ahead yes good morning thank you very much um your energy bill increased by 630 million in 21 and from 9.2 to 10 10.3 percent of sales so you lost 110 basis points there but on the other hand i was surprised to see that the distribution and selling expenses which are much higher number of cost grew under proportionally so you gained actually 80 basis points on the margin which distribution and selling expenses so in balance you only lost 30 basis points with these two elements which are most affected by all these inflationary developments uh has this to do i mean this on the proportional growth with distribution and selling has this to do with the changed business mix with a higher proportion of solution and products or because i was a bit surprised that this didn't increase more and should we hence expect a similar development in 22 ie still higher energy bill of course bought a lower proportion of distribution and selling expenses hi good morning ramo thank you and thank you for noticing our efforts to mitigate the costs where they come from i remember we had on logistics we had a big program throughout the pandemic if you recall we made already in march 2020 our action plan to come out of the pandemic with much more competitive cost and i think that's a big part of what you describe and of course now the trend are reversing and we have to now be very agile on the pricing but but we are working very hard to uh to to make both ends meet and to have a positive price over cost um maybe jaradin do you like to add something more details to this no i think it's it's uh it's right to say that the energy uh cost inflation has been very high in 2020 i mentioned 24 of pure price increase in energy uh we did not have such an increase in distribution and uh and query cost as you mentioned remo we also as you know have a very strong procurement teams and that uh also with the digital tools we've put in place are also helping uh to decrease the unique cost when it comes to distribution so and this will continue of course to uh to a service as we go in 2022. okay but it's also true that the business mix also helps a bit i mean the higher the the importance of purdue solutions and products get they are not that energy intensive of course and also not that much this i mean and also on distribute distribution and selling is probably not that cost intensive right that's correct that's correct yes okay now my second question is um on the different regions you mentioned the positive price over cost [Music] and you said in europe and asia there was a positive price over cost-effect for the full year but you didn't mention it for q4 whereas in the other three regions later mid east and north america you also said that there was a positive price of a cost effect for the fourth quarter but not for europe and asia so all these the two regions where you have to struggle most in order to get these price over costs uh balance positive yes it's correct remo uh the uh as you know the energy bill increased uh even further in q4 38 in terms of price in q4 and uh europe all contained more or less the power uh inflation and the epac also uh uh let's say uh mitigate partially contained the energy hikes in q4 the other three regions as you mentioned were positive price of the cost okay but to sum it up as john said just to be very clear here your target still is to get an overproportional increase in epic versus sales remember we don't say it to this point in time i think you know like always we have a you know we have i think a well-founded outlook so we promise a year of growth we promise ebit will grow we promise a healthy cash flow so i think that's already a lot for start of the year and then let us see a little bit the latest developments we have in eastern europe now with this terrible conflict let's wait a little bit how things are falling in place but but we are confident what we the performance we showed in 2021 we see no reason why we wouldn't do that again in 2022 great fair enough and thank you now have a question coming from the video conference and coming from mr ano lehmann your line is open miss lehmann thank you very much i hope you can hear me and see me yes perfect i know excellent thank you so much uh the question is uh on solutions and products obviously you've been very active with acquisitions recently and you're hinting that there could be more now you end up with the firestone business which is roofing solutions uh malarkey which if i understand it well is is tiles for roofs uh prb which is uh what you call specialty building solutions and that comes on top of the precast the ash files and the mortars that were already there so i guess my question is what are you trying to achieve with these businesses which might be interesting on their own but are not necessarily all consistent with each other uh or essentially do you think you're gonna have synergies between the businesses or the ideas just to be opportunistic and maybe even further extend the product portfolio in the division uh yes i do thank you no look we are in in in building materials we are in construction so first of all you know from cement aggregates to ready mix concrete now to roofing or to motors is a very natural development uh you have a lot of synergies when it comes to logistics when it comes to key accounts also when it comes to locations as we operate a very uh granular network of more than 2 300 production sites so we have a lot of synergies doing that and this all comes together in our ambition to be the most innovative and most sustainable building solution provider in the world and this is why it makes so much sense now to go to the roof and especially in the markets in north america and in europe to extend our range of solutions closer to the customer and also closer to sustainability as the companies we are buying um are really uh at the at the front of the sustainable development if i can take your question on who just to explain a bit why we are so excited about these four companies uh we acquired here in solutions and products so you will find that these are growth platforms because there's more and more demand for those type of solutions and the demand is driven by it has a big function for the future so you talk about the roof 20 30 years ago the roof was just to protect uh from from rain from water and nowadays it has a function it has insulation can be a solar roof can be a green roof and this all leads to much increased value per square meter of roof applied right so so you talk about double or treble uh the value from those functional roofs compared to traditional roofing and then of course at the same time you have a huge growth from this development and also from the further demand to re-roof to improve buildings to make them more energy efficient to make them solar energy generating or to make them green livable for the city so this is why we are so excited about that at the same time it's a very um a very strong business through the cycles because most of the business is repair and refurbishment so we are not so bound to the build cycles or something for new buildings we can really do every year the same number of new jobs to reroof and repair so very exciting and then lastly also this all comes with good pricing power because of innovation so what i just described to offer all the roofing systems of the future uh we have quite a big r d lab doing that we are working on the latest application technology so self-adhered roofs and this is really exciting going forward you will see much more also recycling in our roofs in the future where we also can use a construction demolition waste inside so i'm i'm very excited we really brought into the right aspect and we will link that very closely to wholesome going into the future for the synergies thank you very much we now come back to the questions from the phone and the next one comes from gregor kuglich with ubs please go ahead hi good morning um i wanted to touch uh sort of on the prices that have been paid for the various acquisitions and i think firestone um i think made sense i guess the one that looked a little bit high was malarkey so you could just share with us what special about that business in your view to pay that kind of multiple uh for for roofing shingles business in the united states um the second question please maybe coming back to the cost inflation and the sort of recovery effort so you can just tell us what you think at this stage and i appreciate it's extremely volatile but we what your best guess is for 22 cost inflation um please and then so one of your competitors i think we talked about exit rate of price sort of i think north of 10 13 can you tell us what you're observing in terms of pricing as we head into 2022 please thank you hi gregor and i take the first question and and geraldine will talk a bit about i think cost cost inflation exit rate and how much and how often we increase prices last year and also start of the year i think we um we were very fortunate with our acquisitions if you look at the multiples we paid for firestone or malarkey i think they are in a very good ballpark if you if you look at the high multiples of evaluations of this light side building material sector so we're very i think fortunate to to make this happen and you look at malarkey you ask specifically that's a beautiful business because that's that's growing at tremendous the growth rates of something like 15 to 20 percent and the reason is they're very smartly focused on re-roofing in their markets and they have the most advanced products for this residential roofing which is polymer enhanced shingles which is stronger and more flexible and and gives them a competitive edge in the market the market of these schindles you know is a that's an amazing championship segment i think the entire schindle market is around 20 billion dollars in the u.s alone and the product range we are offering participates in 12 billion dollars of market uh growing if you look at the trends of new builds for residential which is almost an old-time low and then you see the tremendous demand for re-roof and repair this is a really a growth engine at the same time the market is already quite consolidated there are only five six players in this 12 billion dollar segment so so i think we were very very happy to enter here and now we have plans to continue we have at malaki we have currently three manufacturing sites and we are now planning already for the fourth one because we expect that this year already we're going to reach capacity utilization with the three plants so we do everything now to expand the volumes further because we want to grow that business obviously to more than a billion dollars in the next few years yes the greek also on the cost inflation whether it is energy or the rest we see the same trend going into 2022 as in 2021 but i guess you've noted the solid performance we achieved in our price over cost during 2021 for all quarters slightly negative in q4 but always very positive driven by the strong pricing discipline that we had and we had it very early in the year in 2021 and you can look at all the pricing components that we have done quarter after quarter it's speaking for itself right now when we entering uh 2022 we have announced tong price increases as we go into uh 2022 uh it's a double digit in value in the us it's double digit in percentage in europe we are entering with a high trend of price increases 2022. thank you the next question comes from the conference call and it's from tobias verner which stifle please go ahead uh yes good morning geraldine and uh ir team thanks for taking my two questions uh the first one relates to the exit rate of price increases in q4 and and maybe while you're at it geraldine can give us the breakup of the q4 price over cost spread which i think is minus 42 million the second question relates to green capex and you know you've updated this uh us on this in the past but i'd like to hear a little bit more on your thoughts here why you think um you know your budget amount is enough to to do to deal with that situation at least over the next few years and what you assume annually then thank you okay so um the um exit rate price increase for q4 and a bit of granularity on the price of a cost for q4 to be as sure um actually in q4 we had a very strong price uh price increase of 6.8 percent that represents a 400 more than 430 million swiss ranks of pure price increase then we had to uh bear an energy cost inflation that i mentioned was very high in q4 in terms of price it was 38 that represented about 230 million and we had also uh for another 140 million of raw material and distribution and maintenance increases linked to the to the inflation so the green capex that's also your questions uh yes uh of course you've seen that in the capital market that we have set ourselves to reach 500 million swiss francs in green capex by 2025. uh this is something that we are controlling we want to uh of course lead the way in the carbonization of the the industry and the green capex are instrumental for that so yes uh we have we have enough to do and to reach the targets which we have a set in for 2025 and for 2030. okay so you you don't feel that this could inflate up further no we don't thank you very much as a reminder for your questions from the phone please press star in one for your video questions please click on the video q a button on the webcast page when i take one further question on the phone coming from martin hussler with said kb please go ahead sir yes good afternoon and thank you for taking my question um it's also turning around a fuel cost i was just wondering if you could give us kind of a breakdown of this 1.5 billion fuel costs if we look at energy sources such as gas petcock coal and oil just to get a rough idea well understand thing that there are regional differences here and the second question actually is also turning on this topic um you have to target to increase your tsr from 21 to roughly 37 sent in in the year 2030. i was just wondering what this could mean also if you look at inflation for biomass waste do you see there any inflation already or or what do you think how this can develop in the future um let me um martin first of all good afternoon um welcome uh let me start a bit to talk about the different fuels and i think geraldine if she's comfortable can give us some more more background on the numbers itself so so what we have seen now in the last years with these tremendous hikes in energy prices for all sorts of energy this is helping a lot for alternative fuels so at the moment we try to accelerate further and and while this overall number you're mentioning are uh seem to be rather low it's because we have in north america and especially also in india we have low rates or low availability of of alternative fuels we it's especially important that in europe we accelerate here also to uh to master the co2 challenge we have here and turn this into a co2 opportunity so at the moment what we see alternative fuel is highly attractive and we invest now a lot and try to accelerate the same is true for renewable energy we have the first wind and solar parks in our plans and while this was always challenging to to have a return on investment with the current energy prices this has totally changed and we also want to further accelerate here to go for renewable energies here for all our sites yes uh martin so uh the the breakdown of the 1.5 billion actually you have about 55 percent that is unpacked coke and and coal you have a 19 on gas and you got the rest uh look i think it's important we are very agile and the goal here is always to source the most competitive uh source of energy that's uh really what animates the the teams okay thank you and and just you know if i look because a lot of uh obviously companies try to to to go for alternate alternative fuels i was just wondering but you see already there kind of a cost or a price inflation as well i think we're in a good situation here martin of course there will be eventually price inflation but it's still it's so valuable to make this available and you know you have to make the plant ready for alternative fuel you have to source the alternative fuel you have to prepare it and we are working on all of that and it's it's very rewarding it's very rewarding and uh and that's that's our plan going forward okay thank you today's last question is coming from the phone and it's from mr harry goad with berenberg please go ahead good morning thank you for taking my question i just got one on um pricing in europe and and in the context of the carbon price when you think about the price increases that you're hoping to get in europe is this going to reflect underlying sort of energy cost inflation and the movement in the carbon price in the last year or do you think that's too much to ask of your customers this year i've been physically your thoughts on that thank you um yes hey hi harry and that's of course what we do that's what we successfully did in 2021 and that's what we're gonna do also this year um there is uh the co2 cost you are you're mentioning in europe they obviously have risen sharply um i think it's a positive thing because it enables us to accelerate the decarbonization make the necessary investments and it will be displayed in the pricing so the question is not uh if you are able uh to compensate the question is are you fast enough or are you in a better position maybe compared to other companies and this is what we try to do and if you look at our european results for 2021 you see that we have been successfully doing that last year and this is what we exactly want to do this year so cost inflation co2 cost inflation we want to fully compensate okay thank you that was the last question for today back to you for any closing remarks well again uh thank you for joining us today in these challenging times with the ukraine conflict uh rising uh yesterday morning very very happy we could connect today happy we we shared the positive developments and i very much look forward to deliver what we promise in our strategy 2025 also what we promised in our outlook for this year and uh look very much forward to hopefully see you very soon in person again and and discuss the uh progress wholesome is making so thank you very much have a good day and please stay safe and healthy [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you