Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Saint-Gobain conference call. I now hand over to Pierre-André de Chalendar, Chairman and CEO, Benoit Bazin, COO, and Mr. Sreedhar , CFO. Gentlemen, please go ahead.
Good evening, everybody. I'm very pleased to announce the strategic acquisition of Chryso. This is perfectly in line with Saint-Gobain's strategy to strengthen our position in providing sustainable solutions in the construction market. It comes at a time where decarbonization of construction is accelerating. As you know, Saint-Gobain has been looking for opportunities to strengthen our position in construction chemicals, to enlarge our offer, and reinforce our existing position. This acquisition comes 18 months after our very successful Continental Building Products acquisition, which has been, as you know, timely done and very well integrated. I'm going to let Benoit Bazin, who has been leading this acquisition very effectively, explain to you the details of the transaction. Benoit will be, of course, in charge of the integration going forward.
Thank you, Pierre-André. Good evening, everyone. As Pierre-André said, it's a major opportunity for Saint-Gobain to reinforce our leadership in construction chemicals and create a growth platform of more than EUR 3 billion in sales. It's fine on the slide two that you have, I think, in front of you. Create a growth platform of more than EUR 3 billion in sales in construction chemicals. As you know, construction chemical is a market on which we are already a leader with strong positions in 66 countries and brands such as Weber, Maris Polymers or Tekbond. We provide solutions that are fully aligned with our two growth drivers, sustainability and performance. Chryso is positioned on an innovation-driven growth platform in construction chemicals, where we already have a presence in Middle East and Brazil.
Chryso provides comprehensive additive solutions for sustainable construction, thanks to its vertical integration of polymer know-how and customer intimacy with high value-added services. It is an outstanding company which has demonstrated its ability to grow profitably under the leadership of Thierry Bernard, the CEO of Chryso, someone I know personally, and will join Saint-Gobain along with his team. It is a great pleasure to welcome Chryso experienced and highly competent team to Saint-Gobain. The acquisition process has confirmed that the combination of Chryso with Saint-Gobain will boost our leadership, not only in the additive segment, but in construction chemicals overall. This is also the right timing at the beginning of a strong construction cycle, while we are seeing an acceleration of both decarbonization and also the penetration of ready-mix in emerging markets. I'm highly confident about the strategic value for Chryso, for Saint-Gobain, and for our shareholders.
I move now to slide number three. Construction chemicals market is a EUR 60 billion market. In this market, the combination of Chryso and Saint-Gobain existing business leads to a more than EUR 3 billion unique growth platform in all segments of the market, with leading brands and positions, and a worldwide footprint of more than 200 plants in 66 countries. Saint-Gobain brings its geographical footprint, its existing customer base, its innovation capabilities, and its ability to scale up, Chryso provides advanced chemistry expertise, vertical integration of polymer know-how, customer intimacy, and market access that can be leveraged beyond additives. On slide number four, you can see that Chryso is a growth machine. Additives deliver sustainability and performance to the products to which they're added. They're added to a range of formulations, concrete, cement, gypsum, mortars.
While overall representing less than 3% of the end product, additives make all the difference because they bring a large range of critical characteristics, workability, durability, sustainability, early and final strength, aesthetics, et cetera. If I look at the mature markets, the decarbonization trajectories imply that low-carbon concrete will grow and represent up to 90%, 9-0, of the volumes by 2030. Additives will be the key ingredient for adoption and implementation of those low-carbon products. They enable the development of formulations that reduce the quantity of cement and water consumption, or that enable solutions to deal with versatility of raw materials, such as demolition waste and recycled aggregates. For instance, some major contractors have pledged to move to 90% low carbon by 2030. This does require up to three to five times more additives than today.
On the other hand, emerging markets, ready-mix penetration will also strongly drive demand for additives. Ready-mix concrete requires additives so that concrete can be delivered directly to job sites for productivity and performance. Emerging countries are on a curve of transitioning from more than 80% of cement sold in bulk to more than 70% ready-mix concrete in mature countries. This shift creates significant market growth for the additives, both in terms of penetration and product sophistication. All in all, those solid trends will drive the additives market, which is expected to grow by 6%-7% on compounded annual basis over the 2021-2025 period. I move on slide number five. On this very attractive market, Chryso is a well-recognized leader with sales around EUR 400 million in the last 12 months of 2021, and last 12 months EBITDA of EUR 85 million.
Chryso has demonstrated outstanding and consistent profitable growth over the last 20 years, with 7.8% compounded annual growth rate, of which 5%-6% organic. It is present in 20 countries with a balanced footprint of 55% in mature markets and 45% in emerging economies. The additive market is essentially a market where local leadership positions combine with world-class innovation and supply chain make the difference. Chryso model is therefore extremely powerful. The company strategy over the past years has been to develop worldwide competitive advantage while growing and entertaining the leadership positions in key geographies. Number one in France, number one in South Africa, number one in Turkey, with true scale effect advantages. Number four in the U.S., with a very targeted regional growth strategy that has proven extremely efficient in terms of both market penetration and profitability. I move now to slide number six.
What makes Chryso special, and what are the competitive advantages of Chryso? There are four. Chryso secures a cost, innovation, and technological advantage thanks to its unique proprietary internal polymerization capability with four centers, France, India, Turkey, and South Africa, combined with a network of 31 local mixing plants. This strong initial infrastructure is low capital intensive, and the polymerization centers of Chryso are located at regional level, associated with a strong focus on quality and logistics, which enable the company to benefit from an optimized sourcing strategy and customer service. Chryso has also a very strong differentiation on customer centricity and service offering, and the ability to build long-term partnership with their customers and to co-develop a lot of products with them. An expert local relayed in an empowered organization enabled to push efforts and tailor products to local needs.
31 local formulation centers create the perfect dosage based on local input materials, weather conditions, technical specifications for each particular application. Dosing equipment located in customer premises, optimized and digitalized supply chain ensure best service to the end customers with impressive customer app results. Third, relying on those unique assets, Chryso achieves dynamic organic growth by targeting selected channels and client types in key geographies such as U.S., India, Italy. As a result, for instance, in the U.S., Chryso has expanded organically with a 17% annual growth rate between 2017 and 2020. The focus is based on margin accretive growth through a very structured process. Finally, Chryso has also created a value through strategic profitable bolt-on acquisitions, well performed over the last 20 years.
Once within Saint-Gobain, the leadership of Chryso management team who has been responsible for the success of Chryso will pursue and accelerate on those levers. They are fully aligned with Saint-Gobain DNA and the deep foundations laid by our transformation plan, Transform & Grow, local empowerment, customer proximity, ownership and accountability, alignment of teams and business objectives while leveraging worldwide scale and expertise. I move now to slide number seven. Chryso value proposition is also fully aligned with our two growth drivers, sustainability on one side and performance. If you take sustainability, the major move towards low-carbon concrete in the next decade, Chryso is best positioned. It is an innovation leader with 35% of new products to sales, recognized R&D teams, 3% annual R&D spend.
Complemented with Saint-Gobain innovation capabilities, will support the acceleration path towards ultra-low carbon concrete, where the stake is to decarbonize what represents 4% of the total world CO2 emissions. Chryso has a strong portfolio of sustainable additive solutions that will be key to reduction of concrete CO2 footprint, and also address the aggregate shortage when we need aggregates for concrete, as well as enable the development of the circular economy, where you can deal with demolition waste and versatility of materials. As a very recent example, Chryso has launched EnviroMix. EnviroMix, a range of products fully dedicated to enable substitution of clinker in low-carbon concrete.
On the performance side, additives provide cost-effectiveness, speed, and productivity gains to the product they are added to. They deliver the performance that is needed to follow the pace of urbanization and infrastructure needs. Chryso self-flow products perfectly complement Weber's flooring solutions, enabling savings on cost per square meter while providing ease and speed of deployment for residential and commercial products. A lot of productivity gains, a lot of examples that can be very material for the customers. I now let Sreedhar N. give you details on the synergies and also details on the transaction.
Thank you, Benoit. Let's look at now slide number eight, which gives a lot of details on synergies. In total, you'll notice here that we have identified and built in the business plan EUR 50 million of synergies by year five. Out of that, EUR 15 million synergies are related to the cost, and EUR 35 million synergies are linked to growth. When you look at the cost synergies of EUR 15 million, which will be delivered within three years' time, they consist of savings on joint raw material purchases, vertical integration of Chryso products in Saint-Gobain, and administrative cost savings. The growth synergy of EUR 35 million based on a focused expansion plan in identified key geographies, a detail of which I'll give in the next slide. All these synergies have been identified in consultation with the Chryso management to ensure that the execution is completely flawless.
Let's go to slide number nine. Here are the details of the growth synergies. They are focused on three areas, each representing roughly 1/3 of the total EUR 35 million savings. Acceleration of Chryso in its priority countries like U.S., India, South Africa, and Middle East, where Saint-Gobain's strong presence in terms of brand image, local capabilities, talent pool, and industrial footprint can support Chryso to grow faster. The second category is development of Chryso solutions in some selected geographies like LATAM and Southeast Asia, where the additive market is growing faster and is quite sizable, where Saint-Gobain's construction chemicals business is also very strong with the local industrial and market presence can help Chryso to grow.
Lastly, acceleration of Saint-Gobain and Chryso combined growth in construction chemicals through cross-selling and co-development of construction system solutions in high value-added markets within Europe, where our current construction chemical business is very strong, be it in waterproofing or concrete repairs. Having exchanged in detail with the Chryso team, we are confident that we will deliver additional growth synergies with further geographical or market expansions or bolt-on acquisitions, which will be boosted by the combination of Saint-Gobain's and Chryso's respective pipelines. We are very enthusiastic on the growth prospects that this acquisition provides to Saint-Gobain in the field of construction chemicals. With all the detailed work done with the management, we are confident of delivering a minimum of EUR 50 million synergies in the next five years with a clear potential to deliver much more. Let's look at slide number 10. Here are the overviews of the transaction details.
We have entered into an agreement with Cinven, the international private equity firm, to acquire Chryso based on an enterprise value of EUR 1,020 million. This enterprise value represents a multiple of 12x Chryso's last 12 months' EBITDA of EUR 85 million and a multiple of 7.6x post run rate synergies of EUR 50 million in year five. Saint-Gobain will fully finance this acquisition using the proceeds from divestments made by the group in the last two and a half years. We are confident that we will create value in the year three, even if we take only cost synergies of EUR 15 million into account. Earnings per share will be accretive for year one. Post-acquisitions, Saint-Gobain pro forma net debt to EBITDA will be around 1.3x before IFRS impact. In comparison to the end of 2020, which was 1.1x.
We expect to close this transaction during the second half. Chryso will be integrated within Saint-Gobain's High-Performance Solutions segment. We are impressed with Chryso's profitable growth track record over the past years. We are eagerly looking forward to welcoming Thierry Bernard and his team. We are confident that together we will build a new chapter of Chryso's profitable growth story and create value for our shareholders. Now I pass on to Pierre-André to conclude.
Thank you, Sreedhar . To sum up, this acquisition of a great company is very much aligned with our vision to be the leader in sustainable construction. The addition of Chryso will further strengthen Saint-Gobain's growth platform in construction chemicals, as Chryso is a leading player with a strong track record of profitable innovative growth. We are very confident that this acquisition will create value for our shareholders. Now we are at your disposal for any question you may have.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you have to press zero one on the telephone keypad, zero and one on your telephone keypad. We have a first question from Sven Edelfelt from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, thank you for taking my question. Two questions for me. First one, can you comment on the polymer patent? Is it synthetic or natural polymer? How does it compare to slag or calcined clay? To what extent the polymer can replace the clinker content in cement? Is it 5% or 50% of your overall replacement? That's the first question. The second one, looking at the revenue per plant, it seems a plant generates about EUR 12 million of revenues. On looking at your synergies, it's EUR 35 million of synergies. Do you need to add some CapEx to get there? Can you maybe comment as well, if the plants are limited in terms of capacity utilization? Is it the metric to look at?
Benoit?
Yeah. I take the first question. Today, it's mostly synthetic polymer, but they have their own technology and patent. They have more than 300 patents on the chemistry. It's a very well-defined innovation process. Second, the additives, they don't replace slag or clinker. They are used to reduce the ratio of clinker in the overall concrete. By doing that, and you can, as you know, replace totally clinker with a slag. When you do that, when you either lower the clinker content or you substitute with other materials, whether it's slag or something else, then you increase a lot the volume of additives by three to five times.
It is not a replacement of clinker per se, but it allows to decarbonate the concrete by lowering what is the CO2 content of the concrete, and by doing so, you have to put much more additives. This is the growth of Chryso. The second question is, yes, the mixing plants are very small units of a few hundred square meters. The reason why we are very confident about the growth plan is that, if I take just Southeast Asia and Latin America, we have 50 plants. We are going to free up some space within those plants, and the CapEx for mixing is a few hundred thousand euro's.
Yeah, it's EUR 1 million maximum. If you really want to do polymerization, you're talking of EUR 3 million-EUR 5 million.
It's low CapEx.
Very low capital intensive. Yeah.
We open up the local infrastructure of our construction chemical plants around the world to accelerate the growth of Chryso.
Next question.
Thank you. Next question from Jean-Christophe Lefèvre-Moulenq from CM-CIC Please go ahead.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Hello.
Good evening.
Yes, good evening. [Non-English content]. I have two questions. First, to continue with the question of Sven. The formulation of Chryso chemistry is directly mixed to ready-mixed concrete, not to cement. Is that clear?
You have the two applications, Jean-Christophe. You have both within cement, but the bulk of the market is directly with concrete. It's 80% concrete, 10%-15% cement, and interestingly enough, we have a 5%-6% in gypsum. That's also interesting because we put additives in gypsum on the slurry for gypsum plasterboard.
Okay, it's very clear. Second issue, could we have more flavor on the market channels? What is the share of distribution and what is the share of direct sales to works?
Yeah, good question also.
Well, it's 95% direct. It's a B2B business, 95% direct with the large contractors or large ready-mix players. This is why we put it in the High-Performance Solutions with global innovation, global scale, global customers, and 95% direct sales based on co-development innovation, very similar to what we have, the business of Adfors within construction industry. It's a vertical of High-Performance Solutions. It is exactly the same characteristic for Chryso.
Okay. A follow-up question also. The existing business of Saint-Gobain, so the [inaudible] , could we have some metrics in terms of sales and EBITDA margin? If we look at the Chryso EBITDA margin, it's close to 21%, very high. Is that the same metric for [inaudible] ? Many thanks.
As Benoit already said, we are talking of a presence of more than EUR 3 billion. If you take Chryso out, we are talking of EUR 2.6 billion, EUR 2.7 billion. We are talking of a profitability of, if you just take what we saw in the last 12 months, we are talking about something like 16% EBITDA.
How much did you say?
16%.
16%. 16% for existing business of Saint-Gobain.
Yeah.
Okay. It's very clear. Many thanks. [Non-English content ].
Thank you. Next question from Elodie Rall from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening and congratulations for this announcement. A great acquisition it looks. A couple of questions. First of all, could you give us a little bit of color about the competitive landscape in the bidding process into this acquisition? When did you start looking at it? How competitive was it? That would be helpful. That's my first question. Second, could you give us a bit of history in terms of the EBITDA margin profile of this acquisition? I think you gave us the history on sales. just, I need to ask that one, but not sure how much you will answer, but did you consider rather buying your own shares at seven times rather than doing the acquisition at 12 times? Thank you.
Well, on the first question, it's a very good question. We had a one-to-one discussion with Cinven on this asset, there was no competition option. Maybe Cinven had in mind to launch such a bidding process in the coming weeks. We have been fast, and we agreed both with the management, who was extremely eager to join Saint-Gobain and to accelerate the growth strategy of Chryso within Saint-Gobain, which is a key element for Chryso and Cinven in the decision-making process. Of course, a key element for us, and of course, the price was a good price for both Saint-Gobain to create value and both Cinven. We have been alone in this transaction.
In terms of EBITDA, we said it is around 20%. That's what we are looking at in the business plan, what we have put is in the range of 20% to just be prudent at this point of time. I think you have seen that this is a growing business. If you take the last 20 years, it has grown close to 8%, which is substantial growth. We believe that it always has some upside. Right now we have taken it around 20%.
On the last question, we consider that in order to create value for our shareholders, buying such a growth platform with a fantastic track record at 7.5x EBITDA will create more value than the straight share buyback as we speak.
Okay, great. Thanks very much. Very clear.
Thank you. Next question from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America . Go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good evening. The first question is trying to understand this acquisition in the context of your strategy. We knew you were interested in the space when you were trying to acquire Sika. I guess it's a logical move. Do you see this acquisition as the beginning of a new platform for your future development in construction chemicals? Should we expect more acquisition in this space in the future? That's my first question. Secondly, on the synergies, the EUR 50 million, but I guess more on the EUR 15 on the cost side. Chryso has been through ownership from Cinven and I believe before that LBO France. Private equity, which typically are quite active with cost-cutting. What makes you confident that there is more cost synergies to extract?
Lastly, if you could just give us an indication of the yearly CapEx spending and the operating margin of the business. Thank you.
Yes, Arnaud, I'll take the first question. Benoit will follow on the rest. As you know, I have been for quite some time interested in construction chemicals. We have a very sizable business with Weber. We have been growing in the last year by small adjacencies and complements. Chryso has two characteristics. It's also an adjacency in that space. It's a leading player in some countries. From that standpoint, it's bigger.
I would say the other characteristic of Chryso, it's a little bit a jewel in that industry. It's the highest profitable company I know in this sector with very solid growth and probably the most innovative. I think we'll integrate. That will be the job for the next one year to integrate that company. Then we will see from there. Benoit will evaluate whether we need to. I think it's already there going to be a lot of growth from this acquisition. One thing at a time.
You have on slide three, the different areas where we are active.
Yeah.
On construction chemicals, so it's a wide space. What is interesting is that on all the small bolt-on acquisitions, sometimes they were half additives, half other construction chemicals. Chryso didn't want to buy them. Within Saint-Gobain, of course, they will buy them. Sometimes we didn't want to buy something which was half additives and the other half closer to additives in construction chemicals. The mix for those bolt-on acquisitions going forward will be perfect to have both Chryso and Weber together. On the synergies, Arnaud, we don't expect any cost savings on SG&A because as you said, this company is extremely well-managed and no, when we mean cost synergy, it's on the raw materials. We have EUR 2.7 billion of construction chemicals plus the EUR 400 million of Chryso. There are a number of raw materials that we buy which are the same. We expect some purchasing gains.
There are some very slight. Savings on costs like IT licenses, the size of Saint-Gobain will provide some savings on that. The bulk is some raw materials purchases. Second, we have, as you know, some concrete ready-mix products within France in our biggest merchant business, close to EUR 350 million of business. Within that, we buy some additives, and we make sure that we have the integration, the vertical integration of Chryso products into those activities that we have in-house. That will be raw materials and kind of vertical integration rather than cost saving, because Chryso is already extremely streamlined and well-managed, as you said. Sreedhar?
Regarding your question on CapEx, it's been in the range of EUR 15 million-EUR 16 million CapEx. I think that was the question, right? The CapEx.
Yeah, just on the operating margin.
Operating margin is tracking up around 16%.
16%.
Yeah, more than 15%, actually. It's between 16% and 16.5%.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Go ahead.
Thanks very much. Hi, gentlemen. I've got a couple of questions. The first one, just back to your margin comments. I know that you're not giving much detail on the margins pre the last 12 months, but if we benchmark Chryso against some of the listed construction chemical peers out there, its margin is significantly higher than all the listed companies that we cover. I'm just wondering if you can give us a little bit more detail on trying to understand where that margin gap comes from. Is that a regional thing? Is that down to sales channels? That would be really helpful. Maybe put that 20% in the context of the average over the last five years, if you could. The second question is on return accretion.
We've discussed the earnings accretion, but I wonder if you could talk about when you think this business will be neutral from a returns basis? Is that when all the synergies have been fully realized? The last question is just on that revenue synergy number? Can you talk to us a little bit about how you expect to build this business into your group? My understanding is that you don't have that much of a presence in concrete admixtures at the moment. You obviously do have interest in mortars. I'd just like to understand where you see the opportunity and also maybe the challenges as it relates to realizing that revenue synergy. Thank you.
Yeah. The first thing is they are extremely efficient, they are successful. That's why their margins are better than others. This is coming mainly because I think that the business model, the way they have developed, I think they are focused on the local leadership. They are not trying to spread their wings everywhere in the world. I think they've been extremely focused on these countries where they believe that they could get the returns. The other thing is the way they have the supply chain, the way they have organized, including the polymerization, is one of the important aspect and attraction in this target was it's done in only four plants globally. This also brings more efficiency. I think they have really managed very well in the last few years, and that's why this margin is clearly best in class.
Very steady.
Very steady.
Yeah. There was a second question was on the return on capital employed on year three.
Yeah. I said that we will create the value in the year three, and that's something which we're very confident, and we said that it will be coming with only cost synergy of EUR 15 million. We are not even factoring the revenue synergy. Revenue synergy will be an upside, which we have factored EUR 35 million by year five.
To your question on the growth synergies. First, we are already in two admixtures. We have a bit more than EUR 15 million, both in the Middle East and Brazil. This is a segment that we know well because we use additives, as I said, in our own concrete ready-mix business in France, and additives or gypsum. We know this segment. Now going forward on the growth synergies, how we are going to do that. As Sreedhar mentioned, first, it's acceleration on the countries of priority for Chryso, namely USA, where they have tripled their sales in the last 10 years. In the USA, Chryso alone is in itself a quite small actor. We have more than EUR 5 billion of building materials.
The name, the presence of Saint-Gobain, the network, the sales people that we can divert and to put into admixture sales and cover the geography will be extremely useful. Second, in India, just staying on the priority countries for Chryso. Chryso is a bit below EUR 13 million, 30, in India. You know that we have a EUR 1 billion business, highly successful in India, growing almost 20% over the last 20 years. Clearly connecting Chryso with the brand of Saint-Gobain India, with the talent that we have, with all the industrial setup, with the R&D that we have in India, will be one way. Second pocket of growth is open to Chryso, big markets. Namely Latin America and Southeast Asia, where they are not present. They are not present because they were too small to have the range and the strength to launch a strategy on those markets.
If you take just Latin America and Southeast Asia, we have close to EUR 600 million of construction chemical. What are we going to do there? I said we have 50 plants in those countries. We have 20 plants in Brazil alone. We'll select the right logistic place for Chryso to install in a few hundred square meters, their local mixing plants and units, take some of the same people, and we have many talents ready to go, and launch their strategy on those new geographies. Third, cross-selling in mature countries where we have a very, very large presence. It's close to the EUR 2 billion of sales that we have, mainly in Europe. Here we have several applications on flooring. For instance, Chryso has recently launched something which is, over the last few years, going double digit for floor, for self-leveling floor.
We'll use those technologies, our network within Weber to accelerate their growth in the Nordic countries, in Germany, in Czech Republic, in Switzerland, where they are very small today because they don't have the size and order. The opportunities are big. If you ask about the challenges, for me, the only one is make sure we have the talents and the teams ready to tackle all those challenges and all those opportunities for growth. It's not a lack of ideas, not a lack of existing business country by country, not a lack of R&D and innovation efforts when we connect the team together. It's having the right people in place. What is very nice about that is we feel very comfortable about the culture, about the teams within Chryso and Saint-Gobain.
Yeah. I guess, again, I want to insist on this, that all these ideas have been built with the management team of Chryso. I think that is the most important point because there is a buy-in. They believe in this, and that's what is making us really feeling that we are going to be very fast in getting it done.
We have spent the last few weeks talking a lot in depth on R&D, on geographic development with Thierry Bernard and his team, and we share the same business plan going forward. That has been discussed in depth.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my few questions. The first one is just maybe on that point on how it's managed. I see on your final slide it's going to be part of the HPS, so High-Performance Solutions segment. I believe Weber is kind of split around the different regional segments. I guess the question is, from a practical perspective, who's kind of in charge? Are you going to run them separately and they sort of get some space, as you indicated, in the individual plans to sort of allow them to expand? I guess, how will you do the organizational set up? Maybe it changes over time. That's the first question. The second question is going back to slide three.
Can you give us an idea, I appreciate where Chryso sits, but your business in those sort of six buckets that you've outlined, how you define. Where are the bits split up? Where's Saint-Gobain kind of the strongest in those six categories, and to what extent is there an overlap with Chryso, or is it fully complementary? The final third question is maybe just technically, if you just give us your WACC threshold that you use for the value creation comment by year three, please. Thank you.
To your first question, as I said, the characteristic in terms of global innovation, global customers, 95% direct sales, is very similar to what we have within High Performance Solutions and our construction industry vertical segment. The CEO of Chryso will report to the CEO of High Performance Solutions on day one at the time of the integration. We'll keep the full autonomy of Chryso as a vertical market, as a business unit within division, within High Performance Solutions. How it's going to work on the cutting edges, of course, we'll exchange on raw materials purchase because we have central purchasing with Weber. Same on the purchasing of additives within our Building Solutions business or the original business, so it will be very easy and done very quickly. The growth side, we'll open up the infrastructure of Weber, which is indeed in the different countries.
We'll open up this infrastructure to free up some space in order to put dedicated mixing units of Chryso country by country in the right order of priority for Chryso. That's the support of the Saint-Gobain infrastructure, whether it's in the U.S., in India, whether it's in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, that will provide the growth of Chryso in those countries going forward. On the third bucket of growth energies that I mentioned, the technology, for instance, for self-leveling floor that Chryso is rolling out in France today with Cemix, this is the brand name that they use. We have a lot of flooring applications ourselves.
We'll use the two channels, continue with the Chryso channel under Cemix and put the technology under Weber for their flooring applications, whether it's in Germany, whether it's in the Nordic countries, to accelerate the rollout of this technology within our flooring applications of Weber. Again, Chryso will be managed as a division of High-Performance Solutions with the full autonomy to continue the innovation going forward and the growth.
The other question you had is ROCE. It's 6.85% of the average on an average. That's what we are looking at.
Okay. Sorry. On the second question. There was a question on the C segment. We are very strong on building finishing, on resins and coatings, on waterproofing, and we are present on the three other segments, concrete specialties, additives, and additives, but to a much lower extent.
Smaller. Okay. You will not transfer anything of the existing business into Chryso. There's no reason to do that. I mean, I appreciate Weber is a bit different, but some of the other bits which may be small, maybe fit better or are used with the product line.
The question, Benoit, is whether there are some small parts that we have already there that will be transferred to Chryso. We are studying that, but it will be maybe some small specialist companies, but this is not going to be significant area.
Yeah, we have a small mixture business already in Brazil.
Yeah.
Of course, on day one, it will be put under the management of Chryso, and it will be used as a bridge head.
Yeah.
To expand in Brazil. There will be some functional overlap.
Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Tobias Woerner from Stifel.
Yes, good afternoon. Congratulations to this acquisition. A number of questions on my side, if I may. First one, quick to answer. Chryso is out of the old materials, is that right? The old Lafarge materials?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks. Secondly, the tax rate within Chryso, where does that stand?
Yeah. The Chryso's average tax rate is around 22%.
22%. Its cost of debt, does it have any debt or?
They have debt, but it is not relevant for us because we'll be reimbursing everything and we have a lot of cash, and we will invest.
What is your cost of debt at the moment, if I may?
For Saint-Gobain? Our cash is. No, if you just take that, okay, what is an average cost of our debt, what we have is around 2%.
No, that's fine. I just want to make sure.
Just keep in mind that we have EUR 8.4 billion cash end of last year.
Okay. Thirdly, if you could you decompose the historical growth, the 7.8%, how that's put together other than the 6%-7% coming from admixtures, organic growth?
It was between 5% and 6% organic growth and 2% of bolt-on M&A acquisitions.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, if your question is, you're talking of 5%-6%, 6%-7% what we've taken for the future?
Yeah.
Yeah. We expect this market to grow at that rate. The one point which Benoit said quite often during this call is the whole decarbonization is something which is going to accelerate, and this is going to be a big upside for the Chryso business model.
Yeah. I add that we have not built in our business plan any bolt-on. As Benoit said previously, there could be, because there are a number of very small companies that have different of these construction chemical businesses, as Benoit mentioned. There will be an opportunity for a lot of small bolt-ons, but we have not factored that in the business plan at this stage.
Yeah, it is standalone at this point of time.
Okay, two more questions, if I may. Such an interesting acquisition. Out of the 5%-6% organic growth, what's the pricing we should assume there historically?
Historically, it has been something like around 2% on an average. It depends on year to year, and I think they've been quite successful in passing on the inflation is also through adding a lot of new products. Because you would have seen in the presentation, we talked about 35% of the sales comes from the product which didn't exist five years back. That's also another way they keep introducing the positive mix effect. Otherwise, pure price, I would say between 1%-2%.
Okay, great. The last question is a more general one. You talk about the theme of decarbonization. Are you inclined to also enter into other products which would take away market share from the existing-?
Yeah.
Clinker-driven cement world?
No, I was going to say we have made acquisition in wood, whether it is fiber wood a few years ago in France, and we are expanding the capacity or the acquisition we just announced to increase our merchanting of wood activities in France, where we see a strong growth. That's also a way to increase our exposure to very sustainable and growing businesses, which are part of the decarbonization answer to the construction industry.
You know what is interesting, it's not only the l ower CO2 of concrete or cement. It's also the fact that if you use more additives, you can use different kinds of sand and aggregates. We know that going forward, there is scarcity of those raw materials. There is more and more pressure on where you can have a quarry, et cetera. The fact that with more additives, you open up the versatility of the aggregate, the sand that you can use for concrete, the demolition waste. It does open up a wide spectrum of innovative chemistry for solutions in construction, and it's way beyond the pure cement.
Okay. My very last question. Apologies for so many questions, Gregor made a great point in terms of how this business is going to be managed. You're going to have a great business, EUR 3 billion of turnover and more growing going forward, it'll be sitting within several different divisions. It'd be great for us to actually be able to track it as a unit and see how you manage this going forward. Any thoughts on that?
We don't intend to change the structure and the reporting of the financial communication that Pierre-André and Sreedhar has been put in place for the last years. We will report to you the progress and the value creation, of course, of this acquisition like we have done on Continental over the last years, like we have done all the time within Saint-Gobain.
Like we will do in Continental at the end of the first half.
I will come back to you on the Capital Market Day also.
Yeah.
On what we have done with Continental over the last 18 months.
I just think, it's not just Weber and Chryso now, but it's also the Gypsum division business, which have a real nice fit with one another, and it'd be great to see that.
What is important at the end of the day is to continue to improve strongly the margin of the group. You should see that going forward.
Thank you very much. Well done. Thank you.
When you talk about gypsum, it's a raw material for gypsum to some extent, for plasterboard, which is a very good one. As Benoit said, it is the same philosophy as the one we have for what we call construction industry today, which is mostly a product made out of fiberglass and which are ingredients of a lot of solutions that are in our original markets, and they are sold to large customer. That's a specificity of Chryso.
No, I see. There's a lot of things coming together there now. It'd be great to see that.
Exactly. You got it.
Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. Next question from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. Go ahead.
Yeah. Good evening. I would have two questions. First, how will Chryso's management interact with Saint-Gobain the different set of countries and the various manager to allocate the capital, whether on a CapEx, on a bolt-on acquisition, how the decision is going to be made? My second question is, what's the outlook for the 2021 sales and the margin for Chryso in an environment where demand is quite good, but where chemical cost inflation has never been so high? Do you see some potential margin pressure? What have been the latest trends? That will be very useful if you can give us a bit of color on that.
I take the first question. We will, as I said, place Chryso as an autonomous division of High-Performance Solutions. We have discussed and agreed on all that with the CEO of Chryso in order to continue to nurture and grow the autonomy and the growth and the success of Chryso. In terms of decision, whether it's on CapEx, whether it's on the small bolt-ons, the CEO of Chryso will interact with the head of High-Performance Solutions and myself to make quick relevant decisions on the growth and whether it's CapEx, whether it's external growth for Chryso going forward. There is no connection with Weber, which is done by country. It will be, again, a direct line between the Chryso CEO, High-Performance Solutions CEO, and myself. Quick, we have agreed on all that on term sheet and everything, it's all clear and ready to go.
Yeah. Your question on Huh? Yeah. Outlook for 2021. We have indicated to you the last 12 months figure. It's in the same line. I think the management is very confident to deliver what we have said last 12 months figures.
On the price increase versus cost inflation, can you give us a bit of a color?
Yeah. As of now, they're doing well. In the first quarter, they managed well.
The last data on the cost inflation.
They have been able to manage that. This is something which they have been doing it consistently in the last few years. Again, I said, I think they're very focused on local markets and trying to see that the margin is also improved through the mix, which they introduced to the new products. Coming back to this question on the margin or the integration of Chryso, we share exactly the same culture and the same empowerment of local teams. We have discussed that at length. In all the transformation of the group with Transform & Grow, I think it's fully aligned with the model of local empowerment, decentralization of Chryso. We feel very confident that the integration will go very well.
Maybe last question. In terms of R&D, I understand that Chryso has definitely an edge versus other player in the same industry. How can this edge be transferred to Weber?
We are not talking about the same application. Of course, when we have some knowledge to be transferred in terms of chemicals, in terms of compositions, we will share. We'll keep the central R&D of Chryso, which is in the south of Paris. We'll open to Chryso all the platforms, all the capabilities of the R&D centers of Saint-Gobain. When they go, for instance, I give a good example, Brazil, we are small in admixtures. They are not in Brazil. We have an R&D center in Brazil. It makes full sense to add some admixtures capabilities in our R&D center in Brazil to support technically the growth of Chryso in Brazil.
We have an R&D center in India. It makes full sense. They have a local R&D technical center in Mumbai, a center in Chennai. It makes sense to connect them. We'll keep the dedicated R&D, which has been extremely successful, and then open up the platform of Saint-Gobain. I'm sure when we started to have those discussions, there will be a lot of ideas generated by just the exchange between our different structures.
Benoit, you told me the R&D teams and the head of Chryso is extremely excited by these prospects.
Yeah.
That bodes well.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question from Yves Bromehead from Exane BNP Paribas.
Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I was trying to understand the cost synergies. You mentioned EUR 16 million as a sort of run rate. If we look at the cost of additives, I think this is about 5% of the weight content of mortars, but it's much higher in terms of the actual amounts in value. I was trying to understand what are really the cost synergies here as you backward integrate into the additive manufacturing and whether there are significant opportunities for that to be increased by a multiplier effect. My second question is whether you are now fully focusing on becoming a construction chemical company and potentially looking at either further consolidating your new position in the additive admixture, for example, in the U.S., but also in other chemical products like adhesives, resins, waterproofing, and even membranes.
Lastly, on the sales synergies, could you maybe help us understand how much of that is just cross-selling versus new market opportunities? If you have already done your due diligence, what would be the size of the revenue potential if you had a strong position in Brazil and Southeast Asia, for example, for Chryso?
Sreedhar Natarajan, you take the cost synergies.
Okay, I'll take the cost synergies. If we're talking of the EUR 16 million, Yves, out of the EUR 16 million, we are saying largely it is coming from the raw material which we buy within the construction chemicals and additives business, which we have within Saint-Gobain. We're talking of, again, EUR 2.7 billion+ . We have taken a large part of that. Half of that is coming from there, and the other part is coming from the distribution business, which buys the additives from outside. We are just talking of integrating that with Chryso. That's one. The second thing is gypsum business also buys additives from outside. We're talking of integrating them with Chryso. To me, this is a low-hanging fruit, and we should be able to achieve very quickly.
On the second question, yes, we are happy and we'll continue to grow our construction chemical business, but there are many other opportunities within Saint-Gobain. You see what we have done in gypsum. Yes, at the beginning of this week, we announced a small acquisition in additives in Russia, construction chemical in Romania. There are some opportunities, but it's not the only growth driver of Saint-Gobain. On the growth synergies, the plan is, for instance, to take in Brazil over the next five years, 10% of market share in the additives market. You could say it's not extremely ambitious.
Maybe we'll do better. That would be very nice. In terms of total revenue, it's a bit north of EUR 100 million with a nice contribution margin. Between EUR 100 million and EUR 120 million additional sales over the next five years to get to this margin impact coming from growth synergies and reasonable market share gain, whether it's in Southeast Asia, whether it's in Brazil, in the single digit type of market share, and it could be even more.
Thank you. If I could just come back on the additive. If I do a simple math, I think you're probably buying around EUR 150 million-EUR 300 million of additives in your business just on the mortars. EUR 16 million. I know you said low-hanging fruit, but.
No, because we buy some raw materials together, but the additives that are used in concrete are different. The additives that are used in concrete, we buy them because we have a concrete business in France, which is in the EUR 350 million range. There is quite a few additives in terms of millions of euros that Sreedhar mentioned that we are going to switch to Chryso. In terms of raw materials, there are some, I don't know the English word, polycarboxylate and things like that we buy together between Chryso and Weber. There will be a bit of material gain. Maybe there will be more, but so far, this is what we have figured in our business plan on the purchasing gain.
Well, thank you very much for taking my question. Have a good day.
Thank you very much. Next question from Eric Lemaire from Bryan Garnier. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. I've got two actually. First one is there any specific risk that the deal will not be completed by H2 this year? Do you have any break-up fees there? The second question, I was wondering, you already answered partly the question, but I was wondering what type of raw materials are purchased exactly by Chryso. I suspect it is chemical, but which one exactly, apart the one you just mentioned?
There are many raw materials. We are not going to enter into those details, and I think none of us are expert in chemistry, so there are many raw materials. The beauty about Chryso, but the difference of many others is that, as we said, they have a vertical integration, and they go very upstream. They buy monomers, and they have polymerization unit to make polymer. It does provide two advantages. First, on the cost side, because monomer you can buy on the commodity market. For example, they have a plant in Turkey where they buy monomer from Asia, and they sell those polymers when they have polymerized the monomers in Europe. They buy [the last four] coming from Asia, and they sell in Europe. Again, after that, there are some citrates that I don't want to put on the market.
They buy monomer, which are commodity-driven, and they make their own polymer with all their patents. Second, on your first question, no, there is no risk, and we expect there is no difficulties on the antitrust side. We need to have a bit of filing, but we are confident it will flow nicely on phase I in the different countries where we have to do it. Closing will be in the second half of this year. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Before going to the next question, let me remind you that if you wish to ask a question, you have to press zero one on the telephone keypad. It's zero and one on your telephone keypad. We have one more question from Michael Betts from [inaudible] . Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. My question's a big picture one. As far as I'm aware, amongst the global cement companies, only Cemix has its own construction chemicals company. All of those companies are spending a fortune on R&D in additives and trying to lower due to decarbonization or self-leveling concrete, et cetera. My question is, does Chryso work with those big global cement companies, or does it concentrate on working with the smaller, independent ready-mix companies and contractors? What risk is there, given the amount of spending that these big cement companies in conjunction with their partners are spending, that some of the technology gets overtaken by new products? How defendable is some of the Chryso technology, I guess is my second part. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Mike. No, you are right. Cemix is the only one with some additives business and know-how. Chryso works with all the top players in the cement industry, all the top players in the concrete customers, and also the top contractors. They sell directly to the Vinci of the world and those large contractors. It's a true B2B at a very high level with all the big players. The beauty about the Chryso model is that some of those businesses 20, 30 years ago used to be within Lafarge, integrated within cement company.
When you are an additive supplier, you share so much knowledge with the cement or the concrete player that when you are a concrete customer of additives, when you are a cement customer of additives, you don't want your supplier of additives to be integrated in cement, and to share your know-how, all your co-development with other cement competitors. This is the reason why over the last decades, most of the additives went out of the big cement players. It is going to stay the same going forward.
On the second question, no, we don't foresee, and discussing plans with the management of Chryso. They have been always at the forefront of new materials, of new patents, of new products. The product I mentioned they just launched, I think it's last week, for how to lower a big way the clinker content of concrete. They have been truly not only the most profitable company, but also the most innovative company of their sector, and we'll continue to provide the financial resources, R&D resources so that they continue on their successful path going forward.
Just as a follow-up, Laurent, apologies if it's in the slides or on the press release. How much is Chryso spending on R&D a year?
3% on sales. 3% on sales, and they have a central R&D south of Paris, and they have 26 or 29, I forgot. Look, 20 centers. Look, I think it's more than that, 25, sorry. 26, sorry. 26 local development centers within their different geographies. That's the combination of central innovation and local development centers.
Understood. That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We don't have any more questions for the moment. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you have to press zero one on the telephone keypad. Zero and one on your telephone keypad. We have one new question, once again from Jean-Christophe Lefèvre-Moulenq from CM-CIC. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Gilles. The additional question regarding the channel mix and the client mix of Weber, is that the same or?
No, it's very different. A big part of Weber is for distribution. That's a big difference. That's why we have it in our original local organization by country.
Okay. It's very clear.
There are also some direct customers in Weber, but it's much smaller.
One thing which we have not factored that when, for instance, in some countries with a Cemix or self-leveling flooring application, you start the foundation of a building. Of course, you start very early in the building, and later on, we can leverage our local businesses, whether it's Weber, Gypsum, Insulation for distribution to pick up additional business. It's through different customer channels.
Okay. [Non-English content] gentlemen.
That's the reason for putting it in HPS, Jean-Christophe.
Okay. Now well understood.
Sell directly to large customer with a very co-development model.
Okay. Many thanks. [Non-English content] gentlemen .
Thank you. We don't have any more questions. Looks like we have no more questions. Back to you for the conclusion.
Well, once again, I think it's a very good acquisition. We are quite excited, as you understood, and well prepared, and I think that the team of Chryso is fully on board that I think that's something which is going to be very helpful and which will help Benoit to have a very quick integration of that company in Saint-Gobain. They are very exciting prospects, and we are quite excited.
Thank you. I hope to have, hopefully, them during the Capital Market Day on the 6th of October. We'll make sure we work diligently to have closing, and we are eager to welcome them within Saint-Gobain and continue on this very fantastic growth platform. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.