Good morning, and welcome to the analyst and investor conference call for Holcim's first half 2026 results. My name is Bernd Pomrehn, and I am pleased to be joined by Miljan Gutovic, our CEO, and our CFO, Steffen Kindler. After their presentation of our results, you will have the opportunity to ask your questions. Sandra, may I ask you to share the technical details with us? Thank you.
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Thank you so much, Sandra. With this, I directly hand it over to Miljan. Miljan, please.
Thank you, Bernd. Good morning to you all, and welcome to Holcim's 2026 half-year results and analyst and investors conference. Steffen and I are pleased to be presenting our numbers to you today, and of course, we look forward to taking your questions afterwards. As you have seen, after a very strong start to the year, our momentum even accelerated in Q2. In net sales, our organic growth was 5.2% for H1 and 6.4% in Q2. There was an even stronger momentum in recurring EBIT, which grew 11.5% in H1 and by 13.1% in Q2. The drivers included increased customer demand for our sustainable offering, our strict cost discipline, and of course, our operational excellence. In the first six months, we closed the two value-accretive strategic acquisitions of Xella and Pacasmayo. This we will discuss later on.
Building on our strong first half performance, we are upgrading our 2026 full year guidance. Turning to the regional highlights now. In Europe, there were strong net sales accelerating in Q2, driven by Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, and Eastern Europe. Price over cost was positive, and our use of alternative fuels in the region went up again over 70% in H1, future-proofing Holcim from energy price exposure and market volatility. We completed the milestone acquisition of Xella on June 19, with these building solutions now already at 50% of net sales in the region. For the outlook, we expect the strong activity in infrastructure to continue, and this includes from roads, tunnels to the airports. Several projects have started, such a crossing river in London, the Axenstrasse Tunnel in Switzerland, and we are seeing major investments in railway in Eastern Europe, especially in Bulgaria.
In residential, the recent increase in building permits is continuing with recent notable growth in France, Germany, and also in Poland. In LATAM, we delivered 6.2% organic growth in net sales in H1. This was driven by Mexico, Ecuador, and Central America, with our recurring EBIT margin consistently above 30%. The strong performance of Pacasmayo, the acquisition of which we completed in March, contributed to both net sales and also recurring EBIT. For the outlook, we expect government support for new homes and also infrastructure projects to accelerate growth in Mexico, in Peru, and also across the whole Central America. One large project that I would like to highlight, which I recently visited, was the region's biggest social housing project in Ecuador. This is a perfect example where customer demand for sustainable products is evident even in the emerging markets. They are building 35,000 homes for more than 150,000 people.
Our outstanding performance in Asia, Middle East, and Africa continued with net sales up 8.5% and also overproportional increase in EBIT nearly 24%. The margin rose 80 basis points from a year ago to nearly 26%. The drivers in this case were continued favorable demand trends in North Africa and Australia, and we expect this to continue for the full year. One of the infrastructure projects in Australia is Western Parkland City near the Western Sydney International Airport. During my recent visit to Australia, I was quite impressed the amount of infrastructure projects we have happening. We are investing heavily. We are commissioning the new high-capacity concrete batching plant at Badgerys Creek that will be producing from September. Another example is the upcoming Olympic Games in Brisbane, where we are seeing a lot of construction activity already starting or in the tender stage.
With that, I would like to hand it over to Steffen to talk through the financials in more details. Steffen?
Thank you, Miljan. A warm welcome to all of you also from my side. It's always a pleasure to be here with you today. Turning first to the net sales bridge, you can see that we had a strong organic growth of 5.2%, representing almost CHF 390 million. Total sales are also up as the strong OG offsets impacts from net M&A, here mainly the divestment of Nigeria, and foreign exchange translation effects. The foreign exchange translation effect of 3.4% year-to-date is a mixture of mature and emerging markets currency devaluation versus the CHF. It's notable that this softened in the second quarter to 1.5%, while it was still at 5.5% in Q1. For recurring EBIT, we delivered double-digit organic growth of 11.5%.
There were foreign exchange translation effects of CHF 40 million or 2.8%, a CHF 112 million impact from divestments, as mentioned already in the sales chart. Here as well, net M&A is mainly driven by Nigeria and other divestments, partially offset by Pacasmayo. Also here, the foreign exchange translation effect softened to 1.4% in the second quarter. EBIT growth was driven by strong commercial execution, operational excellence, and disciplined cost management in the countries and at corporate level. I want to underline that once again, we delivered positive price over cost in all our regions. This is now the 17th consecutive quarter with positive price over cost for Holcim. Let's look at the progression of our recurring EBIT and recurring EBIT margin on a rolling 12-month basis.
This graph shows our continuing margin expansion, again, driven by our strong commercial execution, operational excellence, and disciplined cost management. Also underlined with our AI initiatives. The group margin for the second quarter was flat compared to the same period a year ago, mainly due to divestments. We're committed to further margin expansion for the full year 2026 and expect to be broadly flat for the first nine months before seeing expansion for the full year. Let's look at the regional performance. Organic growth in net sales was strong in each of LATAM and EMEA. In Europe there was a significant acceleration in the second quarter. In Asia, Middle East, and Africa, there was excellent organic growth in recurring EBIT in H1 at almost 24%, with an 80 basis points increase in margin. While we keep achieving a recurring EBIT margin of above 30% in Latin America.
Europe saw good margin development. As mentioned before, good cost development on the corporate level continued. Our performance culture and disciplined financial management ultimately drives the growth of our earnings per share, EPS, which is up 7.4% in CHF from a year ago. This shows that we pay equal attention to operational performance and financial discipline in the lines below recurring EBIT, that we are producing superior profitable growth. You can see the development of our free cash flow in the first half of the year. The headline number incorporates some CapEx phasing, a seasonally strong June that impacted H1 working capital, the large divestment of Nigeria in the second half of 2025. Taking these things into account, we are fully on track to meet our full-year guidance of around CHF 2 billion.
Looking now at our strong investment-grade balance sheet, as well as accounting for dividend payments, our M&A, principally the acquisition of Cementos Pacasmayo in Xella, has increased our financial debt. Given the seasonality of our cash flow, we expect our leverage ratio to be back to around 1.6 times by year-end, so close to our 1.5 target level, even after closing our announced acquisition and expansion in Colombia and our usual run rate of around half a billion CHF on bolt-on acquisitions. With that, I'm pleased to hand you back over, Miljan.
Thank you, Steffen. For NextGen Growth 2030, we are delivering superior performance and margin expansion focused on the five key drivers. Firstly, we are scaling up our sustainable offering, powered by our premium brands. We are accelerating initiatives for decarbonization and circular construction, driving profitable growth. A key part of NextGen Growth is expanding high-value building solution. With our impeccable track record of value-accretive M&A, we are focusing on the most attractive markets and the most attractive businesses. All of this is driven by our deeply embedded performance culture. Now let's look more closely at some of these drivers. Our sustainable offering, driven by our premium brands, ECOPact, ECOPlanet, and ECOCycle, continues to be in demand. These premium brands are being used at scale in large-scale projects.
One example here, which you can see on the slide, is the library in Australia, which is built with ECOPact and Geostone, our modern decorative concrete inside. The library in Geelong and in Melbourne is a landmark and community hub that reflects Aboriginal heritage, and it was also awarded a 5-star Green Star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia. During the first half, we increased the volume of recycled construction and demolition materials by 36%, accelerating also our circular construction technology, ECOCycle. Circular construction, more broadly, continues to be a driver of profitable growth. As you can see on this slide, the contribution from our acquisition of Xella, for example, with its additional 22 circular construction hubs, we are now close to 150 in total. We also closed seven value-accretive transactions in the first half of the year, of which six were acquisition and one was divestment.
To reinforce building materials, Holcim made acquisition in Romania as well as Pacasmayo in Peru. Building solution expanded with four strategic acquisitions in Belgium, Germany, and New Zealand, as well as the acquisition of Xella. We also made one divestment. The two strategic acquisitions we closed in H1 will definitely help us accelerate our NextGen Growth 2030 strategy. Xella, which is a leader in the attractive EUR 12 billion-plus walling market, brings around CHF 900 million in projected 2026 sales, as well as more than 50 production facilities. At the same time, Pacasmayo, a leading player in Peru of building materials and also building solution, brings additional CHF 500 million of projected 2026 net sales, as well as three integrated cement plants and 28 ready-mix and precast plants.
On the next slide, you can see how addition of premium Xella brands enhances our integrated end-to-end building solutions, offering our customers from foundation and flooring to walling and roofing. For walling, our customer offering now includes Ytong, as well as Silka and Multipor mineral insulation. For roofing, we now offer a large format Hebel panels. To conclude this section on Xella, I wanted to emphasize how delighted I am to welcome Xella's 4,000 employees to Holcim family. Last quarter, we explained to you how AI is unlocking incremental value and growth for Holcim, improving performance, and also driving customer-centric services. To reinforce, we expect benefits from AI of around CHF 200 million by 2028, reflecting both cost savings and also cost avoidance. We think this will entail growth investments of around CHF 20 million a year.
We have around 40 initiatives across these four areas of production, logistics, commercial, and administration. Let's look next at some of the initiatives we are scaling up. On this side, we have initiatives related to production. We have AI-powered Holcim Predict family of initiatives. M-Predict is for maintenance, where we are using AI models correlating smart sensors to predict maintenance of critical machines. The other one is Q-Predict, which is for quality. Using models, it allows us to optimize cement formulations while reducing clinker factor. So far, we have tested more than 7,000 different cement formulations since its launch. For M and Q-Predict, we have made excellent progress. The next big initiative is P-Predict, which uses AI for real-time kiln process control, allowing us to optimize our energy mix, and this will include increased usage of alternative fuels.
Turning to the rest of the year, we are upgrading our 2026 full year guidance after this very strong first half. Net sales and recurring EBIT growth at high end of our NextGen Growth 2030 targets, 5% organic net sales growth and 10% organic recurring EBIT growth. Further increase in our recurring EBIT margin, free cash flow around CHF 2 billion, and we want to continue to over proportionally grow in recycled construction and demolition materials. Bernd, you can now open it for questions.
Thank you, Miljan. Thank you, Steffen. With this, we open the line for questions. The first question came in from Ben Rader Martin from Goldman Sachs. Good morning, Ben.
Excellent. Thanks very much, Miljan, Steffen and Bernd. Thanks for the questions today. My first question was on, I guess the ETS changes we've seen in the last few weeks. I'd be interested in how that affects your European decarbonization strategy at all. Are there any business cases that you think are stronger under the proposed changes or any that you might look to revisit? The second question is around Europe cement pricing. I wonder if you could provide an update on your ambitions as we get into the second half of this year. As we think about 2027 with the backdrop of more energy inflation, is it right to think that the contribution for pricing into next year could be a similar magnitude or even larger than what we saw in 2026? Thank you.
Good morning, Ben. Thank you for your question. I'll start with ETS. It's been almost two weeks, Ben, since we saw the EU ETS proposal for reforms. First reaction from my side was this actually once again confirms that ETS will remain the key pillar of European climate and industrial policy. After analyzing it, we found that it is positive for Holcim, and it will open additional opportunity for us, starting with this industrial decarbonization bank, EUR 100 billion of investments. We definitely want to participate in this. Free allowances phasing out. I see this as a positive sign because it will give us additional time, maybe a year or two, to optimize our value chain. I think I said this many times before, when it comes to carbon capture project, I strongly believe that we need to find onshore storage possibilities to make this project even more financially attractive.
Moving from offshore to onshore, this can help us to delay this project by a year or two. We talk about carbon market. This is also something very interesting where we can participate. We talk about carbon capture utilization, which is something very interesting because they have changed accounting from the capture to the usage. This here can open the possibilities for CO2 to become a feedstock. We do have some of the projects, including the one in France, where we want to work with our partners, of course. We want to use the captured CO2 to sell it, to be used to produce sustainable aviation fuel. In my view, very positive, and for Holcim being the leader in the decarbonization, this will definitely open the new opportunities. Now on the pricing. Very happy so far.
At the beginning of the year, we did aim for mid-single digits. This is where we are. There were some very pleasant upsides, for instance, Mexico. For the second half of the year, I do believe there are pockets of opportunities, but nothing on this level. Steffen said it, 17 quarters of positive price over cost. Next time when we talk, Ben, I will report another 18th quarter of positive price over cost. That's the goal for the rest of the year.
Excellent. I guess just to come back on pricing, conscious they're a little bit early for 2027, but given the energy inflation backdrop in Europe, do you expect pricing to be a bigger contributor next year than what we've seen this year, or similar magnitude, or is it too early to say?
I would not like to comment on this at this stage. It's too early. Probably we should talk more about this in Q3 or towards the end of the year.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ben.
Thank you, Ben. The next one on the line is Julian Radlinger from UBS. Good morning, Julian.
Hey, good morning, guys. A couple questions. The first one is, can we dig a little bit deeper into Europe? You finally turned the corner there on volumes, and of course, you're not the only construction company to have done so. Could you paint us a bit of a picture of which countries are growing, which ones aren't yet? I'm also really curious about, is this more infrastructure driven or is residential coming back in a clear way somewhere? By that I mean not just permits that you're seeing, but actual activity. Thank you.
Good morning, Julian. Thank you for the question. On Europe, very pleased with the momentum in H1, especially acceleration in Q2. As you have seen, we did very well in Europe. All in all, infrastructure backlog is extremely healthy across the whole of Europe. On the residential sector, I would like to say that Eastern Europe is doing well, but we are seeing soft recovery in Germany and also in France. At the same time, Spain and Greece are doing really well. The only soft market in H1 was U.K., and we expect that these big projects such as River Crossing in London, Sizewell C, few others where we are participating, tendering. This will create a much better momentum in H2. Unlike Germany and France, residential in U.K. is still soft.
Okay, great. Then sort of the same question for Latin America. Here, your volumes were slightly negative, I think, in Q2. They looked a little bit better in the prior quarter. If I look at all sorts of construction data, and what some of your peers reported for Mexico, et cetera, I would have actually expected a bit of volume growth in Latin America. Can you help us understand what drove that sort of volume setback in Q2, and will that change in the second half of the year? Thank you.
On LATAM, Julian, it was a country mix, but countries that we are seeing a strong performance, Mexico, Ecuador, the whole Central America, and especially Peru. You saw what Pacasmayo reported for Q2. Net sales up more than 15% and EBITDA up 30%+. Argentina is softer than we expected, and in Colombia, we had the election, so that probably had an impact on the whole volumes. Regarding Mexico, we are pleased with the performance. We are still talking about even higher EBITDA margin than 45%. We maintained our market share. I know there was a shift in the volumes in central region of Mexico, but this was nothing to do with the Holcim. For the H2, I believe that we will see significantly better momentum. We did spend money on the integration of these companies. We invested heavily in the sensor.
All of this is already paying off.
Maybe the highlight on the pricing, I would like to say for me at least, was indeed Mexico.
Thank you.
Thank you, Julian. We take three questions from Paul Roger from BNP Paribas. He sent us the questions by email. First question from Paul, "Are the margins in LATAM likely to be relatively stable sequentially around 30% in the future? Which would actually imply a big expansion year-over-year in the third quarter.
I would hand it over to Steffen.
Yeah. Hey, Paul. Good question. Look, I would say what we've been saying all along, that LATAM, for us, we manage this like a portfolio. LATAM has always been above 30%. We have some countries every year that are a bit stronger, that are going through other periods. We manage this as a portfolio, and we always say between 30% and 35%, this margin will swing year-by-year. Which is great for us because the region is growing in sales, and the mix into our overall portfolio and into our results is positive from this high margin growth. Every year we expect this to be above 30%, with some wiggle room, depending on the country mix and the specific projects that we're doing. Yes, we confirm that it is above 30%.
Perfect. The second question from Paul is on our corporate costs. He is writing, "Is there upside risk to your previous targets for reducing central costs, given the good performance in the second quarter?
Yeah, look, very good question. Please be mindful that at the half year, the corporate cost we show, you cannot simply multiply that by 2 to get to the full year number because we have some backloaded impacts. Like for example, insurance payments, clearing out the insurance from our internal captive. These are things that hit in the fourth quarter. This is why you cannot put a straight line from half year to date to full year. We're fully on track with the target that we set. We said that after the spin, we had corporate cost of a bit more than 3% of sales, and our trajectory is to come down to 2% by the end of this year. At least to be in a structure that allows for 2% as of 2027. We're fully in line with that trajectory.
We will see then in the full year how we manage the late sequencing of those costs. So far, there's certainly no risk that it could be worse.
The third question from Paul. He's asking, "Are there any green shoots in the U.K.?" Any positive signs first? Leading indicators?
I did mention this previously, that in H1, U.K. has been relatively soft. We are seeing that all these big major infrastructure projects have started. We are supplying river crossing in London, I mentioned Sizewell C. What's equally important that we are tendering for a lot of big infrastructure projects. Government is committed the next year to spend more than CHF 700 billion. It is moving. Probably the delay in H1 was due to the political uncertainty. I would expect much better and stronger momentum later in Q3, and hopefully the residential will start coming back through some government incentives.
Thank you, Miljan. The next one in the line is Elodie Rall from JPMorgan. Good morning, Elodie.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll have three, if I may. First of all, on your guidance, I think it implies, in H2, some deceleration, right? In H2, a bit like for like, given you delivered 11.5% in H1 and you guidance around 10% for the year. Why is that? We see some easy comps, I think, in Q4 from corporate cost. What's keeping you from being a bit more optimistic there? Second, in terms of price cost pipe, sorry to come back on that, can you confirm that it was positive in Q2 and give us some color by region? I think you mentioned 17 quarters of positive price cost spread, was it just for Europe? I didn't quite catch that. Lastly, just maybe a bit of out-of-the-box question, you're selling your emerging market exposure.
You just sold Nigeria, you sold that to Huaxin, and you have a 41% stake as part of your JV in the Huaxin. I was trying to understand what the long-term rationale is here with regard to your strategy and your JV. Thank you.
Good morning, Elodie. Thank you for your question. On the guidance, we decided to go to the upper end because it's H1. We usually revisit guidance in Q3, but we were feeling comfortable with the performance in H1, so we decided to go up to the upper level. It doesn't mean anything for H2 that there will be a slowdown. I can tell you that July is looking good, equally good as June, across all our markets. Some market even better in July than in June. Q4, it will be better in December, but I would not expect any slowdown or deacceleration in H2. We can revisit our guidance again at the end of Q3. Regarding the Huaxin, yes, we did divest Nigeria to Huaxin. We believe that Huaxin is a better owner of this business. We did even before some other positions with us.
We like our participation in Huaxin. It's a very healthy relationship, and it does not contradict with our strategy in the long term. On the price over cost, I would like to hand it over to Steffen.
Yeah. Hi, Elodie. Good morning from my side as well. Correct, 17th quarter of positive price over cost in all regions. To give you a bit more insight so that you can do your math, positive price over cost was to the tune of, let's say, CHF 90 million, and you can probably parcel this in equal thirds to the three regions with Europe in the sequence, Europe, EMEA, LATAM. That gives you a good indication, but roughly a third all of those.
Emerging market strategy, she asked.
Emerging market strategy. So far Europe represents around 55% of our total net sales, and the rest is LATAM, North Africa, and other positions we are. I believe this is a good mix. There could be some additional potential divestments just on the smaller scale, and we are constantly reassessing our position, and we will continue to invest in the most attractive markets and most attractive businesses. For instance, LATAM is considered as a developing market. This is a market where we have the highest margins. This is a market where we have made some significant investments. I mentioned Pacasmayo. We signed the acquisition in Colombia. We expect this to close in the next few months. Emerging market or developing market will continue. Selective ones will continue to be the key focus for us in the years to come.
Thanks very much. Very clear.
Thank you, Elodie. The next caller is Pujarini Ghosh from Bernstein. Good morning, Puja.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on the margin expectation for the year. While we've been speaking over the last few months, the impression I had was that through pricing you are trying to offset the absolute increase in costs because of the energy and raw material cost inflation. That could mechanically mean that the margin could be a bit weaker year-on-year. Today's result comes as a slight positive surprise to that. Could you explain what has been better than expectations in terms of pricing? You did mention Mexico, anything else you're seeing, maybe better uptick or reception from your customers? How should we think about this going into H2? Are you still continuing to pass pricing?
This guidance upgrade, how much of that comes from better pricing expectations versus volumes, versus the outperformance that you've already shown in H1?
Thank you for your question, Pujarini. I just want to go back to history, and I'll take example of Europe. From 2021 to 2025, markets were challenging in Europe. The construction activity was soft, and residential dropped. During this time, Holcim Europe has increased sales, increased the EBIT, but also, we have managed to have a margin expansion of more than 400 basis points. Why I'm telling you all of this? Pricing is definitely something that what we are focusing on, what we are driving. Margin expansion is driven also by other factors. We are scaling up our sustainable offering. You saw it at ECOPact, ECOPlanet, now ECOCycle. On these products, we do have a modest price premium, but we also have some cost upsides. It's a double-dipping. You have a small premium, you have a reduced cost, and you do end up with the margin expansion.
These products are now representing one third of our sales. Secondly, decarbonization and circular construction. These initiatives we have on alternative fuels, on clinker factory reduction, on recycling of construction and demolition materials, all of this is driving profitable growth, and all of this is actually helping us when it comes to margin expansion. The third big topic is M&A. We have a great track record of value-accretive M&As, where we are divesting less attractive markets. At the same time, we are focusing, we are investing in the more attractive markets. Perfect example is the latest Pacasmayo, where the EBITDA margin in this year has been well above 30%. We have divested some less attractive position. It is the product mix, it's the sustainability-driven initiatives, plus value-accretive M&A.
When you combine all of this will continue to lead to margin expansion this year and also in the years to come. Steffen, maybe on the guidance for margin for the rest of the year?
Yes. Look, our guidance for margin for the rest of the year is that we will increase further. I said previously that we have a sequential improvement. We were still slightly down in the first quarter. Drivers for that were, of course, the weather in the first quarter. We are flat in the second quarter. Very good performance on price over cost, very good performance on our pricing and on our cost performance. There's an impact from divestments. There's just a mix impact, and that has kept us flat for the second quarter, predominantly in Nigeria, that had a very high margin last year. That is fading out now. The Nigeria divestment happened in August, so we're going into a more like-for-like basis on that for the second half. All the other things will continue.
We expect probably to be year to date, nine months flat, and then full year positive, which means two good margin quarters to come.
Going back to pricing, Pujarini. Happy with what we have achieved so far. For the rest of the year, nothing extraordinary, but I do see some pockets of potential price increases in Europe, but more in Latin America.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Puja. We take a question from Luis Prieto from Kepler Cheuvreux. Good morning, Luis.
Morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Just two left for me. Would you be able to break down the organic growth building block of your Q2 2026 recurrent EBIT bridge between price over cost and volume to get a better idea? The second one, following up on Elodie's question. If I recall correctly, you mentioned in Q1 that in order to achieve the top end of the guidance, there would need to be geopolitical stability. I understand that there was strength in Q2, wouldn't it have been more advisable to wait until nine months, that you mentioned earlier, to have more visibility on the geopolitical front? Thank you.
Thank you for your question, Luis. I'll take the second one, Steffen can go with the first one. Yes, geopolitical factor is always a risk. As I said, we had such a great momentum in H1. We started well in Q1 despite the weather impact, we really accelerated in Q2. You saw it, net sales above 6%, over proportional double-digit EBIT growth. We felt the need to up our guidance a little bit. In Q3 we will revisit this again, it seems that, once again, we have demonstrated that the business model that Holcim has is resilient across all market conditions, economical cycles, and we can overcome geopolitical uncertainty as well.
For price over cost, Luis first. Good morning. Good to have you. Answer to Elodie before the price over cost in the second quarter was to the tune of some CHF 90 million. Let's say 15-20 of that was volume, there was some positive contribution of JVs to a tune of 10-15, the rest is pricing.
Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you so much, Luis. The next caller is Martin Hüsler from ZKB. Good morning, Martin.
Yes, good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me.
Perfectly well.
Thanks. I have a question regarding this margin guidance you just alluded to. I was wondering whether the margin improvement in the second half does also include Xella, or if it's only on recurring base? That's the first question.
Hey, Martin. Good morning. Our margin is calculated on all sales and all EBIT, it's not an organic margin, it's a full margin. Organic is, just for everybody on the call, to make this very clear, sales growth is organic, EBIT growth is organic. The margin is a full margin, cash flow is a full cash flow, and EPS growth is a full EPS growth. Okay? The only two organic KPIs that we have in our reporting and guidance is sales growth and EBIT growth.
Okay. That's rather a strong message, I guess, because I would expect Xella, obviously, on a recurring base to be a bit margin dilutive, and then obviously you have some consolidation effects in the second half probably as well. Maybe can you share what maybe margin or, let's say, what EBIT contribution we could expect from Xella in the second half? Obviously, you mentioned the sales side, but maybe on the EBIT side as well?
I said it before that the impact of M&A on our margin in the first half was rather one of divestments. We divested Nigeria, which had a margin impact in the first half because that was a business with a very high margin. The inclusion of new businesses, like our bolt-ons, we do bolt-ons to a tune of CHF 400 million-CHF 500 million each year, is what we said, plus Pacasmayo, plus Xella. The net of all of these will, of course, have a slight negative impact because all of these things come in new. They come in for the first year. They have integration costs. We don't break that out. This is all included in our guidance. The positive price overcost, the positive performance we have elsewhere, and the positive contribution from M&A we did in previous years, that will help us to offset.
We give this guidance knowing that we offset the onboarding cost of the newly acquired businesses.
Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. The second question I have, maybe a bit housekeeping, but the delta between adjusted operating profit and operating profit was rather a bit higher than what I was expecting. Maybe in the tune of CHF 150 million. What should we expect for the full year here?
That is a tune that is rather a bit elevated this time because of provisions taken in the first half of provisions released. You know, there are one-off items. There was also an impairment in the numbers in Argentina. We would expect that for the full year, the best guidance we can give you, go with run rates of the past. We manage these below the recurring EBIT lines. We always manage them with big care, and we try to always keep them within the framework of what we're used to. Just so that you know, I personally approve every item that's booked below recurring EBIT. We're managing these lines very closely, and the best assumption you can take is previous years.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Martin. The next question comes from the line of Ephrem Ravi from Citi. Good morning, Ephrem.
Morning. Thank you. Most of my questions have been answered, just two follow-ups. Firstly, on the M&A front. Your net cash or net acquisition of CHF 7.3 billion obviously includes some big one-off items for Xella and Cementos Pacasmayo. Looking forward, if you make CHF 2 billion of free cash this year, your net debt will come back to about CHF 5 billion, just about that, and that will leave you at around just over at times of EBITDA in terms of leverage. Given CHF 1 billion of dividends and half a billion of bolt-ons, that still leaves you close to CHF 2.5 billion-CHF 3 billion of balance sheet firepower for sizable acquisitions in the next 12 months. Would that be a fair characterization of how we should think about your balance sheet strength in terms of inorganic? Assuming there are obviously good opportunities out there to buy.
Second question, I know you mentioned the margin dilution at a group level was minimal, just on the LATAM level, your margin was lower by just over 200 basis points, I suppose because of Cementos Pacasmayo. Could you help us quantify that margin dilution percentage? Thank you.
Ephrem, very good on the balance sheet. If you're looking for a job in treasury, we're happy to have you. That was spot on. We have about 1.6x leverage by year's end. After we paid for all the acquisitions, remember we still want to do a mandatory tender offer for Cementos Pacasmayo. We still have the Colombian acquisition to close probably this year. All of these things together will lead us to a debt leverage of around 1.6 by the end of the year. You said it absolutely right, if we want to stay with our, let's say, 1.5x guidance for next year, come back to that, we have more than CHF 1 billion on top of add-ons of CHF 400 million-CHF 500 million. We have another CHF 1 billion of firepower available.
If we were to increase the debt leverage any further, we would even have more money available, which we could do for a short period of time. Your estimates there were not bad, but maybe the simplest way to go about it, if we keep on doing add-ons, if we want to go back to 1.5, we have more than CHF 1.1 billion, CHF 1.2 billion available still for next year to spend.
On the LATAM margins.
Oh, sorry. Yes. The LATAM margins. Yeah, it's correct what you said there as well. It was Pacasmayo integration. Pacasmayo came with very good results, very good growth, but a bit of a lower margin, as you can also see in their reporting. That had a mixed effect and the onboarding costs of Pacasmayo. Those were the main drivers, plus some other M&A we did there, some other onboarding costs. Those were the main drivers for margin in Latin America. Again, as I said before, we expect margin in Latin America to be above 30% and to always be above 30%, because this is how we're managing the region, a bit like an investor manages a portfolio with different countries having different growth trajectories at different points in time.
Just to add on M&A, what Steffen said. Look, yes, we did close Pacasmayo, Xella. Teams are working to close Colombia at the end of the year, beginning of next year, we are not stopping. Pipeline is very healthy. We are seeing some promising targets. We are working on some very good deals. We do have, thanks to our very healthy balance sheet, thanks to our financial discipline, our excellent cash conversion of free cash flow, we will be able to do more of these value accretive deals in the future.
Thank you.
Very clear. Perfect. The next question is from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Good morning, Arnaud.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Just a couple of follow-ups if I may. On cash flow, the cash flow guidance is unchanged despite the small upgrade in the EBIT guidance. Appreciate there's a lot of moving parts, and you've given us a net debt EBITDA target as well. Can you help me even further and do you have a view on working capital effects and CapEx for the full year? I'm actually struggling to get to CHF 1.6. Naturally, would go a little bit lower than that. My second question is just on Xella. You report CHF 458 million of sales for the first half. If I multiply that by two, that's about CHF 920, which I believe was more or less what was delivered in 2025. Can you confirm that for now, Xella sales have been broadly stable this year?
Do you believe the business can start growing even without a meaningful recovery in German housing activity? Thank you.
Good morning, and thank you for the question, Arnaud. I'll start, and then I'll hand it over to Steffen. First of all, on Xella, look, Q1 was tough for Xella. Yes, mainly weather-related conditions, especially in Western Europe. What we saw in Q2 was very promising. I still believe they can grow. Momentum is there. We are seeing positive signs in residential, as I said. Thanks to combining our forces, Holcim and Xella, we will be able to accelerate these activities on cross-selling, on specification selling, and also on system selling. Yeah, I believe they can, and they will grow. On the first question, I'll start with the CapEx, then I'll hand it over to Steffen. We talk about M&As, but the fact is we are investing heavily in value-accretive CapEx projects. Yes, this year we have invested heavily.
There is a brand new flagship plant for us in Belgium that will be commissioned in H1. Most of the payments is due this year. We're also building the new grinding station hub in London, Tilbury. We have made some heavy investments in alternative fuels in Europe, but also in Latin America. I mentioned some of the investments we made in Australia. We are investing also in organic growth and all these CapEx projects that we have, they have very attractive ROIC, which is currently above our current company ROIC. I'll stop here and hand it.
Thanks, Miljan. Hey, Arnaud. Good morning. To deconstruct the components a little bit, good EBITDA growth. Also, you saw a slight softening of the FX headwind that of course helps, which is not even part of the calculation really. A bit of higher working capital, maybe to the tune of CHF 100 million because of good business development. Remember, our working capital is negative in most of our countries, there's not so much room to improve further. That will be totally compensated by the cash flow coming in with new acquisitions. Nothing to be said on taxes. When you put all these things together, we're quite confident around the CHF 2 billion. Why do we not narrow this down much more? I always say cash flow is a KPI that represents a period, but there's also a significant snapshot effect in it.
If I'm asked to close out a tax audit in some country, a several-year tax audit, and the administration wants the payment in December or in January, this could have a large swing factor on our free cash flow. This is why we're guiding around CHF 2 billion, but we're quite confident. Based also on the past, on the trajectory, where we're standing today, when we look at the past years, we're quite confident that this CHF 2 billion is a very realistic guidance.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Arnaud. The last question today comes from Harry Dow from Rothschild, obviously.
Hi there. Morning, everybody. Just two questions from me. Firstly, just on the AI savings, I wonder if you could tell us whether any of that was booked in the first half, and maybe just some phasing around. You might have given this before, but just remind us the phasing for this year and next through to 2028 of those savings. Secondly, just on the strategy on European roofing, I think you mentioned that there was a launch of a new roofing panel product. Just some more color on the strategy there. Should we expect more organic development or M&A led? Also, I'm assuming that was sort of an insulated panel. Does that mean potentially there could be a future of insulated panels for walling solutions as well? Thank you.
Good morning, Harry, and thank you for your question. On AI, the total target we communicated, CHF 200 million net benefit by 2028. This includes approximately CHF 20 million investments per year. We did not say the target for 2026, but I would expect this to be CHF 30 million -CHF 50 million, and then I would expect that we significantly increase and double up on this. Very happy with the progress, especially what we showed you this morning in production side with our Predict family. This is probably something that I personally am very connected to. It started three and a half, four years ago. I was in my previous role. The whole momentum, once we set up the team, the scaling up, today we have more than 1,500 machines already on AI platform. It's quite impressive.
The speed, the scale, acceleration, what we saw in production, we want to replicate in commercial, in logistics, and to some extent, even in admin. On the roofing, well, roofing is relatively small business, a few hundred million CHF. We did make some acquisitions, if you recall Zinco GreenRoof. With Xella, we do have the opportunity to provide the system through our Hebel brand. It could be more organically a market. As I said, it's consolidated. There are not many opportunities for additional consolidation or M&As.
Perfect. Thank you so much, Miljan. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you so much for your interest in Holcim and your very active participation. Obviously, the investor relations team is more than happy to help you if there are any further questions, so please stay tuned. Have a wonderful summer. With this, I hand over to Miljan for some closing remarks.
Once again, thank you all for joining us this morning. We were very proud to share with you our extraordinary performance in H1 and especially in Q2. We will continue to focus on our key strategic initiatives combined with impeccable execution. I think we are looking forward to equally good H2. I also take this opportunity to thank now 50,000 of my colleagues around the world for outstanding contributions to Holcim's NextGen Growth 2030 strategy. Once again, thank you very much.