Good morning. Welcome to the CEMEX third quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. My name is Lauren, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time you require operator assistance, please press star followed by zero, and we will be happy to assist you. Now, I will turn the conference over to Lucy Rodriguez, Chief Communications Officer. Please proceed.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. I hope this call finds you and your families in good health. I'm joined today by Fernando González, our CEO, and Maher Al-Haffar, our CFO. As always, we will spend a few minutes reviewing the business, and then we will be happy to take your questions. Before we begin, I would like to quickly remind you about our CEMEX Day event taking place on Wednesday, November 16th. This event will be a live webcast presentation where our CEO and top management will focus on climate action, our digital and growth strategy, and provide a medium-term outlook on our regions. You can find further details on our website. Now, I will hand the call over to Fernando. Fernando?
Thanks, Lucy, and good day to everyone. Before I begin, during the quarter we experienced severe weather events that impacted our local communities in Florida and the Caribbean. We are doing whatever we can to support rescue and reconstruction efforts in the communities in which we serve. Our thoughts are with all of those who have been affected. Now to discuss the quarter. Our top line grew 13% driven by double-digit price increases across all products. While the magnitude of our pricing increases has been significant, it has been more than matched by relentless input cost inflation, particularly in energy, with consequences for our EBITDA and margin. To date, pricing has been able to offset inflationary costs in dollar terms, but has not yet succeeded in regaining margins. We continue to see inflationary headwinds that outpace our pricing efforts, particularly in Mexico.
We are making some progress, however, as in the quarter we did see two regions begin to recover margins in cement, our most energy-intensive product. While U.S. results were significantly impacted by Hurricane Ian in September, the region show a nice recovery from the supply chain disruptions and the maintenance cost of the second quarter. Once again, our EMEA region showed remarkable resiliency, growing its EBITDA for four consecutive quarters. The Urbanization Solutions business continues to grow rapidly. On climate action, we continue our streak of sequential declines in carbon emissions. During the quarter, we're submitting a revised climate action roadmap to SBTi for alignment under the 1.5 degree scenario. We have made progress against our goal of rebalancing our portfolio with almost $600 million in divestments year to date.
Regarding our deleveraging efforts, we reduced total debt by approximately $540 million, while our leverage ratio decreased to 2.82x. Net income, excluding goodwill impairment charges, was approximately $450 million higher than third quarter of last year. Finally, our return on capital remains in the double-digit area, well above our cost of capital. Double-digit growth in sales reflects the significant pricing contribution from all regions. Despite the pricing efforts, EBITDA and EBITDA margin declined due to stubbornly high inflation, particularly in fuels and electricity. The reduction in EBITDA margin was mainly driven by Mexico, where higher maintenance and outages in the tight northern markets led to a significant increase in distribution costs as we travel longer distances to deliver products to our customers.
Free cash flow declined due to higher investment in working capital, lower EBITDA, and higher maintenance CapEx. The decline in consolidated cement volumes relates primarily to demand in Mexico and South Central America and the Caribbean, where we saw continued normalization of bagged cement consumption in the post-pandemic period, as well as difficult weather. While bagged cement volumes declined in these markets, the growth in ready-mix, bulk cement, and aggregate volumes speak to the strength of the formal sector. In the U.S., a Category 4 hurricane and continued supply chain challenges capped volume growth of all three products to low single digits. Volumes in Europe have begun to reflect a slowdown in construction activity. In SCAC, a kiln outage in the Dominican Republic, a sold-out operation for us, and weather contributed significantly to the regional drop.
Consolidated prices continued to accelerate in the third quarter, with cement prices rising between 15%-30% across all regions. Europe is the standout, with price increases that have been able to offset much of the margin pressure. The 3% sequential growth in consolidated cement prices attest to the strength of our summer price increases. We are in the process of announcing January increases that will reflect the significant input cost inflation we are experiencing across our portfolio. Pricing, however, is not the only lever, and we remain focused on managing costs with our energy diversification, supply chain, and climate action strategies. The decline in EBITDA is largely explained by a lower margin related to persistent input cost inflation. The drop in volumes also contributed to the EBITDA drop. Pricing was the strongest lever of growth and was again able to more than offset total cost increases.
While margins declined, the net contribution of price over cost has grown since the second quarter, suggesting some progress in beginning to recover margins. We experienced a $30 million FX headwind, largely due to the depreciation of European currencies. The FX movement with our Euro debt exposure acting as a financial hedge did allow us to reduce debt by $46 million. Across all three businesses, we have recovered inflation in dollar terms year to date. Recovering 2021 margins remains our primary goal, and cement remains the largest pain point in that effort given its energy intensity. Since last year, it's been our primary focus in our efforts to recover margins. It is encouraging to note in the quarter that in two of our four regions, we not only compensated for inflation in cement on a unitary dollar basis, but actually began to recover EBITDA margins.
We still have work to do and of course, we don't expect linear progress. Volatility in the energy market will likely continue, but we remain committed to recovering input cost inflation in our business. I am pleased to announce that in early October, we submitted for validation our 2050 net zero roadmap and revised 2030 decarbonization goals to SBTi. The new roadmap is aligned to the SBTi's recently issued 1.5-degree scenario for our sector and includes Scope 3 emission targets. CEMEX was a member of the expert advisory group that worked with SBTi to develop this scenario. Our success in reducing carbon emissions since we introduced our Future in Action program, a decline of more than 8% since December 2020, gives us the confidence to commit to a more accelerated 2030 pathway.
With receipt of validation, CEMEX will continue to have the most ambitious decarbonization pathway in the cement concrete sector. Our CO2 emissions have declined more than 4% year to date, and progress is in line with our 2021 record reduction. We will provide a more detailed discussion during our CEMEX Day event. We have continued to execute on our operational resilience goal of rebalancing the portfolio towards developed markets. Year to date, we have done close to $600 million in asset sales. Proceeds will be used primarily to fund our bolt-on investment strategy along with debt reduction. Now back to you, Lucy.
Thank you, Fernando. Despite the decline in cement volumes, net sales in Mexico grew 9% on the back of our pricing strategy and a pickup in formal sector demand. While year-over-year comps became easier in the third quarter, we continued to experience volume declines in bagged product. We attribute this movement to the normalization of bagged cement demand from the pandemic peak, inflationary pressures impacting retail consumption, as well as temporary market share loss related to our pricing strategy. Bulk cement and ready- mix continued to grow, supported by the industrial and commercial sector and infrastructure. Nearshoring activity in the border states, the construction of distribution and logistics networks, as well as tourism, are driving volumes in the formal sector. With year-to-date project announcements of more than $12 billion in private investments for industrial and logistics space.
EBITDA and EBITDA margin declined due to higher fuels, maintenance, distribution, raw materials, as well as product mix. Maintenance outages coupled with flooding and supply chain issues disrupted logistics in the northern part of the country, where supply-demand dynamics are the tightest. This led to a significant increase in distribution costs in the quarter as we sent product longer distances and had to rely on more expensive spot freight to meet customer demand. We estimate that these issues, which we believe are temporary, accounted for a headwind in year-over-year margins of approximately 2.2 percentage points. With our objective of recovering margins in mind, we announced a 7.5% increase in bagged cement prices effective October 10th. Additionally, we continue making strong inroads in our alternative fuel strategy.
Alternative fuel usage reached 38% in Mexico, almost 14 percentage points higher than the prior year. The move to alternatives not only benefits society, but is also an important lever in combating energy inflation. Finally, the high level of integration of our business with our sold-out U.S. operations remains a unique competitive advantage, allowing us to meet the needs of the U.S. in a cost-effective manner while also supporting capacity utilization domestically. In the U.S., sales and EBITDA grew by double digits, supported by growth in all products. Cement and aggregate volumes rose low single digits, while ready-mix was flat. Volumes were impacted by the arrival of Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 hurricane that hit Florida, one of our largest states, in late September. We estimate that the storm had an EBITDA impact of approximately $11 million in the quarter or close to 1 percentage point in margin.
Demand was largely driven by the industrial and commercial sector, which we expect to remain an important source of future growth. Trailing twelve-month contract awards in our four key states are up 31%. Residential demand continued to grow in the quarter, albeit at a slower pace. We have seen the first signs of weakness in the residential sector materialize in our business in Northern California. Infrastructure contributed to volumes in the quarter, and we are seeing encouraging signs for the rollout of the infrastructure bill, as trailing twelve-month highway and street contract awards rose 14% for our four key states. Supply-demand dynamics remain quite tight in our markets, with many of our customers on allocation. To fulfill the strong demand, we are increasingly relying on imports from our Mexican operations as we continue to strategically leverage our unique distribution model.
Third quarter pricing announcements in states that represent 80% of our volumes saw strong traction. We have already announced additional pricing increases for the remainder of the year in January. Despite the impact from the hurricane, we secured a 2.4 percentage point sequential improvement in EBITDA margin, reflecting recovery from the supply chain disruptions and maintenance costs of the second quarter. On the cost side, energy remains an important headwind. While import costs rose, we are seeing signs of cost stabilization as shipping rates decline. We expect the residential sector to become a headwind to growth starting next year, but we believe nearshoring, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will act as a catalyst for future demand. We are seeing positive signs from the Jobs Act that money is being deployed.
We are in the preliminary stages of this investment cycle, and we are excited by the multiyear impact on our business. Despite the macro challenges, EMEA continued to show remarkable resiliency, with sales growing double-digit while EBITDA rose high single-digit. Topline growth was driven by double-digit price increases across all products. Cement volumes declined 3%, reflecting a drop in the Philippines and some weakness in private sector demand in Europe, which we would attribute to the economic slowdown. We now expect 2022 volumes across our products in Europe to show a flat to low single-digit decline. We experienced sequential price growth in the region, reflecting the successful implementation of summer increases. Europe in particular showed strong cement price traction, with a 5% sequential increase and growing 30% year-over-year.
Despite the pricing efforts, however, costs, particularly fuels and electricity, continued to escalate, as evidenced by the decline in EBITDA margin. We are in the process of executing additional pricing increases, which will roll out over the next three months. In the face of significant energy volatility, our European business continues to exhibit strength due to its consolidated vertical footprint, diversified businesses, and leadership in decarbonization. Year-to-date, EBITDA has grown 7% in Europe. In the quarter, our European operations continued to lead the way in carbon action, achieving for the first time a more than 40% reduction in carbon emissions. The region is well on its way to complying with the EU emissions reduction target of at least a 55% reduction by 2030. In the Philippines, cement volumes declined double digits as the country transitions to a new government and macro challenges impact demand.
Sequential prices increased 4%, the sixth consecutive quarter of improvement. For more information, please see our CEMEX Holdings Philippines quarterly earnings, which will be available this evening. Our operations in Egypt and Israel continued to show strong top-line and EBITDA growth. Net sales in our South and Central American and the Caribbean region grew 2%, driven by a strong cement price contribution. Cement volumes declined 12%, while ready-mix volumes grew 8%. The cement volume decline reflects bag cement rebalancing as well as operational and weather issues in the Dominican Republic, now our largest market in the region. The strength in ready-mix volumes is evidence of the recovery in formal demand as bag cement reverts to pre-pandemic participation levels. The decline in EBITDA and EBITDA margin largely resulted from higher energy costs, lower cement volume, as well as geographic and product mix.
In Colombia, while our pricing strategy has led to a 12% growth in local currency pricing, it has come at the cost of market share, with volumes declining 5% in a market showing mid-single-digit volume growth. Construction activity in Colombia is largely supported by the rollout of infrastructure projects in formal housing. In the Dominican Republic, with our production largely sold out and very low inventory level, cement volumes declined double-digit due to the stoppage of the cement kiln in the quarter, as well as the impact of Hurricane Fiona. We estimate that industry cement volumes remained flat during the quarter, supported by tourism, formal housing, nearshoring activity, and large infrastructure projects. With high shipping costs in a largely sold-out region, our logistics network, leveraging our operations in Panama, coupled with our cement capacity additions, should be an important competitive advantage.
I invite you to review CLH's quarterly results, which were also published today. Now I will pass the call to Maher to review our financial developments. Maher?
Thank you, Lucy, and good day to everyone. As Fernando mentioned, we are pleased with our strong pricing traction in all of our core businesses throughout the year. We continue to manage our pricing strategy to recover the margin loss to input cost inflation. We had a positive free cash flow after maintenance CapEx in the third quarter, but lower than last year due to higher investment in working capital and maintenance CapEx. The higher investment in working capital year-to-date is primarily driven by healthy top-line growth as well as the inflation effect in our inventories, in addition to the inventory buildup necessary to address continued supply chain tightness. We expect to partially reverse the investment in working capital during the remainder of the year.
The increase in maintenance CapEx relates primarily to the delayed delivery of mobile equipment and spare parts last year, which pushed our maintenance calendar into this year. During the quarter, we generated net income of $494 million versus a loss of $376 million in last year's third quarter. This increase was driven primarily by asset impairments in the prior year, lower financial expense, a gain from liability management activities, and the sale of Costa Rica and El Salvador. Return on capital employed for the last twelve months stood at 12.7%, excluding goodwill, well above our cost of capital. As regards to our balance sheet, we're pleased with the evolution of our debt, with a reduction during the quarter of our total debt of $540 million and consolidated net debt of $454 million.
As we did earlier in the year, during the quarter, we repurchased $654 million of our bonds at very attractive discounts, contributing to a reduction in debt of $91 million. Year-to-date, we have purchased $1.2 billion of our bonds. We partially funded these bond purchases through the closing of EUR 500 million sustainability-linked loan with similar terms and conditions as our current bank credit agreement. Even after the liability management exercise, we remain with limited exposure to rising interest rates, with approximately 74% of our debt at fixed rates. Our floating rate debt is mainly exposed to euro rates, which, as you know, are substantially lower than U.S. dollar rates. Our risk management strategy focuses on mitigating FX risks associated with our operations in non-U.S. dollar currencies, as well as fluctuations in interest rates and energy commodities.
Given the depreciation in many of the currencies in which we operate and the sharp rise in interest rates and energy during this year, these strategies have had a positive offsetting effect of approximately $360 million. This includes gains in our FX interest rates and energy hedging strategies, as well as debt reduction from FX translation effects from our non-U.S. dollar debt. These gains have had a positive effect in leverage and partially in EBITDA. Net-net, as a consequence of all of the above, our leverage ratio stood at 2.8 times, down from the prior quarter. We expect our leverage ratio to decline in the fourth quarter as we generate free cash flow and pay down more debt. We will continue with our strategies that bolster our capital structure and remain focused on achieving investment grade in the short term.
As we have said in prior calls, we have a bias towards debt reduction and further strengthening of our balance sheet, particularly during these volatile and uncertain times. Now back to you, Fernando.
Our progress in regaining margins has been delayed due to persistent inflationary headwinds. Therefore, we are adjusting our EBITDA guidance to better reflect the current cost reality as well as FX volatility. We now expect 2022 EBITDA to be around $2.7 billion. As always, our guidance is based on like-for-like assets as well as the foreign exchange at the time of guidance. With higher than expected fuel and electricity costs, we expect energy cost per ton of cement produced to increase around 40%. Investment in working capital is expected to be around $250 million, $50 million more than our previous guidance. We now expect maintenance CapEx to increase by $50 million to $850 million, with anticipated total CapEx of $1.35 billion. Now back to you, Lucy.
Before we go into our Q&A session, I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are based on our current knowledge of the markets in which we operate and could change in the future due to a variety of factors beyond our control. In addition, unless the context indicates otherwise, all references to pricing initiatives, price increases or decreases refer to prices for our products. Now we will be happy to take your questions. In the interest of time and to give other people an opportunity to participate, we kindly ask that you limit yourself to one question. If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to withdraw your question, press star followed by two. Press star one to begin.
The first question comes from Carlos Peyrelongue from Bank of America. Carlos?
Thank you, Lucy. Thank you, Fernando, Maher, for the call. My question is related to the U.S. Can you provide some color for next year regarding volumes? The Portland Cement Association is seeing housing volumes declining double digits next year. As you mentioned, infrastructure spending is helping to compensate. If you could provide some color as to the expectation of both of these forces and if you think infrastructure can compensate the expected drop or at least partially compensate the expected drop in housing? Thank you.
Fernando, would you like me to take that, please?
Yeah, go ahead, Maher.
Hi. Hi, Carlos. How are you doing? Sorry, is there somebody on the call or somebody else here?
No.
Yeah. Very quickly, Carlos. I mean, the market that we have seen softening in the U.S. is residential. Really, we've only seen that softening in some of our markets. One of the areas, for instance, you know, selectively has been the Bay Area in San Francisco. I mean, first I would like to say that for us, demand for the housing market is probably around 30%-35%. That's you know, that's the expectation in terms of the volume. Of course, you know, we do expect some mild downturn. There are tightening credit lending conditions. However, I'd like to say that households are you know, stronger, jobs are better. There are low inventories for instance.
It's true that, you know, mortgage rates have gone up, but they're likely to normalize. Rents are also going up quite rapidly, which at some point in time will translate again into increased demand. So on the housing side, we're seeing a little bit of a slowdown. Then offsetting that, which is about two-thirds of our business, is infrastructure, which is about 50%. Then you have industrial and commercial, which is somewhere between 15%-20%. You know, in infrastructure, you know, we see actually quite a bit of a backlog right now. I mean, if you take a look at contract awards in our key states, they're up 11% on a trailing twelve months basis, and that's very healthy.
You know, frankly, with elections coming up in 2024, the pressure on the government is going to be very high to continue to disperse. There are other fiscal stimulus programs that are there. You know, there's the Inflation Reduction Act, there's the CHIPS and Science Act. There's a number of spending programs that are likely to translate into, you know, an acceleration in infrastructure going into 2023. Now, industrial and commercial is another area that we're beginning to see a very important uptick, not only in the U.S., but also an impact of that is happening in Mexico as well. That is a function, frankly, from a lot of the nearshoring or friend-shoring, let's say, that is taking place. You know, you've heard of the recent CHIPS and Science Act.
That's a $53 billion, you know, dollar funding program that is translating to a build out of chip manufacturing infrastructure in the U.S. You have the Inflation Reduction Act, which we mentioned, that's $370 billion. The only reason I'm throwing a lot of these numbers at you is that, yes, we do expect housing to moderate, but moderating under very healthy conditions, totally unlike the last time that we've seen a situation like this. On the other hand, we think that there are some countercyclical measures that are likely to kick in, you know, which are infrastructure, industrial, commercial. Now it's a bit too late. We're just in the budgeting process.
You know, I can't give you kind of a where we have in terms of guidance in terms of next year.
Sure.
On balance, I mean, we're expecting the situation to be, you know, probably neutral to sort of modestly weaker going into next year.
Perfect. Thank you, Maher. I appreciate it.
Maybe if I could just add, I think the real question in this is an issue of timing, and that is, you know, so far we really haven't seen the impact of residential anywhere except in Northern California, but we are, of course, expecting it to weaken. It's difficult to project how, you know, fast that happens, And at the same time, it's very difficult to project how quickly the contract awards numbers, which are extremely healthy for our four key states, not only for infrastructure, but also for industrial and commercial, how fast that ramps up. At any rate.
Yeah.
The next question.
Carlos, I think.
Yep, sorry.
All right, Carlos, one thing I wanted to mention also that is very important is that as you probably know, a big percentage of our sales in the U.S. right now are imports. To the extent we see, those imports are coming in at, you know, because of transportation costs, they're coming in at a very low margin, at the margin. We think if we see a moderation coming into 2023, the big relief valve is going to be through reduction in imports, which are not big contributors to EBITDA at the end of the day or EBITDA margins. That's another, I would say, risk mitigator to a possible, you know, slight turndown in the U.S. demand.
Understood.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you both.
Great. The next question comes from Vanessa Quiroga from Credit Suisse. Vanessa?
Yes. Hi. Thanks, Lucy, Maher, Fernando. Can you clarify on what led to the above average investment in inventories in the quarter, and if this is coming from a specific region or country? Maybe if it's possible to quantify the impact on Mexico margins from weather, diesel prices, and other logistics challenges. Thanks.
Fernando, do you wanna take the inventory?
Hi, Vanessa. Yeah, go ahead with the inventory. I will take the other one.
Yeah. Vanessa, if I could go very quickly, and I think, you know, it's important to kind of review the whole working capital thing, not just the inventory. You know, as you know, the working capital investment increased by around $431 million so far. Very important to stress that close to $285 million of that, $285 million of that is due to clients. The reason for that is very simple, because of higher sales. However, I would like to stress that if we take a look at days receivables in our business, those have been flat. Really the increase that we're seeing, the biggest chunk of increase in working capital is coming from clients, and it's totally as a reflection of higher sales.
There are no deterioration in credit terms for our portfolio. There are no changes in suppliers. The big issue, as you highlighted, is in inventories. The increase in inventories is about $170 million or six days of inventory. Now, three days of the six are essentially a build-out of product inventory. You have, you know, finished goods, you have goods in progress, you have goods in transit. That's about $70 million out of the 170. Then the next piece that is very important, which is accounting for the other half, it's essentially two days that are for materials and spare parts, and one day is for petcoke. Most of the petcoke increase is due to an increase in price.
40% is because we've actually increased inventories of petcoke as time passed by. Then there's some other items that are close to $78 million that are, you know, essentially because of special items that occurred last year that did not occur this year. On the inventories part, frankly, this is happening throughout our portfolio, I would say if I wanted to highlight one particular country in terms of petcoke would be Mexico, and that's because Mexico has the highest exposure to petcoke, and they've built out the highest inventory. In summary what's happening to working capital and inventories in particular.
Okay. If I
That's very clear, Maher.
Thank you.
If I can take your second question, Vanessa, regarding margin deterioration, particularly in Mexico. Let me start by saying that on the 6.4 percentage point decline, about 47% of that decline is explained either by timing on maintenance, meaning different timing of maintenance same quarter last year compared to this quarter. Some one-offs on product mix. For instance, as you saw, our volumes in Mexico in cement are dropping while our ready-mix volumes are increasing. That combination, it changes the mix of products with different margins, and that is impacting about 0.8 percentage points. Just this mix effect.
On higher maintenance, which is not necessarily the highest expense, but it is during the quarter that is impacting about 1.5 percentage points during the quarter. Then there were a few plant disruptions because of floods and the like impacting also 0.7 percentage points. You know when these disruptions happen, there are some additional logistics expenses to support the markets from other plants. The rest, the other 53% is basically what we've been commenting, is fuels and raw materials in cement and ready- mix. The pricing contribution of 10.8% was not enough, as we commented, to gain back margins. We have already recovered input cost inflation, but recovery margins is still work in progress.
Okay. No, that's helpful, Fernando. Anything related to issues on the railways and having to use ground transportation for products or volumes that were used to-
Yes.
Be transported via rail?
Those are the type of disruption. I used example of floods, but there were a couple of issues with railroads, one in Sonora in the export from Campana to the U.S. and the other one in the Istmo de Tehuantepec. Those were temporary. Both are solved. Yes, it did impact together with the floods and other type of disruptions.
Thank you, Vanessa.
Okay.
Three questions instead of one. Okay. Thank you.
Sorry.
The next question comes from the webcast from Francisco Chavez from BBVA. "How sustainable is your pricing strategy with increasing signs of weakness in cement volumes, particularly in Mexico, LAC, and Europe?"
Thank you. Well, what can I say? Since early this year, we've been saying that we are targeting a pricing strategy in order to recover our 2021 margins, and that's what we've been doing, and that's what we continue doing given that to achieve that target. It is challenging to continue executing this strategy, but I do believe it's doable. I think pressures are spread all over the industry. Although we don't have a certain outcome, we do believe that it's doable. Look at the example of Mexico this year. Look at volumes, look at market share, look at pricing. We will continue with this strategy. By the way, the strategy in 2022 has not finished.
We did increase prices for more than 40% of our volumes in October, depending on each market and conditions. We are moving from, in some cases, a low single-digit to a high single-digit in October to continue executing this strategy of recovering margins. Challenging but doable.
Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Gordon Lee from BTG Pactual. Gordon?
Yes. Hi, good morning. Thanks very much for the call. Just a very quick question on Europe. Thinking a little bit about the programs announced both by Germany and the U.K. to soften the impact of rising energy prices in the winter. I was wondering whether you have either a qualitative or quantitative comment on whether you think that might help costs and overall demand maybe as well as we move into the winter and into early next year. Thank you.
Hi, Gordon Lee. I'll try to take a stab at that in answering your question. I mean, number one, very important that in Europe, you know. You're specifically talking about electricity or you're talking about fuels as well? Just electricity?
Electricity.
I mean, just to put into perspective to everybody, the European business accounts for roughly 15% of our consolidated EBITDA. Very importantly, close to 70% of electricity needs are actually fixed for this year, and close to 30% of that is fixed for next year. These contracts range between 1- 1.5 years on average. In the case of Europe, in terms of cement, the electricity represents about close to 20% of total costs. Within our footprint, it's very important, the area that is probably most exposed to what's happening in Europe in terms of Russian gas and the impact on the cost of electricity is Germany.
In the case of Germany, actually, we you know, we don't use gas as fuel, and most of our electricity prices are fixed. Close to 90% of our electricity prices are actually fixed, and they come from a waste to electricity system that is owned by a third party that is fed with RDF. That contract is going to be renewed for another 15 years, and we you know, we should not have any problems in terms of the escalation in the price of electricity in Germany. Spain is probably the most floating rate exposure that we have. There, you know, the capping of the natural gas that started in June and it doesn't expire until the middle of next year, essentially.
In the U.K., you know, I think we will be favorably impacted, frankly, by what's happening there. Bottom line, at the end of the day, despite the volatility that has been taking place in the spot market, you know, number one, we do think that the markets will settle down to something more stable as a consequence of these dampening programs that are being put into place. Our exposure to electricity there is not as material as some of the other industrial players that may be out there. In particular, like I said, in Germany, it's really de minimis from our perspective.
Perfect. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Does that answer your question, Gordon?
That it does. Thank you very much.
Great. Thank you very much, Gordon.
Great. The next question comes from Anne Milne from Bank of America. Anne?
Good morning, Lucy, Maher, Fernando. Thanks very much for holding today.
Good morning.
I have a question or questions related just to the debt structure. I like that you guys have been reducing debt. I think that's great. Maher, you said that there would be likely further reduction maybe in the fourth quarter, obviously going forward. I just have a couple questions, but it's all related to debt. Don't get upset, Lucy. Will this likely take the form of buybacks at a discount since many of your bonds are trading at discounts right now? Also, I see that you shifted a little bit from fixed to floating rate in the quarter. I think you mentioned, Maher, that the floating rate has linked to the euro, so would that offset any higher interest rates you might have as a result of that?
Just how much of the potential is in your debt total? Is it $500 million of the $1 billion you have outstanding? That's it. Just a little bit of information on debt. Thank you.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much for the question. I mean, obviously, as you know, we've been very, very active this whole year, right? I mean, we bought close to $1.2 billion, and we generated about $160 million of kind of net present value for our shareholders. Whether we'll continue or not, I mean, I have to say, I mean, the prices out there are very attractive. Unfortunately, our bonds are not very liquid. And, you know, the last tender offer that we did, which I was expecting to get a big, you know, oversubscription, we barely just got under the line for the amount. Which meant that, you know, we priced it properly and, there's not a loose bond out there.
Now, of course, we're always on the lookout, right? We do have a fairly sizable committed revolving credit facility that is attractively priced that we can from time to time take advantage of the market discounts. For the time being, I think we're kind of lying low because we're also not interested in shortening duration that much and clustering a lot of the maturities kind of in the middle of our debt stack. But you know, we're always on the lookout. Now, in terms of fixed versus floating, you know, as you know, when rates were very low, we went into kind of overweight fixed. As rates started rising, we started switching slowly from fixed to floating.
We think our natural kind of mix is somewhere between 70/30, 75/25. We're awfully close to that or we'll be there by the end of the year. Now, most important is the point that you mentioned is that the portion that is floating is currently 56%, based on EURIBOR. You know, EURIBOR is about 300 basis points lower than dollar LIBOR. You know, we expect that differential maybe not to stay 100% where it is, but we certainly expect to have a healthy differential between you know that and dollars. We feel reasonably comfortable with that.
Of course, you know, to the extent that euros start appreciating, you know, we will trim back some of our cross-currency swap positions that we have on the books to reduce that. In terms of the perpetual, I mean, that's trading at a very interesting and very attractive rate. We'll continue to look at that.
Oh, okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Great. The next question comes from the webcast from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. Would you expect some fuel deflation in 2023 given the recent decline in petcoke and coal prices?
Let me take that one. Well, we've seen a positive trend already in production of certain type of fuels. Now, you know, going deeper into the reasons, we do believe that this trend might continue. But still, in a very volatile manner, particularly when referring to petcoke. There are some dynamics that, you know, can change pricing trends. But in general terms, we've seen positive adjustments since the peak after the war. And to some extent, we should continue seeing those trends. Now let me make one clarification. When you think of the impact on our production cost, we cannot directly relate the reduction of these type of fuels to our input cost inflation. There is an inventory effect.
Our fuel mix has been changing. You know that we are increasing materially our alternative fuels and reducing other primary fuels, for instance, petcoke, primarily. There could be a delay in different regions. There could be a delay on prices or the impact in our cost for about 4-5 months. When taking that into consideration, please don't forget that there is sort of a delay because of inventories.
Thank you, Fernando. The next question comes from Alberto Valerio from UBS. Alberto?
Thanks, Lucy. Hi, Fernando. Hi, Maher. Just a question looking forward for next quarter. Hello, can you guys hear me? Hello?
Yes.
Yes, Alberto. You're a little weak. Yeah.
Okay. I try to speak a little bit louder. Thanks for taking my question. My question is about next quarter. The results that we need to have next quarter to meet the guidance. If you take quarter-over-quarter, adjusted by seasonality, the fourth quarter is not a stronger one. I would like to know, what do we have to improve, and what are you seeing as improvement for next quarter? You mentioned the hurricane that impacted $11 billion. But for next quarter, we need a little bit more to improve to meet the guidance. If you could provide any color, what are you guys foreseeing that is better in the fourth quarter than the third quarter to meet the guidance? Thank you.
Yeah. Just a second.
Do you want me to start off, Maher?
No, I got it. I was just trying to recall. Alberto. Alberto, first, I think you know in order to answer your question, I think it's important to kind of talk where we're starting from in terms of guidance, right? I mean, we had a guidance that was around 2.9, and there's some adjustments that needed to take place to take us to kind of where we're thinking right now, right? As you know, we divested our interest from our digital accelerator, Neoris. That accounted for about $26 million of EBITDA. You need to adjust kind of the guidance to that. You know, typically, as you know, when we give guidance, we give guidance with FX as of the time that we do it.
If you give effect to the change in FX from the last time we gave guidance until now, bottom line, you start with a basis of guidance of around 2,840. Okay? We changed guidance on energy. We talked about Hurricane Ian. We talked about the impact of Hurricane Fiona. Hurricane Ian had an impact of about $20 million worth of EBITDA. The energy guidance would have about $60 for the full year. Hurricane Fiona had a few $ million, and then there's a couple of other things that would adjust. We ended up with $2.7 billion for the year. Now, this is not a guidance. You're doing the numbers.
To reach the full year guidance, that would imply an EBITDA for the fourth quarter of about $650, which is around 1% higher year-over-year. Last year's fourth quarter was $644 million. Now, you know, depending on what happens, we'll see, but essentially, you know, we do think that pricing is gonna continue to do fairly well. We do think that, you know, demand is likely to be also doing fairly well. And, you know, so you guys, I mean, you can do kind of your own sensitivity in terms of what's likely to be needed to get that. But we think it's pretty reasonable assumption to get to that fourth quarter to get us to the full year.
Maybe if I would add that maintenance.
V ery clear.
I would just add that maintenance outages also, we're expecting them to be fairly stable on a year-over-year basis and down on a sequential basis. So.
Yeah.
The next question comes from Ben Theurer from Barclays. Ben? We might have lost him. Ben, are you there?
Okay, I think this will be the last question, but Bruno Amorim from Goldman Sachs. Bruno, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. You know, is it possible to share with us the percentage of your total cost that comes from, you know, transportation contracts with third parties? I'm just trying to understand to what extent you are indirectly exposed to energy costs. You know, your service provider, they probably adjust freight prices according to variations in diesel and bunker prices and so on. So, you know, anything you can share in that sense would be helpful. Also, if you could comment on how often they adjust, you know, the prices that they charge from you. Is it monthly, you know, annual or whatever the periodicity is. Second, if you could make a quick comment on how effective this price increase announced on October 10th in Mexico has been so far. Thank you so much.
Fernando, do you wanna comment on the pricing, and then I'll deal with the
Well, what I can comment, again, I commented that slightly more than 40% of our cement volumes, you know, we are executing an additional price increase in October. Early to say the dynamics are, you know, we're going through the dynamics already for about three weeks. Given that the increases have been a wide range from low single digit to high, you know, we're positive on the trend, but, you know, early to say, you know, how much we are going to realize from this effort.
If I can address the distribution question on diesel, distribution including in our ready-mix business is about 21%, both COGS and SG&A. It's roughly the diesel component represents about 3%, so that's about $250 million for the full year, and that's for direct diesel. We guesstimate that the amount of diesel or transportation that is done by third parties is about the same amount. Now we fairly actively hedge our diesel exposure. This year we had close to 75% or so of the position hedged. Looking into next year, we're already close to around 75% as well.
Now we are also looking at this, you know, actively or more actively hedging third party exposure as well. There is definitely a correlation in terms of transportation costs by third parties to us, and you know, diesel expense, diesel cost in the market. I don't know if that answers your question.
Yeah. No, Maher, thank you so much.
Yeah. No problem.
This was very helpful. Just to clarify, this exposure to diesel through third parties, is it included in that breakdown of energy costs that you usually provide to the market or not?
No, it's not. I mean, that's
Okay. Okay.
The guidance that we give is on the directly managed item. That portion would come through the transportation cost element. I'd like to say, you know, the hedging strategy this year has been, you know, quite successful and contributed, you know, importantly, to the bottom line because that hedge goes through the EBITDA essentially and distributed to the businesses.
Thank you very much.
Maybe if I could just add, Bruno, what we guide to is the energy for the production of cement, which includes fuel and electricity for cement only, and transportation is separate, so. Okay?
Yeah. Thank you.
We appreciate you joining us. Okay, thank you. We appreciate you joining us today for our third quarter webcast and conference call. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact investor relations, and we look forward to seeing you again at our CEMEX Day webcast on November 16th. Many thanks.
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.