Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I hope that you have received our press release and that you have been able to go through the main highlights. Let me sum up our strong third quarter sales performance. We saw second-half acceleration in organic growth in the third quarter, up 13.3% compared to 2019. A faster rate of growth than the 11.9% we had seen in the first half. Good trends continued in renovation in Europe, construction in the Americas and Asia Pacific as well. Importantly, we were successful in increasing prices further, with an acceleration to 8.7% in Q3 versus 2020. We took an active decision to prioritize pricing over volumes given the very inflationary context, but still achieved volumes up 3.6% versus 2019.
Once again, we are confirming our full year guidance. 2021 will be a new record high for Saint-Gobain in terms of results. I am very confident about the strength that the group is demonstrating and all the actions that we are taking to deliver great results in a volatile environment. We have also continued to make very good progress on our strategic initiatives, including the optimization of our profitable growth business profile. Since the beginning of the year, we have closed divestments with EUR 1.85 billion of sales and signed or closed acquisitions representing EUR 850 million of sales. The last ones being the closing of Chryso ahead of plan on October 1st, and the interesting acquisition of IMPAC, a leader in construction chemicals in Mexico that we announced a week ago.
Since our Capital Markets Day on October 6th, we have launched our Grow & Impact plan throughout all the Group. I can tell you our teams are truly excited about it, and they are fully aligned and committed to make it a collective success. Personally, I was in the U.S. for a week, right after our Capital Markets Day, and the energy there was extremely strong. I now hand over to Sreedhar, who will give you additional information about our third quarter sales.
Thank you, Benoit, and hello, everybody. Let me give you more details about our Q3 sales. We saw a sequential improvement in organic sales in Q3, up 13.3% versus 2019. Compared to 2020, Q3 organic sales were up 9.4%. The currency impact turned positive in Q3, up 1.1%, mainly because of a less negative impact from the U.S. dollar. We saw a negative structure impact of 3.8% in Q3, reflecting, in particular, the divestments in distribution, Lapeyre, the Netherlands, Spain, and Graham in the U.K., as well as PAM in China. Now coming back to the like-for-like growth. Pricing accelerated to 8.7% in Q3 as we prioritize price over volume.
As we mentioned at the Capital Markets Day, given the current context of accelerating inflation in energy costs, we now expect energy and raw material inflation of around EUR 1.5 billion for the full year, up from the EUR 1.1 billion that we estimated back in July. This means around EUR 1.1 billion of inflation for H2 alone. We are confident that we will offset the inflation for the year as a whole, even though we will have a negative spread in H2. We needed to achieve pricing of 8% in H2 in our manufacturing businesses to compensate this inflation on a full year basis. For Q3 alone, we had 8.1% price increase in our manufacturing businesses, and we continue to push for additional price increases across the board.
Coming to volumes were up by 0.7% in Q3 versus Q3 2020 and 3.6% versus 2019, with a slight negative working day impact of 0.5% overall. Negative 1.5%-2% in Southern Europe for both periods. In Q4, the working day impact will also be a small negative of around 1% compared to 2020. As anticipated, there was a high comparison basis in Q3 2020 in Southern Europe in particular, as craftsmen had taken very few holidays during the summer period in Europe due to coronavirus pandemic. Note that we will have the same technical impact in December for both Northern and Southern Europe. Underlying trends continue to be good in renovation in Europe and construction in the Americas and Asia Pacific in particular. I will now give some details by segment.
High Performance Solutions saw continued sequential improvement apart from the European automotive market, which worsened. Like-for-like sales were up 7% versus 2020. Mobility saw sales decrease because of the deterioration of the European market, whereas the sales to the Americas and China continued to grow. Supply chain tensions linked to semiconductor shortages are weighing heavily on car manufacturer production capacity and thus the demand of our automotive solutions. Like-for-like mobility sales were down 7% versus Q3 2019, as against a market which was down by 20%. We continue to clearly outperform thanks to our exposures to electric vehicles. Industry continued to improve sequentially, even with activities related to our customers investment cycles remaining below 2019 levels. The construction industry business continued to enjoy good growth driven by external thermal insulation demand for the sustainable construction.
Now turning to Northern Europe, where we saw a strong pricing acceleration driving the 10.7% organic growth achieved in Q3 versus 2020. Volumes grew slightly. Nordic countries continue to see solid growth, especially in light construction solutions for the renovation market. In Germany, growth slowed down due to spillover impact of lower sales of automotive glass. However, the country's light and sustainable construction markets such as modular construction remain dynamic. In the U.K., growth accelerated due to pricing in the context of our distribution network optimization. Note that the U.K. market has been also impacted by some supply chain disruption, like shortages of truck drivers. Eastern Europe continues to have a good momentum both in volumes and prices.
Now coming to Southern Europe where organic sales grew 4.7% on a high comparison basis as craftsmen did not take their usual holiday in summer 2020 due to the pandemic. This is as we anticipated and had told you at the end of July. Over a two-year period, the region was up 12.7% in Q3, led by pricing and dynamic growth in solutions for light and sustainable construction. France continued to show good trends driven by renovation and energy efficient solutions, benefiting from the stimulus plan for households, MaPrimeRénov', and our strong presence across the value chain more widely. Spain saw a good growth in light construction solutions, and Italy continued to benefit from its support program for energy efficient renovation.
Turning now to the Americas, we saw strong sales growth in Q3, up 14.9% versus 2020 and 28.2% versus 2019, driven by pricing as the region had a very high comparison basis for volumes post-COVID catch-up. North America grew 13.6% versus 2020 and 18.3% versus 2019, with an acceleration in pricing and good trends in the light construction solutions aided by the successful integration of Continental Building Products. We were able to minimize the negative impact of the significant supply chain tensions, especially for raw materials. As a result, Q3 production was only slightly disrupted. Latin America continued to see strong growth driven by both prices and volumes, with organic sales up 18% in Q3 versus 2020 and up 50% versus 2019.
In particular, Brazil and Mexico continued to show a very strong growth momentum over the quarter. Lastly, our Asia-Pacific region saw strong sales growth with like-for-like up 20% versus 2020, driven by strong pricing and double-digit volumes. China continued to see dynamic growth thanks to a good underlying market. In India, the recovery accelerated even versus 2019 due to strong volumes and pricing actions. However, sales were down in Southeast Asia due to coronavirus restrictions. To sum up, overall a very good quarter. Acceleration in pricing, reflecting our continued strong discipline on track to offset the full year inflation. Trends remain strong in our key markets. With the launch of Grow & Impact, as Benoit said, we are confident our underlying markets will continue to grow and that we will continue to outperform the market. Now I hand over the floor to Benoit for concluding remarks.
Thank you, Sreedhar. I would like to make a few comments about the outlook and our strategic priorities for the rest of the year. For the fourth quarter, we expect the following trends for our segments. High Performance Solutions, supportive industrial markets, excluding the contraction of the automotive market, particularly in Europe. Businesses related to customer investment should rally steadily, although are expected to remain down versus the good level recorded in 2018. In Europe, continued sales outperformance on the dynamic renovation market, albeit with a high comparison basis for December, as Sreedhar highlighted, with trade professionals having worked over the 2020 Christmas and New Year period. In the Americas, market growth, particularly residential construction in both North and Latin America.
Asia Pacific, here also market growth with continued good momentum in China and India, but with the situation still affected by health-related disruptions in Southeast Asia. Our strategic priorities are, first, accelerate growth as a leader in light and sustainable construction, offering decarbonization solutions for construction and industry. As we set out at the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago, we'll be able to outperform our attractive underlying markets thanks to our performance-driven local operating model and comprehensive set of solutions to help our customers on both sustainability and performance. Secondly, continue our initiatives focused on profitability and performance, maintaining robust margins and strong free cash flow generation.
To conclude, as you have seen in the press release, for the full year 2021, the group is targeting a very strong increase in operating income to a new all-time high with like-for-like operating income in second half 2021, close to the previous record of second half 2020. Now, Sreedhar and I are happy to answer any question you may have.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, you have to press zero one on your telephone keypad. It's O one. On your telephone keypad, we have a first question from Jean-Christophe Lefèvre-Moulenq from CIC . Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Do you hear me?
Very well.
Excellent.
Please.
Good evening, everyone. I have a couple of questions with Ibrahim, my colleague, who's a junior analyst. First, a general question on the acceptance of the price hikes. Will it continue? We have a very strong price hike over the third quarter. Will it continue? Secondly, could we have the traditional answer to my traditional question on the price of 4 mm? And last question regarding the distribution in Europe. We have a strong organic growth both in the third quarter and nine months cumulative. Could we have the price effect both for nine months and third quarter? Many thanks.
Thank you for your question. General acceptance is yes. You know, our number one priority has been throughout the year and has continued to be in the third quarter to first service well our customers. Happy to say that we didn't shut down any customer around the world. Service to customers has been paramount for all our businesses everywhere in all country. We have made sure also on those price increases, because indeed, you know, we have had the price increase every quarter, every second month in the U.S., every quarter in Europe, which has been a bit unusual in some countries. We have made sure that we could anticipate, one, our customers upfront, and therefore the acceptance has been there based on a relatively good service, shorten also the lead times in the last few weeks. Acceptance is there in Q3.
As Sreedhar said, we'll continue to push prices in the fourth quarter because that's our priority and we'll do that and confident the further price hikes will continue to land well around the world in the market, whether it's in Europe or in North America or Latin America.
Your question on 4 mm, you know, in the first place, the glass, we have been quite successful in making frequent price increases. I mean, almost every quarter, we increase the price in the range of 5%-7%. If you look at the Q3 versus last year Q3, we are talking about an increase of close to 26%. The price of 4 mm end of September was EUR 3.7.
Okay.
There is a good progress in the price increase of glass. Coming to your third question on distribution, the price increase for the first nine months was 5.4%, that is YTD. The last quarter was 9.8%. Once again, we have been able to push the prices up across.
Okay. Ibrahim has a follow-up question.
Yes. Could you please remind us of the market share of Isover in Europe and especially in France, and is it outperforming Kingspan in 2021?
Well, it would be a bit too long to go country by country for our insulation business. You know, in France, yes, we have a strong market share, and based on the trends we have seen in volumes for insulation in Europe and particularly in France, we are confident that indeed we are outperforming. You know, it's broader than insulation. It's our overall solutions, whether it's partitions, whether it's external insulation on facades. These are all the solutions we push that we have highlighted during the Capital Markets Day, the use case we mentioned to you. Those mid to long term trends are there. We have seen that. We have mentioned, I think the number of MaPrimeRénov' projects we have seen in France this year. It's going to continue next year.
We'll see next year also the public buildings picking up, and all that is a big ask for our energy efficiency solutions.
Thank you.
Merci beaucoup. Many thanks.
Thank you. Next question from Yves Bromehead from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess the first one is on the comments that was made on the H2 price cost. I think if I heard correctly, you said it was going to be negative. I mean, in light of what your competitors have been publishing over the last few days, actually Q3 seems to suggest that both in distribution and in construction products in Europe and the U.S., the price cost spread is actually positive for some of your peers. I guess the question is how do you recalculate the bridge to help us understand, you know, how you get to that forecast of negative? Is it because in Q4 you've got much more cost inflation than in Q3? How should we think about 2022?
I appreciate we're not talking yet about the guidance there, but any indication on whether the negative price cost spread continues into H1 would be interesting.
Yeah. Yves, as you know that we were ahead of the curve. We had a positive price cost spread of EUR 125 million in the first half. It is true that the inflation has gone up significantly starting from September, we would have a significant inflation in the last four months of the year. We have been quite successful in, again, by anticipation, we have been able to push the prices up, and that's why we have in Q3 already 8.1%. To offset the total inflation, which I guided of EUR 1.5 billion, we need to have the full year price increase for industrial businesses for 6%, which means for the second half, I need to have 8% price increase.
It is true that we have got Q3, 8.1%. To have Q4 similar 8%, I need to constantly push the prices because you have to keep in mind there is a base effect. Last year, Q4, the price increase impact accelerated. We are talking about additional one to 1.3% price increase. We are confident to push the prices up. That is why I believe for 2022, we should start the year in a positive note, but we have to be realistic given the fact that there is an acceleration of inflation, there is always a little bit of a time difference. You would have a negative impact in the second half.
Okay, thank you. Essentially you don't think you can push for that additional Q4 2021 price hike?
We push it for additional price increase in Q4. We have announced some price increase in October, and there will be more in November, so that we continue our actions. We have given that a clear priority, and we want to finish the year well and enter 2022 in good shape without losing any single week or month on price cost in the beginning of 2022.
Every single segment we have announced a new price. I mean, it's like the focus on price is pretty, I would say at a very detailed level, at the country and business levels.
Sreedhar mentioned a lot on the manufacturing business. On our distribution business, we have done a very good job to pass, you know, the price increase to customers, and we have done that for the last, you know, 18 months in a higher inflation environment.
Thank you. Just on a second question on the working capital, can you maybe give us an indication of what is going to be actually the outflow for the full year in 2021?
One point, Yves, on that, and then Sreedhar will complement. We need, and we have done a bit of that if and when we can, to rebuild a bit of our inventories. You know, in some markets, if I take North America, we are hand to mouth to our customers on most product lines. Anytime we can build a bit of materials or a bit of finished goods, we do that. That's a high level comment on the business side. Back to the first question, we want to service our customers very well so that it makes it easier to land the price increase. Sreedhar.
On working capital, we remain again very focused, Yves. As I said, throughout the organization, there is a lot of focus on cash. If you recall again, we had reduced nine days of operating working capital last year. I had guided that half of that, I want to keep the flexibility to have the corrections in the raw material levels. As of now, we have still not succeeded in building that necessary extra inventory. We just have to keep this flexibility. I can only tell you that there is a lot of focus.
All right. Thank you very much. Have a good evening.
Thank you. Next question from Elodie Rall from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question, sir. Sorry to come back to that price cost spread in H2, but maybe another way to ask the question would be what kind of price increases would you need to see in H2 to be flat in terms of price cost in H2 specifically, instead of referring to H1. So that would be my first question. My second question is on Southern Europe. You've said the trade professionals worked over the Christmas period last year and New Year's Eve, New Year. So are you suggesting that volumes will be weaker than last year and in line with what we've seen in Q3 into Q4? Just a housekeeping question on working days. It was minus 0.5% indeed in Q3.
What do we expect for Q4? Thank you.
I can take the second one on a high level comment in South Europe. Yes, we know last year we have seen the craftsmen working between Christmas and New Year, so all year until the very last period of the year. What we have seen, for instance, in the third quarter, we have seen some craftsmen coming back the first week of September, not even in August, but the first week of September. We have seen week after week, September accelerating for the craftsmen in Europe. We expect that kind of technicality in South Europe in the fourth quarter. If I normalize that, if I exclude the impact of working days or those kind of holidays, we have a good trend. We have a, you know, single digit, a good trend on volumes in South Europe.
These are the underlying trends that we expect and we have seen in our markets over the last 18 months, and we expect that to continue into next year. I can tell you the month of October is strong in terms of volumes in South Europe. We have to bear in mind that, yes, there is a bit of technicality by the end of the year on the craftsmen. It could be, in terms of working days, -2%, I think, for South Europe. Holidays, you know, we never know exactly what they are going to do between Christmas and New Year. We never know also what the weather is going to look like. There is always this kind of wild card by the end of the year.
Overall, the trends, again, the underlying trends are solid. Even when I compare with the trend of 2019, you know, there is nothing new to report in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter versus 2019. We cope with all the supply chain challenges. We have a lot of agility, but we have strong underlying trends versus 2019, and the market dynamics is there.
Yeah. Elodie, for the second half, we are talking about the inflation, total inflation of EUR 1.1 billion. To compensate the whole inflation, we are talking about something like close to 9%, price increase instead of 8%, which I'm guiding at this point of time for the full year. Again, just keep in mind again, once again, I'm insisting on that the Q4, lot of new price increase has been announced. That is why we are very confident that we should not have a challenge at the full year basis, not only in 2021, but also in 2022.
Did we answer your question on the working days, Elodie?
You said -2%, right? Working days-
For South Europe. Correct.
in Southern Europe. Is it the same for the-
-2.
group in general?
No, it will be, what? 0.5.
0.5 for the group.
-2 for the-
-2% for Southern Europe.
Okay. Just on the H2 price cost. So I understand what you're saying for the full year, but what price increase would you need to have in H2 to offset H2-
9%.
cost inflation?
9%.
9%. Okay.
Yeah.
What was the exit rate in October, like in September?
You have Q3, 8.1%, and I'm telling you, we have made new announcements for Q4.
Okay. Thanks.
I'm very confident that we'll keep pushing the prices up. As we have demonstrated in the last 18 months, you have seen that we have been quite successful in pushing the prices up.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Sven Edelfelt from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. I'd like to come back on the price cost spread as well. You mentioned a negative price cost spread in H2 because of a miss of 1% in Q4, so that makes it to EUR 100 million negative at the operating profit level. Is that correct?
Yeah.
Or like, EUR 200 million.
I mean, we are talking about, you know, we had EUR 125 million positive price cost spread for the first half. That's why I keep saying that I'm very confident that we will have a positive price cost spread for the full year.
You know, in terms of business management, you have seen the priority we have put on prices in the third quarter without waiting. We have been anticipating also to make sure that we could explain all this to our customers so that it would land correctly. All the countries, and they are all extremely agile country by country based on their market situation, they are all pushing that. We are confident we are taking the right actions in due time.
Okay, thank you. On the pricing on the High Performance Solutions division, it is lower than the rest of the group. I understand these activities are less energy intensive, but to what extent the current environment of higher energy bill will translate into higher raw material, and then there will be a need for higher prices in this division. Can you in fact remind us of the dynamic there?
Well, indeed, as you said, then it's less, you know, energy intensive. You have within HPS, the mobility market, where the prices historically in such a business are declining. We always improve the margin by adding new models, but during the lifetime of the model, the prices are declining. This is the main impact within the High Performance Solutions business. The rest, you know, they are managing prices versus cost reasonably well. Keep in mind that this automotive impact, you know, in the third quarter is going to continue. You have read across all the news that the supply chain within the automotive sector has not improved, has actually deteriorated. We expect that to remain the same in the fourth quarter. Auto will remain difficult.
Actually, we are also preparing ourselves for something difficult in 2022. We have taken actions. We have announced the shutdown of a plant in Portugal a few weeks ago, and we are restructuring also in other countries. Overall, it will weigh a bit on the High Performance Solutions margin in the second half, which will be clearly above the second half of 2020, but below the second half of 2019 because of this Mobility automotive sector, which is not improving in Europe, even though we are doing well in North America and in Asia because we grew in those regions and we are clearly. I'm happy because we are clearly outperforming by, I would say, 10 points the overall mobility market worldwide. This is due to our very strong positioning on electric vehicle.
It's 20% of our sales by the end of the year, so outperforming by 10 points when we are down -7. I've seen a lot of reports at -20% on the automotive, you know, sector around the world, so clearly outperforming. But it has an impact, though, on the overall picture for High Performance Solutions in the second half.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good evening, Benoit. Good evening, Sreedhar. Two questions on my side. Firstly, I appreciate we are only in October 2021, but I'd like to talk about 2022. It's a simple question. Are you confident that you can increase volumes in 2022, taking into account the base effect and maybe a bit of fade on renovation? At the same time, you've told us with the Grow & Impact plan that maybe you can outperform underlying markets. That's my first question. My second question, maybe just a technicality, if my estimates are correct, you're gonna have about -5% effect from deconsolidation in the second half on the sales. Could you give us an indication of the profit effect? We know that Lapeyre was loss-making.
I'm assuming Graham and the Dutch distributions were low margin, but at the same time you're adding Chryso. Should it be more or less a neutral impact on your operating profit in the second half? Thank you.
Sreedhar will take the second one, and I take the first. You know, we see good trends on our underlying markets. I mentioned that, we see that in October, currently, again, outside of any holiday working day impact. The trends are solid. If I take, you know, the first half of 2021, we said out of the 7.6 or 7.5 volumes, maybe there was half of that which was a catchup effect after the COVID. The rest was normal. This is the kind of underlying trends we are seeing as we speak. Housing momentum in the U.S. is strong. Clearly there is a backlog of orders if I think of gypsum, roofing, etc.
Same in Europe, you know, the backlog of craftsmen is very high. We will see in some countries next year the public building renovation to take place. We are confident that those underlying trends on volumes, the midterm, you know, trend that we have outlined, highlighted, sorry, during the Capital Markets Day are there to stay. We'll give you more color and outlook, of course, end of February when we'll publish our full year 2021 and outlook for the year. Yet the underlying trends are there. Based on any backlog, customer feedback, and you know, various actions we see on energy efficiency, renovation, public buildings, etc., I'm confident it will stay and will continue on this strong momentum.
Of course, we have to cope on our side with the right workforce in our plants with the right supply chain. I was in the U.S. two weeks ago, right after the Capital Markets Day, and we have faced 240 force majeure in the U.S. between January and early October. That's the kind of initiatives we have to cope with, but we have done that successfully. I think those hiccups we are now, we know how to manage them and we are confident about 2022.
Coming to the scope effect, Arnaud, we should continue to be negative in Q4, even though we have a positive impact of acquisition of Chryso and Panofrance. These are the two big acquisitions, closed in end of Q3. Given the divestment of underperforming businesses, the impact on sales will be bigger than the operating profit. It won't be equal.
Could it be a positive impact on operating profit or that's too optimistic?
I would say that, you know, the sales will have a bigger impact than OP. I don't wanna be very precise at this point, but it will be meaningful. You know? Not so much because, you know, at the end of the day, we are talking about a couple of businesses which are underperforming. It's not going to be, you know, in terms of OP.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. One question just on a clarification and then another one in terms of inflation into next year. I think you said that the calendar effect for Southern Europe in the third quarter was negative 1.5%. Can you just confirm that I heard that correctly? Then the second question, could you quantify at spot prices what you think the impact to costs would be in 2022, if those spot prices held for the full year? Obviously, no one's got a crystal ball in terms of what happens with cost, but it would help us understand what would need to happen on the product pricing side in order to defend margins into next year. That'd be helpful. Thank you.
In terms of working days, you're right, it would be between 1.5%-2% in Southern Europe for Q3, negative impact. Coming to your question on the next year, I mean, it all depends on how the inflation will take on. At this point of time, we are focusing on increasing the prices as if this inflation is going to be there, and that's the idea. As we make progress, we will certainly talk about it end of February, where we stand. I mean, again, the way we have done in the last couple of years, the systems and the processes we have on price increase, I remain very confident that the pricing is a clear focus, and it is happening at a very micro and grassroots level.
That's why I remain confident that we should be able to pass on the inflation even in 2022. Saint-Gobain has demonstrated it in the past. There is no reason to believe that we will not again do it in 2022.
To add to what Sreedhar said, you know, you have seen what we have been doing, pushing our solutions, and therefore our pricing power. I think we have demonstrated clearly in the third quarter our strong pricing power will be clearly double-digit margin in 2021. You know our ambition to be double-digit margin. We have outlined that very clearly during the Capital Markets Day in early October. Usually, we don't give annual guidance on the margin, but we'll give you know, some outlook and some flavor in February. We are clearly pushing in the minds of all our managers around the world, this margin drive and margin focus.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Next question from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Good evening. I would have just a couple of questions. My first question is on your distribution business. Could the acceleration of price increases that we have seen in the third quarter and that you are planning for the first quarter more than offset the lower activity compared to the first half of the year? Another way to formulate the question is, do you believe it's possible to reiterate the very strong margin achieved in distribution in H1 2021, or is it too optimistic? My second question is on your hedging policy. I think we've seen today some comments by Russia that they could supply a bit more gas to Europe.
Could you just give us a little bit more color on your hedging policy in this very volatile energy environment? Is there any update that you could give us since the Capital Markets Day?
You know, maybe I'll start with hedging policy because, you know, the policy has not changed. We remain, you know, 50% level of hedging is something which we have been doing consistently. You know that we made one exception in for 2022, we are hedged for 60%. You are right that it is quite a volatile situation, and we do monitor it very closely. We do take some steps which are short-term steps on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis to make sure that everything is not exposed on a spot rate basis. But in terms of broad policy, we have still maintained that, but very, very close monitoring on a actually daily basis.
I get a report on a daily basis, what is the level of energy at a country level and what is it that's happening every single day.
To your question on building distribution, you know, keep in mind that this year we don't have a normal seasonality on distribution. I think we told you that the extra volume catch-up we have seen in March, April, May, you know, we were running at high double-digit volume of activity, which was a bit crazy and extremely tiring for our team. We don't have the normal seasonality between first half and second half of distribution, if you were to take, I would say, a normal year. That being said, our different banners of distribution, whether it's in the Nordics, in the U.K., in France, have done very well in terms of outperforming the market, in terms of pushing their prices and passing that to the customer.
They are doing very well, and they are doing what's necessary to keep a healthy level of margin. Don't take the usual seasonality of distribution in 2021 without mentioning again the impact of those working days, you know, of the craftsmen, whether it's in South Europe in August or Christmas, et cetera.
Thanks so much.
Thank you. Next question from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Just a couple left from me then, please. The first one is just on autos. I thought you did relatively well. I think you're only down kind of 5% in the third quarter. I think auto production was down, whatever, 15%-20%. Do you think you can hold that kind of decline, assuming that's the sort of market backdrop, or is there a timing difference that we need to think about? I'm not quite sure when you sort of deliver your glass compared to production, or should it be sort of simultaneous? The second question is on the Americas, where I think volume growth in the third quarter kind of basically was zero, right? Can you just maybe flesh out a little bit what happened there?
Maybe I think there were some roofing statistics that suggest that was maybe down and maybe plasterboard was up. Maybe just give us a sense why that kind of slowed to zero. Just sorry, coming back on the volume kind of comp next year. It seemed you kind of alluded to it, but I think you said at the time if your volume growth was, say, 8% to year right in the first half, I think you said maybe 3 percentage points of that was underlying, so therefore you'd be kind of 500 basis points short everything else equal for the first half. Is that the right way to think about sort of, obviously, you may grow against that, but sort of as a clean starting point when we think about the first half at least?
Thank you.
Well, I take the first two and Sreedhar will complement and take the third. Now auto, you know, it's just in time within the automotive sector, so there is no delay in terms of what we would see in terms of requests from our auto customers and what we would deliver and therefore see in sales. It's just a matter of one or two days. So it's purely based on our market share and the overall outperformance we have done. Because again, we grew in North America and Asia, thanks to our electric vehicle position. Of course, we dropped in Europe because the market is much tougher there. I don't expect that to improve, as I said, in Q4 and 2022. I think it will remain challenging a good part of 2022.
It's hard to be a bit more precise. In America, the high-level comment, and then Sreedhar will complement. Yes, we are at, you know, zero plus in terms of volumes in Q3, but I would not look at it that way. You have to bear in mind that, you know, for instance, last year, Q3, we had a lot of inventory because we exited the COVID lockdown with a lot of inventory, so we could sell that inventory. Today, we are on allocation to customers in most of our product lines, so that makes quite an impact when you compare just quarter to quarter, which I think is not the most relevant measure in such a difficult period.
If I take the year to date in the U.S., then we are up slightly more than 10% in North America and close to 25% in Latin America. I think this is the more relevant picture. We are on strong volumes in North America. By the way, we may announce in a matter of some days or weeks some expansion plans in North America. We've been working on that for several months already, and we may announce that in the coming days, partly for insulation, gypsum, and roofing in the Southeast part of the country. Volumes are strong, and that should continue into 2022. Sreedhar, you want to add to that?
No. I think, again, I would reiterate what you said, Benoit. It's important that we need to look at, first of all, the comparison. It makes sense to look at from 2019 and not 2020. There are so many things have happened, and that is actually vitiating the comparison. It's good to look at 2019. When you look at 2019, we are talking about 6.3% volume increase at the group level. We are seeing a good trend across. You know, if you're talking about the guidance, what we are saying, you know, it's like 3%-5% is what we are saying in the medium term.
This is something which we need to keep in mind that we are confident to continuously grow in our underlying market and also outperform as we talked about the way we are moving towards the solution-driven organization.
I see that you are all already switching to 2022. Let's finish the year in shape. We are actively working day in, day out to finish the year strongly, and we'll give you more flavor in February of 2022. Thank you for those questions.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you. We don't have any more question for the moment, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question, you have to press O one on your telephone keypad. We have a new question from Mike Betts from Data Based Analysis . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you very much. My question is on the price increase in the Americas. I mean, I don't know if you've seen, but Eagle today highlighted that their prices for wallboard were up 33% in the latest quarter. So my question on that is, were you seeing something similar? And also, you know, are you willing to just give me some idea of how big Gypsum now is as a percentage of sales of that division. And then secondly, has there been any delay in implementing price increases just because you haven't got the product in reality to sell? You know, when you're on allocation, it must be quite difficult to tell somebody the price is going up 10%, but you can't have it for three months.
I mean, has that been an issue at all? Thank you.
Well, thank you, Mike, for your question. Sreedhar will give you the precise percentage. I would say, yes, we have seen the announcement from Eagle. We are in the same ballpark exiting the third quarter. Again, as we said at the Capital Markets Day, we are extremely happy about the momentum we have in Gypsum North America as we speak. Very strong in the U.S. We have also good dynamics in Canada. So keep in mind that in some of the prices and numbers we give to you, it's all North America for us. The pricing momentum has been stronger in the U.S. than in Canada. But yes, we have such a similar picture. More pricing measures have been announced for the coming months.
You know, when you have allocation, and actually it creates the right dynamic for the pricing. This is not just an allocation only for Saint-Gobain because it is, most of the players in the U.S. are, in the same boat. That is why we are able to push the prices up. I mean, when you look at just Americas, the price increase in Q3 was 15%, which is a significant price increase. This is happening, it's also because, there is an allocation and everybody is trying to put the prices up.
Specifically, Mike, versus other years, usually you have two, three months type of delay or warning, I would say, for the customers to prepare them on the price increase. This time we are much more in a matter of three, four weeks.
Yeah.
It's much shorter and therefore I don't see any delay in terms of price increase landing on the market based on the capacity that we face.
It's been quite a unique situation that we have actually had a frequent price increase in this year. I mean, we're talking of most of the businesses, three to four price increase in this year.
I think there was a question from Mike on the percentage of Gypsum as part of the total North America. I think that was your question, Mike.
It was as well, please. Thank you.
Well, it's a growing part, both in terms of sales and profit, but maybe we'll take this question offline. It's still below half of the business we have in North America. We are still bigger in exterior products, what I call exterior products, roofing and siding, versus interior, Gypsum and insulation, even though across North America, we have been making very good progress on the interior.
It has done well. Yeah.
That's great. Thank you both.
Thank you, Mike.
Thank you. Next question from Harry Goad, from Berenberg.
Hi, good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple, please. I think one of the sort of key messages from the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago was your sort of intent on taking market share, which is gonna drive that 3%-5% organic sales growth over the next couple of years. The key driver of that was what you talked about solutions and cross-selling. As you've sort of rolled this strategy out, I mean, you mentioned you've been out across the business in the last few weeks, what's the sort of feedback you're getting from colleagues and businesses on the ability to hit those targets from sort of what you're talking about in terms of solutions? That was the first question. Second question, separate topic.
You talked about a favorable order backlog across Europe and the U.S. Is that predominantly driven by private sector demand, or are we beginning to see some of the sort of public works projects, whether that be, you know, European Union or state government or national government projects beginning to impact on demand as well? Thanks a lot.
Thank you. You know, yes, we continue to look and measure our market share and performance, and I'm happy to say that, you know, we have increased our organic growth between end of June and end of September versus 2019. Even though some markets like Mobility dropped. We have increased our top line organic growth versus 2019, end of June versus end of September versus end of June. When I communicated, you know, our Grow & Impact plan, and now it has been done throughout the group with live communication on my side, on top of what I had done with the 150 managers in of Saint-Gobain in early September. They are all motivated, committed, excited about that, the Grow & Impact actions. I think it's very clear in terms of strategic vision, worldwide leadership in light and sustainable construction.
The plan, we have outlined it with six priorities of action, and they know they have to deliver on that. We are competitive within Saint-Gobain, and I can tell you a lot of managers are competitive. Yes, they are eager to outperform. They are measuring that country by country. They have this fighting spirit for the Saint-Gobain team to win. The reaction, of course, I'm biased, maybe Sreedhar will complement, but the reaction has been extremely positive on all the actions, on the clarity and the simplicity of the vision. I feel confident that we have all the teams of Saint-Gobain behind us.
I think the one big difference is that a lot of discussion has happened. When we had presented finally it has happened because a lot of engagement. There is bottom-up approach. Many people were involved in the thought process, and that is why there is an emotional bond on this whole plan. I clearly see that. I know when we talk about performance, then what I say, I can tell you that the moment the competition results are out, by end of the day, we get an analysis from the CEO of the country where we are. That also reflects they are keeping track of the performance and looking into the details.
Maybe something which is not even made public within the group, but you know, every year we measure the employee satisfaction and engagement. I received that last night. I looked at that. The participation rate is even higher than a year ago, which was higher than 2019. So it's extremely high. The engagement and what we call the promoter score, you know, employee promoter score is much higher than 2020 and much higher than 2019. So it's increasing year after year. I think part of that is also related to our new ways of working, our clear organization, where our teams are empowered, they are trusted, they collaborate, and also the robustness of the vision and the Grow & Impact plan. So I feel all the Saint-Gobain teams are fully engaged. On your question on the backlog for-
I just want to add one more thing.
Please, Sreedhar.
Benoit, there's another difference. Every three months, Benoit connects through a live chat with the whole organization. That is another way of communicating, articulating the priorities, and bringing that alignment throughout the organization.
To add to that, you know, the top 150 managers, I don't want to be too long on that, but the next day after the Capital Markets Day, we had a live chat with the top 150 managers of the group, and I told them, "What were your questions, what were the expectations, and what we have committed to all together as a team during the Capital Markets Day?" This is the same story, and everyone is aligned on a simple way. On your question regarding the-
Private sector.
The private sector, yes, so far we have seen most of the backlog being related to the private sector, but we expect the public one to ramp up next year. Clearly, we have signed for that in France. I know that recently, for instance, in France, we have seen some heavy work, you know, the groundwork picking up, which means it's going to lead some additional activity next year on the second level, you know, more interior products after all the heavy work. It's picking up also for next year in some markets and some countries like France.
Okay.
Commercial is also picking up in the U.S., as I mentioned earlier in the call.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We don't have any more questions for the moment. If you have a new question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. That's zero followed by one on your telephone keypad.
Well, if there is no more question, I think it's time to conclude. I would ask to add one word also. We didn't have question about that, but I would say the first weeks of the Chryso integration are extremely good. The teams are all aligned and engaged. I was in the U.S., as I told you two weeks ago, and I met with the Chryso U.S. manager, who is all excited. So far so good. We are on track with our plan with a lot of ideas for synergies for Chryso. So that's a good addition. You have seen we have been active also in acquisition within the construction chemicals space, the latest one being in Mexico. To conclude, thank you very much for your questions.
You have heard our confidence with Sreedhar. All the teams are aligned. The priorities of actions are clear. Thank you again for all the interaction and the question. I would just like to flag that our full year 2021 results will be published on the 24th of February, 2022. Thank you very much for participating in this call, and have a great evening. Thank you.