Morning, this is the conference operator, welcome, and thank you for joining the Saint-Gobain Conference Call. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions by pressing star one at any time. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Benoit Bazin, Chairman and CEO, and Mrs. Maud Thuaudet, CFO of Saint-Gobain. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm sure that you have seen our announcements yesterday evening on the deepening and strengthening of our local organization model. I am here today with Maud, our CFO, to give you additional color and perspective. First, let's start with the key principles and objectives. What does not change, of course, is that Maud and myself, we will be driving the group results, strategy, and value-creative capital allocation to make Saint-Gobain move forward and deliver its best performance. What does change is that we take an additional step in the group decentralization. Starting July 1, our country CEOs are in charge of all Saint-Gobain sales in their countries, including construction chemicals and industrial solutions, which were previously managed within the High-Performance Solutions segment. Country CEOs have a responsibility for the full Saint-Gobain P&L in their country.
They will keep the same incentive structure, which has been critical to their P&L ownership and our success over the last years, operating results in mass or margin, cash, and return on capital employed. I'm creating a Chief Operating Officer role by my side with Patrick Dupin, who enjoys a deep and broad understanding of our group that will allow him to further optimize our operations. Patrick will dedicate 100% of his time to manage our group expertise platforms in order to leverage scale on technology and initial KPIs, IT and digital purchasing. He will also leverage expertise platforms by product lines that we have put together: gypsum, construction chemicals, insulation, glass, ADFORS reinforcement solutions, and industrial solutions. These platforms will guide and support our country CEOs for the best execution in terms of product offering, innovation, and marketing.
The objective is to accelerate growth, accelerate growth around country CEOs to grow further their solutions, all the cross-selling initiatives, specified sales, and key accounts, therefore differentiating further Saint-Gobain from our competition, increase our share of wallet, and enhance our pricing power. The second point I want to address with you this morning is why now? Why do we optimize our organization now? Looking back, we have successfully completed our successive plans: transform and grow, and grow and impact. Our local organization has been key to our success over the last six years. The current organization has now reached maturity, and we can build further on its strengths. We have applied our country-based model since 2019 to 80% of the group perimeter. Now, it will be 100%. We are now taking the next step in the group transformation, moving to a completely local organization.
In today's fragmented geopolitical environment, more regionalization is required for our customers. This extended local model will be a key advantage. We already have a local-for-local business model with local value chains for our initial footprint, for our logistics and purchasing, our brands, our sales and customers, as well as our regional innovation centers. With this announcement, we go a step further to complete this regionalization. Also, on October 6th, as you know, we will present to you our next strategic plan. Like I did, if you remember, with a new executive committee in June 2021, right before the launch of our plan, Grow and Impact, I want us to be ready as a renewed team for this new chapter of Saint-Gobain.
This is why I have decided to optimize our organization and reshape also our executive committee effective July 1, so that this renewed team will take full ownership in the preparation and, after that, the execution of our upcoming strategic plan, committing itself to maximize profitable growth and returns. Beside Patrick Dupin as COO, I also promote a new generation of leaders to the executive committee, several of them being in their 40s who have demonstrated solid performance and successes. You know already Maud. In terms of regional management, all of them keeping their reporting line to me. David Mollo becomes CEO of Northern Europe, Thierry Bernard, CEO of Southern Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and Camille Arissa, CEO of Latin America, replacing Thierry Fournier and Javier Gimeno, who are leaving the group after having successfully transformed their respective regions.
David, Thierry Bernard, and Camille have been crucial to the success of the group in recent years. David as the CEO of HPS, Thierry Bernard in building up Saint-Gobain leadership in construction chemicals since joining as CEO in 2021, and Camille having played a key role in transform and grow, and then having taken on significant operational roles in both France and Brazil, notably Brazil in the last three years. Of course, completing the regional management team, we have Mark Rayfield heading up North America and Sreedhar, who you know very well now, heading up the Asia-Pacific region. All this will be implemented smoothly and quickly between now and July 1st. Our country CEOs are already in place. They expand their role and their reach, and they will go, if I may say so, from five cylinders to six cylinders.
With this optimization of the organization towards growth and with a renewed executive committee, I can tell you that I'm very excited and very confident to take together the next step with Saint-Gobain. I now hand over to Maud, who will give you some details on reporting.
Thank you, Benoit. Let me talk you through these changes and how they will actually translate into our reporting. Under the new organization, we will report under four regions, which are namely Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, and Africa, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. In addition to these four reporting regions, we will also, on a quarterly basis, report sales for our industrial solutions, which are the part of high-performance solutions exposed to industrial markets. As you know, they represent around 13% of our total group sales. Then, once a year, we will provide you with a split of group sales by main product type. As you know, this is not the way the group is managed, and there is no P&L owner for this split, so there will be not either under the new organization, which further deepens our local approach.
However, Benoit and I, we are completely understanding that it is helpful for you to have a snapshot of this thought on a regular basis, and particularly for those of you who are newly following Saint-Gobain. We will take the opportunity of the upcoming CMD to give you also information and color on each region's breadth of offering, end markets, and dynamic. For the transition period, we will provide you 2024 and 2025 reporting under both the current organization and the new organization. For 2025, for H1, we will publish under the current organization and give you the equivalent under the new organization. For H2 2025, including Q3 and full year 2025, we will publish under the new organization, as I said, under the four regions, and give you the equivalent under the current organization.
For 2024, we will provide the numbers under the new organization in July when we publish our first half results. Thank you for listening, Benoit and I. I think we're now ready for taking any questions that you might have.
Thank you. This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. First question is from Ebrahim Homani, CSE Solutions. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. I have one. If I may, it's about the margin you plan given this new organization. We know that with the Transform and Grow plan and Grow and Impact, you manage to increase the margin in a very usual manner. What do you plan with this new organization, especially in terms of construction chemicals cross-selling?
Thank you for the question. Again, the main topic is that we will highlight and give you perspective and plan on all the group parameters, financials, and, of course, the strategy at the upcoming Capital Markets Day. As you know, we are ambitious, so we want to make sure that we deliver the best performance for Saint-Gobain, and this is the purpose of this reorg and also the renewed team with a lot of fresh sets of eyes. The main goal, as I mentioned on the call, is to further accelerate growth. That is clearly the goal of this reorganization to make sure that our country CEOs, they have the full offer of Saint-Gobain within their hands, that they have the ability to run fast on the ground in terms of execution. The main goal is truly to accelerate growth.
Coming to construction chemicals, you know that we will put everything under one hand by country. Clearly, across all the technology that we now have under construction chemicals, it will be very powerful to further develop construction chemicals around the world and country by country, having truly one management of construction chemicals country by country, keeping, of course, the focus on all the different product lines. The leader on the expertise platform on construction chemicals will be Frédéric Guillebaud, who is the number two under Thierry Bernard today, and Thierry Bernard will be at the Executive Committee. It is a very strong sign of recognition of the success that we had in construction chemicals, and particularly the success of Thierry Bernard over the last four years since joining the Executive Committee.
The executive committee, of course, Thierry will continue to be the sponsor in terms of construction chemical further growth. We will also highlight to you at the Capital Markets Day our ambition on this segment of construction chemicals for the next years.
Thank you very much.
Next question is from Arnaud Lehmann , Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, can you come back on the fundamental of making this change? Because we understood that many of the HPS customers were global companies. I'm thinking, for example, in the automotive or the building material sector, and there was therefore a commercial argument to keep it separate from the region. What has changed? I guess you mentioned it a little bit in the press release, but why does it make sense now to go for this merger of HPS into the region? Secondly, for the country CEOs who are going to have more responsibilities, are you setting up cross-selling targets? Is it going to be included in their KPIs going forward more than it was before? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Arnaud. Some of those fundamental points within industrial solutions of some global key accounts do not change. We will keep that in terms of some global innovation and some global key account management. What has changed over the years is that, and it is already the case, the day-to-day execution on all the businesses of Saint-Gobain, they are by country on the ground. We want to maximize this efficiency on the ground across the board, across the full perimeter of the group. It is already the case. If I take some end market like mobility, the dynamic is quite different region by region. It is true also on the innovation side. The innovation you get in China, you have to be in China, and we have R&D centers in China, in India, in Brazil, in North America, and it is more and more regional.
We keep the benefits of those global key accounts. It will be actually managed by these expertise platforms of the different segments, be it construction chemicals or the global key accounts of the large payment players of some mobility or some different key accounts. We have some of that also in the building materials. When you take global key accounts on hotel specification, etc., that is something we are pushing within Saint-Gobain. Again, we will highlight that at the capital market day. Clearly, what I have said is that we see more and more local execution, more and more different regional dynamics. Of course, the geopolitics and the macroeconomic environment takes a role into that. The second parameter is that in order to further grow the construction chemicals segment, it truly makes sense to have one hand country by country to do that.
You know that it was very important at the start of the Chryso acquisition in 2021 to keep it in one piece. After that, to have the brain, I would say, and the backbone of Chryso to integrate GCP. Now, with FOSROC, we have all the different technologies, the different applications, and it is time together with Weber to put that country by country, which I started to do end of last year for the FOSROC perimeter, and we do it across the board for the subgroup. We keep some of those specificities in terms of global customers, also for the construction market, some global innovation, but truly the execution on the ground, and therefore the power, the speed, the ownership on the execution is on the ground, and I want that to be optimized.
The second question that you have is truly the role of the CEO to make sure that day in, day out, Patrick will optimize in every single corner of Saint-Gobain, the execution, the monitoring of not only our performance in terms of industrial performance, purchasing, digital analytics, all the group leverage, but also on sales, key account, cross-selling solutions. Yes, indeed, the role of CEO is to guide, support, and also challenge and monitor the local execution on sales, not only on industrial KPIs, digital purchasing, etc. That will be an additional role of Patrick, and he will dedicate 100% of his time towards that. Indeed, country CEOs will be monitored, helped, supported, and challenged to further accelerate growth.
If I may, Benoit, country CEOs' incentives are not changing. They keep their same incentives based on their own P&L. What is changing is the fact that they have an extended scope, and of course, profitable growth will be easier to achieve thanks to this global offer of Saint-Gobain that they have in their hands to grow in that country.
We will also come back to you at the Capital Markets Day on how we will enrich, deepen, and enlarge the solutions of Saint-Gobain. I highlighted a bit of that during the AGM yesterday on the residential segments, on non-residential segments, on infrastructure. Putting all the strengths and the breadth of Saint-Gobain, which is second to none across all the different markets, on the power of our solutions.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
For any further questions, please press star one on your telephone.
I do not think there are more questions, so thank you very much for joining the call. Again, I am very excited for this new chapter. As you know, we do not sit and relax. AGM was yesterday. I am happy to have been re-elected, and we are running full cylinders day one so that we can prepare what we will present to you at the upcoming capital market day and make sure that we have the team ready, renewed with several managers in their mid-40s so that we have a lot of power, a lot of energy, a lot of additional thoughts to put Saint-Gobain at its best performance for the next chapter. Thank you very much, and we will see each other when we publish our first half results on July 31st. Thank you. Have a very good day.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.