Titan S.A. (TITC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Bobbie, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Titan Cement Group conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the 9 months 2022 results. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marcel Cobuz, Chairman of the Group Executive Committee; Mr. Michael Colakides, Group CFO; Mr. Yanni Paniaras, Group Executive Director, Europe and Sustainability; and Mr. Bill Zarkalis, Group COO, President and CEO of Titan America LLC. Mr. Cobuz, you may now proceed.

Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming to our Q3 results publication and exchange between management and analysts. Very happy to be here in my first quarterly call as Chairman of the Group Executive Committee and leader of Titan. I'm joined today by a wonderful team of Titans here. So, Michael is here, CFO; Bill from U.S. will also discuss about digital progress; Yanni from Europe will help us uncoding all our good results on decarbonization; and Spyros Kamizoulis, our Investor Relations Head. Together with Dimitri Papalexopoulos, our future Chairman, they were my sherpas during my onboarding and most recent transition into the job. Before handing over to Michael, our CFO, who will walk us through the financial results, let me share a few highlights on my first month in the job. First of all, very excited and proud to be able to join Titan family, bring my passion for transforming the industry and leads the next chapter of commercial and technology transformation of Titan at a turning point for the industry. Consumers are changing their preferences. Policymakers and investors are more demanding than ever on decarbonizing. There are inflationary cost and demand supply disruptions. I have spent my few months in the job with our leaders, teams and customers in all our 15 markets, learned about their ambitions, seeing the culture at work, discuss challenges and opportunities going forward, and I remain very excited. And here are the 3 reasons why I'm very excited about Titan and looking forward on our ambitions. First, Titan is a 120 years old trusted brand in growing markets, and it has an unparalleled technical expertise, be it on the old or new technology and a fantastic [ candle spirit ], which is visible, by the way, in the technical performance of the past years and in the very strong digitalization drive, which is, in my view, best-in-class in using AI and machine learning in our plants with more than 90 pilots these days as well in decarbonizing. Second, we have strong market positions and excellent quality of assets in our main markets. And if I have to refer only one, I will pick U.S., where is 60% of our business, we have a lighthouse plant, state-of-the-art plant, Pennsuco, end-to-end digitized the largest plant in Florida. We have strong position in Virginia, and we have a balanced portfolio in U.S. where cement is only 40% with a strong activity in aggregates, in block or light pickup as well as in ready-mix. The third driver which makes me excited about Titan is the great commercial drive to premiumize offers to launch green solutions. We are already at 20% of our sales in green solutions and we keep innovating in new technologies with start-ups and partnerships that we can discuss today. So happy to report on that front on the customer front that we are front runner in decarbonizing the product portfolio in U.S. We just completed and reached 100% of rollout of our low-carbon limestone enriched cement in U.S. and we have plenty of solutions in jobs already completed or ongoing, like Amazon logistics centers in U.S. or engineering school of Princeton where we have specified our low-carbon cement. We're happy to report as well that more recently we have been selected in an iconic project here in Greece. You see this beautiful picture -- cover picture, which is Ellinikon project, a very large mix of infrastructure, high rise and commercial project where we are adding assets, a new ready-mix plant. And we will be showcasing plenty of our green solutions there. Going forward, I see us well prepared, first, to win in an inflationary environment. The team around here are veterans in dealing with complexities in both developing as well as inflationary environments. The second is to accelerate our sales growth by expanding the core. The third is improving efficiencies and costs by leveraging on digitalizing our end-to-end supply chain. And the fourth is to accelerate the decarbonization. I'm very happy to let you know that today, the SBTi has validated our targets, which are in line with climate framework, reducing global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, both in Scope 1 and Scope 2. We have already upgraded our targets and we're very happy to learn that SBTi confirmed them, and I'm sure Yanni will come back to this. So, more to discuss on all these topics. Next year, I hope that we will have a Capital Markets Day where we can share more about our growth strategy as well as our highlights. Now, regarding Q3, I'm very happy with the results. The good performance, the strong growth in sales and EBITDA and margin recovery, and a very strong performance in U.S. and Greece. I'm also very happy to report that our growth-focused and disciplined capital allocation allows us to continue investing in U.S. and Greece in logistics improvements as well as in improving our energy mix. We hold a positive outlook despite the volatile cost environment, and we see healthy cash flows going forward. Michael, can you please walk us through the details of the financial results?

Thank you, Marcel, for the exciting introduction. And in fact, we have experienced a very strong Q3. So, good morning, good afternoon to everyone from me as well. Thanks to the very strong third quarter, hitting a growth of 41% compared to the third quarter of last year, sales increased by 32% for the year-to-date, reaching a level of EUR 1.66 billion. Robust demand in most markets and strong pricing that offset accumulated cost pressure led to sales growth at high levels. The strong U.S. dollar continues to add further to our growth momentum. In Q3, EBITDA recorded a strong increase of 24% compared to Q3 of last year to EUR 95.4 million, beating the third quarter of 2021. For the second quarter overall, we have an improvement compared to last year. Margins were on an improved trajectory. Year-to-date, EBITDA has reached EUR 234 million, an increase of 6.8% compared to last year. Due to the high-growth CapEx of EUR 158 million as well as to the sales and inflation-driven working capital needs of a further EUR 158 million, net debt reached EUR 912 million. We should note that more than 80% of our interest exposure is either in fixed rates or covered by long-term hedges and that we have no refinancing needs for the next couple of years. The group's decarbonization and digital initiatives continue at full steam. The group has been accelerating the digitalization of its manufacturing activity with significant financial benefits, and Bill will go more -- into more detail on this. In line with our decarbonization plan and as a result of our initiatives, CO2 emissions continue to drop significantly, being reduced by 5.5% year-on-year, while new CO2 targets have been announced in line and approved and validated in line with our 1.5 degrees climate framework. Moving to the next slide where we see our key financials. The group had a record Q3 in terms of both sales at EUR 626 million, and EBITDA at EUR 95.4 million, while margins have been further improved. Solid volumes, especially in cement and the realization of price increases, drove the group's strong sales growth. The sales growth combined with improved operational efficiencies such as the use of more alternative fuels, lower energy consumption, and use of digital tools in manufacturing led to increased EBITDA, offsetting the persistent rise in energy and transportation costs. Net profit after tax for the 9-month period was up by 8.7% to EUR 89 million. In the next slide, where we see the third quarter performance, as you can see, all regions achieved sales growth in excess of 20%, while there was also EBITDA growth in all regions with the exception of the Southeast Europe, which was hit by a spike of extreme electricity prices, which to be noted have now reversed to lower levels by now. Turning to our volumes. The growth of cement volumes largely reflects higher domestic cement volumes in the U.S., Greece, Egypt, and more Southern European markets. In Turkey, volumes have shown a decline. In aggregates, volumes have increased in Greece, but have dropped in the U.S. due to the extended maintenance stoppages back in the first quarter as well as the wider production of Type IL cement, which requires more aggregates quantities for strong production. Growth has also been observed on the ready-mix side with increase in volumes coming from the Greek domestic market as well as in Southeast Europe. Now, taking a look at our balance sheet. The balance sheet helps illustrate the point of persisting high costs set against -- sorry, the P&L. The persistent high cost against the successful evolution of price increases in the third quarter compared to the same period of last year. As one can see, cost elements remained very high during year-to-date and third quarter despite the improvement in our overall operational KPIs, such as the energy consumption, the use of alternative fuels, the improved liability, et cetera. Profitability improved in the third quarter and year-to-date, reflecting the volume increases as well as the dynamic successful price increases in all markets. Moving forward and looking at some of our key factors of cost. The explosion in key energy and transportation costs have been relentless and you have seen them hitting new highs during the third quarter. Apart from the freight rates, which have been dropping since the end of the second quarter, all the energy costs have reached new highs in the summer. However, over the past couple of months, we have seen many energy costs easing and the financial for the markets predict that further decline lies ahead. Of course, we should caution as we are all aware, we are still going through a period of high volatility and high unpredictability. Now going to our balance sheet. We see that it is, to an extent, inflated by the stronger U.S. dollar, but also by our increased net working capital. Moreover, the application of IAS 29 for hyperinflation accounting in Turkey further increased our assets by close to EUR 90 million. Now moving on to cash flow. Operating free cash flow for the first 9 months of the year included 2 significant outflow items, EUR 158 million from our ongoing CapEx program targeted to enhance our growth opportunities, produce manufacturing cost savings and optimize our logistic costs; and on the higher sales and inflation-linked increased working capital by another EUR 158 million. As a result, the group's net debt at the end of Q3 is close to EUR 200 million higher than it was in December of 2021. Now taking a look at our CapEx. On this slide, we show the evolution of our CapEx during this year, which is a high growth CapEx year. In fact, this will be the group's highest CapEx spending in a single year for the past 15 years. As we remain confident for the growth prospects of our key markets, we continue to execute our plans according to our original schedule. In the U.S., we're in the second year of our $300 million growth CapEx program, aiming to expand the effective cement supply capacity, reduce production costs, add more storage facilities and provide significant logistics cost improvements. We expect to see the financial benefits from these investments within 2023. In Greece, our higher investments year-to-date include the installation of the calciner in our plant next to Athens, also to be completed within next year -- early next year, new cement product sales and ready-mix plants as well as installations for hydrogen introduction, targeting an overall increase of alternative fuels utilization. Aside from the U.S. and Greece, the group is also targeting increased alternative fuel utilization via investments in its operations both in Southeast Europe as well as in East Med. And finalized a few weeks ago, our export terminal sanctioned in Turkey has started operation and provides now an outlet for exports from the country. Taking a look at our debt. Despite the high EBITDA as a result of the higher CapEx and sales-driven working capital needs, the group's net debt as of the end of September reached EUR 912 million. This is expected to be reduced by year-end through higher EBITDA and the reduction of working capital. It is also important to note that the group has no refinancing needs as our next bond maturity comes at the end of 2024 and no material debt maturities over the next few years. Our interest exposure is over 80% either in fixed rates or covered by long-term interest rate hedges. The group's net finance cost year-to-date decreased by EUR 1.3 million compared to 2021 and reached EUR 26.6 million. Having said that, we now turn to our regional reviews starting with the U.S. market. The U.S. remains the group's largest market in terms of revenue and profitability. And we are fortunate to operate in geographically privileged states. Titan operations in the U.S. experienced a very strong third quarter, capitalizing on the market's continued strong momentum, which allowed the successful implementation of price increases, addressing the persistent cost challenges and contributed to the recovery of profitability. EBITDA in the third quarter alone reached EUR 63.5 million, posting an increase of 47% versus the same quarter of last year, which was EUR 43.2 million. In U.S., this was a 40% EBITDA growth in U.S. terms for the domestic U.S. operations. Year-to-date, sales in the U.S., aided by the strong dollar, increased by 31.7% to EUR 963 million, an increase of 16.5% in dollar terms, while EBITDA after a weak start of the year in the first 3, 4 months, reached EUR 134 million compared to EUR 126 million last year, a 3% increase compared to last year or still 10% lagging in U.S. dollar terms. Florida presents a thriving business environment, benefits from high foreign direct investments and enjoys demographic and economic growth. Florida's economy continued growing and Hurricane Ian's impact on our operations has been limited to an estimate of EUR 5 million lost EBITDA -- dollars, I would say. Multifamily residential buildup and infrastructure activity underpinned demand in the Mid-Atlantic market. Infrastructure investment programs continued, while the backlog remains healthy in regional projects. Titan America's $300 million CapEx program continues, aiming to capture the anticipated market growth of the following years by expanding our effective supply capacity and achieving operating efficiencies, while also optimizing the logistics operations. Sales of the low-carbon cement, 1L, as Marcel mentioned, has accelerated and reached practically 100% of all our sales in the U.S. Turning to Greece. Trends in the weak domestic market remained positive. Sales volume moved further upwards, while increased prices helped address input cost inflation, allowing for restoring profitability margins. Total sales for markets in Greece and Western Europe in the first 9 months of the year grew by 20.9% to EUR 235 million, while EBITDA improved to EUR 23.6 million compared to EUR 20.4 million last year, a 15.4% increase. Major construction projects in Thessaloniki continued driving the markets and large infrastructure works have picked up pace as well. New ready-mix units serving major project work sites have also allowed us to capitalize on our market presence around growing large urban agglomerations. Regarding exports, successful price increases also have been implemented, while exports have also benefited from the strong [indiscernible]. The group is working simultaneously on many energy mix improving actions and other decarbonization initiatives in the fields of hydrogen, alternative fuel substitution and carbon capture technology. In the region of Southeastern Europe, market softening has been observed without, however, significant impact on our volumes that remained stable. On the other side, the profitability of the third quarter has been impacted due to much higher electricity prices, which in some countries have even tripled. The positive development is that in the last months' electricity prices in the area have been easing. Sales for the region as a whole in the first 9 months of the year increased by 29.7% to EUR 278 million compared to the same period of last year, while EBITDA declined by 5% to EUR 65.6 million. Large scale residential development projects drive the market, counteracting the softness of small private projects, while infrastructure investments support regional demand. The introduction of low-carbon cements across more markets continued in the quarter, as did the investments in alternative fuel utilization and in digitalization, which allow the group to improve its efficiency and address cost pressures. Turning to East Med, which has continued its upward path with improvement in both sales and profitability. Total sales in the region reached EUR 185 million, an increase of 51% year-on-year, while EBITDA reached EUR 15 million compared to just EUR 3.5 million same period of last year. In Egypt, the cement market continued to grow, reflecting the country's extensive infrastructure and residential needs. Prices increased covering the hike in fuel costs and the effects of the Egyptian pound devaluation. The government extended the application of the market regulation production quota mechanism for another year at higher allocations, while the new agreement with the IMF should benefit the economic prospects of the country. In Turkey, domestic cement volumes have declined as projects are slowing down and overall investment activity declined. Real estate investment, however, remains a perceived safe outlet for capital, thereby supporting building activity. Prices continue to increase to address higher energy and inflation of costs and our subsidiary, Adocim, delivers positive EBITDA results. Exports provide a stable outlet for the country and, in the course of the period, our group completed and launched operations of its purpose-built new cement export terminal in Samsun, which successfully started shipping low-alkali cement to the United States. And finally, a couple of words about Brazil and our joint venture, Cimento Apodi, where due to the high interest rates and increased inflation, cement demand has negatively been affected and domestic cement volumes in our market declined by 2.9%. Price increases of more than 25% have been implemented and are gradually offsetting increased input costs. EBITDA reached EUR 12.2 million compared to EUR 14.4 million last year, while price is not yet fully mitigating the spike in costs. And with that, I will hand over to Yanni to drive us through the updates on the decarbonization trend. Thank you, Yanni.

Thank you, Michael. Hello, everybody. We are in the week of COP27 Climate Summit running this week in Sharm El-Sheikh, so it's very appropriate and very good timing for us to also announce our contribution to combating climate change and to announce that we have actually increased our own climate ambition for 2030 accelerating our target Scope 1 and Scope 2 reduction targets, and also including key parts of our Scope 3 emissions in our overall reduction plan. As Marcel mentioned, the Science Based Targets initiative has recently actually, in anticipation of the COP27, they have issued their own 1.5 degree target setting framework for cement. And we are among the first in the industry to submit our new targets for validation. And in fact, earlier today, we did receive the official validation of our targets. So, we're very happy to be recognized among the early movers on the industry's path towards carbon neutrality, and we are looking beyond that. We're looking at the market and we are aiming to grow the share of our green lower carbon products in our portfolio to over 50% by 2030. This long-term commitment is supported by our current strong short-term performance where we can show an increase in pace of decarbonization. In the first 9 months of the year, our direct CO2 emissions declined by more than 5% compared to last year. Key factors are an increase in alternative fuel use as a result of our ongoing investments that Michael mentioned earlier, both in processing and in feeding facilities in our plants, as well as a significant increase in having lower clinker and therefore lower carbon-reduced cements. Both developments are value-generating. So, at the same time as reducing our footprint, we are reducing the consumption of solid fuels at the time of high prices, and we are providing additional production capacity, and therefore, sales potential for our cement. Looking further, our R&D team has made progress on more innovative technologies, carbon capture, carbon capture storage or use, hydrogen as alternative carbon-free energy sources. Our Recode project, which you may remember, we have been recognized as a key innovator by the European Innovation Radar is now, as you can see also in the picture, in operation capturing at pilot scale CO2 for the production of specialist construction chemicals and other products. In the meantime, we have also received approval for funding for H2CEM, which is currently the only project in the second batch of Important Projects of Common European Interest that involves the use of hydrogen for cement production. And further projects, in line with the European and U.S. policy focus and support of CCS technology, are being developed in the ecosystems around key plants. Finally, taking a look beyond climate change to our broader ESG performance. We are happy to have received this August for the second year running a AA rating in the MSCI ESG ratings, and this puts us among the leaders with the highest scores in our peer group. We scored particularly strongly on safety, on governance, on waste. But as the AA rating suggests, we also have a strong performance across the board on all other criteria. So, overall, good progress on climate change and sustainability. We're really proud for today's recognition by SBTi and the recent recognition by MSCI, and very happy to be engaging on low carbon sustainable solutions with our customers. Thank you, Michael. Bill, over to you.

Thank you so much. And let me say, it's great to be back in the investors and analyst presentation, especially in the quarter with strong results for the group. I will try to cover our quarter 3 highlights for our digital transformation where our talent is working very hard. And I must say, we all feel very proud about their accomplishments. Progress on digitizing operations continued this quarter as more solutions successfully moved from the proof-of-concept phase to the actual rollout and implementation across the group's industrial units. Let me start from the manufacturing side. The accelerated rollout of real-time optimizer, which we call RTOs, continued in the quarter with the mills at the group's plant in North Macedonia and also with [indiscernible] Kamari in Greece. With the use of RTOs, the group realizes an increase in the clinker and cement output, owing both to the process optimization and break down avoidance, as well as significant savings in thermal energy and electricity consumption. According to our accelerated rollout program, RTOs are going to be deployed across the group's entire asset base by the end of 2023. The group's quality prediction model was also successfully tried and tested at our Pennsuco plant in Florida with good results on the prediction accuracy. Artificial intelligence-based predictive quality applications enabled plant operators to improve the grinding process, lowering clinker consumption and hence ensuring consistent product quality, and reducing our carbon footprint. After setting up a dedicated business CemAI earlier this year, Titan Group has already secured the sale of 5 units of its proprietary technology offering machine learning failure detection solutions. On the supply chain and customer experience side, several projects are up and running. While we have rolled out our customer application in several European units, we have also deployed our next-generation demand forecasting tools in both the U.S. and also Greece. Furthermore, digitalization tools that help in the optimization of either the distribution network or the inventories of spare parts have been deployed and the preliminary results show significant business impact. With that, I close my part and I will turn it back to Marcel for an outlook statement for the rest of the year and for 2023. Marcel?

Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Yanni. Thank you, Michael. So, our CFO already alluded to the positive trends of cost factors as well as recovering margins in quarter 3. What I can share with you is that October volumes and pricing cover cost looks good everywhere with pricing, cost performance and increased cash flows. That makes us optimistic about the end of the year with order books, which remained solid in U.S., Greece and other markets. We do see some headwinds on the single-family housing in our U.S. markets, in Southeastern Europe, repositioning on infrastructure projects, high rise and multifamily housing is a priority for our teams everywhere. The slowdown in some Southeastern Europe markets will be partly mitigated by the decreasing cost factors, particularly electricity. And at the same time, these are marginal for the group, given also the seasonality. We are engaged, committed on the preparation of price increases for 2023 in some of the markets. They have been already announced to our customers with an application from 1st of January. In other markets, we are now assessing the timing and the magnitude, as well as accelerating our transformation of the energy mix with less dependence on natural gas switching opportunities between coal and pet coke, and an increasing weight of alternative fuels, which has reached a new record level last month, close to 20% for the group, as we are aiming this quarter at an over-proportional growth of EBITDA compared to our sites. We remain disciplined in our CapEx spending and making sure that we have healthy generation of cash flows, and we prepare for scenarios in which some of the CapEx will be phasing through the second half of next year, particularly if the headwinds intensify in the first half 2023. So, overall, optimistic for the last quarter and beginning of next year. That brings us to the question and answers. Michael?

Yes. So, if there are any questions from the audience, we'll be very glad to provide answers.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Edelfelt, Sven with ODDO BHF.

Congratulations for this good quarter. 3 questions for me, if I may. The first one, there has been a shift in volume in Q3 compared to Q2. To what extent your volume growth is supported by market share gain due to other pricing from some of your competitors? And how confident are you to keep these market share gains, if you had any? Second question. You mentioned declining forward price for combustible for next year. If combustible price were to stay on this level, to what extent you would lower cement prices next year to, let's say, lower the pain for your customers? And then, the third question would be to Marcel. How free are you to run the company when it comes to portfolio adjustment? Is it something that is on your roadmap, obviously pending the agreement from the main shareholder? These are my questions.

Okay. Thank you for the questions, Sven, and looking forward to meeting you soon somewhere in Europe. On the shift of volumes between the quarters and market share gains, so happy to report that most of our market shares in main markets are stable. We do see some intensification of imports in some of our Balkan markets, but they are marginal. And we are happy to hold those positions going forward. On the declining price of solid fuels, and I will let Michael maybe comment a little bit more, my main priority is to make sure that we intensify our efforts in increasing the use of alternative fuels. Alternative fuels as a cost ratio into the solid fuels, they represent 20% to 30% of what we see today as price of coal and pet coke. While we do a lot of hard work in using high sulfur pet coke, as well as switching between coal and pet coke while we are completely out of any exposure to gas in Europe, we use natural gas only in U.S, I'm personally confident that with this strategy on the energy mix going into next year, we are going to see a good cost -- energy cost tailwind. Will that trigger any adjustments on the pricing? I think we will see how we cross that bridge when we reach it. However, the pricing of cement and concrete in the overall cost of construction is in the range of 3% to 5%. There is no elasticity between the price of cement and the new build environment. At the same time, we embark in to decarbonization investments. So, healthy margins going forward and healthy cash flow will allow us to pursue these investments with vigor.

Just to complete on the fuels question, a couple of points, Sven. One is that with the investments we're making, for example, the largest plant we have, the Kamari plant, it used to be 30% alternative fuel substitution last year, it's up to 40% this year. And when the [indiscernible] comes into operation, it will be at 70%-plus. So, we expect not only emission reduction, but also significant savings to derive out of the investments we're making for alternative fuels. If the prices of solid fuels continues reducing, that will help us to recover our margin. I mean, if you look at our EBITDA margins, you will obviously notice that they have declined significantly over the past 12 months. Now, by Q3, we have made a recovery, but we are nowhere close to where we were before. So, price decreases are not so obvious unless there are very strong market pressures.

On your very nice third question, Sven, so as a listed company with very responsible anchor shareholder, we do have a very strong governance when it comes to strategic decisions. The executive team is currently working on a good budget 2023 with positive price over cost, cost savings and healthy cash flows. We also plan to announce externally our strategic drivers going forward for 2026, and this will be submitted to Board for approval. The company, the way I see it, is already disciplined enough not only in resource allocation and CapEx that is examining regularly the quality of the assets, running impairment tests as well as M&A -- running M&A opportunities. So, I think we are more into a continuity than a radical transformation here.

The next question comes from the line of Kourtesis, Iakovos with Piraeus Securities.

Yes. Congrats on the strong set of results for the third quarter. My questions has to do with CapEx. I can see that year-to-date you stand at EUR 158 million. Where should we expect it to close the year and what do you have on your budget for CapEx for 2023? And the second thing is, I would like to ask, do you plan for further price increases in 2023, especially in the U.S market? And if you could split your revenues as a general rule of thumb in the market in terms of residential, private projects and public infrastructure projects? And last question has to do with Infrastructure Bill in the U.S. I can see that you referred to your presentation that most of these, you expect a positive impact in the second half of 2023. How do you see evolving in the areas you're active in especially in Florida and Virginia? Thank you very much.

So, the CapEx, I think, Michael, for this year and next year?

Let me give you the big picture on CapEx. This year, we started with a relatively -- we had a sizable budget for CapEx, but we took a few months until we finalized for the bigger number that we are ending, we expect to close the year at a level of something like EUR 220 million order of magnitude of CapEx across the group. We have not deferred any investments, though we had a very good set of investments for this year, which had very good paybacks. And in the U.S. in particular, we expect to see the benefits coming within 2023, and also for 2024 where we expect a rebound on the market. Now, going into next year, we are more cautious as to how much and when. So, there will be, let's say, approvals of CapEx coming in a staggered process. It will not be as high as 2022, but it will depend on the evolution of the markets within the year and also the evolution of our leverage. We do not want to exceed the threshold of 3 either at the end of the year or in the interims. So, we will be also sort of being very prudent on leverage as well.

Bill, do you want to comment on the price increase and infrastructure going forward?

Yes. In relation to the question about the price increase and also in relation to the question that Sven made, we are far from going from market share in the market. On the contrary, we are keeping an eye on maintaining our market share, but we are very diligent and systematic in terms of continuing to increasing our price. And before talking about the 2023 market price increases, we have October market price increases both in Florida and the Mid-Atlantic area. In Florida, we have announced $8 per ton of cement -- short ton of cement. Short ton means that practically per ton, $8 is almost $9.5 per metric ton, but $8 per short ton for October in Florida, and another $14 per short ton as of January 1 for the Florida market. Also in Florida, we have implemented a very strong price increase, who has exceeded $30 per cubic yard year-to-date in concrete, and we have announced another $12 per ton as of January -- of cubic yards -- excuse me -- for concrete as of January 1 in Florida, while we continue to increase prices in concrete on a project by project basis. In the Mid-Atlantic area, we have announced $10 per ton as of October per short ton in the Mid-Atlantic and $12 in the New York-New Jersey area. And we have an extensive price increase program that changes on a ZIP code by ZIP code basis depending on where the starting point is. But to give you an idea, it starts in October from $10 per cubic yard, all the way up to $30 per cubic yard, and there will be price increases to be defined depending, of course, on the weather for the first quarter of 2023. So, a very comprehensive, very specific new wave of price increases that are defined by application, by ZIP code on the basis of where the starting point is in the markets where we operate. Now, in relation to our breakdown by market segment, we don't provide such information, I'm sorry about that, Iakovos. But I can say upfront that you know that in the markets where we operate, from Florida all the way up north to the Carolinas, Virginia and New York, New Jersey as we have leading positions, fundamentally we have a cross-section of the marketplace. You cannot be in the leading position that we have without having a bit -- being a representative market share. But on purpose and in relation to our market participation strategy, we are heavier on infrastructure, we are heavier on business and commercial non-residential, especially in high margin projects and also in marquee projects that require the high quality of our products and services, that gives us clearly an advantage and benefits for the customer as well. And of course, preferentially, especially in New York and in Florida, we participate in the multifamily residential region. And the rest, of course, we try to cover with single-family residential. I think this strategy helps us a lot, especially given the volatility that single-family residential business has. And I presume, we all read the same reports. Although our order books are very robust, clearly there are headwinds in this market in relation to the mortgage rates and also to the sticker price shock in certain areas. So, I think, our strategy will serve us very well, especially as we see now. In relation to the other part of your question, the Jobs and Infrastructure Act taking effect, there are bids for these new projects. Clearly, there's going to be some lag effect between these bids are assigned, allocated, and we have dollars put on the ground and therefore cement being put on the ground. That's why we said back in the second quarter results that we can see the benefits from this Act come into fruition in the second half of 2023.

The next question comes from the line of Woerner, Tobias with Stifel Europe.

Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to understand a little bit better where you are with your journey on the PLC side. In other words, what percentage of your cement is now in the U.S. in terms of PLC? And what sort of target do you have over the next, let's say, 12 months to 24 months with regards to that? Now, in theory, the increase for the industry in terms of PLC should also increase capacities and replace imports in essence. How do you see the dynamics playing out on that front, also with regard to the price increases you just talked about? And then just lastly, we are hearing over the last few weeks or so extremely low levels on the Mississippi in terms of water levels. It's not necessarily 1 of your markets, but does it impact the surrounding markets or also touches upon your markets?

I will attempt to answer at least on your questions, and I will invite my colleagues as they have more insights. But in relation to the Portland-limestone cement because this is I think what you're talking about, clearly we announced already in the second quarter results, and Marcel repeated it today that in Titan America both our plants are producing. Now, they will totally shift to 100% PLC. And also, with the additional [indiscernible] cement and other types of cement that are all low-carbon cements, practically 100% of our production in U.S. is now green cement in relation to where we are. On top of that, thanks to the efforts of our people in the tri-state area in New York, New Jersey, we have switched our customers to limestone cement. And now, our inputs from Greece from our Kamari plant limestone cement, so not only are local production, but our inputs from Greece, our limestone cement allowing us really to offer to our customers green cement, low-carbon footprint cement, which really serves our 2030 goals, but also allows us really to meet the needs of our customers in the U.S. In relation to the production, I think, our production is keeping up clearly in terms of the final product. But we got to take into account the markets where we participate, like we discussed last quarter, these are the mega regions of U.S. We are in, let me call it, privileged -- we are privileged to be in markets that are growing fast, and we see this across all applications. And although we see parts and ZIP codes, it's a checkerboard economy. We see parts that may be going down. There is a reduction in consumption of cement. In our areas, the growth remains strong, robust as the order books are strong. So, we had experienced growth and we needed the increase in the production from assets, and we needed it really increase in our imported cement. So, overall, we have strong demand. And the fact that we have shifted this demand to low-carbon footprint really makes us extremely proud.

And benefits the margins.

Of course. In relation to Mississippi, yes, I know we are witnessing some lower level of water, and that goes along with the Mississippi a lot. But I wish we can talk about low levels of water for our markets, Tobias. I'm sure you read about Hurricane Nicole that hit us in Florida and got from what I hear from our people right now because they're assessing the issue. We got a lot of rain. No wind damage so far, but this has to be verified. It hit north of our Pennsuco assets. But we're not complaining about lower level of water in our areas, so I cannot really comment about what's happening in Mississippi. Clearly, as our CFO reported -- Michael reported that we had an impact in the third quarter of $5 million on EBITDA from the previous hurricane that hit us in September, only $500,000 roughly of that is permanent. So we needed really to cover the cost. The rest is temporary loss of business that is recoverable. So that's the good news. And overall, our teams are very well prepared to serve the markets and our customers.

Can I add one quick question on Turkey? It seems when I look at October prices, they're now at almost EUR 50-plus, which is 100% -- more than 100% increase in euro terms. I'm flabbergasted given what's happened to the economy in terms of inflation and volumes actually. How should we see this and also does that impact global supply of seaborne cement? In other words, is it going to go down because Turkey cement gets good prices locally?

Unfortunately, while prices have gone up, Tobias, locally, consumption has gone down. But the local producers reacted. It's been now months ago that they have been reacting to inflation very methodically. So, they kept increasing prices to keep in line with inflation. In a country where the local inflation grew to 70%, 80% and currently 85%, it becomes almost a weekly, if not daily exercise, to adjust prices. So, yes.

This is the dynamic pricing, and I think our teams are well focused, [ very performing ]. And when it comes to exports, we are competitive in the market.

Yes. But there will be no reduction of quantities because locally there is no increase of consumption.

And what prices do the Turks now export? What is their marginal cost they can sell into...

We cannot comment on others, Tobias, but for us it's a positive variable contribution. Yes.

The next question comes from the line of Athanasoulias, Nikos with Eurobank Equities.

Hello, and congratulations on a very good set of results. I have a couple of short questions, if I may. The first one is about the hedges, whether you have any hedges and what are those hedges? And second one is for electricity in Greece. From what we know, you have a contract with a stable tariff right now, which is ending next year, what are you planning to do after that? Maybe sign a PPA -- some PPAs or will you source from the grid?

I will address the hedges. The most important hedges we currently have is on foreign exchange. There we're practically hedged. Our currency exposure is hedged for our indebtedness in the countries. But also, as I mentioned on interest rates, we have -- for the floating rate obligations, we have converted the bulk of it to fixed rate. And also, for the longer-term, for the 2024 maturity bond, we have also hedged that refinancing going forward. So in terms of interest expense, you should not expect any surprises for us, any increase in costs in terms of the rate. On the energy front, we have not done any significant hedges other than for natural gas in the U.S., where we have an exposure that we have covered a good part of 2023 needs. But on coal and pet coke, apart from whatever we have physically sort of placed orders for, we have not done any hedging. Similarly, for shipping freights, we've done a lower volume than we had last year. Yanni, you want to answer for PPC?

Yes. Regarding electricity in Greece, Nikos, first of all, we said that we have fixed contracts. Just to be clear, we have -- part of the costs are fixed. Part of the electricity that depends on the energy mix and the cost of CO2 is not fixed. So, we have had increases this year. And this is one of the factors that we're considering when we're looking at pricing in the next months. Now, to your question for next year, we are in active negotiations both with PPC and others. Our intention is to have contracts both for the short-term for next year, but also looking at options for longer term contracts, especially if we can link them with our target for having a greener supply of electricity and reducing our Scope 2 emissions.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Colakides for any closing comments. Thank you.

Okay. Well, thank you all for attending. It's been an exciting quarter, and we are very happy to be in a position to present you these results. The next -- you will hear from us next in late March on the 22nd of March when we will be announcing our Q4 results, and hope to see you all then. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a good afternoon.