Good morning. Welcome to the 2020 result presentation of LafargeHolcim today. I am very happy to have you all here with me digitally. I'm here in the studio together with our CFO, Géraldine Picaud. We firstly would like to run you through our results. Then we go to our Q&A session.
2020 was a very challenging year, I think, for all of us. I'm very proud our people managed this so well. We kept everyone safe and healthy. At the same time, we also took good care of our business. You see in our results that we had a very strong momentum in Q4. Net sales were growing again. Operating profit was growing over proportionally.
This is a result of demand, which is coming back fastly in the building material spectrum, and it's also due to our action plan, Health, Cost & Cash, which helped us very strongly to reduce the cost, increase the cash flow, and come back on growth track. As a result, we have a record free cash flow of over CHF 3.2 billion achieved in 2020. Following this, we had a further strengthening of our balance sheet, and our net debt leverage is now as low as 1.4X .
That's also a record new low level achieved in 2020. Exciting milestone with the acquisition of Firestone Building Products. This is a new growth platform and a new chapter for the company on our way to be the most innovative and sustainable building materials company in the world.
Our efforts to become the most sustainable company have further accelerated in 2020. For example, we achieved the A-list ranking with CDP. Later, I talk about the outlook. We go with a great momentum and a good demand pattern into 2021. Let me just share with you some more details on the results before Géraldine goes into the financial performance in more detail. It has been an amazing year.
You see here again our quarterly results with the big disruption in the second quarter, then a very fast recovery, our cement volumes back almost to 2019 levels. Sales even above that for quarter four. You see also the over proportional operating profit increase. I think a very strong showing the resilience of our business and how strong we come out of this crisis year 2020.
If you look at one of the reasons we are so strong in the crisis is our branded product sales. You see here the numbers in the second half, we had a volume growth of over 4% for our cement bags, and you see here all the exciting brands we have. This is especially important in the emerging market space. This also is a very good indicator here for the running year, where we expect this trend to continue strongly.
If you look at our action plan, Health, Cost & Cash, we already gave you an announcement as early as in March what we intend to do. Number one priority is the health of our people, of our partners, of our communities. That was, I think, a very amazing how our people were helping locally.
A big plus for us to be a locally organized company where we can react very fast to the different stages of the pandemic and the different rules we have in our markets. We have on the cost side, overachieved. We promised a reduction of 300 million in fixed cost. We achieved close to 400 million. The same for third-party products and service costs, where we overachieved here our targets for the year.
We have on the CapEx side, interesting development. We were after three quarters well ahead of the target, with the strong demand in the fourth quarter, we shifted gears and allowed the companies, of course, to make all promising and necessary investment. That's why in quarter four, we are a little bit short of the target, for the right reasons.
All of that enabled us to show an over proportional increase in profitability, which means our price over cost ratio developed very strongly, and we have increasing margins in all of our five regions. Consequently, cash flow on a record level. If you remember, we had a record cash flow already above CHF 3 billion in 2019, and I'm very proud of the team that we could confirm this performance already in the consecutive year and even achieving a new record of above CHF 3.2 billion free cash flow.
If you look at the Firestone acquisition, that's a great new milestone for us. I just want to give you a small progress update. First of all, the business runs very well. The 2020 results are better than initially communicated to you. This is the same tune for the outlook. We are very excited here for 2021, especially with the new President Biden's program in the U.S., Build Back Better. That's an amazing support program for Firestone products to make buildings more sustainable, meaning more insulation, better waterproofing.
This is really the home turf of Firestone Building Products, and we really acquired this company at the right point in time. The closing also earlier than planned. At the moment, we believe we can even close it next month, end of March. Meaning that April 1st, this business is fully in the LafargeHolcim family. Same for financing.
We have already secured very attractive financing conditions for this acquisition. $2 billion of the acquisition price comes from simple U.S. dollar cash, and the remaining $1.4 billion was financed via two bonds. Very well done and going to be an exciting part of our future.
Bolt-on acquisitions also accelerated even in this difficult year, where to do due diligence or negotiations was not easy to do. Nevertheless, we made eight very attractive bolt-ons, focusing especially on our aggregates business, adding new quarries to our business in the most attractive markets in the U.S., in Canada, in the U.K., Switzerland, but also in Australia.
Huge acceleration of all sustainability, and I mentioned in the beginning already this very prestigious organization, CDP, they put us on their A list, where very few companies are listed, so that's fantastic. We just became a founding member of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. I'm the most excited about the rollout of our new green products, especially our ECOPact, our new green concrete, which has a 30% up to 100% more sustainable footprint than traditional concrete.
It's a product which is in high demand with our customers, and I'm very proud that we rolled this out from Europe to North America over to India. Good. I think with this, I want to make a last comment about the momentum in a few minutes, and before that, I give the floor to Géraldine, who gives us more details on the financial performance.
Thank you, Jan. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before going into our full year 2020 results, we feel it is important to give you another view of the Q4 results. This is actually a better reflection of the prevailing positive business trends. You can see here that our cements volumes are almost stable compared to Q4 last year. On a like-for-like basis, our net sales returned to growth at +1.5%, that was driven by a price increase of +2.6% in the quarter.
Such price increase more than covered the cost, allowing for an outstanding and overproportionate improvement in our profitability. Indeed, the recurring EBIT exceeded 14% on a like-for-like basis. The group EBIT margin improved by 170 basis point in Q4. Let's now move on to the full year 2020 results, which are a fairly resilient set of results.
Here, of course, our activity and profits have been impacted by the lockdowns of some construction sites, notably at the beginning of the year. As Jan explained, we have been always able to adapt our cost and spending in order completely to match and to generate this overproportionate Recurring EBIT of minus 1.9% that you see here.
We have also made some progress on all the categories of expenses below the Recurring EBIT. We have reduced further the financing expenses. We have also reduced the restructuring expenses, this in a context of crisis, and we have further reduced the effective tax rate from 26% - 25% this year. This leads to an earning per share of CHF 3.07. Pushed by our discipline and the cash protection measures, we have generated our best free cash flow ever recorded at above CHF 3.2 billion.
This is coming from an intense focus on our working capital, as well as a close management of our CapEx. Let's now move on to the performance of all the regions. What you can see here is that the Recurring EBIT margin has improved in all regions. The mature market, Europe and North America, yes, have been impacted by COVID, but managed to quickly adapt the cost, as said, and also maintain a very good pricing.
All the emerging market, and you see the outstanding performance of LATAM here. Overall, all our emerging markets have done quite well thanks to the success of our branded products. Let's now move on to the free cash flow and give you a bit more detail on this.
Again here, despite the crisis, we have been able to generate our best free cash flow ever, even better than the 2019 one, by CHF 230 million, which was already at an exceptional level. Let's start. You can see the Recurring EBITDA was down CHF 561 million, and this is almost entirely attributable to the negative currency conversion. This has been fully offset. It has been fully offset thanks to the very good execution of our Health, Cost & Cash program.
Firstly, the working capital. We have further optimized working capital, as you can see here, by an additional CHF 146 million. This is coming from the good monitoring of our inventory as well as the good collection on our receivables, which is quite important in the context of crisis. We have also further reduced the restructuring and the litigation and other non-recurring expenses.
As said, in line with our commitment, we have limited our CapEx by CHF 370 million reduction. That leads me to the net debt. Here again, despite the crisis, we have been able to further reduce the net debt. Firstly, as just said, the business has generated a free cash flow of CHF 3.2 billion, and this is after all leases and after all CapEx.
We have expense net of disposal, CHF 124 million, mainly on our bolt-on acquisitions. We have distributed CHF 1.5 billion of dividend, out of which CHF 1.2 billion to the LafargeHolcim shareholders through the CHF 2 dividend. The minority shareholder of our control subsidiaries have received CHF 280 million. Well, we are very proud to report a net debt below CHF 8.5 billion at year-end 2020.
This is the leverage, also a record level, as Jan said. We are now at 1.4 X. It has reduced by 0.1X compared to 2019, which leaves us plenty of headroom to finance the Firestone acquisition and to remain below two times. Let me add a few words on our sustainability. The sustainability KPIs are part of the metrics that we follow as closely and as regularly as the financial KPIs.
In 2020 here, what you can see is that our CO2 emission amounted to 555 kilos per ton of cement, and this is an improvement compared to last year. How have we obtained these results? By implementing several levers. Firstly, we have further increased the use of alternative fuel versus fossil fuels in all of our plants.
You have to realize that we have 20 plants that are today using more than 70% of alternative fuel. Secondly, we increased the use of mineral components to decrease the clinker in the cement production. Finally, we have developed all range of low carbon cement and low carbon concrete products. Jan, as an example, mentioned ECOPact and the EcoLabel. Of course, waste recycled and water withdrawn are KPIs that we follow very closely and where we have also improved.
Talking about people in 2020, we have provided COVID support here to our communities, reaching more than six million people. Before handing back to Jan, I'm very happy to confirm that we will propose to the AGM a CHF 2 dividend per share. Despite the crisis, we stick to our commitment announced in our Strategy 2022.
It will be a cash dividend, fully paid out of the foreign capital contribution reserves. Therefore, it will not be subject to Swiss withholding tax for all our shareholders.
Good. Thank you, Géraldine. We come to the outlook and the guidance, we are quite confident. We saw the growth momentum already in the fourth quarter, we see that going into 2021. We have good demand patterns in all of our regions, good order books, then in the second half of the year, we are expecting that the stimulus promises of basically all our key markets will hit our order books.
We have summarized a few of the key stimulus programs, with the most prominent one may be the Build Back Better plan in the U.S., which is an amazing program and probably will be the biggest infrastructure and housing program we have seen in many, many years in the U.S. We are very excited here. We will benefit from infrastructure.
We expect a new highway built, and we are very excited also for our Firestone products for Build Back Better, which means more sustainable, and we have the right solutions for that. Very exciting, also in the right time, where we now make one-third of the company turnover is in North America. We are, I would say, here at the right time as strengthened with the latest acquisition of Firestone.
You see the other stimulus programs from North America down to Latin America, Mexico, Brazil, we listed, over to Europe, and then over to India, even to Australia. We're very excited to be part of that Build Back Better programs, which the governments here have announced, and we expect this to hit our order books already in the second half of this business year. We look at the other guidance we want to share with you.
We want to now start the Firestone growth platform already from April onwards. We're very excited here to make this a global business. We just announced the global leader for solutions and products, a member of the executive committee. That's going to be a very big part here of our future solutions and products to develop into a strong foundation for our future. We have the bolt-on acquisitions.
You have seen we were able to do eight in the year of the pandemic, and we expect now, and we target to increase that number to a double-digit number for 2021. When you look at the profitability, we think we are fully on track for 2022 targets. Some targets, cash conversion, debt leverage, were well-achieved in 2020 already. Nevertheless, we want to restate that we will stay financially disciplined.
We expect an EBIT growth of at least 7% for the year. Our cash conversion will be above 40%. Debt leverage, as Géraldine explained, we'll keep below two times. Also the CapEx will go back to CHF 1.4 billion, this is the maximum value. Also here, we stay financially disciplined. I think with this outlook, I'm very happy now to start the Q&A session.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Webcast viewers may submit their questions or comments via video conference by clicking on the video Q&A button. An operator will quickly check your line and give you access to the video Q&A session. You will be live for everybody. You will know that you are live once the operator will announce your name as next questioner.
The first question comes from the conference call from Mr. Johannes Ritter with FAZ. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. If I remember correctly, you were also very excited when Trump took over, and in reference to his infrastructure programs. Now, you're again very excited. What's the difference now with Biden's program? Could you elaborate on that, please?
Yeah. Good morning, Mr. Ritter, thank you for the question. I think it's correct. When Trump ran for presidency back then, he had an infrastructure program which was focused on roads and focused on airports. You are right, this never really got started under that administration. I think one reason was that actually the economy was running very well.
I think that's the big difference we see now. We have now a new administration who has to support the people, avoid unemployment, and at the same time, make the promises for sustainability true. That's why we strongly believe that Build Back Better will be executed and will have a big support for LafargeHolcim.
Okay. The sustainability, I'd like to ask you about that as well. Your share price does not really lift up. Is that due to the fact that your industry is one of the worst in respect to carbon emissions?
No. I think it's, of course, our target to be the most innovative and sustainable building materials company. We are on the way to achieve that. We just launched our newest low carbon cement and concrete types. We have now with Firestone the most sustainable solutions for roofing. We are doing that, but I think we have to further execute here, achieve the results, and then I'm sure we get also the benefit from the share price.
You mentioned that there's a high demand for these ecological friendly products. Can you give some figures? How high are the sales or were the sales of these products so far?
Later this year, we will give you a precise figure, but at the moment, we are almost sold out for these new eco products, simply because the demand is actually more dynamic than expected. It's a good thing, and we are very busy to make the right supply chains to provide enough product because we are basically sold out in key markets, Switzerland, Germany, but also in the U.S. after launching these new eco products.
Are clients willing to pay more for these products in comparison to the normal products?
I think they pay for the value. I think we shouldn't say they pay more. They pay more because it's a high-value product. Yes, it's correct. We have a big demand from the consumer, so basically from the house owner, but also from the architects. They all want to have CO2-free buildings. That's why we are facing a very attractive demand for those products.
Are these products more expensive than the normal ones or not?
Oh, it has to be more expensive. It's a higher value. We do recycling of demolition waste, so we have a high content of the product is simply recycling of old buildings, old infrastructure. Certainly that comes with certain costs. Also at the same time, we have a leading position with those products, and that's why we can also ask for a premium price.
Are your margins higher or lower than to you?
That's a very detailed question. I answer you throughout the year, but we have a very good margin situation with the Eco Line products.
Okay. Last question concerning this topic. Is your bonus connected to the progress in your environmental targets?
Yeah. We have this already since last year. We were, I think, the first company in the building material sector who has introduced targets for sustainability. I have a target for CO2 reduction, a target for water reduction, and a target for increasing recycling of waste. The chart presented by Géraldine for the targets on sustainability are the targets all senior leaders globally have in their incentives.
The next question comes from the video conference and is from Ms. Angelika Gruber. Please go ahead, madam.
Yes. Hello and good morning. Thanks very much. I also have a question on sustainability. You said you made progress in reducing your CO2 targets. I was wondering whether also COVID helped you a little bit. I saw that you're already quite close to your 2022 targets. You're nearly there. Can you do better than your targets or will emissions increase in 2021 again?
Hey, Angelika. Good morning, and thank you. We do a fair measurement. Basically the reductions you see are also reduction per ton of material. We measure this effective per ton and not because for the entire year we had a reduction in volumes. We don't take that into account. Our targets are measured by ton, and that's why we make very good progress.
Thanks for realizing that we are quite well on track for the 2022 targets. I think we basically fulfill all of them except for the return on invested capital, where we are close. I hope this is a number we can already achieve in this business year, and then maybe it's time to set us a more ambitious target, maybe later this year or beginning of next year.
Thanks.
The next question comes also from the video conference and is from Mr. John Revell. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello, Jan, and hello, Géraldine. I've got a couple of questions, if I may. Your outlook's quite positive for this year, but I was wondering, obviously we're not out of the woods with COVID yet, and there's a third wave and new variants. What sort of risk do you see of a third wave dampening demand in the construction sector? That's my first question.
The second one is also you've been quite upbeat about stimulus forthcoming in the U.S. I recall the company in the past was quite upbeat about stimulus under Mr. Trump, and that never actually happened. What are your concerns that Biden's stimulus is actually going to come through on this scale that he wants, this $1.9 trillion, because that's a bit more than everybody else wants.
How big do you think that's going to be, and do you think it's going to be enough? The final question is just you did a few more deals on the M&A front last year. Can you give us a bit more guidance on what's the plan this year on the M&A front, please? Thank you.
Hey, John. Thank you. First, I think on the waves, I think we just are in a wave right now in most countries. The difference to the first wave is that basically all construction sites remain open. When we had the first wave, March, April, May, there were some closures of construction sites in various countries around the globe, and that was disrupting our business, as you can see in our quarterly overview.
We don't see this at this point in time. Even in December, when we went into quite strict lockdowns in many countries, our cement volumes were actually up against 2019. We also see the beginning of the year, a lot of lockdowns. Construction remains an essential part of the business as defined by the governments, and we do our part to support that and to keep the activities running.
On your second question with the stimulus, I think I already answered to Mr. Ritter that, of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we have to see what's happened. I would say we have a very precise announcement by the new administration in the U.S., not only for infrastructure, highways, and so on, but also for housing and making them more sustainable.
I personally would be surprised if this is not going to happen. We will see that throughout the year. I think important to notice that it's not the only stimulus. We have this across the globe, as shown to you in the graph. On the acquisition front, first of all, I'm very happy. We put the company on more efficiency. We did a lot of homework over the last three years, now is the time to grow the business.
We have done that with bolt-on acquisitions, with the Firestone acquisition, but also with launching the new green products for organic growth. For this year, we have to see what opportunities come up. We are ready. We have a strong balance sheet. However, keep in mind, we keep financially disciplined. We only make deals which make financial sense.
I hope so, but I was wondering, is there any kind of number of deals you might be going in? After Firestone, is that it on the big deal front?
No, we are ready. We are ready. What comes up, we are ready. You look at our balance sheet, I think our results are better than expected. The cash flow will also be strong in 2021 for us. We expect a very solid balance sheet. We can do many things if the opportunity comes up.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, for any further questions or comments, you may click on the video Q&A button or press star and one on your touchtone telephone.
If there's no-
Once again, for video.
Yeah.
Once again, for video questions, please press on the Q&A button on the webcast page or on the telephone, press star and one.
Looks like we have no more questions. Therefore, I really appreciate you joined us today digitally. I very much hope we can meet in person maybe later this year. I think it should be possible. Until then, I wish you happy writings.
Sorry.
Yes.
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Jenisch. We have a question from the telephone, from Mr. Philippe Rey from L'Agefi .
Good.
Please go ahead, sir.
Oh, good morning. Bonjour. I have a question. You will develop the forward business segment solutions products into a strong driver of growth and sustainability. Which return on invested capital can you grow, in particular organically, with this business? You will accelerate bolt-on acquisitions. Does it mean that it will orient it rather towards this new business area?
Yeah. Bonjour, Philippe. Thank you for your question. We do both. First of all, we are very excited to have the opportunity now to have a groundbreaking acquisition with Firestone. The solutions and product segment really is kickstarted now. We will now have the opportunity to take that U.S. or broadly U.S.-based business also into Latin America and into Europe.
This will be done mostly by organic growth and also by bolt-on acquisitions. We are then also interested to expand into other technologies for our customers. We are open to add other businesses to solutions and products. At the same time, we have many opportunities to also do bolt-on acquisitions for our aggregates in the concrete business. As you have seen in 2020, we did eight of these bolt-on deals, all for aggregates and for concrete.
You can expect this to continue also in the new business year. As I shared with you, we hope to have an acceleration here, and we are hoping to even have more than 10 deals in 2021.
You can reach one return on invested capital above 10%, probably in the future.
Philippe, can you speak a bit louder? We cannot hear you.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Okay. You can grow with an above-average return on invested capital. It is a goal, of course, above double-digit return on invested capital in this business area.
Yeah, it's correct, Philippe. This solutions and products business is rather low capital intense, we are very excited also for organic investments. Even with very significantly low investments, you can make significant impact for organic growth.
Maybe one last question. You have reduced substantially the fixed cost last year. Can you further reduce the fixed cost in this year? Which scope?
Yeah. I think we made a great progress on the cost in general. The fixed cost we shared with you are more than promised. Also on the variable side, we were able to reduce the cost significantly. We expect those costs to stay on that level or further improve. We have launched this action plan in the crisis, Health, Cost & Cash. We continue to execute on this program also this year. We expect quite a solid cost improvement and a further improvement of our margins.
Thank you very much. Merci.
We have a follow-up question from the video conference coming from Mr. Revell. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. I just didn't quite catch the back end of Philippe's answer there. Was it about 10 bolt-ons you were looking at to do this year? Were they going to be mainly in this building solutions and products area, do you think?
Is that the area you're going to be focusing on?
We make progress. We started with the bolt-on acquisitions really three years ago. We started with four a year. Now we made eight, even during the pandemic. I think our target for 2021 has to be 10 plus bolt-ons. Let me say specifically to your question, these 10 plus will be for aggregates and ready mix and for solutions and products. This will be an additional acquisition space we try to occupy.
All right. In solutions and products, is that going to be a particular focus for you guys in addition? As you say, it's very low capital intensive, so is that a priority area as well?
Absolutely. Yeah. We want to be the leader in flat roofing systems, and we also have interest to add other technologies. That's, of course, a primary focus for us.
Okay. It's going to be about 10 in ready mix and aggregates, and then some additional ones on top for the solutions and good stuff.
Absolutely.
Just to clarify that. Thank you. Cool. Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time.
Good. Thank you again for joining us today, even only digital, and I very much hope we can connect in person later this year. Until then, I wish you happy writing and stay safe and healthy and look forward to seeing you very soon.