Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Hailey, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, thank you for joining the Wienerberger conference call on the results on the third quarter of 2020. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. If any participants have difficulty hearing the conference, please press the star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Daniel Merl, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to the Wienerberger earnings call on the first three quarters of 2020 and our Q3 2020 results. Our board representative today is our CEO, Heimo Scheuch. He will lead you through the presentation today, discussing our results in the COVID environment, but also giving an outlook for further growth opportunities for Wienerberger in the future. After the presentation, as usual, we are ready to take your questions. I will now hand over to Heimo Scheuch for the presentation.
Thank you, Daniel, and good afternoon from Vienna from my side as well. Thanks for being on the call, and would like to briefly go with you through the Q3 results, give you an update on the situation in our markets, and then also a short update on our strategy. Ladies and gentlemen, as you have received the presentation, I would kindly refer to some pages that you can flip through with me. When we look at page three, you see, obviously, Q3 has been a very good quarter, obviously determined by strong operational performance in all of our units. We had a post-lockdown demand that improved through the summer months. The catch-up effect due to the lockdowns in the quarter two have materialized. You remember that we discussed those at the half-year results and have seen them coming through in all of our units.
Above all, I think the self-help efforts that our group puts in place with respect to performance enhancement measures, the improved product mix, and obviously also the strong focus on innovation is paying off, where you see that we, even in this sometimes very challenging market environment, can grow the business and especially the profitability. Draw your attention that obviously on a group perspective, the turnover had been down in quarter three about 2%, and EBITDA compared to the record level of last year, up with 2%. It shows clearly that we're on a good path for the further development of Wienerberger. Addressing some of your potential questions already, pricing has been very stable, so we have been able to hold the prices at the levels that we have attained beginning of the year and throughout the whole COVID crisis, so pricing stable.
We had on the front of efforts in the different units, obviously, a good performance on the Fast Forward project. As I said a couple of times, we have implemented our measures very rapidly and quickly. We have delivered so far EUR 24 million out of this project during the first nine months of this year. I'm very confident that the EUR 6 million remaining we will achieve also this year, so we will come to a EUR 30 million EBITDA improvement from our Fast Forward program. The rest that we will deliver in the years to come, and especially in 2021, will be then part of our overall measure I will talk in a minute about. This is the general statement.
If I can guide you to slide five of my presentation here, give you an overview of the markets, a little bit more in detail, taking on your suggestions that I had during a couple of calls with you that you want to see a map again a little bit. A little bit of background to the market. New build and renovation. When we look at Western European markets in the first nine months of this year, they have been, from an overall perspective, slightly down compared to last year. That is to do with the lockdowns and obviously also the problem that administrations are not full-time working, and we have some delays with issuing building permits. This is the general status when it comes to new build. Renovation is being up, helpful for our roofing business, especially in the strong Western European markets like the Benelux.
We've seen very good performance also in the paving segment in Belgium and the Netherlands. Very good demand levels coming in these segments. Central Europe, again, when you look at Austria and Germany especially, we have been a flattish market environment when it comes to new build in our core segment for one and two-family houses, and also in the renovation field, more a flattish environment in these two markets. Eastern Europe, a mixed picture, ladies and gentlemen. We have seen, obviously, that the Eastern European markets have been, throughout the COVID and the lockdowns, operating from a very different approach they have taken to the Western European economies. We have seen some markets over the summer also weakening. This is especially true for Poland and Hungary.
This has not to do exactly with the COVID situation, but both countries, especially the Hungarian one, have taken tax measures before the COVID crisis, bringing VAT substantially up on building materials and services and construction. They obviously were suffering from a quite severe downturn in the market. We had to digest this also in these economies. As I said, Poland and Hungary, weaker compared to last year in the new build segment. The other markets like the Czech Republic and Romania, taking only the two big ones, have been more or less flattish compared to last year. Again, in the renovation segment, we find a very stable environment throughout the whole area, with good volumes and stable volumes compared to last year on the roofing segment. Let's move to infrastructure.
Here again, declining volumes in Western Europe due to the lockdowns, especially obviously when you talk about the more important markets for us, like the Netherlands and France, and to some extent also Belgium. At the Nordics, these are the markets like Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Baltics, relatively flat development to last year, so on a good level, flattish. Eastern Europe, especially the markets that are heavily influenced by the Cohesion Fund and by public funding from the EU, are doing well. We had infrastructure projects again in the summer. It's a little bit the same scenario then in the new build segment in Poland and Hungary, showing a slight decline in these markets. This is the overview on the markets. You will see more or less the same development for the rest of the year. We'll come to this in a minute.
In some areas, probably a little bit more declining because obviously the catch-up effects are now over, and we have worked up the volumes basically that were pre-COVID issuing of permits. Let's have a quick look to the U.S. and Canada. We've seen in the first nine months, and especially after the major COVID crisis in quarter two, a strong demand level in new build in the U.S., so good levels and in certain areas, even above last year. You've seen also that our profitability in this segment has increased very satisfactorily, and also in the renovation front, good demand level. Infrastructure due to bad weather, obviously a little bit below last year. Canada was severely affected by a very long lockdown, and obviously after that it came back nicely. As I said, it took a while to start off the business in Canada.
All in all, I think that's the overall perspective on the market development on our end markets. When we look at page seven of the presentation, 4% turnover down compared to record last year. On an overall perspective, I think in this business environment, a very good performance. It shows also that from a cost perspective, we have costs under control. EBITDA is only down by 7%. We had to digest, I recall, major lockdowns in major of our markets and digest all of this sort of cost. I think we've done well in order to manage that. On page eight, nine, and 10, you have an overview of our business units. I think the numbers explain themselves, and I've given you an overview. If you have any questions afterwards, we can go into the detail.
Generally speaking, I think considering the markets and the development and overall, very good performance. We want to draw your attention to slide 12 of our presentation. Here again, the overview on the financials. You see that obviously from an EBITDA margin like for like, we have well digested this sort of event this year in our end market. I just want to draw your attention that obviously Wienerberger's business model today is much more resilient than in the past, and therefore we can sort of digest those events rather in a more appropriate way than in the past. On page 13, two things that I would like to mention.
You see that on a working capital perspective, we have been able to reduce our working capital in this market environment, shows how tight we manage our working capital and our structure when it comes to net debt. You see that compared to last year, we are down by 22%, so below EUR 700 million on net debt. It gives us a ratio of 1.2x net debt to EBITDA, so a very satisfactory level. I think it shows, as I said at the beginning of this year, you recall cash preservation, very strong balance sheet management for Wienerberger. Free cash flow also on a very satisfactory level. I think these are essential parts of the issues when it comes to cash management, balance sheet, et cetera, and working capital.
Let's move very quickly to page 20, where I give you an outlook over the whole year. I keep saying this over the year, and you have seen the consistency in my words during this COVID crisis that the markets will be down by roughly 10%. I think when we look in certain markets over the year, we will see this. You will see it at the end of the year, obviously. Quarter four is still before us. I think here you will see a certain decline compared to record levels of last year. We will spend this year roughly about EUR 120 million of maintenance CapEx. Now, the question that you will ask in the discussion anyway is about quarter four. Let me give you here my personal feel. We've done very well in quarter three. We've actually performed exceeding, very satisfactory.
In quarter four, I think we have a lot of issues in front of us. Currently, the visibility is very low. There's a lot of political issues coming to the high infection rates that we face, especially in Europe, and countries are moving very fast in imposing all sorts of partial lockdowns or certain lockdowns. Will they affect us? I don't know yet. I don't have the visibility yet because it's moving very quickly. I can only tell you that these high rates of infections are in a certain way affecting all of us because people cannot come to work from a production perspective, from a service perspective, from also a construction perspective out on the sites. There's a lot of things that are coming our way. I'm not pessimistic at all.
That I say this loud and clear, I'm not pessimistic. I'm trying to be realistic, and we face a lot of challenges in the next couple of weeks or months, as you wish. This COVID-19 won't go away so quickly. We have to deal with it. Is the current guidance that we have out there with a like-for-like EBITDA with the higher range of EUR 500 million, is it too pessimistic? Ladies and gentlemen, the only thing that I can tell you from today's perspective, independently of lockdowns and whatever comes our way, I'm sure and I'm pretty confident that we will reach this EUR 500 million. I think here you have a very strong message from us, that even in these difficult times, we're more or less certain to reach this EUR 500 million.
It's a strong statement from my side, independently, obviously, of the market developments that, or the general political and other developments that we might see in the next weeks. I think what I'm trying to say with this, if it's going better, if we have a mild winter, if the weather conditions are such that we can work through right to Christmas, and if also from a perspective of COVID-19, we have a favorable one, yes. The answer is yes, we will be doing better. Let us sort of see this during the next couple of weeks. I will be updating you as I did in the past on COVID, but from today's perspective, the visibility is low, and it would be obviously not the right way to now rush ahead and do some sort of scenarios again, because we will see.
As I said, we will work on the working capital, we will work on our cost structure. As we did in the first nine months, bring in the best performance that we can get. I think this addresses the whole issue of guidance. For those who want to take quarter four of last year, meaning 2019, as an example, please don't do that. It was a very different quarter for a couple of reasons. I only give you two. First of all, we did some price increases last fall. They were fully effective in quarter four. We didn't do this this year because it was not the right moment to do so. First issue.
Second issue, it was a very, very mild winter, and we were able to work through right to Christmas, and there was a lot of deliveries also in December, so a strong month. I'm not saying it's not going to be the same, but I would say only one word, don't take this as an example. Okay. This is, I think, my message as far as the guidance is concerned. Let's move a little bit towards the future to address also our strategy. We've clearly laid out during our capital market stage at Wienerberger, independently of the markets that we will find in 2021, 2022, and 2023, wants to grow. We will again focus on our business, on our products, on our route to markets, on sort of our overall business approach with services and with solutions to grow the business.
To simplify, you find on page 23 of the presentation that we want to grow in these three years by EUR 135 million EBITDA in these two. Investing in the business, obviously, with a clear payback. We do this on a very structured basis in improving our technologies, improving our processes, improving our overall performance, and adding, therefore, EUR 135 million. If I sort of multiply this with our current multiply on the stock exchange, we will create more than EUR 1 billion sort of value for the company. An impressive, again, goal and strategy forward independently of markets, independently of M&A. Ladies and gentlemen, I think when you look at our targets on the ESG front, you see again a very clear commitment of Wienerberger to reduce energy consumption, to reduce, obviously, our emission of CO2 by 15% in the next three years.
Again, a very impressive way forward. It's not only enough to talk about CO2 emissions. We are talking about biodiversity. We are talking about our portfolio saying it's 100% recyclable or reusable, the new products that we design and put in the market. A strong commitment of Wienerberger to a very modern, a very forward-looking ESG management. Last but not least, let me just say one thing. We don't shy away of looking at our portfolio, also divesting certain assets if we don't see that there's enough growth, if we don't see that there's enough opportunity for further improvement. You've seen that we have successfully divested our Swiss business for a higher multiple, actually, that we are currently traded on the stock exchange. Again, a very good move forward on the liquidity side and on the strategy side.
We can invest this money in businesses that grow faster. Again, we promised to divest EUR 150 million of value. We did so and are successfully, obviously, ticking this box again. On an M&A front, obviously, we have created a lot of liquidity, that's certainly the case. We have created room for further growth. We'll wisely use it in the upcoming months and upcoming year. You've seen a small acquisition coming through, I've described it on page 25 of my presentation. It's again, there you can see that we are improving our range of products and solutions for our clients. We have here added a software company that basically offers smart infrastructure solutions to monitor, predict, and control data when it comes to sewage water.
Again, here we think we can offer new additional features and value to our clients. I think summarizing all of that, I think from our perspective, we will move forward on our innovation strategy and clearly do it by M&A and also internally. We have ambitious targets for Fast Forward enhancement projects with all the performance enhancement that I've given you an overview very briefly. ESG and sustainability are top priorities with clear targets that we can track, that we can communicate it, and that you actually can check on us. We will use the strong cash generation for further growth. Again, anticipating some of your questions, yes, we have a very good and interesting pipeline of projects. They will come through. It takes their time, and obviously we're not rushing into something. We don't feel ourselves under pressure.
I think the next months will show that when we do a move, it's the right one for the right price and creates value for all of our shareholders. Thank you very much for your attention, and I'm obviously delighted and ready to take all of your questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen at this time we would like to begin the question and answersession. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speakerphone, please pick up the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at any time. And one moment for our questions, please.The first question comes from the line of Yves Bromehead, of Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you are well. I have three questions. My first one is, well, I guess you've already answered anyway, the Q4 and the full-year 20 guidance. I'm not going to ask you something about that. When we look at the stock level of brick inventories in the U.K. and elsewhere, it seems that the market is getting quite tight, especially post the catch-up effect. I guess two-sided. One is, can you keep that level of free cash flow, or are you going to have to increase working capital in Q4? Secondly, is that preparing you very well for the price increase season as we get towards January 2021? My second question is I want to know if you could comment on the impact of recent consolidation in the U.S. through one of your competitor.
In Europe, recently there has been an announcement on the tile market. Just wanted to get a feel as to how consolidated the market is today versus maybe pre-crisis. Last but not least, I appreciate you've been very vocal around the niche piping solutions where you're increasing your weight there. Are you also interested in maybe some new verticals like the HVAC industry? Could there be some overlap there? Thank you.
Thank you, Yves, for your questions. I think the first one on the inventory level, I think from our perspective, we are in a situation in Wienerberger where we can easily deal with any changes in the industry. We are clearly monitoring our route to markets. I think we're the company that works the closest with our end consumers and end users, even in the U.K. On the contrary to our main competitors there that are working more or less in the, I would call it in the commodity, in the big scale and the volume business. We are working with a lot of smaller clients, here we have a good visibility.
We have stock levels on acceptable levels, I think, not lower or not in any means for me in a critical situation for the demand level that could pick up eventually or also as you are referring, price increases coming our way. Don't underestimate our capacity to move production from U.K. to mainland Europe, or actually also to support U.K. production with our capacity in mainland Europe. Here I feel that we have all the flexibility we require. Also in the tile segment, because you referred to it also in the later question, but also in the tile segment, I see ourselves well-positioned because I see renovation picking up. Here, obviously, we are monitoring this also very well to have the stock level on the right situation.
Working capital is not only linked obviously to inventory, as you correctly pointed out, but for me, it's also, I think that from a Wienerberger perspective, we are on the right way and we don't need additional inflow of cash to finance additional working capital. I think we are here fine and for the rest of the year as well. Consolidation effects, your second question, is obviously moving along and you had, obviously, a M&A activity, Etex selling its business on Creaton roofing tiles in Europe, and they sold it to the French competitor of Terreal, a group owned by private equity. They bought it for quite a high price, I would say, at this way when we look at the performance of the business. I'm not unhappy that the consolidation is taking place.
As you see, we are not only thinking of consolidating the industry and think it's helpful that others do it also, because we are moving ahead already in the sense of integration of different businesses and offering more than one solution. It's not only about capacity, it's about the whole solution. When you talk about the roof, our competence is not only in roof tiles, but in non-ceramic accessories, in insulation and other material that is linked to the roof. This is going to be Wienerberger's path forward. Again, if there are consolidation possibilities, you refer to the U.S., but I refer also to smaller ones in Europe. Wienerberger will be ready and do it for the right price, because obviously we are not doing it just for the need of consolidation, but it must make a lot of sense.
Yes, we are certainly a consolidator also in the future and do it for the right parameters that we require to create value for all of our stakeholders. On the niche piping solution part. Again, yes, we are driving our change process in the piping segment very thoroughly with a lot of energy from the management side. As you've seen the strong numbers coming in from this segment, and we will do so over the next years. It's a process. I always said it's not something that will be in a couple of months achieved. This will certainly be part of our strategy forward for the next years. You will see us, first of all, investing in the business. We create capacity, we create technology for additional products, accessories that we can sell with our piping business.
You've seen us doing these little M&A left and right, and we'll continue to do so. The answer to your question is, yes, we think that we can sort of grow the in-house segment, which we call it the electrical one and the water one of the business. Also on the infrastructure side, create here product range that is not only consisting of pipes, but as I said on the M&A front with the Dutch acquisition, a more comprehensive, a more value-creating product range that we put in place over the next years. I hope I've addressed your question, Yves.
Yes. Thank you very much, Heimo .
The next question is from Xintong of On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two, if I may. The first one is actually on the Q4 outlook or even rolling to 2021. If I look at the EBITDA guidance, which means that the Q4 EBITDA like-for-like will be even lower than 2017 or 2018 levels, not just 2019. I'm just wondering in that sense, can you please help me understand a little bit like in Q4, in which markets that you see a significant slowdown even rolling to 2021? Also, what are your rationale behind the EUR 500 million guidance? I'm just trying to understand the gaps here, the difference versus the previous years. My second question would be actually on your digital tools. You've mentioned that during, say Q3 or even the first nine months, your digital solutions actually helped a lot.
For example, the Wienerberger Building Solutions business. I'm just wondering, is it possible to quantify the impact in any sense? For example, how many more users you've got? How do you see it improves their productivity? What is the opposite scenario, for example, the slowdown in construction activities or businesses if those tools weren't actually in place in the first nine months? I'm just trying to understand the impact of all the digital tools here. Thank you very much.
Yes. If I may take your second question first, thank you for this one. Obviously we track it in a very detailed way, this approach. If I may remain a little sort of helicopter level and not go through all of the details, but if we introduce a webshop for plumbers in Austria, for example, which we did last year and this year was fully effective. We see here double or even triple digit growth in this webshop. What does it do? It actually offers the plumbers to order directly from us directly, and we deliver between 12 and 24 hours on the construction site. This is the approach Wienerberger takes. We have put this in place and as I said, we have here double or triple digit growth this year. Yes, it adds to our business. Yes, it creates it.
It's difficult to measure on a group level because we have so many things in place and actually I could tell you, if we hadn't these sort of things in place, we probably wouldn't create the business that we have done in the past. From sort of users that come to our websites that order from us directly or that are in contact with us in order to create leads for project sales, for example. All in all, we have, again, very impressive growth rates. When I look at Belgium, one of our major markets in Western Europe, we have a traffic here of more than one million people that are on our sites and work with us. It's quite impressive, and I think we are surprised ourselves how strongly people are using and interacting with us in the digital field.
You will see more and more features from us to satisfy the demand level and satisfy basically our clients. As a matter of fact, one of our subject is also we have more and more access or hits to our installation videos. How people install our products. It's very helpful for them to see it, to get instructions directly from us. We use these learning tools more and more, especially in the COVID-19 times. These are things where we are dramatically changing our efforts and where human efforts and also financial efforts go in. From a financial perspective, these investments are not huge for us. We are not talking about EUR 10 million or EUR 20 million here. It's smaller amounts that we exactly use for those businesses and bring to the marketplace.
I hope I addressed it, obviously I will think and take your question for the future to give a sort of a couple of KPIs that we can track then in the future so you have a better idea. I hope I addressed it in a way that you can get a better feel that digital is, for us, a major tool when we talk about customer relationship and interaction with our customers. Your first question was relating to the quarter four and the guidance. Let me just give you, as I tried in my presentation first, to give you the following sort of perspective. We were one of the first companies in the sector to give a guidance this year.
We did, and we upgraded the guidance in the sense that we said very early in the year, EUR 500 million is the upper range, basically, that we think we are able to achieve. Yes, we are working towards this, and as I said, please don't take always the comparison to last year because it was very different with the price increases, with high volumes in quarter four. It's a very exceptional one. You are right to go back to 2018 and 2017 and look there as well. It's fine. It's good. I said, with the current situation, and please understand my position here, it is very difficult to update a guidance in October when you have not a lot of visibility for the rest of the year.
I can guarantee you, as of today, that we will reach the EUR 500 million in any event with all the closures and all the lockdowns that potentially, and I say potentially come our way. We don't know yet. I'm just saying, I think Wienerberger can go through by not affecting our current performance, and we can sort of say, give you the insurance that we will make EUR 500 million this year. That means, on the contrary, if nothing happens and if everything goes well, if we have a mild winter, yes, we will do better than this. Absolutely. You are right to look at the historical numbers and we will do better. That I think I can update you probably in a three or four weeks' time when we have a better visibility.
From today's perspective, I rather would stick to what we have and give you this information, and this is the best I can do at this point of time. Okay.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Aimee Gallo of Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Just a couple of questions from me, and I'm sorry for asking a bit more on the Q4 again. Would it be possible for you to give us some color on how the October trading panned through your markets? Secondly, is it based on the sort of lockdown information that we have as we stand today, would it be fair to assume that actually most countries are still quite positive in terms of the construction sector and there aren't as many restrictions in place versus when we compare to the first lockdown? I think related to that, it would be also helpful to understand how the renovation sector, as you see it, would probably operate in the current lockdown scenario. My second question really is on the international piping business.
If you could give us some color on how the backlog stands in that business, that would be quite helpful. The other really connected question is really on the margin performance in piping has been quite good in the past two quarters. Obviously, there has been some self-help measures as well as product mix benefits. If you could give us some color as to what is the normalized margin that we should expect your piping business to have on the back of the optimization measures that you have taken so far. Thank you.
Right. Let's start with the piping business, because otherwise we always talk about Wienerberger in general, and I'm very appreciative that you talk about the pipes, because I'm very proud what our colleagues are doing there. From a perspective of margin, I think they've done a great job in improving it. I would say from our target perspective, it's about 12% that we target there on an EBITDA front. We are moving in the right direction with the current portfolio. Obviously, if we acquire and invest strong in the business to upgrade the portfolio, this sort of margin will trade upwards. For the moment, with the current portfolio, with the current industrial structure, the 12% is a goal that we want to achieve, and I think we're in good shape to achieving it.
When you look at the current performance in the nine first months of this year, we have made good inroads when it comes to the Fast Forward. Fast Forward means performance enhancement. That goes for all divisions. I've given you the indication of EUR 24 million this year and up till the end of September 2020 and for the whole year, EUR 30 million. Again, also the part that you can distinguish by turnover or whatever goes into the piping division as a contribution there on performance enhancement. The second one is obviously on the up trading, as you said. Here again, as I said, slightly improving the sales and the interaction with the market with higher value-added products. We continue this path, and we will do so. Again, here, good movement in this direction.
All in all, from a piping perspective, we are on a good way forward in order to achieve our targeted 12%. From a backlog perspective from the international piping business, what you are referring to is the big dimension pipes or the SoluForce business. Again, here, yes, orders are on our way. We have delivered just a very big project to Bangladesh, and we are delivering some other projects internationally. The order book is quite satisfactory at this stage. When we look at the construction market and you were trying to get a better sense of quarter four, yes, I think we need to understand the following, that not all markets are doing that well. As I said in my introduction statement about different markets in residential, in renovation, and also in infrastructure. We have a very different set of markets in Europe.
Some of them are down more than 10%, by the way. That's why I'm saying for Wienerberger's perspective, a 10% minus from our end markets is the fair assumption to take for this year. That means that obviously construction markets are in Europe doing differently. Hungary is down more, for example, compared to last year than 10%. Also in Poland, we see a decline that is more important than the 10%. Other markets are more flattish, as I said about Germany and Austria. Again, here you have a very mixed picture. Is the market changing dramatically in the last couple of weeks this year? Listen, the difference is the following, and it's not that I'm trying to be evasive, but you need to understand the rationale of people and psychologically. We are at the end of the year.
Winter comes, the people are sort of not working through in all the countries. Psychologically speaking, they are not in this situation as in March and April, where they are just waiting that it starts, and then when it starts, they go off and do it. In certain countries, yes, you are right, they work through it. Obviously, we are in a phase where people are thinking twice to start a project right now. That's why I'm saying I'm not so sure that we have this sustained development through quarter four. I'm not pessimistic about any market. I'm just saying we need to keep an eye on the situation. It is a difficult one for all of us because COVID creates issues also for our installers, also for the work on the construction site. It's not that easy that they handle it.
That's why I'm saying we should be a little bit more cautious and not over-optimistic. Yes, you are right, renovation is doing well in certain areas of Europe, not in all again, in certain areas, and it will certainly improve over the next six months or so. Again, take into consideration that the winter months that are starting in November for me and going through to February and March in certain areas in Europe will be these sort of months where we will deal with COVID, yeah. There will be a sort of impact on construction industry as such, in some areas more than in others. It's about labor, availability of labor, about, I say, the infection rates and all of those sort of things that will affect us. Again, please get me right.
I'm not being negative about anything, about the structure of markets, about the demand levels, but I'm just saying this is an issue that we will face over the next weeks and months. It's different to the lockdown because the lockdown was a one-time effect, and this was clearly in certain countries, yes, it was 100%, this time it's not, but it's a sort of thing that will drag on for a little while. This is hopefully my answer to your rather complex question, if I may say, because the visibility we don't have. Please understand also my position. I've never been in such a situation with all these sort of things that come our way, and we will see. As I said, I'm also cautious because we need to digest this.
Yeah. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Rushil Paiber of MainFirst. Please go ahead.
Great. Congratulations on the great results, and thanks for taking my questions. I'll just ask two questions, if I may. I can just start on your outlook for pricing. Given the volume declines, I know you've mentioned on a number of occasions end markets declining on average by roughly 10%. Looking forward to next year, do you anticipate any competitive pricing pressures coming into your key markets? This is the second question, just following up from a previous question. The self-help measures that Wienerberger have put into place have been very successful in driving margin expansion, and it does seem that across the three key divisions, you are close to your midterm targets. Do you anticipate revising or can you provide any updates in regards to the midterm targets for each of the operating segments? Thank you.
Thank you. I think from a pricing perspective view, you are absolutely right, where I think we achieved satisfactory levels this year. Again, I think we promised that we will offset all inflationary cost increases by price increases. I think we were successful in this. We are obviously up-trading our portfolio as such to get better margins, and this is the tendency forward. From a competitive pricing environment, listen, we lived this year in competitive pricing environments, to be perfectly honest, because our smaller competitors are fighting for volumes and are fighting for markets. This is, again, I think the strengths of Wienerberger, that we do not go into this area of price wars or price sort of declines. We really try to improve our services and improve our products to our customers and therefore keep the prices as they were at these levels.
This is key for us, that this sort of performance enhancement measures has helped us in order to keep it at the level. Obviously on the other side, we are trying to improve margins and also now addressing your question in the forward-looking by help self-measures. Cost, technology, and input costs will be managed in a way to improve here the portfolio. Are we able to give you here? I mean, from my side, the group as such, when I gave you the indication that we want to have a growth in EBITDA with EUR 135 million, I think it's a strong statement when we say we keep here the 2020 level as far as sales is concerned and prices is concerned, and we say we can actually improve our performance by EUR 135 million due to self-help measures.
I think this gives you also an indication that we want to perform better in the future and get obviously, step by step, the margins up in our different product segments by self-help. Obviously, if we can do it then additionally through better markets and better acceptances and price increases, then we will be on top of it. I hope I gave a sort of a first indication to your question forward-looking.
Yes, that's great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. The next question is from the line of Pam Leo of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. I have two questions. Number one is related to margin and the Fast Forward program. It looks like the margin gain mostly comes from North America, not really from Building Solutions. In fact, in the first nine months, in Building Solutions, margin has contracted. Could you please comment on that and provide a bit more color on the Fast Forward program? Thank you. Then the second question is really related to acquisition, M&A. First of all, how big is the Inter Act software business that you have recently acquired? Secondly, if we think about your capital allocation strategy, specifically pipe versus North America, what's your top pick and why? Thank you.
I will take, if you may, your second question first. From an M&A perspective, Inter Act is a very small acquisition. It's a single-digit amount in millions of euros, so it's not that significant for the overall picture. As I said, it's very important for the future development of our piping operations. Something like this, we can digest very easily. It's on top of it's more a human business in the sense of know-how and IT solution and cloud-driven sort of solutions here, and not an industrial footprint with machinery and building and construct and production sites. Yes, this sort of M&A will continue. Top picks, for me, a top pick is where do we create the most value on synergy side, and also on the customer side and on the performance side.
We have numerous projects in our pipeline right now that we are currently working on, and they will emerge in the, I would say, in the next couple of months. I'm very confident that we can add to the current portfolio of Wienerberger certain assets that will bring a lot to our operations in North America and in Europe. Here, again, confident on this track record, and you've seen it in the past. I think we've been very disciplined in allocating financial resources to M&A with a payback on average of about 5x . I think here again, we are very confident to get a couple of those deals in pretty quickly. On the margin and the Fast Forward, yes, you are right. Obviously, the American business has improved and has improved in margin and in performance.
The contraction, when you talk about the Wienerberger Building Solutions, is only logical. You see this has been the business that has been mostly affected by our lockdowns in quarter two. They had obviously to digest all the shutdowns, so the cost of this, the idle capacity, the cost of being down for, in some cases, eight weeks. This business has suffered the most and had to digest it. If you look at the performance as such, and I think it goes without saying, a contraction that is slightly from 21%- 20%, 1% is not in such critical and extraordinary circumstances. I think it's acceptable. I think they've done a great job on the pricing front, great job on the front of cost management, but I'm not so worried about this sort of margin contraction in this case of the COVID situation.
Okay. Thank you. If I may just go back to the M&A comment, if I can be very bold and just saying, M&A North America, why? It looks like a fragmented market with a lower margin. Why wouldn't you put more money here to grow over here? Why to grow in North America?
First of all, the North American market is not fragmented. I think if you look at it, the four big players have more than 60% market share of the market. If we were to make a major consolidation move in North America, we would further concentrate and therefore structure the industry. I just take as an example, the U.K. and how the U.K. is today compared to what it was 10 years ago. I think our industry always is important that it has a certain concentration. A small number of big players that actually drive the market in the sense of innovation, new products, and also from a route to market. Therefore, obviously, to improve margins in North America and drive this upwards is a key element to such an acquisition.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand back to Mr. Daniel Merl for closing comments.
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for dialing in today. The next conference call will be on the February 24th for the full year results. Thank you once again for your questions today. I wish you a pleasant afternoon. Stay safe and goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Wienerberger conference call. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.