CRH plc (CRH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Those with us here in New York and to everyone joining online My name is Lauren [ Schulz ], and I'm the Chief Communications Officer for CRH. I would like to share with you some important safety information before we get started. You'll hear a lot about CRH today. But what is most important to us and core to everything that we do is safety. Emergency routes are clearly marked all throughout the conference center and in the breakouts that we'll be in later today. There are two exits in the rear of this room and there is one here to your left. And in the event of an emergency, you are reminded to leave your belongings behind, make your way to the nearest exit, do not run, do not use the elevators, and please remain calm. The venue alarm is a siren with flashing lights. And if you hear this alarm, follow the instructions of the venue staff, who will guide you towards the nearest exit. I can confirm with everyone here today that there are no drills planned throughout the duration of our Investor Day. Now a quick note on regulatory safety. Today's presentation may include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ due to various risks and uncertainties, but you can find further explanation of our safe harbor in the presentation deck that is available to all of you on our website, at crh.com. Today's agenda. So we have a very exciting and informative and engaging agenda for everyone today. Our CEO, Jim Mintern, will begin the main session shortly, followed by 4 breakout sessions that will offer a deeper look into our roads, our water, our leading performance and our growth capabilities. After these sessions, we will gather back here in this room for a Q&A session. Virtual attendees. You will have access to the general session and the Q&A live, and you will have access to all of our breakout sessions online. Further details about those 4 sessions will be provided here after our main presentation. Finally, the webcast of today's session, including all associated materials are also available on our website crh.com. Thank you for your attention on those details now. Let's get started. [Presentation]

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the CRH Investor Day for 2025. We have a really exciting morning ahead of us. I think it's really fitting that we're here right at the heart of Midtown Manhattan, a city, New York that symbolizes ambition, resilience and opportunity. It's also fitting because we're right at the heart actually of CRH here, right? We to our leading and connected network of assets have been shaping skylines, have been connecting communities, and really powering progress for more than a century. In fact, our materials, our products and services have built over half of this great city. Well, everyone in the room here this morning has already interacted with CRH in some shape or form. Whether that was on the road or the subway that got you all here this morning. Our weather indeed was the infrastructure, delivering the water and energy to your homes and houses. CRH is not just part of New York's past. It's woven in the presence, and it is driving its future. Now it's 2 years to the months since we listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So as CEO, I felt it was timely that we get together. To give you all a deeper understanding of CRH of who we are, and to set out our ambition for our new phase of growth, our year of growth, and specifically, our new 2030 targets. This morning, we will set out how we carefully and have strategically built out market leadership positions over 5 decades, both in America and in Europe. And why today, CRH is America's largest infrastructure play, with a scale and national footprint and a connected portfolio, which today is impossible to replicate. You will hear also as to why we win as an organization. Why CRH is the leading compounder of capital in our industry, consistently delivering superior shareholder returns, whether that is over at 12 months, a 10-year, or indeed over any period in our 55-year history. So what makes us the most consistent performer in our industry? Well, to explain that this morning, we're going to take you inside the CRH growth algorithm. The growth algorithm, which drives that consistent performance, delivery and compounding of capital. The growing infrastructure megatrends that underpin our business, we're going to explain later how our roads and water businesses are uniquely positioned to capitalize on these long-term structural drivers. We will explain how and where we decide to deploy capital, and then having acquired businesses how we go about making them better. We will set out our growth ambition to 2030, and how we are going to lead CRH, your company, into its next era of growth and value creation. We're going to take some time and talk about what we believe makes us special as a company. The CRH winning way, our secret sauce, which differentiates us from everybody else. And at the heart of this is our unique culture, cultivated over 5 decades of entrepreneurial leadership. Our superior strategy enabled by unmatched scale and a connected portfolio that drives higher profits, returns and cash. And we will discuss our customer-centric approach. How our portfolio in CRH, a portfolio of 300 local leading brands, solves our customers' most challenging problems. And how we connect -- we connect our local leadership and global capabilities to supercharge our leading performance. Over the last 2 years here in New York, I've got regularly asked, how can you have possibly -- how can you have 11 years of consecutive margin expansion? And surely, this is the end of the road. Can you sustain that? Well, this morning, we're going to unpack during the breakout sessions, our unique leading performance and growth capabilities, that enable that consistent year in, year out delivery on performance. And ultimately, this morning, we will set out why CRH is a true compounder in every sense of capital of growth and of shareholder value. Now you're going to have the opportunity today to meet some of the wider leadership team in CRH. CRH is not run by any one individual, but by a world-class team. And in my 24 years in CRH, we are fortunate today to have what I believe is the strongest ever leadership team we've had in CRH with over 200 years of industry experience amongst us as a team, and a team that is supported by a deep pipeline of incredible talent throughout our organization. Now I'm going to be joined on stage shortly by Randy Lake, our COO; by Nancy Buese, our CFO. And later today, you're going to have the opportunity to meet and hear from Nathan Creech, our President of Americas; Peter Buckley, our President of International; and JP San Agustín, our Head of Strategy, Innovation and Venturing. This morning, you're going to get a really good sense of the strong alignment between us as a leadership team and you as our shareholders. Now my role as CEO is clear. Is to continuously drive value for all our stakeholders, whether that's our employees, our customers or for you, our shareholders. And my goal today is when we leave here this morning that everybody has a much better understanding of CRH, your company, the global leader in building materials, of our unique entrepreneurial culture and relentless pursuit of excellence. And the characteristics that have made it a privilege for me to dedicate the majority of the most of my working life to this amazing company. And ultimately, how we are raising our ambition to deliver the next era of growth and value creation for CRH. We are not just the leading building materials company. We are not just the #1 infrastructure play in the U.S. We are a leading industrial company, a true compounder of capital, a company that's built for growth, and powered by performance. A must-own stock in every portfolio. Now with that, I'm going to ask Nancy and Randy to join me on stage. And here on the front row this morning, we have our leadership team in CRH. We're also joined by Mr. [ Richie Boucher ], our Chairman of CRH. They're sitting here in the front, and I hope during the course of this morning, and over lunch, you have a chance to talk to them all. So thank you. So starting with who we are, a high-level overview of CRH. We are the largest building materials business in North America and in Europe. Our size and our scale carefully built out over 5 decades of entrepreneurial leadership, is unmatched in our industry, and nearly impossible to replicate. Today, we employ 80,000 people across 4,000 locations, and we have a market cap of over $75 billion. This morning, we have reaffirmed our full year guidance of an adjusted EBITDA of between $7.5 billion to $7.7 billion EBITDA, representing yet another record year for CRH, and a year of double-digit growth building on top of what was a record year in '24. And that EBITDA is broadly equivalent to the combined total of our 3 next listed peers in the U.S. Scale matters in our industry, but it's not just about being bigger. It's about being smarter, more connected and more consistent. Our unmatched scale, combined with our connected portfolio, gives us a commercial, operational and strategic advantages that sets CRH apart, and enable us to deliver superior performance year after year. And the results speak for themselves. Over the last decade, we have delivered compound annual adjusted EBITDA growth of 15%. EPS of 17%, and free cash flow growth of 11%. We are also the only company in our sector to have achieved 11 consecutive year of margin expansion, demonstrating the consistency of performance, and the relentless focus on improvement. And in fact, since 1970, CRH has delivered an industry-leading compound annual total shareholder return of over 16%. Now that's a hallmark of a true capital compounder, a business that consistently grows creates value and delivers for shareholders over the longer term.

As you can see from the map and Jim mentioned the strategic -- strategically building out that platform in 3 of the most attractive construction markets in the world. In the U.S., we planted our flag in 1978. And since that point in time, it become the largest building materials in North America, which represents approximately 75% of the group's adjusted EBITDA. And when you look at how that position has been built on 2,000 locations, 50,000 employees, we've really been the benefactor of strong market positions, starting with our aggregate position. That national footprint gives us both the regional and sector and end-use exposure that really gives us both higher growth and more consistent performance. And really to break that down, look at two markets, in particular, the distinction between these two markets. The northeastern part of the United States certainly described and experienced as a highly populated area, very dense, probably the most extensive infrastructure market in the country, harsh winters that really drives significant repair and remodel demand creating a very highly predictable and recurring revenue stream. You can compare that to some of our higher growth markets in the south and the west of Texas and Florida. Really focused on new build construction based upon population growth and that inward migration. It really is a focus for us not only to build out the residential market but also the infrastructure business as well. Turning to our international business, which represents 25% of the group's adjusted EBITDA, very attractive footprints and strong market positions. Central and Eastern Europe, the demand is driven by significant new build construction, supported by government and EU funding. And as you turn to Western Europe, a very resilient repair and remodel market with strong infrastructure exposure. It serves really as the hub for innovation, design, advanced technologies, where we're proud to be at the forefront of that, the ability to capture those ideas and concepts and translate those in the United States and scale. And we've built a leadership position now in Australia market with stable dynamics, robust growth prospects and very similar to the southern part of the U.S., and/or Central and Eastern Europe. But across all of these geographies, our strategic positioning ensures that CRH is not just present, but that we're market leaders, with the scale and growth exposure needed to drive long-term value creation. Maybe walk through each one of these businesses, the unique businesses that we have in a little greater detail. The Americas Solutions business, Material Solutions, that's our largest business, represents 55% of the adjusted EBITDA across the group, leading positions in aggregate, cementitious and roads in North America. It's complemented very well with Americas Building Solutions, where we're the #1 provider of critical infrastructure and outdoor living solution. And this segment represents 20% of our adjusted EBITDA. And I mentioned the international business that we have, the exposure there, 25% of the group's adjusted EBITDA where we hold those strong leadership positions in Europe and in Australia. What Jim described kind of our effort over the last number of decades in the U.S. in particular, where we've become the #1 infrastructure player in North America. And that's been a very deliberate build-out based upon four really key areas of our business. And it all begins though, with aggregate, a valuable finite resource that really is the backbone of the business. And 95% of our revenue is connected to aggregates. Aggregate feeds everything that we do from our cementitious business to our roads business, to our water infrastructure platforms. And here, our position is unrivaled. 230 million tons of annual production. 20 billion tons of reserves. CRH has ownership of more reserves in the ground than anyone else in our industry. And building on that foundation, we've become the leader in cementitious materials with 25 million tons of annual production capacity. And between those two, aggregate and cementitious, there really are the essential elements that allows us and enables us to build, maintain and improve the network that serves our communities, and that our economies rely on every day. And then through that connected portfolio, CRH is also now the largest road paper in the United States. It's a business that's supported by recurring revenue and robust public funding. And here, we produce more than 50 million tons of asphalt on an annual basis, equivalent to the next 5 players combined. And our paving operations are almost entirely self-supplied through our aggregates -- high-value aggregate and asphalt. And that connected portfolio allows us to capture more value at every step of the chain, delivering higher profits, stronger returns and greater cash generation. We're also the leader in water infrastructure, a market we first entered nearly 50 years ago. And today, we provide engineered solutions and systems that collect, protect and transport this vital resource. And we have national coverage. And over 80% of the products that we produce consume aggregate and/or cementitious materials. And since over 85% of every road requires some sort of water management system, you can see the connected nature and the benefit that our portfolio brings to that set of customers. And taken together, these 4 platforms, aggregates, cementitious materials, roads and water, they really form the foundation of our unique position as the #1 infrastructure player in North America, a position built for growth and long-term value creation.

Having looked at our geographic reach and strategic positioning, now let's look at our financial delivery. We have a proven track record of creating superior value for our shareholders. Over the past decade, in addition to growing our top line, we have delivered a 15% compound annual growth rate in adjusted EBITDA. And at the same time, we have significantly expanded our margins, which are up over 900 basis points. This performance is a direct result of our winning way, which Jim will talk more about in a few minutes. We are proud of our delivery of 11 consecutive years of margin improvement, reflecting our relentless focus on performance, a key part of our DNA. Our focus on operational excellence has translated into strong growth in earnings per share, free cash flow and return on invested capital, all financial metrics for our business. Over the past decade, we have delivered compound annual EPS growth of 17%, annual free cash flow growth of 11%, and nearly 700 basis points of uplift in our returns, for return on invested capital of 13.4%. Our performance across each of these metrics highlights the strength of our business and our ability to consistently deliver over the long term.

And when you look at our performance through the lens of total shareholder return, the story is just as compelling. We have significantly outperformed both the S&P 500 Index, and as well as some of the best in our industry. Over the last 1, 10 and even 55 years with compound annual total shareholder return of almost 36%, 17.5% and 16.2% over the last 55 years. This exceptional consistency reflects our position as the leading compounder of capital in our industry. And underscored by CRH continues to be such a powerful platform for long-term growth and value creation. So how has this all been possible? What is unique about CRH that enables us to consistently outperform the industry? The answer is embodied in what we refer to as our growth algorithm. And it's set out here, and it's been cultivated and refined over the past 55 years, and this is what drives our industry-leading performance. And this morning, we're going to take some time and start unpacking this. We will explore how CRH is the leading infrastructure play in North America. We are uniquely positioned to capitalize on three large and growing megatrends. On transportation, on water and on reindustrialization. These three mega trends will support significant above-market growth and value creation for our business going forward. We're also going to take you through the CRH winning way. It's our secret sauce, and this is at the core of who we are as a company. It's ingrained in our culture. It is the multiplier effect that enables us to fully capitalize on these mega growth trends and enables us to continue to outperform the industry, as well as consistently deliver double-digit earnings growth. All of this represents a powerful combination, which has not just delivered our strong track record of growth, profitability and return over the last decade. But it's going to continue to drive superior value creation into the future.

So let's talk a little bit about these growing megatrends and how they're reshaping and shaping the build environment and how they become growth tailwinds for CRH. As the #1 infrastructure play in North America, we stand at the center of some of the most powerful growth catalyst, and Jim talked about those being transportation, water and reindustrialization. And the critical role that we play by building and maintaining the U.S. transportation infrastructure system, which is the most largest and most extensive network in the world from everything that we've known to roads and bridges to airports, ports, and railways. It's our materials, products and the solutions that we provide that are essential to connecting those communities and allowing our economy to operate and function well. And with a growing population and the expanding economy, there's a significant ongoing need to maintain and modernize and expand that underlying infrastructure system to meet those challenges of tomorrow. But really one of the most critical and most urgent challenges today is water management. Across the U.S., much of the existing water infrastructure is outdated or under stress. And there's a need, certainly to update those systems that collect, transport and treat the water, not just for public safety and our health but also for the long-term resilience of the communities in which we operate. And we're uniquely positioned as the leading water infrastructure player in the United States, our national footprint and that deep expertise that we have across storm water, wastewater and [ potable ] water gives us a significant advantage as investment in these areas accelerate. But beyond transportation and water, we continue to benefit from the powerful wave of reindustrialization. Everything from energy, infrastructure to the reshoring of advanced manufacturing, the surge in data centers driven by the demand of artificial intelligence. It's here, our capabilities and scale ensure that CRH is positioned to deliver where the needs are the greatest. But let's just dig into these a little deeper and expand on each one of these. Transportation, certainly, we're well familiar with it remains most -- one of the most reoccurring and predictable revenue streams for our business. It's underpinned by robust and sustained public funding at both the state and the federal level. $350 billion from the IIJA allocated to highways and roads Around 60% of those dollars have yet to be deployed. So it highlights the runway we still have ahead of us. And actually, when you look into next year, state budgets are projected to increase by 6% in terms of their underlying investment in their infrastructure.

Water infrastructure represents another significant and fast-growing market for CRH. It is a $100 billion ecosystem, driven not by discretionary spending, but by urgent investment necessity, with roughly 1/3 of the U.S. water infrastructure network more than 50 years old, and the American Society of Civil Engineers indicating a $1 trillion spend needed by 2033, the scale of the opportunity is extraordinary. And CRH is uniquely positioned to deliver. You're going to hear a lot more about water during the breakout group later this morning.

At the same time, reindustrialization is accelerating. The demand for AI is fueling that expansion of data centers, and CRH is strategically located to capture this growth. In fact, with 85% of all the U.S. data centers that are either under construction, or proposed to be constructed, they're within 30 miles of any one of our locations. So our reach is wide. These projects tend to be large, complex, and highly specified. Really plays to the strength not just to the products that we offer, but also the engineering and technical services that we provide. It also focuses on the modernization of our energy infrastructure and reshoring those supply chains. And so you take those together, transportation, water, reindustrialization, they represent really one of the most compelling growth opportunities in decades. And with our unmatched scale, the national footprint, the connected portfolio across aggregates, cementitious roads and waters, we're uniquely positioned to capitalize on these growing mega trends.

So turning now to the second component of our growth algorithm, which is the CRH winning way. At the heart of our success is our unique entrepreneurial culture, one which has been nurtured and refined over the past 55 years. The culture is at the heart and the foundation of what we call our winning way. A mindset that unites our employees, brings clarity and consistency, and focus to everything we do. And our winning way is anchored around four key levers highlighted here in the center of this circle. These levers are what drives superior execution of our strategy, delivering leading performance across 4,000 locations in CRH and guides our disciplined approach to capital allocation, ensuring we maximize value for our shareholders while continuing to grow with scale and with confidence. But before we unpack each of these levers in detail, we first want to highlight kind of four critical enablers that surround and support them. And these are shown here in the outer ring. These enablers are the backbone of our approach and how we bring our winning way to life each and every day, ensuring that our strategy is not only effective but crucially, a strategy that is repeatable, scalable and predictable over the long term. The first of our winning way, the first enabler rather of our winning way, is our customer-centric approach. At CRH, our success is because we operate locally. Close to our customers, close to our communities and close to the opportunities that drive growth. Construction and infrastructure is local. We talk about it globally, and we talk about the national level, but all construction and infrastructure is done at a local level, and that's why we operate at a local level with local leading brands. In the U.S. alone, we operated more than 200 trusted brands and a selection of these, you can see on the right-hand side of this slide. Similarly, in Europe and in Australia, we have approximately 90 long-term, long-established and trusted local brands. Many of these businesses have been the cornerstones of their communities for generations. For example, we're here in New York, we trade as [ Telkom ]. [ Telkom ] can trace its roots back to the late 19th century. In Salt Lake City, we're [indiscernible], a business that was formed in the 1950s. These names carry real weight and real trust in the local markets and communities they serve. And when we acquire these new businesses, we typically keep those local brands and management teams in place. We don't change the names of the businesses. This ensures that we maintain the strong community ties that customers value, while also deepening the loyalty and strengthening and presence in the local market. We also then empowered the local teams with an ownership mindset, given them both the autonomy and the incentives to grow and improve their businesses year after year. And this is a powerful reflection of the CRH entrepreneurial spirit, one that has been central to our success over the past 5 decades. And importantly, these deep local relationships are not only a competitive advantage with customers, but crucially with potential partners. They underpin our unrivaled acquisition pipeline. And there the reason why CRH is so often seen as the acquirer of choice in small and medium-sized businesses in our industry. Now the next two enablers we're going to talk about is our -- in our winning way are our unmatched scale and our connected portfolio, which combined gives CRH a level of reach and capability that is truly unparalleled in our industry. Our story in the U.S. is as a result of more than 5 decades of careful, disciplined growth, which started back in 1978 with the acquisition of a concrete products business in Utah. From that starting point, we have built out a footprint that today spans every major infrastructure market in the country. And the foundation of it all is our aggregates network. More than 800 locations nationwide, providing the essential building blocks for everything we do. Next, our cementitious product businesses with over 600 locations supporting an extensive national presence. Turning to -- turning next to our Roads business, where we operate for more than 500 locations across 43 states, Here, you can see the extensive overlap between our roads business and the aggregate footprint, highlighting the efficiency and co-located nature of our operations. And finally, our water infrastructure business, serving customers across the U.S. from almost 80 locations. These sites are strategically positioned close to our aggregates and close to our [indiscernible] locations, enabling us not only to self-supply but to seamlessly support our roads business, given that 85% of all roads require water management systems. Now when you step back and look at the combined picture, the scale and connectivity of our footprint is extraordinary. It creates competitive advantage that are almost impossible to replicate. Driving efficiency, deepening customer relationships and unlocking growth opportunities across multiple markets. So let me bring it all together, our customer centricity, our empowered local teams, our unmatched scale and our connected portfolio. We have a business model that is truly differentiated. These are the enablers of our winning way, and they are what positions CRH to deliver consistent performance and long-term value creation. Now let's take a closer look at the four key levers of our winning way, highlighted here in the center of the circle. These levers are what enable us to execute our strategy with consistency and discipline. Together, these levers gives CRH the ability to grow with confidence with scale and with purpose. And continue setting the standard of excellence in our industry. The first lever of our winning way is our superior strategy. As we've highlighted earlier, we have strategically positioned our businesses across 4 key platforms. Aggregates, cementitious, roads and water. These platforms are not only essential to building and maintaining critical infrastructure, but they also directly align with the growing megatrends that Randy talked about earlier that are shaping the future of our industry. Now in these poor platforms, scale matters, and it is a powerful differentiator in each of these markets. And CRH is the largest aggregates reserves in North America and operates one of the leading cementitious platforms in the country. Now together, these two essential materials form the backbone for what is the nation's most extensive road and infrastructure businesses. Both positioned at the center of long-term growth opportunities. But scale is not -- scale on its own is not enough. What sets CRH apart is how we operate. With decades of experience and unmatched capabilities, we deliver best-class operational and commercial excellence, running these businesses more effectively and efficiently than anyone else in our industry. Our customer-centric approach keeps us close to the market, close to our customers, enabling us to better understand their needs at every stage, from product design from project design to product specification. This insight allows us to unlock cross-selling opportunities, leveraging our connected portfolio to deliver value-added for our customers. The result of this portfolio is the result is a portfolio today in CRH that is more consistent. It's more predictable. It is characterized by lower capital intensity, greater optionality for the capital deployment and the ability to compound growth and value creation year after year.

So let's bring superior strategy to life a bit and explore the example from our Roads business, a business that delivered -- we've developed over time and deliver certainly strong cash and exceptional return on invested capital. Within our fully connected roads offering, we go beyond just supplying the material of aggregates, we actually deliver a full suite of value-added products and services from mixed designs, to the asphalt product itself, to the paving capabilities. Everything that's essential to deliver a finished and high-quality road. One of the things that we talk about often, and we have here, is in and around the position of our aggregate business, and that certainly is the foundation. But as you move from left to right, you can see another significant competitive advantage we have and the ability to procure and store up to half of our annual liquid asphalt needs. And certainly that surety of supply is important. We have to have the product during paving season, but also provides us cost certainty and the ability to lock in margins ahead of the paving season. But often, I think an underappreciated value as well is our ability to customize asphalt blends to tailor those products to the needs of a specific customer. I've often said every road is uniquely designed and the ability for us to actually combine the right kind of products together and provide that unique product gives us a significant competitive advantage. As you move into our paving -- the paving side of our business. We are self-supply with all the high-quality aggregate and asphalt, and provides us that direct route to market. It reduces the capital intensity, increases the cash generation and drives higher returns. And to really illustrate the impact and how that actually works, you start with an assumed as a simple example, assumed $10 per ton of cash gross profit of aggregate. We convert that $10 into $60, a sixfold increase. But if you look at the roads business itself, it also has a superior profile and provides 300 basis points of return accretion compared to just supplying aggregate alone. The real clear demonstration of superior returns. And this is the essence of our connected roads offering. It's creating and capturing value at every step of the way. We just don't view this business as a distribution channel for aggregate. We actually capture margin in each one of those phases. And it's one example of how we can compound value for shareholders. maximize profits, generate cash and deliver optionality for future growth in a market that remains very highly fragmented. There's much more what we're going to explore here during one of the breakouts in and around our roads business, and so we'll get into that into further detail. Another great example of our strategy in action is the build-out of our leading cementitious platform in North America. The U.S. cementitious market itself is a high-growth area with a significant structural deficit in terms of domestic supply. Roughly 25% of the annual consumption is handled through imports. And our presence in this business really started in earnest in 2018 with the acquisition of [ Ash Grove ], 8 strategically located cement plants, a network of aggregates and ready-mixed concrete, along with logistics assets that allow us to penetrate the South, Midwest and the northwestern part of the United States. And it's probably the best deal that we've ever done in CRH. We've tripled the profitability, and probably more importantly, provided a real platform for further expansion. And that came about with our acquisition even last year of the Hunter assets outside of San Antonio, Texas. 2.1 million tons of cement in that high-growth market, along with 20 ready-mix facilities and, probably as importantly, the network of import terminals in a high-growth market that we're very complementary to our existing footprint and the connected business we have in Texas. And most recently, we announced the acquisition of [ Eco Material ], a leading supplier of [ SCMs ] with approximately 10 million tons of productive capacity, which increases CRH's U.S. cementitious capacity by 60% to 25 million tons. As part of that deal, two significant things stand out. One is the national distribution the rail network that's very complementary to our existing [ Ash Grove ] network and the innovation capabilities to better serve our customers. But this has been a very deliberate build-out of the U.S. cementitious platform and really another clear demonstration of our strategy. The second lever in our winning way is in around leading performance. And at the heart of this pillar is safety. It's our #1 value. And certainly, my colleagues here who have joined us, we spend every day focused on how do we ensure the safety of the 80,000 people who are part of our business, as well as the contractors and subcontractors who support our effort. We spend a tremendous amount of time and resources in and around the systems, and training, and the technology to enhance safety and to ensure that we're identifying and eliminating risk. And safety really is just the starting point of that wider culture of leading performance. It's the mindset that really runs deep across our entire organization. And we often say it's the belief that tomorrow can be better than today. And our leading performance is both locally owned, but then globally enabled. We empower our local teams to take accountability for delivering day-to-day execution while our global capabilities provide the tools, the best practices and the innovation that really raises our performance across the entire network. And it's the combination of those things that ensures excellence that's replicated then at over 4,000 locations. And Jim called it out earlier, I think the results speak for themselves, 11 consecutive years of margin expansion. And I think it demonstrates not only that leading performance is not just a cultural ambition, but it's really that proven driver of operational excellence, financial strength and shareholder value. But let's take a look at an example of leading performance in action, and how we connect that local leadership with our global expertise. Every year, we begin with a rigorous strategic planning process where we set really clear priorities, identify high-impact initiatives for each one of our businesses, all aimed at delivering our full potential. And the way we describe full potential, we ask our business leaders to say, if you were the only business in CRH, had unlimited access to capital, what could your business look like? And it's that mindset that we engage with our teams. And then they translate those initiatives into action plans, and then they're empowered to execute whether that means driving top line growth, improving underlying efficiencies and profitability of their individual businesses, or scaling their businesses through very targeted investments. And then we track those on a monthly basis, and review those during our operating reviews. And you'll hear more about that in one of our breakout sessions later just how we actually replicate that and what it looks like and feels like at one of our 4,000 locations. But I think you can get a sense in terms of the power of that approach, how we continuously drive leading performance across our entire business. Another example of leading performance is the action that we take in and around leading technologies, our innovation to really strengthen our leadership position. It can be everything from improving efficiencies, enhanced pricing strategies, getting us closer to our customers. But through these strategic investments and the partnerships with world-class companies, it puts us at the forefront of developing higher-performing businesses. And across all of CRH, we're advancing over 200 ongoing innovation projects. We hold over 2,000 patents, demonstrating really the scale and then the level of the ambition we have in and around innovation. And we've put up three examples on the screen for you to get a sense of what some of those are. On the left-hand side, our proprietary pricing tool. So it's the ability for us to get real-time customer information, orders in the system matched up with inventory in local markets, to ensure we're able to deliver the product we need to but also produce dynamic pricing in high-growth markets. It's also about getting exposure to the quantum that we would sell in terms of share of wallet of customers, being able to leverage the full capabilities of our connected portfolio. And if you look in the center in and around kind of energy optimization, we talked about the scale and size of our asphalt business in the U.S. We have a very significant asphalt business in the U.K. as well. And currently, we are launching an innovative Vortex burner that burns both biomass and waste products to eliminate the need for fossil fuel. And that's gone exceptionally well, and now scaling that in the United States in some of our major markets to ensure we reduce not only the use of fossil fuels, but improve our underlying cost position. And lastly, in and around AI, the investment in [ PhitoAI ], and AI-powered leak detection platform that supports and provides data to our end customers, specifically municipalities where they can identify leaks in their system, not have to spend money in terms of recapturing water that's already been cleaned, but also the ability to look in advance where weaknesses could occur and be proactive in the underlying maintenance. It's a way for us to engage closer with the customer and develop recurring revenue. And these are just a few of the examples of innovation across the group. They're all about driving efficiencies or engaging closer with our customers, reducing costs. But at the end of the day, they're all return accretive. And lastly, in terms of leading performance, certainly, our commitment there goes hand-in-hand with a focus on creating value from the circular economy and sustainability. We're the largest recycler of [ any ] product in North America. Last year alone, we recycled 50 million tons of waste or byproducts. And with the recent acquisition of [ Eco Material ], it adds an additional 10 million tons of recycled products that we can then enable the production of high-quality blended cements for use in concrete to reduce and significantly reduce carbon intensity. And so we view environmental stewardship not just as the right thing to do, but actually, it's a powerful performance enabler. And recycling in general, right, improves margin and reduced waste. It lowers depletion rates. And by relying less on [ virgin materials ], we protect a very important asset base and extend the years of our reserves, which we currently have over 80 million tons of life remaining. And we've set a leading industry standard as well in terms of our focus on carbon reduction. Our 2030 road map with an absolute reduction of emissions by 30%, and we're continuing to make solid progress against that ambition. But I think bottom line is, if you're a leader in the construction industry, we think those who embrace innovation and the technologies are really at the forefront with the ability to reshape how our world is built.

We've talked about our superior strategy and our differentiated performance. Now let's turn to another key driver at CRH, value-creating capital allocation. We are thoughtful, intentional stewards of our shareholders' capital. Every dollar we deploy is rigorously assessed to ensure it drives maximum long-term value. Over the last 5 years alone, we have allocated approximately $27 billion of capital around a disciplined and structured approach to grow our -- to provide growth and returns. And about $15 billion of those dollars have been allocated to value-accretive M&A, growth CapEx investments that strengthen our platforms, expand our footprint and drive growth and value for years to come. At the same time, we've returned significant cash to shareholders through about $12 billion in dividends and share buybacks. CRH has a proud history of 55 years of consecutive dividend payments, and have provided over 40 years of stable or growing dividends. Our share buyback program has been a flexible and efficient use of capital. Since 2018, we have repurchased over $9 billion worth of shares, at an average share price of $49 a share, repurchasing almost 20% of our shares outstanding. All of these actions are enabled by our strong and consistent cash flow generation together with our financial capacity and our proven growth capabilities, we have significant opportunity ahead of us for further value creation. Let's turn to our financial strength and credit metrics, which are the foundation for the capabilities we've created around the strategy. CRH has created a balance sheet with strength, flexibility and optionality to navigate our next chapter of growth. We've maintained an investment grade credit rating for over 20 years. And like Jim in the role before me, I can assure you we will maintain this credit rating on my watch. And we have indicated a long-term leverage ratio comfort level around 2x. Our current liquidity levels are ample, and we have the ability to strategically consider how we best use our balance sheet to support our deployment of capital. One area to highlight is our intentional acceleration of growth CapEx in recent years. Because of our size, scale and position and the markets we serve, we can see opportunities early and execute on them. Randy will talk about some examples in Indiana, North Carolina and Oregon around how we identify the best projects for execution and value delivery. We have deliberately stepped up our own CapEx investment leveraging our footprint, scale and connected portfolio to fully capture the high-quality organic growth opportunities across our markets. And these investments are carefully targeted to expand production capacity in high-growth regions, and they also will drive operational efficiencies through automation and advanced processes that lower cost and enhance performance. We're also making investments that optimize our energy usage, increasing our contribution to circularity and reducing emissions. You can see our progress and our inventory of internal projects is quite robust. These investments reflect our criteria of low-risk, high-return opportunities that expand our capabilities, support margin growth, and enhance long-term shareholder value.

So as Nancy mentioned, I wanted to give you a sense of a couple of examples on where we're deploying capital in a very targeted way to drive underlying organic improvement in the businesses. On the left-hand side, you see one of our largest quarries in North America, Cape Sandy, which is in Southern Indiana, strategically located on the Ohio River services, 5 different states, both internally, as well as external customers. It's a $100 million investment that's going to drive, obviously, underlying efficiencies and improvement, but as importantly, increase capacity to support future growth in those states. And you'll hear more about that later in one of our breakout sessions. In the center, you see the investment in Fayetteville, North Carolina to really address a product gap and offering down the 95 corridor in a very high-growth market across the southern part of the U.S. It's about not only addressing a gap in the portfolio that we had, but also taking care of our customers to ensure that we're a complete supplier in a growing market in terms of underlying and critical infrastructure. It's a greenfield facility. On the right-hand side, you can see the investment in our [ Durkee ] cement mill and operations out in Oregon. It's a $65 million investment, increases the capacity by 200,000 tons, again, to meet growing demand to get ahead of the curve. And that investment is going to drive obviously cost improvement and efficiencies, but it's also an alignment directly with our decarbonization road map.

And now let's turn to the final component of our winning way, our proven growth capabilities. M&A has always been at the cornerstone of CRH, reflected a deeply embedded growth mindset across the organization. In fact, over our history, we've acquired over 1,250 businesses. That's one every 2 weeks for the last 55 years. Few companies in any industry can match that track record. This success comes from a well-developed muscle that we have developed within CRH. Our ability to identify, acquire and integrate businesses with discipline and precision. It all starts at the local level, where our teams deeply rooted in their local communities with their local brands actively source opportunities through trusted relationships built over decades. These grassroots insights feed into a rigorous investment appraisal assessment, where every potential investment is measured against strict strategic and financial criteria. The result of this is a very repeatable model of disciplined growth that consistently creates shareholder value. In the last decade alone, we've done over 320 acquisitions. The majority of them small bolt-on strategic bolt-on deals. The number of these deals reflects the very fragmented nature of the markets that we operate in and demonstrates why CRH is consistently viewed as the acquirer of choice for family-owned and entrepreneurial mindset of businesses in our sector. Once acquired, these businesses are then transformed through our winning way. We supercharge local leadership, with our global capabilities, leveraging our leading performance system, our best practice programs, our global procurement, and our operational and commercial excellence initiatives to deliver significant synergies and accelerate growth post acquisition. At the same time, we applied the same discipline to active portfolio management to CRH. Over the last decade, we have completely reshaped CRH into a structurally better business today with a sharper strategic focus, and deeper positions in markets where we see the greatest long-term growth potential. The result is that today, we have a CRH, which is more focused, more connected and better positioned than ever before. Now let's look at the proven growth capabilities in action. As Randy mentioned earlier, we have strategically built out leading platforms at scale across aggregates, cementitious, roads and water in some of the most attractive markets in the world. In the south and the west of the U.S. In Central and Eastern Europe, where in CRH, we have some of our biggest, some of our most modern, some of our most efficient plants that have really driven a key part of the growth over the last 5 years in CRH, and are going to continue to power and drive CRH in the next 5 to 10 years also. And also in Australia, where we significantly increased our investment only 12 months ago. All of this represents disciplined and value accretive capital deployment, and how we leverage the benefits of scale and of our uniquely connected portfolio of businesses.

Examples that Jim called out, but maybe we pick one in around Texas. It's -- obviously, it's a large and fast-growing state. And in fact, it's our largest state as well. But over a decade ago, we identified Texas as really a key growth platform. Due to the large scale and size, the rapidly increasing economy. The funding environment was strong for infrastructure, the investment that was going to be needed in around roads and water was clear. And then you saw as well the investment by the state to accelerate reindustrialization. And we've delivered significant growth in Texas over the last decade with compounded annual revenue growth of 16% and adjusted EBITDA of 24%, as well as expanding the underlying margin of our business. And M&A has played a very critical role in that journey. We have done over 25 deals over the last 10 years, really aligned in and around those core areas of aggregate cementitious materials, roads and waters. And overall, that growth in Texas over the last decade, I think proves our capabilities that Jim talked about and the benefits of that connected portfolio, which has now positioned us as the #1 building materials business in the state. And again, you'll hear more of the details behind that business during one of our breakout sessions.

So in summary, CRH's winning way as our secret sauce, and it's the engine behind everything we do in CRH and it's powered by our unique entrepreneurial culture, which has evolved and built out over the last 55 years. Through the winning way, we execute a superior strategy with discipline and with focus. We drive leading performance across over 4,000 locations through a culture of continuous improvement. And we deploy capital with rigor to maximize shareholder value. We leverage our proven growth capabilities to build leadership positions in high-growth markets. That's the combination which sets us apart, which sets CRH apart. It positions us to fully capitalize on the powerful megatrends that are shaping infrastructure, construction and reindustrialization. And it gives us confidence that we will continue to deliver industry-leading performance. The winning way isn't just a framework. It's how CRH wins, both today and for decades to come. Now at this point, we'd like to pull all this together and take you through our expectations for the next era of growth in CRH.

To first address capital allocation. We expect to accelerate our level of growth investment in the next 5 years. Since 2020, we have deployed approximately $27 billion with over half of that allocated to growth investments. And over the next 5 years, we have the ability to deploy another $40 billion towards our growth ambitions. That's $40 billion is under [Audio Gap] located about 70% of that pot or up from our 55%, around $28 billion to growth investments. Our unique platform allows us to lead on both growth CapEx and M&A as you heard earlier from Jim. We have the firepower to do so and our deep reach in the local markets allow [Audio Gap] we will continue to drive organic growth in our existing businesses through low-risk, high-return growth while maintaining our financial discipline and our value-focused approach. We will continue to return cash to shareholders through share buybacks and our dividend program. And all of this is consistent with our long track record of delivering shareholder value, and it reinforces our position as the leading compounder of capital in our industry.

And as we discussed earlier, we believe the growth opportunities we have are unrivaled in our industry. Thanks to our unmatched scale, crucially, our connected portfolio and the fragmented nature of the markets that we operate in today. And over the next 5 years, we expect to allocate our growth investments, again, across 4 key platforms. Aggregates, cementitious, roads and water. To fully capitalize on the opportunities that we see in front of us. So we've shown we have the capacity and the opportunity to deliver significant future growth and value creation for our shareholders. And outlined here are our expectations to 2030. We expect to deliver annual revenue growth of between 7% and 9%, supported by our leading positions in high-growth markets, alignment with growing mega trends, as well as contribution from growth CapEx investments and M&A. We are targeting further margin expansion across our businesses. with an adjusted EBITDA target of between 22% and 24% by 2030, and building on our strong track record of 11 consecutive years of margin improvement. We also -- we will also continue to focus on strong cash generation, and we expect to deliver over 100% free cash flow conversion, underpinning the financial capacity and capital deployment opportunities outlined earlier. And all of this is underpinned by our growth algorithm that we have spoken about over the course of the last hour, combining our alignment with growing mega trends, and the power of the CRH winning way, to deliver superior long-term growth and shareholder value.

Well, we appreciate your attention this morning. And before I invite Lauren up just to go through the logistics of the next hour, maybe to overview a bit on the breakout sessions. You heard us mention, obviously, and talk about these particular areas, but we want to peel it back in a little more detail, give you a little more insight in terms of what it takes to be successful in each one of these areas and around our growth capabilities. And around what it means to be leading performance to actually see what that looks like in the context of individual businesses and the engagement that locally led and globally enabled concept. And then our Roads business and why we win in roads, and why we think it's such a terrific business. And the combination then with water, the idea of being connected and scale to win. And hopefully, you have the sense to I wouldn't touch it much, but look at that model out there. It's a great model. I think it does one of the best jobs of really articulating what you should expect and where we play and how we win. So with that, Lauren, I'll invite you to handle the logistics.

So now we're going to take a short 15-minute break, after which we will begin our breakout sessions. So everyone here in the room has a badge and there are a letter associated with your badge, A,B,C or D. Those that have letter A on your badge, you will be starting with our water breakout. The water breakout will be back here in this room after we all leave reset and then come back. For those of you who are in Group B, you will be hearing about why we win in roads. That session will be taking place just outside these doors in the gallery. For those of you who are in Group C, you will be heading down the hall to start with leading performance. And Group D, you will also be heading down the hall to learn more about our growth capabilities. Each session will be approximately 15 minutes. And after each presentation, you'll then move on to the next breakout area. We have plenty of colleagues outside to help you get to where you need to be. After all of these sessions, we'll return back here to this room after another short break, where we'll have a Q&A session. Everyone who is participating online, you will also have access to all of our breakouts. So in a moment, you'll see on your screen the agenda for the remainder of the morning, and a count down to each presentation to start, so you don't miss a thing. For you, after the 4 sessions, we'll also bring you back into this room after another short break to join us for the live Q&A session. So thank you, everybody, and we look forward to sharing with all of you more about CRH. [Break]

Hi, everybody, and welcome to the water breakout. My name is Jason Jackson, and I'm President of CRH Americas Materials. And prior to that, I had the good fortune to be able to lead our U.S. water infrastructure business.

And I'm Marie Glenn, the COO of our Construction Materials business in Florida. I know that water might not be the first thing you think about when you think about CRH, but it should be. Water is an extremely important part of our connected portfolio. If you take two things away from this session, they should be, number one, we've built the leading water infrastructure business in the U.S. in terms of scale and growth. And number two, CRH is best positioned to capture the growing demand enabled by long-term tailwinds in critical water infrastructure. You've already heard about our growth algorithm from Jim. Now let's look at how it applies to our water business. We'll start with the megatrends. In the case of our water business, the megatrends that are going to drive demand for decades to come, are aging infrastructure. A lot of America's water network is well past its intended design life and we see that every day with water main breaks, cycles, contamination events, and we're wasting billions of gallons of water every day. Climate resilience. We're seeing more extreme weather events, and we need more robust water systems to handle them. Water scarcity, communities have to manage every drop more effectively as we face droughts in many parts of the country. These mega trends present a huge opportunity and how we capitalize on that opportunity is our CRH winning way. Our winning way is a force multiplier for our water infrastructure business and the formula is simple. We execute on our superior strategy. We deploy capital rapidly and effectively to create value. We have the resources we need to continue to grow, and we demonstrate industry-leading performance. So when we take the megatrends and we apply our CRH winning way, this combination has allowed CRH to become a leading compounder of capital, and we've built unmatched scale and profitability. We're not just participating in the water market. We're leading the way, and we're in the right market segments with the right geographic footprint, and the right portfolio to solve the most pressing water challenges.

Now Marie just highlighted our growth algorithm and our leading compounder status. This is the algorithm in action through the lens of our leading water business. But this isn't a stand-alone business. This is a connected platform, where 80% of our input materials come from our core of aggregates and cementitious materials. This connection to roads and materials, along with our shared customer base, gives CRH an advantaged position across the U.S. infrastructure segments. Now yes, we are the market leader. But no, we didn't just get here. We have been in this space for nearly 5 decades, and our customers rely on us to solve their most complex challenges. It has been a deliberate and intentional build-out enabled by our growth algorithm. And we generate over $1.6 billion in annual revenue, and $0.5 billion in EBITDA through a superior strategy that keeps us focused on the two foundational elements of water infrastructure. Conveyance and flow control and water quality. Now these are not only high-growth verticals, but they are where scale and expertise matter most. Now let's take a deeper dive into our water business and the opportunity ahead through this short video. [Presentation]

Now that video gave you a sense of how vast and complex the U.S. water market is. A key point to remember, no two water systems are the same. They are influenced by a number of factors unique to geographies. So scale and focus enables growth and profitability. Let's go a bit deeper into where we play. On the left, you will see our core conveyance and flow control products. These are the concrete pipes, culverts, manholes, inlets and chambers, but they aren't just structural components. They are engineered to manage how water moves and flows through the systems and networks. Manholes, for example, they play a key role in regulating flow and providing access for maintenance and inspection. Now on the right-hand side, you see our focus on water quality. These are solutions like bio-filtration, media filtration, mechanical separation and more. These systems are designed to treat and protect downstream ecosystems. In short, we move water and we clean it, delivering connected solutions that support resilient, sustainable infrastructure.

Water infrastructure isn't just critical. It's foundational to how society functions. We all know we need water, but you probably don't spend much time thinking about how it gets where we need it to go. This 3D streetscape shows how our products fit into the water infrastructure system that's right under our feet. You can't see these products, but the pipes, manholes, culverts and filtration systems aren't just underground assets. They're embedded in the very fabric of our communities. This infrastructure provides clean drinking water to homes and workplaces across the country. It clears away rain water and wastewater, and it safeguards our roads, properties in public health. The scale of the U.S. water network is enormous, and it's crucial to life as we know it. Water networks serve over 300 million people across the U.S. through 2.2 million miles of potable water mains, 1.2 million miles of sanitary sewers, and 3.5 million miles of storm sewers, and this isn't optional infrastructure. It's funded at federal, state and local levels because these networks are essential. And at CRH, we have the capability to support our customers coast to coast. Scale is our superpower. As you can see, we serve all 50 states from our 79 manufacturing facilities, combining our national reach with our local expertise we need to serve all of our customers' diverse needs. This scale enables us to capture growth and deliver higher margins. Our scale and our CRH performance systems make us more efficient and drive lower costs, giving us the competitive edge versus our peers. When you combine CRH's unmatched scale, and our cost leadership with our global capabilities like shared services, procurement strength, innovation and our digital tools that make us faster, smarter and more efficient. We have a strategic advantage that is very hard to replicate. We're not just large, we're CRH powered.

And we also focus where it matters, manufacturing high volumes of standardized flow control products while also delivering highly engineered water quality solutions that meet our demanding specifications and solve our customers' most complex challenges. We bring deep capabilities to the table with over 300 engineering and sales professionals who hold long-standing relationships with asset owners, specifying engineers, regulators and national accounts. Their expertise in design and specification is highly valued by our customers and our connection to evolving water regulations, well, that drives long-term growth. Now we're also backed by the broader CRH network, leveraging aggregates and cementitious materials, and roads expertise to increase our influence with DOTs, municipal engineers and infrastructure contractors. In short, we are selling more volume to the same customers across roads, water and large reindustrialization projects than anyone else in our space. Now we have walked you through how we have built our leading water business, one that delivers higher growth and better margins. Now let's pivot to the opportunity for growth and the long-term investment.

And the opportunity is huge. As I've said before and as you've seen in our video, Americas water networks are under unprecedented stress. And CRH is uniquely positioned to lead in addressing this challenge. A generational investment in U.S. water infrastructure is needed because a significant portion of the nation's drinking water wastewater and storm water networks are decades past their intended lifespan. In fact, 1/3 of America's water infrastructure is beyond its 50-year design life. The grades you see in the American Society of Civil Engineers, infrastructure scorecard tell the story about the poor condition of our water networks. We get a D for storm water, a C- for drinking water, D+ for roads, and D+ for wastewater. They also estimate that more than $1 trillion will be required by 2033 to bring U.S. water infrastructure up to standard. And this investment is not optional. Water is essential and investment in this space is nondiscretionary. And the need is only going to increase. Importantly, this need spans the entire U.S. And with 90% of water systems serving communities under 10,000 people, solutions have to be delivered locally. CRH is a combination of national scale and strong local expertise positions us to capture outsized value as this generational investment unfolds. Now that we've outlined the scale of the nation's water infrastructure challenge, let's turn to the opportunity it creates for CRH. The overall water ecosystem in the U.S. is a $100 billion a year market, and we've made the strategic decision to focus on the largest and fastest-growing segments within that $100 billion ecosystem. With that in mind, CRH's water business is focused on a $41 billion a year addressable market that covers flow control and water quality. Scale matters in these segments. And as you can see, these segments are growing faster than GDP. Flow Control includes capture, conveyance and storage products, which have expected 5-year growth CAGRs of 6.8%, 4.9%, and 8.4% respectively. Water quality includes treatment and separation products, and these segments also have a very attractive forecasted growth CAGR of 9.7%, and 5.9%, respectively. As you can see, we've positioned ourselves to capitalize on the most attractive opportunities in the water infrastructure market. This not only sets the stage for sustained growth and continued margin expansion, but it also showcases our superior strategy in action.

You just saw the growth in our focused water segments for the next 5 years. Let's take a look back for a minute at the previous 5 years, where we took the market growth in water, we compounded it through our model to create significant value, and that's what you see reflected in our EBITDA performance on the screen. This is our winning way in action, and it's what makes us the leading compounder of capital. We are the leading player in the U.S. water infrastructure market, built on nearly 5 decades of operational excellence, strategic M&A growth and deep customer trust. Our platform is scaled and resilient, generating over $1.6 billion in annual revenue and $0.5 billion in EBITDA. This financial strength reflects not only our size but our ability to consistently execute and outperform. What truly differentiates us, though, is our ability to deliver growth through performance and a connected portfolio at scale. Our businesses are strategically aligned. They share capabilities and they respond to market needs with agility. This combination of scale, connectivity and performance positions us to continue delivering industry-leading results, and to capitalize on the significant opportunities ahead. But as we wrap up, it's clear. CRH's U.S. water platform is a market leader. We are positioned to lead well into the future, backed by proven results and a 47-year track record of outperformance. We win because of our scale, our superior strategy, and our connected platform. And we do this in large and fragmented markets with long runways for growth enabled by megatrends that drive those outsized investment needs. This is our CRH Water story. And despite being here for 47 years, we're just getting started.

Hi. I am JP San Agustín, Head of Strategic Planning, Innovation [indiscernible] and I am here today with my good friend and colleague, Tim.

And I'm Tim Ortman, President of CRH America's Building Products.

We are excited to be here with you today to provide some insights on our growth capabilities and how we leverage them to build growth platforms at CRH. I have been working in the building materials industry for more than 30 years, and I have managed, or been involved, in the money transactions totaling more than $30 billion.

And I've been in the Building Materials business with CRH for over 25 years. During that time, I have worked on over 100 deals of all sizes, from small family-owned businesses to billion-dollar platforms, and seeing firsthand how CRH builds stronger and more valuable businesses.

Our M&A capabilities are a key component of our growth algorithm that Jim outlined in the main presentation. Each of the key enablers underpinning our winning way are clear contributors to our growth strategy. We're very deliberate and strategic in our approach to build our portfolio, aligned with growing megatrends. Our teams are set up for success. We have the experience and capabilities to execute. And finally, our collected portfolio provides more optionality for capital deployment, both organic and organic than any other of our competitors in the U.S. and Europe. After more than 30 years in this industry, I've yet to see anyone much CRH's ability to consistently compound growth. We are truly the leading compounder of capital in the building materials industry.

When delivering on our proven growth capabilities, key for CRH is our optionality to grow through two acquisition levers. First, our ability to acquire family-owned businesses. Origination starts from the bottom-up at CRH with local teams across thousands of locations with strong community relationships, originating 80% of our acquisitions, underpinning over 1,200 value-focused acquisitions we've done in our history. We are the acquirer of choice, since we understand the value of maintaining the local brand and management teams. Our second lever is to participate in the larger transactions, which are sourced through relationships with various stakeholders. We are deliberate, strategic and rigorous in review of these opportunities. And as CRH has proven, our financial strength allows us to be opportunistic as well when those times arise. We have proven capabilities in integration and synergy delivery, leveraging leading performance insights across our organization, while our scale and connected portfolio provide greater optionality for capital deployment.

We will continue to leverage the scale to our advantage, and we will be delivering as we continue to build our platforms. And you may ask how? By focusing on future market needs, we look to build positions of scale driving above-market growth, while making sure we are building a connected portfolio across our core platforms. Roads and water connected with aggregates and cementitious, our essential materials platforms. And we're also focused on scaling in high-growth geographies. Now let me share some examples of our deliberate approach. The southeast of U.S., where we have built both a high-growth platform, platform of scale with a connected portfolio, in a high-growth market with growing infrastructure needs. And another one example of being deliberate is our Eastern Europe platform that has been built up over the last 30 years. Today, with $3.5 billion in revenues and leading market positions in attractive high-growth markets, such as Poland, Romania, Slovakia and [indiscernible], across all 4 core platforms. And Australia is our most recent example. This is a market where we have been present at a small scale for the past 15 years. And we have transformed our Australian business from $20 million of EBITDA, into $200 million over the past 18 months. Through the right combination of local [ leading ] businesses, we have built a high-growth connected portfolio. From cementitious and aggregates into leading water businesses. We have been speaking about our superior strategy and being deliberate. Now let us walk you through our journey on how we have built the #1 building materials platform in our industry in the state of Texas. Also, CRH's largest state both in revenue and EBITDA.

And as we all know, Texas is a massive, fast-growing economy with strong infrastructure funding on all 3 megatrend drivers, roads, water and reindustrialization. To bring the point home, here are a few stats. Texas has the largest road network in the U.S. with over 700,000 lane miles. How significant water infrastructure needs given an expected 40% growth in population by 2050? And as a leader in manufacturing and exports with growth rates twice the national average. In a recent note, Texas is also a hotspot for data center projects, and our footprint puts us within 50 miles of every one of those. And what his CRH done in Texas over the last decade? We have acquired more than 25 companies, each with a strong local presence, meaningful brands and leadership teams. This is a key differentiator for CRH. We keep those local brands. The power of these local brands is one of the most valuable assets we have is they have been built over decades and carry deep trust in the communities and with customers. For many owners, the most important aspect considered in the sales process are future plans for their people. At CRH, acquired leadership teams aren't just retained. They access avenues for further growth and career development. You will hear from two of those rising CRH leaders today. Jake Parson at the roads breakout, and Jason Jackson on water. We then empower these local teams with CRH resources, capabilities and performance systems, delivering synergies and value across the connected platform. In Texas, this approach has more than doubled our adjusted EBITDA margins, but it isn't just beneficial for CRH. By maintaining local brands and people, we also ensure a seamless transition for another critically important stakeholder, the customer. Our customer-centric approach was a key focus for us as we build out this growth platform in Texas, deliberately building a connected portfolio across aggregates, cementitious, roads and water, which JP will now unpack.

Firstly, let's look at our aggregates network, where today we produce over 10 million tons from over 20 aggregate sites across Texas. Our acquisition of the [indiscernible] quarry in 2014 laid the bedrock of our growth platform in Texas. Leveraging our leading performance system, our team has managed to grow our EBITDA by 7x since acquisition. Along with optimization of our distribution network to open access to the highest-growth MSAs in Texas. It remains the largest [ core operating ] in CRH today, with 7.5 million tons of annual production. And with approximately 2/3 of that used by our connected businesses and providing unique commercial and operational synergies. Now on to our unique cementitious platform in Texas, where today, we are market leaders only 8 years ago, we were not even present. How did we do it? Central to our strategy was the 2018 acquisition of [indiscernible], including the 1 million ton cement plant outside of [ Dallas ]. Our core [indiscernible] in the leading performance team will elaborate on how we drove value there. Then we have the opportunity to further strengthen our network through the acquisition of the [ Hunter Assets ] near San Antonio. Adding 2.1 million ton cement plant and very important, a network of distribution terminals, adding to our [indiscernible] strong logistics network. And speaking of logistics, this connects with our import facilities in Houston, which manages more cementitious volumes than any other port in the U.S. Once again, where scale matters, we build it. And that is why today, we are uniquely positioned to serve the Texas [indiscernible]. Last but not least, last week, we announced the closing of [ Ecomaterials ] building on our existing platform and accelerating our [indiscernible] growth strategy. In Texas, [ Ecomaterial ] is highly complementary to our existing network, as you heard from Randy in the main presentation. These cementitious acquisitions connect not just with our strong aggregates position, but also with our roads and water platforms in Texas, which Tim will now walk us through.

CRH's roads business in Texas is the #1 asphalt producer in the state, and it's highly connected with our Materials Businesses, pulling through our own aggregates to drive margin and value creation. Nathan and Jake discussed further at our roads breakout today. When looking at our acquisition strategy in this space, recent additions like [ Angel Brothers ] and [ East Texas Asphalt ] have expanded our capacity, extended our geographic reach and integrated seamlessly with our materials businesses, driving impressive margin expansion and growth. We have also built a strong water platform in Texas over the last few decades, where, again, we benefit from our connected aggregates and cementitious positions. We took a big step forward with the 2022 acquisition of [ Rinker's Houston ] assets which added a state-of-the-art precast concrete facility producing critical water management products. Since acquisition, revenues have gone up 50% and EBITDA has doubled. To further leverage our growth potential in Texas, we have also invested in a new capacity, opening a greenfield pipe and box [indiscernible] plant near Austin this year, strategically located to maximize synergies with both our [ Marvel Falls ] quarry and our Hunter cement plant also on the outskirts of Austin. Bringing this all together, when you map our assets across Texas, you see a fully connected portfolio, aggregates, cementitious, roads and water, all working together through a collection of strong local brands. This interconnected portfolio creates significant customer cross-selling as we serve common customers across common projects, which has already driven significant value for CRH as the leading building materials business in Texas. And what are the results over the last decade? We have grown revenue in Texas to $3 billion, at an annualized rate of 16%, and EBITDA at 24%, and we are just getting started. We have a great opportunity for future growth and capital deployment as we build growth platforms, not just in Texas but right across our portfolio. Back to you, JP to talk us through the growth opportunities which lie ahead across CRH.

The build-out of our growth platforms is underpinned by our strong financial capacity. We expect to direct around of our $40 billion financial capacity, which is around $28 billion towards both growth CapEx and M&A. The U.S. building materials industry is still highly fragmented, as you can see on the right hand of the screen. There is a large room for consolidation in three of our core platforms, roads, aggregates on water. This means ample opportunity for CRH to drive value by continuing to be the leading consolidator in our industry. Further, our connected portfolio provides greater avenues for growth and higher synergy potential. More than 85% of large independent aggregates businesses in North America have connected businesses, providing advantage for CRH for us as an acquirer of choice for these businesses. As you have seen, we had the financial capacity and room to further lead the consolidation of the industry. You may ask, how do we manage it? As you can see the screen, we manage it by being very disciplined and thoughtful while we continue to build our growth platforms. On the left hand, you can see that, first, we prioritize high-growth markets with secular tailwinds, mainly linked to infrastructure. Then in the middle of the screen, we build a strong pipeline of attractive opportunities, a pipeline of businesses that have market-leading positions and strong brands. And then we multiply value creation, delivering leading performance and unique market synergies by collecting them to our portfolio. And that is why we can consistently deliver accretive returns and superior compounding of capital. Now we will like to highlight some of the key messages you heard from us. First, we are very deliberate and strategic as we build our growth platforms. And our connected portfolio provides higher synergy potential and greater avenues for growth. Also, unique optionality for capital deployment across our core platforms, optionality to deploy capital that no one else has in our industry.

It is clear to see how we leverage CRH's growth algorithm to build platforms with scale that deliver significant value creation. We are both an acquirer of choice with family-owned companies in our industry and a buyer with the financial strength to add significant scalable businesses to our portfolio. We see lots of opportunities for growth, and we'll continue to execute at the highest level for our shareholders.

We have the financial capacity, the discipline and most importantly, the teams to continue to lead the consolidation of our industry. And at CRH, we are the best-in-class compounder of capital. [Break]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the leading performance breakout session. I'm Liz Haggerty and I [ meet ] our customer solutions organization in the Americas.

And I'm Peter Buckley, President of our International division.

As Jim mentioned earlier, CRH has delivered 11 consecutive years of margin expansion. And the engine behind that is our leading performance model, the operational core of the CRA winning way. It's embedded across our 4,000 locations and powered by our global capabilities. It's how we turn long-term growth drivers into superior results year after year. This is not a theory. It's a proven business system with a track record of delivering industry-leading margins, returns and growth. And it gives us a long runway ahead. Over the next 15 minutes, we will show you how the model works as part of the winning way. Why it's fundamentally different and merely impossible for anyone else to replicate given our local expertise and global scale, and share with you some real-world examples of how it delivers results today, and unlocks tomorrow's opportunities. Leading performance starts with culture, and at CRH that starts with safety. Safety is core to everything we do. Each employee completes over 20 hours of safety training annually. And it's with the same discipline that we approach every area of performance. Our model connects the local leadership in our 4,000 locations with our global expertise and resources. This is why we are fundamentally different. We supercharge local leadership with global capabilities. We don't just focus on one or the other. It's locally owned and globally enabled. With collaboration between our best-in-class performance teams and local leaders we identify new opportunities, implement key actions and measure results. Let's take a look at how the process works and why it's so powerful. It starts with our annual strategic planning process. Every business and geography goes through a rigorous annual planning process. Playbooks are built on line of business, utilizing a collection of learnings and decades of experience on how to best run our operations. We set clear priorities. These are high-impact initiatives and strategic growth investments that will deliver our full potential ambitions. Next, our local performance teams translate the priorities into actionable plans and they own them and are empowered to deliver them. We monitor KPIs daily, and we benchmark results against best-in-class metrics as part of our monthly operating reviews. This disciplined repeatable process is the operating engine of our winning way, turning strategy and a measurable performance. Today, we are highlighting the performance excellence component of our leading performance model. Performance excellence focuses on three key things. First, revenue maximization, capitalizing on our strong local brands and empowering our commercial teams to drive value over volume. Second, margin expansion. It's our relentless operational excellence and cost management focus across our network. And third, scale and replication. Using CRH's global reach to accelerate and replicate best practices everywhere. So what makes this better than anyone else's approach, collaboration and speed. We empower our local teams to own their businesses and through collaboration with our global team, we accelerate best practices across our network, enabling us to deliver higher performance.

So let's now dig into each of these drivers in a bit more detail. Revenue maximization is underpinned by the strength of our unique network of local brands. This is built on a track record of acquiring multigenerational family businesses with long-standing customer relationships. And we preserve these brands. We ensure they continue to be the trusted partners for our customers. Then through this uniquely connected portfolio, we have the breadth of products and services to support our customers through all phases of a construction project, partnering with them to solve even their most challenging problems. Our global commercial framework and tools then wrap all this together and support local teams to identify the highest impact initiatives, all focused on delivering value over volume. Margin expansion is fueled by benchmarking relentlessly across our global business, identifying the best practices, and then rolling them out across our connected network of operations. This unique connectivity also allows us to streamline transport and logistics, reducing cost while improving service to our customers. We then accelerate this by investing strategically in projects across our operations and logistics networks that deliver higher returns and faster margin improvement. This is where our model outperforms Others may have pockets of excellence, but as you can see, we can scale across hundreds of sites with speed and with precision. Finally, our global performance teams provide consistent challenge and expertise to each of our businesses. They work together with our local teams to create measurable improvement plans and then strategic investment projects to multiply the impact. Additionally, our global procurement capabilities enable local companies to benefit from our size and from our scale. And our innovation expertise from advanced materials to digital tools, solve problems faster and more effectively than anyone else. So altogether, because we operate on a global scale, we can roll out proven solutions across hundreds of sites at speed and with far more customer insight given our local-led culture.

Now we'd like to share with you two great examples of the leading performance model in action. So let's start with [ MolzerCrushstone ]. We acquired [ Molzer ] in 2017. It's one of our largest aggregate focused businesses. Positioned along the Ohio River, it serves 5 states and over 800 miles of customers and diversified end markets. Since joining CRH, the leading performance model has transformed the business while retaining the important [indiscernible] brand, which has been trusted by customers since 1935. The results are impressive. Since the acquisition, [indiscernible] has tripled cash gross profit per ton, doubled adjusted EBITDA, and expanded their margins by more than 1,500 basis points. So let's hear from Ken Molzer, a third-generation family member about what's been achieved and where they're headed next. [Presentation]

What a great video. [indiscernible] really shows how local ownership and global enablement create value. Another standout example is our Americas cementitious platform, which truly started with the acquisition of [ Ash Grove ] in 2018. As part of our well-developed integration process, experts from across our global network supported the local teams in delivering the identified synergies. And I can speak personally to that. Relocating to the U.S. after the acquisition to lead [indiscernible] and allowing it to leverage CRH's global expertise. We also embedded our performance excellence processes to drive continuous improvement. And today, we continue to accelerate progress by leveraging our unique global capabilities to enable the local teams to capitalize on further growth. This enables both our delivery of performance excellence and the opportunity to drive additional value by transforming the portfolio. [ Ash Grove ] is a really great example of this. Since becoming part of the CRH family, we've delivered superior performance across all key financial metrics. We've made the business better, and we've built scale and a connected portfolio that nobody can replicate. And that's only the start. We continue to build on this through our strategic planning process, establishing an exciting pipeline of organic and inorganic growth opportunities, to increase our cementitious supply and to unlock the next phase of growth. For example, we identified our geographic white space in Central Texas, and that led to the acquisition of the [ Hunter Cement ] plant. Here again, we applied our proven performance model to quickly unlock value. We also [indiscernible] [ Natural's ] portfolio, culminating in the recent acquisition of Eco [ Material Technologies ]. This puts CRH right at the forefront of the next-generation cement and concrete. And it's not just M&A. We've applied the performance model to identify high-impact organic growth opportunities. And as an example, we're investing today in our [ Durkee ], Oregon plant to future-proof capacity in this high-growth region. This is the winning way in action, spotting opportunity, executing with discipline and scaling success, a full potential mindset that delivers industry-leading returns year after year.

As you've seen from [indiscernible] and Ash Grove, this is a tried and tested model, applied consistently across our 4,000 locations, it delivers continuous growth and margin expansion.

And it isn't a one-off strategy. it is the operating engine of the winning way, and that's why there's no structural ceiling on our margin expansion. We just keep raising the bar.

Welcome to the Roads breakout. I'm Nathan Creech, President of the Americas.

And I'm Jake Parson, President of the Americas Materials business in the Northeast.

And we are excited to take you inside one of the most dynamic and high-performing parts of CRH, our U.S. roads business. This is a market that is essential to daily life. It's backed by long-term funding and build recurring revenue and growth, and CRH is the clear leader. We have spent decades building businesses around powerful long-term megatrends. In roads, those trends are first, population growth. More people means more vehicles, more traffic and more demand. Then aging infrastructure. Much of America's road network, it's past its design life. And finally, a growing demand for resilient modern transportation networks designed to handle heavier loads extreme weather and future mobility needs.

Our winning way, a proven framework for performance, growth and value creation turns these trends into sustained results. Today, we'll show you how that plays out in practice. Why Roads is such an attractive business, and how our connected model positions us to win? Our roads business is far more than a distribution channel for aggregates. It's a platform that enables us to unlock value across the entire value chain. From neighborhood streets to highways, roads or the arteries of our communities, connecting people, enabling commerce and fueling growth. We are the largest road paver in the United States. Right now, our crews are active on about 1,500 jobs all across the country. That scale gives us unmatched insight into market dynamics and brings us closer to the end customer, enabling consistent delivery of outsized profits, cash and returns for shareholders.

And over the next few minutes, we're going to walk you through why Roads is such an attractive market. How we win in roads with our connected model and our unmatched scale? How we generate higher profits, cash and returns, thanks to our low capital intensity? And finally, the significant opportunities ahead.

First, let's be clear about what we do and what we don't do. We are not a general civil contractor. We are the nation's largest asphalt producer and road paver. Operating a connected business that starts with aggregates, then to asphalt manufacturing and ends with high-quality paving services. This focus allows us to be the best at what we do. Delivering industry-leading performance, innovation and scale.

And it's clearly a large market. The total addressable market for roads is $145 billion annually, covering both new construction and maintenance on the more than 9 million lane miles of U.S. roads. That installed base, it's built in long-term driver for our materials, our products and our services.

Now this is a market with recurring demand and growing funding, 90% of our road paving revenue comes from public sector customers, a very reliable and resilient base. Over the last 20 years, the market has grown 5% annually. This growth rate has stepped up to 8% over the last 5 years with federal initiatives like IIJA and increased state funding. More than 60% of IIJA highway funding is still to be deployed, and state transportation budgets for 2026 are expected to rise 6% year-on-year.

And funding for roads, it's a bipartisan priority. This is not a political issue. It's an American one. Investment in roads consistently has support across the aisle, reinforcing the long-term strength of this segment. The need is only growing. In fact, it's becoming more urgent. The U.S. road network, it's rated D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers. There's a funding requirement of over [ $2.2 trillion ] over the next decade. Add on the fact that roads require resurfacing and major maintenance every 4 to 6 years. This creates a recurring revenue stream for our materials, our products and our services. And we have a 90% plus repeat customer rate, proof that the trust we built and the stickiness we have with our customers.

Now this isn't just a large and growing market. It's also low-risk and highly repeatable. Our work is spread across 4,000 jobs annually, with typical project durations of 90 to 120 days. 90% of our projects are valued under $2 million, meaning we're not dependent on a few large projects. And around 60% of our annual work is driven by repair and maintenance demand. This diversification protects our business and ensures consistent cash generation. These fundamentals, the large addressable market, strong funding backdrop and distributed risk combined with recurring revenue characteristics make Roads a highly attractive business to be in.

Now let's talk about our leadership in roads. Our fully connected roads business, excluding third-party asphalt sales, generates $6.4 billion in annual revenue. We are active in asphalt production and paving in 43 states, serving diverse end markets. In fact, 2/3 of the U.S. population lives within a 50-mile service radius of a CRH asphalt plant, giving us unmatched reach. But where we choose to participate in the roads business? It's a deliberate strategic decision guided by our ability to establish a leading position, leverage our connected model and benefit from attractive market fundamentals.

Regional dynamics also create recurring demand. In the Northeast and Midwest [indiscernible] cycles and dense road networks drive frequent maintenance requirements. And in the South and West, population growth and rising traffic volumes, fuel expansion. Wherever we operate, we always aim to be the local market leader.

At CRH, we are the largest, most connected road paver in the U.S. To match our scale, you need to add the next 5 players together. In the roads business, scale matters, and we have more than anyone else.

Now our connected business model creates value across the entire roads value chain. CRH is North America's leading producer of aggregates, with more than 800 locations. The vast majority of the aggregates that we use across our roads business comes from a CRH location. Our unrivaled liquid asphalt network, combined with our winter fill program, provides up to 50% of our annual liquid needs, improving margins, ensuring quality and securing supply. The next step is hot mix asphalt production where we operate approximately 450 asphalt manufacturing plants. And finally, the last step in the value chain is our 800 paving crews. We lay 55% of the asphalt we produce, providing proximity to end customers. Additionally, we have long-standing external asphalt customers with 2/3 of them buying additional CRH products, creating a strong multiplier effect across the portfolio. Our connected model creates value at each stage, and the low fixed cost position gives us incredible flexibility. By owning and optimizing each link, we maximize yield, mitigate risk, and unlock margin opportunities others can't match.

Now our Roads portfolio is deeply connected to the rest of CRH. Aggregates and cementitious materials form the foundation layers, providing strength and durability to the finished road. Multiple asphalt layers are engineered for specific needs such as load bearing, noise reduction, permeability and even skid resistance. And our reach, it goes far beyond the pavement, 20% of cementitious materials in the U.S. is used in the road envelope, whether that's in road basis, concrete structures like bridges and sidewalks, or precast elements.

Now roads also carry underground infrastructure such as water, energy and communications. In fact, 85% of our Infrastructure Solutions products are installed within the road right of way.

Our scale also enables best-in-class performance. At the heart of it all, at CRH, we make businesses better by embedding a culture of continuous improvement, operational excellence and value creation across everything that we do. And we harness our scale to deliver best-in-class performance, safely boosting productivity and unlocking the full potential of our business.

We innovate locally and scale nationally. Our ability to quickly deploy these solutions across diverse geographies, markets and customer segments provides a competitive edge. We have 90 state of-of-the-art labs nationwide focusing on solving local challenges for local customers. A great example of this is the work we do with recycled asphalt pavement, or wrap. We work with our customers and regulators to reduce the amount of virgin material we use. Each year, we recycle 11.5 million tons of asphalt from our own paving jobs back into our asphalt mix. To put that into context, close to 25% of our total asphalt is recycled content, helping us to solve challenges for customers, reduce waste and expand margins. This is a great example of the CRH winning way in action. Continuous improvement, leading to operational excellence and value creation.

So far, we've talked about attractive markets, our connected model and how we're leveraging our unrivaled scale. It's the combination of these factors that drives the 6x cash gross profit compared to third-party aggregate sales. From the rock to the finish road, we're adding value at each step of the chain and turning $10 into $60 of value. But our cash gross profit is only one aspect of our leading financial performance. It's important to note that our roads business is consistently growing year-on-year and delivering margins in the high teens.

Margins are just one part of what makes this business so attractive. As we move from Rock to Road, asset intensity drops, and the cash conversion ratio increases. So not only do we have 6x more cash gross profit, but we do it while also increasing our returns performance. Our Connected Roads business delivers a 300 basis point uplift in returns compared to supplying aggregates alone. Combined with our scale, this is what enables us to reinvest in M&A and growth CapEx, while also delivering sustainable shareholder returns. Now let's turn to growth. Roads has been and continues to be a key focus for CRH's acquisition strategy. In the last decade, we've invested $2.7 billion in 50 different roads transactions, adding 15 million tons of asphalt capacity, enough to be the #2 player behind CRH, if it was a stand-alone company. As you can see on the map, our acquisitions are spread across the United States, highlighting the breadth of our reach and the strength of our local networks. Roads are also closely linked to our aggregates business. We've added 31 million tons of annual aggregates production through these same roads acquisitions. Simply put, we are the preferred acquirer of connected businesses at very attractive multiples when compared to pure-play aggregate deals alone.

But what really sets us apart is our M&A pipeline and how we source these opportunities. Approximately 80% of our deals, they come through our local leadership teams and their long-standing relationships that they've built over years of trust and collaboration. The market, it remains highly fragmented, with 74% of the hot mix asphalt industry still privately held. Due to our nationwide profile, this fragmentation creates a rich pipeline for bolt-on acquisitions which offers lower risk and even higher synergy potential. With our market coverage, our scale advantages, leadership position, connected model and the strength of our pipeline, we have clear visibility, and confidence in our continued M&A growth going forward.

Now let's recap. Roads is a large, growing, recurring revenue market with long-term funding support. We are the industry leader with a connected model and an unmatched scale equal to the next 5 players combined. Our lower capital intensity delivers leading margins, high returns and is 6x more profitable than selling aggregates alone. And 3/4 of the market is still privately owned, giving us a significant runway for growth.

Now as you can see, roads, it's an important part of our connected portfolio. We've built it over decades and designed it to deliver growth, returns and long-term value creation. With a strong M&A pipeline, there's still plenty of opportunity ahead. So on behalf of Jake and myself, it's been a pleasure sharing with you the story of our roads business.

Welcome back, everybody. I hope you really enjoyed the breakout sessions this morning, learning more about our leading positions in road and roads and in water and our unique growth capabilities and our leading performance systems that ensure that we will continue to deliver consistent long-term growth and shareholder value creation. Well, what I want to talk about now before we move on to Q&A is -- really, I guess, focus a bit more on who we are, right, as an organization and why we win and how we continuously outperform our peers and deliver as a leading compounder of capital. One of the breakout groups this morning focused on performance systems, right? And all companies, all leading companies have leading performance systems. But what really differentiate our performance system is the rigor around it, right? The resilience around it and the fact that we're going to sail it globally across 4,000 locations. We talked about it earlier, our leading local brands. We power locally. We empower our local management teams and then we globally enable with our performance systems. And let's start performance system, combined with our culture, with our relentless focus year in, year out on performance improvement, which really differentiates CRH. But as I said, all companies have performance systems. But what I believe as CEO, what's going to differentiate us, CRH in the next 5 to 10 years, and indeed, the industry is who are successful at deploying capital. And deploying capital at scale over the next 5 to 10 years. And I think that will be the true differentiator in our industry. And that's what really differentiates CRH. We have unrivaled capabilities, and we have a proven track record, we've been able to deploy capital at scale. And I hope today, after the breakout groups, you get a sense for the optionality we have where we're going to deploy that capital. And that optionality combined with our rigor and discipline is what really enables us to consistently outperform. That, together with our connected portfolio, which are positioned across some of the highest growth markets, whether that's the south or the west of the U.S., whether that's Central Eastern Europe or Australia. And the fact that the markets that we operate today are very fragmented. The top 10 producers of aggregates in the U.S. account for about 35% of production. You see a very similar ratio across when you go into roads, when you go into water. So we still operate in a very fragmented space. Over the past 5 years, and you would have seen this in our proven growth capabilities breakout, we have developed the expertise and the discipline to identify, to in wire and to integrate businesses at scale. Once to integrate it, we can then accelerate synergy deliveries through our winning way. And everything we do as an organization is really underpinned by a relentless focus almost an obsession on performance and on shareholder value creation combined with our financial control and discipline. We CRH are a company that's built for growth and powered by performance. And that's what makes us a true industrial leader and a comparator of capital. And it's also why CRH is a must-own stock in every portfolio. Now we're going to move on to Q&A. I'm going to ask Randy and Nancy to join us, please for the Q&A session.

Also joined by Tom Holmes, our Head of Investor Relations. Thank you, Tom.

Well, hello, everyone. It has been a really, really great day so far, but we're not done yet. For those of you in the room, if you have a question for Jim, Nancy or Randy. [Operator Instructions] So, with that, we'll start here in the room. Adam, maybe we'll start with you. Thank you.

Adam Seiden of Barclays. Jim, I just wanted to pick up on the deploying capital that you were just talking about, clearly a strong track record and speaking some more to come today. So in the revenue and the margin targets that you spoke to, could you parse out what portion of that is organic versus inorganic?

Yes. Adam, Yes, we guided this morning to -- between 7% and 9% top line growth, revenue growth over the period. There's really kind of 2 -- call them power engines or engine the power, which are driving that. One is clearly organic. I think today, you've got a feel in terms of the megatrends that we're playing in, whether that's roads, water or reindustrialization. That, together really with our our leading local positions. We talked a lot about the scale of the business here this morning and the number of locations we have. It's -- in each of those locations we have, the 2,000 across the U.S., we try to have #1 and #2 positions in the market. right? So we're leveraging local brands with leadership positions in higher growth markets and in markets which are supported and platforms supported by megatrends. That's the organic driver behind that. If you look at the inorganic we talked at [ Lenta ] this morning about our proven growth this year to date, we've done 20 deals. Last year, we did 40 deals. We have a regular rhythm because, again, of the connected local nature of the business that power that kind of growth engine on bolt-on M&As, which gives us at the start of every year a fair bit of predictability in terms of small bolt-on deals, almost organic like in the regular side of the bolt-on deals. So it's going to split between organic and inorganic. I think it's reasonable to assume that it's probably going to split equally, broadly between them over that period of time.

Maybe Anthony, 5 rows from the back here, please, in the center.

Anthony Pettinari from Citi. In the release this morning, you reiterated the full year '25 guide, I think, not including ECO. And I'm just wondering if you can talk about sort of the puts and takes with your full year guidance and just sort of confidence level in terms of reiterating here?

I might ask Nancy maybe just comment on some of the specific puts and takes. But yes, we guided between -- reaffirmed our guidance between $7.5 billion and $7.7 billion EBITDA. That again is, as I said earlier, a record year 2024 for us. But what gives us the confidence around that today is what we see in current trading and also the backlogs at to the end of the year from that perspective. But -- at the midpoint, it's another year of double-digit growth. But maybe, Nancy, do you want to comment on some of the puts and takes?

Yes. You did hit it right. ECO is not included in the guidance that it's just closed. And so we're absorbing and integrating right now. And you'll hear from us in November when we do our third quarter earnings call, we will update guidance and provide more information around the Eco transaction at that time.

Kathryn Thompson, Thompson Research Group. A lot of great today, but I might go back to your legacy business, which is asphalt and aggregates. Many players in the industry view asphalts and instruction as a pass-through for aggregates whereas CRH has maintained a position a little bit different position, either how are you different? Why are you thinking that way? Or what are others perhaps not seeing that you see in the strategy?

Yes. Thanks, Kathryn. And I'll be introduced, but maybe ask Randy and Nathan's here as well in the front row, who gave the -- who led the presentation with Jake on the roads. I said it earlier as well. I mean over the last 2 years, since we listed here, most investors I sit down with our new investors say they want to talk about our ag position, our #1 [indiscernible] position in the U.S. tell me about the scale of that, the amount of reserves you own. And that's a fantastic business, right? But what I often say back what I really want to talk about is the Roads business. And I hope after we all have a better understanding why on that model outside, I think when you look at it, that's what brings the CRH strategy to life. You can see the connected nature between roads, between cementitious -- aggregate, cementitious, roads and water all coming together in that model. For me, why do I like it? Because on the first of January every year, the most predictable revenue stream we have in CRH is our roads revenue. It's 90% publicly funded. And for decades in CRH, decades and generations of management, we've talked about the annuity-like revenue stream on our road paving business in the U.S. But maybe, Randy, do you want to talk about I won't I'll give Nathan all the good stuff that you can talk about.

He executes it day in and day out, but the -- I think to your point, I mean, it's the funding backdrop. We know what it is clarity in around that you saw the scale and size of our position. But if you compare that to what is yet to be done in terms of the opportunity in that fragmented space to continue that consolidation. I think that's impressive as well. I think Nathan and Jake shared a stat, I think it was 74% of the asphalt produced today is still in the hands of private owners. And of that 74%, 85% of those companies are connected in some way, shape or form, primarily to aggregate or to sand and gravel. So I think it's the size and scale and the longevity and the support from funding, but it's also the opportunity for us to continue to run our playbook in regards to M&A activity. But Nathan?

Yes. Thanks, Randy. What I'd add on to that probably is the low capital intensity. When you look at the whole rocked the road, and we talked about [indiscernible] Jake referred to it that ratio and that capital intensity goes down that cash conversion goes up. It's also a big benefit for us that it brings us close to that end customer. And we're able to take that information and use it across all of our businesses to give us better into what's going on. And then you look at the risk profile, we talked about it, 4,000 jobs a year spread over in 43 states. Not only do you have that risk lower, but you also distribute it over a lot of projects. So when you combine all of that together, you put in the entrepreneurial culture that Jim talked about in being that really gives us that ability to generate that 6x more cash gross profit per ton than just selling ags alone. And on top of that, that lower asset intensity gives us that 300 bps improvement in ROIC when you look at that that whole value chain together. So that connected part of our business and how it interacts with the other parts really gives us an advantage there, which makes it incredibly attractive. So we can take that $10. And if you focus just on [indiscernible] the delivering that $10 is where you're focused, but we're focused on the whole roads and that's where we deliver that $60. And that's what at the core is makes it really attractive for us.

We got Keith here, just taking on capable a moment.

Sorry. Keith Hughes Truist, you talked about the presentation, capital allocation, M&A, a big part of that. Could you just talk about what geography? And even within that geography, it seems like it would be a lot of downstream acquisitions you could do just given the targets. Is that what we expect to see in the next 5 years?

Yes. Thanks, Keith. I'll take it first, maybe I'll ask Nancy to maybe to come in maybe on some of the growth CapEx as well at the end of it, okay? But Yes. In terms of geographies, if you think back to the May presentation, you should expect us really to continue broadly allocating capital where we have to date, right? So 75% to kind of high 70% of our EBITDA is coming out of the U.S., 25% at international, that won't change broadly through that period of time. Within that, it should be in higher growth markets. So the south of the West, the U.S., Central Eastern Europe and into Australia, too. But then within that case, when you dig down again, it's in -- you think of the 4 platforms that we have built out, leading platforms coast-to-coast across the U.S., right, because that's going to be -- again, you should expect it in aggregates. We're #1 in aggregates. That's not going to change, right? We will invest in aggregates, cementitious, roads and water. And where we have done best is all today, I think Randy presented on Texas, right? What we have done best into deploying capital when we look back is in faster-growing parts of our portfolio. In in connected, you say downstream, I'd say, connected businesses, right? And in geographic -- in faster growing regions like Texas population with sectoral tailwinds, but water roads. And then where we have existing businesses. So if we have an aggregate quarry like [ Marlboro ] Falls our cement business in Texas, that's where we can really deploy capital at scale at interesting entry multiples and accelerate really early synergy delivery. And a lot of that has also been driving the growth in the last 3 to 5 years, and you should continue to expect that going forward. May be Nancy will add anything?

Exactly what Jim said, and we talked about the opportunity sets in the markets where we operate, we have such as the ability to see deep into the market. So we can identify both M&A and then the growth CapEx. And what you're really seeing is those are high-returning low risk because we know what is needed in that market and those opportunities tend to be more accretive. And so what you're really seeing is our discipline and our stewardship around capital allocation, that's where that 70% is going -- and tons of opportunity for us there. So you'll see that discipline. You'll see that value-focused approach, but we will continue to deploy capital as we have.

We're going to dip in for one moment in some of the webcast questions, picking up on Keith's point there because -- there's a lot of overlap, a lot of focus actually on M&A, Jim. I combine a few of them here. How would you characterize the M&A pipeline? Are there -- are there enough opportunities out there to deploy over $20 billion on M&A? And just a final one on that thread. Do you need to move away from traditional bolt-ons towards larger acquisitions?

I mean the pipeline, I would say, firstly, 3 parts of Tom. Pipeline is good, right? We've done 20 deals. We only closed the ecomaterials last week. I think we're going to do good momentum into the end of this year. right, in terms of deal flow. Again, that all comes back to the optionality we have in terms of deploying capital. In terms of -- is that can we spend that we talk about $40 billion, 70% of the growth side, can we spend it? Yes, we can. It comes back to kind of the differentiated and superior strategy that we have to that connected portfolio. we have optionality of where deployed, right? And the -- I talked about it earlier, the very fragmented nature of the 4 platforms that we operate in. About scale, typically, most of our deals small bolt-on deals. We this year, right? But from time to time, we have stepped out, right? We did the [ Asco dev ] in 2018, we did the [ Far Holston ] deal in 2016. And what those -- when we've done those, I'd say maybe 2 or 3 things about it. we have taken our leverage up over 2x from time to time, but with a very clear commitment that we've taken it back down. And I think that's been very deliberate, and we've actioned that each time. But what those bigger deals do from time to time like [ Asgrow ] is that we said it's -- Randy talked about it earlier. It's possibly one of the best deals we ever did in CRH, right? But what it really did from our perspective was fill the bolt-on M&A pipeline for 6 to 12 years in new geographic regions that we weren't -- so that can be the attractiveness of a step-out deal as well, right, to bring in more connected businesses. And that's still happening. We're still getting momentum out of some of those new geographies at this stage.

I'll just take one more from the webcast for now. We'll come back into the room then. An interesting one here, how important is innovation and technology in your business? And to what extent is it a differentiator for CRH?

I'll take that, maybe Randy, you can come back on this. But it's a key part, Tom. We are the leading global building materials company. So you would expect us as shareholders should expect us that we get access to all the leading process technology from all the we apply that at scale, right? So that's what we do, and we keep very much abreast of that from that side perspective. If you go back actually, what, 3 years ago, we set up an innovation on venture info in CRH, and it's up and running 3 years at this stage. Juan Pablo has been running that with his team. it's been fascinating, right? I mean to give you some kind of look into that you take, we've run 3 open global challenges at this stage in water, in roads and in cementitious products. We've had over 100 applicants of start-up by deals, whether that's products, whether that's processes, right? So they've been hugely successful. And what that has done for us is to make sure that we are keeping abreast and getting a very early looking what's happening in some of the most innovative, creative start-up businesses from both a product and a process perspective. Now those open challenges have led to us taking small start-up positions or investments in start-up companies to make sure that [indiscernible] competitions, we assess them, we decide whether we invest in a month from that perspective, we take small stake. So it's hugely important, Tom. I think it's been an excellent way to make sure that we are right on the colin of what's happening both from a product and a process perspective. But, Randy, do you want to?

Yes. I mean -- and we called out 3 examples for sure. But for us -- and I think just building on what you said, that early look in partnering with world-class companies -- we can't be great at everything. So we need the assistance of others to really help dive deeper in terms of what those underlying trends are. And I think what we've got a heck of a lot better with over the last decade is actually adopting whatever those technologies are and then scaling them very rapidly. We talked about the 3 examples today. And they're all about the kind of efficiency or getting closer to the customer, recurring revenue, things along those lines. We've been in this for some period of time. In our cement operations, we've used AI for almost 8 years now in terms of really co-piloting side by side in terms of driving efficiencies in each one of our kilns. So that's kind of been embedded into how we look at improving underlying businesses. And even outside of that, the technologies that we talked about -- [indiscernible] in fact, we're building, we're going to commission a new cement plant in lumber in France in 2026. And what we're going to drive there certainly is underlying efficiencies will then be probably from a ecological standpoint, one of the most carbon positive operations in all of your. It's going to be super modern plant that helps meet the underlying needs of of decarbonization across that marketplace, but that's leveraging really the latest technology. So it's not only identification of it, but then it's applying it very quickly.

Okay. So I just come back in the room here, Adrian, please at the front.

Thank you, Tom. Jim, on the local brand strategy, there's been a lot of highlights on from all of you on that. Two things. One, why is this important for your customers and for CRH? And the second one is -- what are the advantages of operating that way because most people don't do it that way -- I mean you can see the advantages, but are there any disadvantages that you have seen or challenges by having this strategy?

Yes, listen, it is key to who we are, right? We talked about it over 200 brands in the U.S. and 300 across the whole of CRH. It's a real differentiator for us, right? And as I said earlier in the main presentation, construction is local at the end of the day, right? We talk about IIJA, et cetera, but it all comes down to local projects, right? And having that local brand, that loyalty it's hugely important also in terms of retaining talent, right? Because we're very significant employers that rural from that perspective. What it does, in addition to customer loyalty and awareness, I think is that it also helps us fill that M&A pipeline. In terms of if it's disadvantaged, maybe Randy I'll come in and ask you, you can build on it. But there's very little Adrian from it, right? I mean I think -- it's one of the reasons why if you're running one of these local businesses, we want you to feel you run it like an entrepreneur. You use a mandate to grow your business. to sweat your balance sheet, sell assets, buy assets. Now we have a rigorous investment appraisal process around that, supporting that. And of course, you leverage the best global practices around OpEx comic, procurement, et cetera, right, at a platform level. So you get all the benefits of global, but we have power at a local level. Now I think to your point, if you didn't have those kind of safety guards around us that we do have, it could, of course. But this is the strategy that we talked about which has been refined and nurtured over decades, and I think we have the balance of it right. But it's something that it's something we talk a lot about. How do we keep that balance, right, to make sure that we really empower locally but doing a complete alignment. And yes, but I think, as I said, after decades out, and I think we have that balance right, Randy you want to add?

I think there's there's Jim, to your point -- so it's -- I always say it's a 50-mile radius around any plant it's kind of where you got to be great. Part of being great is having the license to operate in those markets. And typically, I'd say only in every case, I've an acquired company, they've had multiple decades and generational exposure in those markets to create a license to operate. People know who the those brands are. They support the brands. There's a there's a positive heritage in history that the communities as a whole align around. So that gives us the opportunity to do things probably uniquely in terms of expansion of sites or targeting other areas because that brand is known. And the leaders I think we're super fortunate because we've created the right kind of culture where the leaders of those acquired businesses, for the most part, want to stay and see their dreams continue to be fulfilled. Right? We enable capital to actually continue that growth trajectory. We have careers for the families, and we rely on that that part of the business to create a talent pool that we can deploy in a lot of different places. I think the local brands as well from a purely a customer standpoint, give a tremendous amount of advantage. If you're taking care of that local brand taking care of that customer on the quality issues or the unique circumstances that each project bring price doesn't come into the equation. And that's a very important enabler for us to be able to drive value and have those kind of relationships where the quality of the end product is more important than the piece parts of the constituency. And I think the other -- and Jim mentioned the M&A, I mean that's where it happens, right? Majority of those M&A opportunities happen because there's been a history of relationships in those markets. And if you look at the deals that we've been able to even last year and -- well, our history, quite frankly, the lion's share of deals that we do are just between ourselves and the owners of that business. It's not a public process. I think that's a massive advantage.

I like to build a [indiscernible] Randy and I both came up through the business. We ran some of these local -- it is hugely empowering. To have to be out there looking for opportunities to grow your business, right? And then the other, when you come to the M&A side of it, and it's not easy to sell a family business. When you take that decision, if you're going to retain the brand, some of -- 2 of our presenters here this morning came from family businesses, right, that we bought and Jason, right, over the last 2 to 3 decades, right? We can offer couriers as well. So that kind of local empowerment of a brand level. And I think a lot of small and midsized family businesses respect the local CRH company because it's been more entrepreneurial, and that helps us in terms of exclusivity on a lot of deals.

Mike very back on there, please.

Thank you, Tom. Good morning, and thank you for all the information today. I was quite intrigued in the breakout sessions about what you do in the water business. I thought that was very enlightening today. and it certainly is a priority platform for you, given what you've highlighted today. And -- can you size the growth opportunity? How big can that business be for CRH in your planning period and even beyond that?

Sure, absolutely. Maybe -- and again, we have Jason here on the front row, who really run that business for the last 5 years. So yes, it's actually the first business we stepped into in the U.S. in 1978, out in Utah was in the water product space. And it's really an area you can see in terms of growth. In the last 5 years, I think the CAGR EBITDA in that business has been 32% for CRH has been really a fast-growing business. I mean I often joke or Jason if he gave me one part of CRH, I run that one because it's a business with just [indiscernible]. right? We've got too much or too little water everywhere at the moment and look at the the grading they give in terms of the U.S. water infrastructure. It's a lot of past most of it gets a derating. So it's something where we certainly think, and I think it's actually brought to life again on the model outside what we do in water product and the water infrastructure is put in place in a road environment. So you can see the entirely connected nature of it. right, from that perspective. But maybe, Jason, do you want to talk about the growth potential and the size of the market, maybe?

Yes, happy to do that. Thank you, Jim. I think when we try to frame up the growth opportunity across the water space, it really comes down to a few key elements a lot of what we highlighted in the breakout. So first and foremost, it's our strategic positioning in those 2 foundational elements where size and scale really matters. And those 2 areas are where we're seeing the benefit from those secular twins and the big investment dollars that Jim highlighted around kind of the aging nature of our water infrastructure Secondly, it's being advantage of those -- that size and that scale and that investment through our national footprint and how we are structured with our connected portfolio, closely tied to our [ ags ] business closely tied to our roads business and closely tied to our cementitious business. And then lastly, I would highlight something we -- we just move them out with another question, which is the true fragmented nature of the space in which we operate. And the runway for growth, the number of companies around there from an M&A standpoint that are privately owned, privately held provides optionality for us to continue to grow well in the future. And I think it's not worth skipping, but we have a nearly 5 decade head start on building those relationships and those connectivity where we are oftentimes the first call that those owners make.

Colin here actually in the second row, please.

Cameron Dave. Thank you for those this morning -- just asking on the significant rerating that the stock has had in the last couple of years in particular, I guess there's still a gap to those U.S. pure-play peers -- just wondering what the company thinks you can get to ultimately? And what are the steps that are going to be along the way there?

Yes, okay, Carlo. Yes. we're 2 years to the month since we listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And in some ways, when you look at -- it was always the right listing place for CRH, right? We're the largest U.S. builders company, right, with the #1 player in infrastructure and we're broadly the same size as the next 3 listed peers combined, right? So to some extent, just sort as a bit of an anomaly. We should have been listed from that perspective. So -- but what it is -- we're 55 years as a company. We talked a lot about that today, right? But we're really 2 years into a listing, right? So it's not -- for me and for all of us as a leadership team, it has been a learning exercise, right? It was not an event. It's a process in terms of delisting, and we're still in relatively the early stages of that process, right? Now my job as CEO, and that's what today's event is actually a part of that. It's about trying to explain and look under the hood of what CRH is and what really delivers -- how -- based on this year's guidance, how do we get 12 consecutive years of margin increase. What drives that TSR over any period you take right? So it's been -- for us, and today's event, I said is key to that, to start to share that and to explain the CRH growth algorithm and then the CRH winning way, which drives that consistent outperformance, right? Now based on a record and what we believe in terms of going forward in terms of the $40 billion capacity and the model we have and the ability to deploy capital at scale I think over time, the market and every quarter we put under our belt matters. It's palatable. Every quarter you put on your belt here matters, right? And I think over time, the U.S. investment community will come to appreciate the resilience, the consistency, the outperformance -- if you go back to 2024, Randy called it our [ AMA ] business, right? It's 55% of our profits. It was up 22% in 2024. The industry was flat. There's a reason that happens on right? It just doesn't happen by accent from that perspective, right? You go back to 2022, we were the only business in 2022 to push margins on. Everybody else went backwards. That is the resilience, the consistency of the model and that's my job as CEO and the team to really explain that. And today is a very good step from that perspective.

Mike fourth from the front, please.

Mike Feniger from Bank of America. You guys talked a lot, obviously, we hear about the pure plays, everyone's trying to get for aggregate assets right now. When you think about your M&A firepower and how you're thinking about it differently? Are we strictly being downstream? Are we thinking more on the water side is something that we could see much more of in the next few years? And also just to tag on to this, you guys haven't been afraid to do divestments and you not like some businesses weren't really part of the portfolio. I'm just kind of curious how we should think about that maybe going forward in the next 5 years as well?

Yes. I think it's a really good question. And I said it earlier in the wrap-up, I think what's going to distinguish companies in our space in the next 5 years is the ability and the success of deploying capital at scale. That's what gives us the confidence because you've got to look at feel of it today about the muscle we have, have been able to do that. We haven't just built one platform. We've built 4 platforms coast-to-coast to lose U.S., right, 4 connected platforms. which that model outside brings it to life, right? The 4 connected platforms based around local leading brands. So where we will continue to grow, we will continue to grow. As I said, it's not just going to be in the water or the road space. No, we will continue to invest in [indiscernible]. We continue to invest in cementitious. I think Randy called it out in the recent earnings call. If you look at the asphalt acquisitions in the last decade, we've added 31 million tonnes of [ aggregate ] as well. Most family businesses in the U.S. look an awful lot more like us than they do maybe some of our peers because they figure this out. It makes much better sense to run a quarry with a concrete plant or an asphalt plant to repaving crew because you maximize your efficiency, you're closer to the customer, all the benefits we talk about the connected portfolio. So it's that and also -- if you look at our capital intensity as a percentage of revenue, it's one of the lowest. There's a reason for that. And when we can predict, as said at the start, if you look at our road business, it gives us objectively the most predictable revenue stream on the first of January in the U.S. every year because it's a publicly funded, 90% of it is publicly funded and you've got a multiyear visibility from that perspective. So when you take the predictability, the resilience the recurring nature of the revenue, the lower capital intensity, right? That's what drives the outperformance on the cash returns and the overall return on capital. And you should continue to do -- expect us to allocate capital across the 4 platforms.

We're just slightly over time here, but maybe before we wrap, I mean, is there anything that you'd like to leave us with? Anything you want us all to remember from today.

Yes. Listen, firstly, I hope everybody had a fantastic morning and appreciate it, and I are leaving here today with a better understanding of CRH. We certainly enjoy the opportunity of putting this together over the last number of months and setting it out. I think Thomas it's 3 things I'd like to say and people to take away. Remember, CRH, we're the #1 infrastructure play in North America. Our superior strategy, our unmatched scale and our connected portfolio of leading brands really positions us to execute unrivaled growth opportunities that we see coming from the mega trends -- we talked about the [ $40 billion ] financial capacity we have as an organization. We have that together with the proven growth capabilities that we talked about under the breakout groups and the experience leadership team I hope we get an opportunity to meet them over lunch. There's over 200 years of industry experience here. It's not one by one person. It's run by a team here in CRH. And there is nobody in this industry who is better placed than CRH to deploy capital at scale over the next 5 years. And I think that's going to be a key differentiator. CRH is a leading industrial company. right? All the financial metrics, the performance, the record, we are a leading industrial company, a true compounder of capital, a compounder of growth and a compounder of shareholder value. So I think for those, we're going to wrap up, I think, now for those on the webcast, I'd just like to thank you all for being with us, and we look forward to catching up with you all again soon as part of our Q3 earnings in early November. I think they're going to sign off on the webcast now. But for everybody here in the room, we really hope that you can join us and stay with us and get a [indiscernible].