Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Stewart, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the conference call on Wienerberger's results on the full year 2021. 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 participant has 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 Daniel Merl from Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Daniel Merl from IR. A warm welcome to the Wienerberger earnings call and the full year results 2021. Our board representatives today are our CEO, Mr. Heimo Scheuch, and our CFO, Mr. Gerhard Hanke. They will walk you through the presentation and talk about our accomplishments in the business year 2021 and our expectations for the year 2022. After the presentation, as always, we are ready to take your questions. I will now hand over to Mr. Scheuch.
Daniel, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome from Vienna, from the whole Wienerberger team. Thank you for being on the call and we will briefly walk you through the presentation. All of you have received it. Highlight some of the major events, Gerhard and myself, and then are obviously ready for your questions. If we look at 2021, it was a year that was to be characterized by geopolitical instability, by a lot of issues when it comes to the supply chain, by inflationary cost increases, and especially also in this context, by sharp increases in energy costs. Obviously, we had also the COVID-19 pandemic and a certain shortage of labor. I would characterize the year as a rather volatile one.
I say this because obviously the same trends you will see also in 2022, and we are continuing to operate in such an environment. All in all, we are very happy at Wienerberger that we handled this environment well. It shows clearly that we at Wienerberger have a local business model. Yeah, we operate locally, have value creation locally. Supply of our raw material is local because we mine our local clays when it comes to the clay part of our business, and we are embedded in a local supply chain. This is, I think, very important to mention. Also to mention before we start the business as such, we, and meaning the more than 17,000 people on the COVID perspective, brought them through safely and healthy again through 2021.
I think from a perspective of general environmental issues here, a good setting. Let me say also one thing, which is very important, in this context. We still and will continue to work hard on a product portfolio, which is very innovative for the sector. We are probably one of the companies that has the most innovative product portfolio in the whole building material sector, with more than 30% innovative product and with 15% system solutions already, and we want to increase this, as you all know, in the near future. 2021, from a financial perspective, we have seen 18% in turnover, and I will come to the organic growth in a minute, but it is essentially coming from organic growth again.
This shows our strong business model that comes and relates to over the last decade, essentially to organic growth. We have generated cash with more than EUR 420 million free cash flows, so a strong increase again. EBITDA margin up again also to 17.5%. When you look at all the other KPIs in the company from self-help to all this cost management, very strong performance, again, which adds up to nearly EUR 700 million of EBITDA reported for the whole year. In this year, 2021, I think this marks a turning point for Wienerberger. A turning point in the sense that we obviously are growing also strongly with M&A.
We have invested in M&A or are dedicated to M&A nearly EUR 0.5 biilion of acquisitions in North America and Europe and have already successfully started the integration of this acquisition. I will come to this in a minute. When you look at the overall performance, we have also, financially speaking, repaid the hybrid last year. We have returned to investors equity and equity related investors with the hybrid bond nearly EUR 300 million, EUR 70 million dividend and or nearly EUR 30 million of hybrid. A strong repayment to our investors. Again, we propose this year to increase by 25% our dividend to EUR 0.75 a share.
Again, a very disciplined management when it comes to the debt side of the business with 1.6 x EBITDA to net debt. I think we have shown that we care about the sort of debt and the ratio on the EBITDA to net debt. Financially is one part of Wienerberger and the performance, but also on the ESG front, we have again shown that we are committed in making a difference in the industry that we operate in. Also when I compare ourselves to our peer group. I think we're the only company right now that has short-term and clear short-term targets out there, and we have again managed to reduce our CO2 emissions by an impressive 88% of CO2 emissions compared to 2020.
Puts us perfectly in line with our midterm target, 23 with 15% reduction. Again, when I come later to the long-term target, here again, Wienerberger has set already the right targets and the right way forward. Circular economy and biodiversity obviously are strong on our agenda. Let me come one second to the M&A side of the business. When Wienerberger does M&A deals, and I compare the deals throughout the industry again, from a payback perspective and a multiple, I look at the U.S. and Canadian acquisition and now being the leader in facing solutions, in ceramic facing solutions in the North American market.
We have realized here a wonderful transaction in the sense of easy to integrate, manufacturing-wise, sales-wise, admin-wise, and obviously the teams are on the ground already working, and we are confident from Wienerberger side that we have here an EBITDA multiple of around 4x for such an acquisition. Again, creating impressive value on the short term. The one in Europe, essentially in the U.K. and Ireland, when we come to the piping part of our business, shows again the commitment of Wienerberger to move into high margin business in the piping and in the RMI market in U.K. and Ireland. To be here a significant player when it comes to solutions around water, on the roof, in the house and around the house.
Again, here we see after nearly six months into this acquisition that we can realize significant synergies, not only on the cost side, but especially also with cross-selling, selling to our clients, the big housing companies in the U.K. and Ireland. Again, here also a 7x multiple shows here the strong commitment of Wienerberger to realize value. All in all, when I look and, I would like to take you to this aspect of looking over a decade, not just a quarter, not just a year, but a decade. From where we, developed Wienerberger in 2012 to 2021, with a growth rate of 6% a year, annual growth rate, compared to the GDP growth rate in North America and in Europe, weighted obviously about 2%.
An impressive way of a long-term outgrowing these economies, and this by organic growth. This means that we have significantly turned around the company from a company focusing on new residential housing market only back in the beginning of 2010, 2011 and 2012, to a company that has now a much stronger, resilient portfolio, focusing also on renovation and in infrastructure. I think when you look at renovation being about 30% of our turnover and infrastructure about 22%, we see here already the strong move in these two fields, which makes us more resilient and obviously contributes positively to the margin and overall EBITDA performance.
Obviously, marking the EUR 4 billion turnover shows clearly that we are moving fast in the overall growth and have, over this decade, certainly outperformed a lot of the companies that are active in our sector. With this, I would like to hand over to Gerhard, who will look a little bit more with you into the figures. Gerhard?
Thank you, Heimo. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Before we start with the 2021 figures, I would like to give you a short overview on the development of the outstanding three last months of 2021, because they were outstanding in the sense of demand. Demand was much stronger than we originally expected. Maybe some of you remember that during the capital market days that we gave a kind of forecast for the last quarter, and this was clearly outperformed. The main reasons for this outperformance was the strong demand, mainly on the building solution side, where also supported by the mild weather. We had strong demand basically in all product categories, but especially in the roof and renovation sector of last year.
Next to that, which also were strongly outperforming in the fourth quarter, was still the Piping segment, the North American or the U.S. Piping segment, which also outperformed and showed again a new record result also in the fourth quarter. This finally led to an EBITDA, which is with EUR 160 million, clearly above also what we expected for the fourth quarter. As Heimo just mentioned, we had an exceptional year, 2021. Looking to the business unit, so I'll do a short deep dive to the business units. I may start with the Wienerberger Building Solutions business unit. Revenues are up by 10% to EUR 2.3 billion. This revenue increase is mainly driven by additional volumes.
We have around about +7% volume increase in the Wienerberger Building Solutions. This is also driving basically the EBITDA. The combination of high sales volume and high run rates of our production facilities were driving EBITDA. Cost inflation was rather moderate. Yeah, we have seen some cost inflation for sure in packaging and in additives. On the other side, you know that energy, we have a very moderate cost structure in 2021, and this also made possible that we were able also to cover cost inflation, and which finally led to an EBITDA of EUR 477 million. A +15% compared to last year. Looking to the Wienerberger Piping Solutions business unit, it was the first time that we crossed the revenue above EUR 1 billion.
We achieved EUR 1.2 billion on revenues, +25% in 2021. The year was, I would say, in this business unit, a very challenging and volatile one when we look to the raw material market. As we heard already in the beginning, we had shortages when it's about the availability on plastic granulates. On the other side, we had strong price increases when it's about plastic granulates. At the same time, we had a very strong demand, especially in the first half year. This demand was stabilizing in the second half of 2021, so that finally we ended up with an EBITDA of EUR 128 million. Where also the contribution of the acquired FloPlast and Cork Plastics business is considered for six months. North America.
The North American business almost doubled the EBITDA from 2020 to 2021. The main driver, as we mentioned already very often, is the contribution and the operational development of our piping U.S. Piping business, which have shown exceptional profitability in 2021. In addition, in the beginning of the fourth quarter, we closed the Meridian acquisition and laid with this acquisition an important base ground for future growth in the upcoming years. All in all, a very successful year in North America when we look back on the financial year 2021. What does it mean revenue-wise? It was mentioned that the revenue organically grew by +16%, and this +16% organic revenue growth is mainly driven by volume.
Here, I mentioned it before that we had a strong volume growth here. Which is around half of the 16%. The rest is pricing. Or to be more clear, 7.5% is pricing and 0.5% is mix. The pricing was needed also to cover the cost inflation. Because we have seen a cost inflation in 2021, which was around 8.5% on average during the year. It was necessary also to have at least a price increase of ±7% to cover this cost inflation. Our Self-Help program was contributing according to expectations, maybe even overachieved our expectations. Because we reported that we expect around EUR 40 million in EBITDA contribution in 2021. We slightly overachieved with EUR 42.5 million.
The main contributors in 2021 out of this program was a big part came from manufacturing excellence. You know that we invest a lot in automation, in efficiency enhancements. But also that we are investing in ComEx programs, in innovation, in new products. Also to keep our share of innovative products by at least 30% of our revenues. This will also be the focus area in 2022, that we will strongly focus also via the self-help program to keep innovation rates up of at least 30%. Energy. Energy was most probably an important pillar also to make this financial year a record year in 2021. We have a long-lasting experience in forward buying energy and electricity and gas.
It basically protects us against our cost increases, and also it ensures price stability towards our customers. We have now already covered round about 90% of this year's consumption. This 90% is based on the production volumes what we assume today for 2022. If we will increase production volume, that means also that we have to buy these additional production volumes or energy consumption on the spot market. This will mean also hitting basically the cost structure. Why this lower than lastly communicated, I think at the capital market is, you know that we closed Meridian Brick in the beginning of the fourth quarter. Meridian just started in fixing their energy costs and therefore we came back, I think, from 97% back to 89%.
That's the reason why it is slightly lower than we have announced some weeks ago. Looking to our EBITDA performance, we show a very strong double-digit EBITDA increase, 2021 compared to 2020. What we would like to do is also that we move step by step away from our EBITDA like for like definition. It seems to be rather complex and also difficult when we speak about year-on-year comparison. We decided also for the first time to show an operational EBITDA. This you see on the slide 23 of the presentation that you see also what the definition is. Therefore, we used also already the operational EBITDA development.
We added a chart where basically the organic growth based on EBITDA is also now included. There is an organic EBITDA growth of +20%. Yeah, as you can imagine, this +20% is strongly driven by volume, by additional sales volumes and high run rates from our production facilities. Also a slight outperformance in price mix, which improving basically the organic growth and also the efficiency measures, basically out of the Fast Forward program. Yeah, we had also some overhead costs increases compared to 2020, where we still were receiving some of the subsidies, state-funded subsidies from the government. Let me continue with our capital allocation, respectively, with our investments, what we did, because we invested a lot in 2021.
We have clear rules in place where we invest our money. We need a certain amount of money for keeping our plants up and running. The maintenance CapEx, and we stick to our EUR 120 million on maintenance CapEx. Even that we have seen also in the machinery parts and accessories there, a high cost inflation, but we were sticking in a very disciplined way to the EUR 120 million. We were investing on the growth CapEx side, but also for measures on the ESG, respectively decarbonization, around EUR 160 million. We had a strong M&A cash out of almost half a billion, basically, for our companies which we bought in the U.S. or in North America and the U.K. and Ireland. What does it mean for our net debt position?
Based on these strong investments, our net debt position slightly increased from EUR 880 million up to EUR 1 billion. Comparing that with our leverage ratio, we see that we were able to keep the leverage ratio, which was in the beginning of the year, 1.6x , to keep it stable, even considering the high cash out what we had for M&As and for growth CapEx. By the end of the year, a stable leverage ratio of 1.6, which also shows the strong free cash flow generation of the year 2021. When it's about income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, about the primary statements, I think most of the KPIs was already mentioned.
Therefore, I think what is important to mention is a strong profit after tax, which is significantly above prior year figures, which is above EUR 300 million. I think what was already mentioned is a free cash flow above EUR 400 million. Let me summarize quickly the year 2021. What we have seen is a strong organic growth, meaning +16%, as I mentioned before. We were outperforming GDP again in our core markets. ROSI with 12%, clearly above our internal goal of +10. The leverage ratio we were able to confirm is 1.6 x, despite a strong M&A activity. Cash conversion rate again confirmed above 80%.
Out of that, of this strong set of figures, we are proposing a dividend which is 25% higher than in 2020 of EUR 0.75 per share. With that, Heimo, I would like to hand over.
Thank you, Gerhard. Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a look into 2022. Again, obviously, the year started, politically speaking and geopolitically speaking, with a mess. We have instability all over the places where we look at. I just want to say at the beginning, so there's no misunderstanding, we have no exposure to the Ukraine as Wienerberger, and a very limited one to Russia, with minus or a little shy of 1% of our turnover. Very low exposure to Russia. I don't think that our Russian operations will be affected by any of this and what the spillover into the European or other economies will be, we will see later. I do make a personal note here. I've never understood, and I've never seen any of these political sanctions working in the history of mankind.
I'm not in favor of this, and it hits always the wrong part of the society and the poor people and the people on the ground and not political leadership. That's my personal opinion only. When you look at this year, on a cost side, we will see rather substantial increases, again, on inflationary cost increases. We, as of the beginning of this year, we were working about 7%+ for all of inflation coming into our business. I see for this from our perspective now that this could eventually be even higher for the year as things are progressing. As for the moment, we are seeing this 7% increases when it comes to inflation and cost increases for the business.
Energy costs, as I say from Gerhard's presentation, you have seen, we brought a substantial part forward, but obviously the part that we cannot cover, that are the countries that have regulations that prohibit us to do this, and other countries, obviously, where we were not able due to the Meridian acquisitions, for example, we are then exposed to the spot market. Interest rates, step by step, will go up as well. This might have an impact on the business. We've not seen it yet, obviously, but for the moment, I'm pretty confident that the markets, new build, will be rather stable for the year. The renovation will be slightly growing. The effect that might sort of temper this growth is the skilled labor availability to install products, and on the infrastructure side, I see a more stable business as well.
As I said, cost inflation about 7% for the Wienerberger Group in 2020, but eventually also more, and that's why we need price increases. To answer this question right at the beginning, between 6% and 8% are required to cover this inflationary cost increases. You have heard it from the presentation of Gerhard that we had around 8% last year, so it's in line with last year. This is going to be again, a challenge for Wienerberger to bring it in the market. We're confident of doing so, but again, the 8% is required to cover costs. If we need to go further, then we will do it in a second wave of price increases if we see it in the next couple of months that the inflation is higher.
Keep in mind also that we are running in our facilities with pretty high capacity utilization already. That means utilization rates in the range of 90% plus. That leaves us not so much room for further growth. We are working on debottlenecking and investing in this business. That's why we dedicate also a substantial amount of CapEx to it. Keep in mind also that inventory levels are historically low, and as Gerhard has pointed out, quarter four has been very strong, so it was running through nearly full speed till the end. Obviously this year also, we have good demand levels. We cannot expect that from this perspective, we will have major growth in the sense that we will satisfy the demand levels where we can.
Some of our competitors have shut down during the winter months due to the high energy costs we are producing, but obviously from a demand level, we can only satisfy a certain amount. Again, pricing 8%+, 6%-8%+. Volume will be up, but not in the range of what we have seen in the past because we have limiting factors, inventory, and availability of products. Self-help again, a strong contribution is expected this year with about EUR 45 million coming from the business. This is more now coming from the commercial part, new products, innovation system solutions, and obviously the pricing as such. Let's have a quick look on the, what we dedicate to the business in the sense of capital allocation. EUR 135 million on maintenance CapEx.
Little bit more than last year due to the increased base of industrial activity in the U.S. and in Europe, especially. Discretionary CapEx that we allocate to the business this year is around EUR 160 million. This will be investments, as I said, to improve the business, reduce decarbonization again, and obviously, debottlenecking or adding new products. Again, I want to stress in this context, if you look and track us, these are investments that have an average four-year payback. M&A contribution. The whole contribution from all the activities and M&A that we have done last year will be EUR 60 million for this year. There you see again, we obviously guided that we have on average, a five-year payback after year three of integration.
We are now in year one after the integration and already delivering EUR 60 million. If you calculate, it should be EUR 90 million, and we're already at EUR 60 million. You see how quickly we are moving in the right direction here as well as the performance is concerned. This is on the M&A front. Obviously we have one issue that I would like to address so there's no misunderstanding on the North American business. Very strong performance in piping last year. Exceptionally strong because we were able to increase the prices before raw material prices actually increased. Therefore we see not a headwind, but a one-time effect from last year, about $30 million. Therefore, we need to build this in the equation when we talk about the results and the expectations for this year. This is not going to be repeated.
That doesn't mean that we fall off a cliff or there's something wrong in the business. Not at all. It was an exceptional contribution to the strong purchasing power that we've used and the lucky punch, if I may say, so that we had. I know that the demand levels are strong. Keep in mind also that availability of raw material will be an issue in the U.S. We see it already in the market. So to be able to produce the whole year and produce the right products will be the real issue in North America. So when I look at the whole guidance as such. We have EUR 750 million-EUR 770 million EBITDA that we guide for this year.
That puts a little bit of, sort of, an idea into it, where we want to be organically and on the M&A front. EUR 60 million coming from the M&A front, and EUR 50 million-EUR 70 million, depending on the market and what we will see in the second half of the year, because the first half we have pretty good visibility. It means, again, a 10% organic growth rate for 2022. A strong message, again, that we are growing in the right direction. Now, to finish, I would like to give you also a little bit of insight what is coming next in a couple of years from Wienerberger. I would say, look a little bit ahead, not only one year. Our vision is that we want to build Wienerberger on this solid industrial basis further.
Maintain our 30% innovation rate when it comes to turnover. Improve to about 25% the system solution, and develop our business in this sense, because we see the shortage of labor that comes into the market in the next couple of years, when we, as a company, need to provide the market with system solutions to make it easier to install and quicker and affordable for the people to use our products. We want to prepare the company in the way that we further reduce carbon emissions with 40% till 2030. This is our target, our clear target, where we invest and where we reduce consumption of energy. All in all, we will guide this CapEx that we allocate to growth in ESG annually, as we do this year, for example, with EUR 160 million.
You see also that the payback rate on average are about four years. Again, a strong payback, a good payback, and these are the best projects that we can get actually within the company. We target an organic growth rate 2% above GDP. You see again that there's a strong commitment of Wienerberger for a longer period of time. Not for every year, but if I take a longer period of time, and you remember at the beginning of the presentation, I showed you the last decade, where we had about 6% growth rate compared to 2% GDP, that we will outgrow the market here again.
Important to note is that, as I said earlier, the turning point of Wienerberger's development was in 2021, where we clearly start to commit obviously substantial funds also to M&A and successful M&A, where we buy companies at relatively low multiples and improve them even further. You see that we have a very good pipeline of potential deals out there that we will also realize this year. We will dedicate a certain amount to such M&A. We can't guide those, because this is not in a calendar year that you make this, but you get an idea if you look at our performance over the last years, that we dedicate consequently these amounts to this growth, and that we realize on average about a multiple of 5x post synergies, and as I said, in year three.
On the maintenance CapEx side, this is what we really need, and we need to dedicate this to the business, not only to maintain it, but obviously improve it slightly and keep it at the high industrial level that we have it, EUR 135 million this year, and we will also guide it. Obviously, this will develop a little bit, because if we create more industrial base and grow, then this will grow, eventually also. It will be in a very sort of manageable, in a dedicated way that we put the money into this business. To keep the industrial base on this high performance level and in order to ensure health and safety and decarbonization also, and obviously also the other targets that we have on the ESG front.
Last but not least, we are committed to pay out a certain amount of the free cash flow to our shareholders, 20%-40% dividend. Some of you will calculate it immediately for 2021. I just want to say one word on this. As I said at the beginning, we also repaid the hybrid, which was considered equity on our balance sheet, and this obviously together forms a strong contribution to our investors that we had paid out last year. Obviously, therefore, the €0.75 on the share is a very good dividend that we propose for 2021. Obviously, you will see our dividend going forward increasing as the business performs well and increases also.
Again, a clear set of rules and ways how we allocate the money to the business and for further growth of Wienerberger in the coming years. If you look at the overall perspective, Wienerberger's situation today that I've shown you after ten years of transformation will continue. If I may say so, in 2030, the percentage rate should be around 40% in the new build. Envelope of the house, again, a stronger footprint, more products going into a new build project. That's our idea. We bundle products. We have very strong brands. Wienerberger is one of the most well-known brands in Central Eastern Europe and also in big parts of Western Europe.
We actually can shift through our route to market a lot more in the future, and that's what we will do also with our digital approaches and the digital solutions. In the renovation business, we are growing. We have now about 29%, but we would like to go in the 30% or coming closer to a 40 of the turnover percentage point in renovation and infrastructure also to build it with more solution-oriented businesses around our piping operations in water management and energy management, where you see these acquisitions that we have performed over the last couple of years. All in all, a company that is strongly serving one purpose, to make the living of us all better in order to have energy-efficient homes, energy-efficient renovation, and a healthy and forward-looking infrastructure for water and for energy.
That is Wienerberger, and I think I will close there, Daniel, and we will shift over to the M&A mode.
Q&A.
Q&A mode, not to the M&A. That's where we're currently in this one. Thank you very much for your attention.
Operator, we are ready to take the questions.
Okay, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Brijesh Siya from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, gentlemen. I have two questions. The first one is on basically the last slide you have put in about the exposures. If I recollect, 2020, you had renovation of around 20%, and that had jumped to 29% in 2021. Looking at the acquisitions you did, Meridian is primarily a residential business and the FloPlast and the other one in U.K., it is renovation rated. I mean, can you just explain why the significant difference, what do you call, shift has come in there?
Coming to the 2030 number of 35%, is it more to do with what you are currently doing or that will involve more acquisitions to bring that number up from 29% to 35%?
It goes basically.
My second question is on the-
Mm-hmm. Go ahead.
Okay, yeah.
No, go ahead. Go ahead, please.
Okay, my second question is on the electric kiln, which you announced two weeks back that you have successfully tested one and that will certainly make your carbon footprint closer to your net-zero 2050 ambitions. Just wanted to understand what economics of it, what's the CapEx and OpEx around it. Is the 40% carbon reduction target, which you are planning to do by 2030, includes certain number of plants to be converted to electric kiln by then. If you have any numbers around it, if you can split it out a bit. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for the questions. The first one on renovation. Yes, we want to improve our current footprint, and that's why innovation and system solutions are so important. You have here part of it is organic growth when it comes to the roof and the façade in particular. On the other hand, we as Wienerberger foresee also acquisitions in this field, and it's in the piping and it's in the roofing segment where we see the strongest potential for Wienerberger. I refer to the roofing one because obviously here also you have seen us with certain solutions and partnerships on the solar front and also on the technical membranes front when it comes to flat roofing. Here we think that we are entering a very strong growth market, which will certainly develop very strongly in the years to come.
When you talk about the façade, obviously, the thin brick solutions in North America and Europe will help us to improve here our performance in renovation as well. Don't underestimate also the renovation potential in our piping business with hot and cold on the in-house front and the water management around the house where we bought obviously the activities in England and Ireland. This can be rolled out on the continent with smaller investments, but also with a sort of an M&A that we will perform there. Here, as I said, it's a mixture of both, but we are confident and see a good pipeline of potential projects.
As I said, Wienerberger's strength on the commercial front, strong sales force, strong brands, strong relationship with the markets and product project know-how that we have, we can add on a couple of products that we see appropriate in our overall offering of systems and product solutions. On the electrical kiln front, that shows clearly how committed we are to new technology. For every product group in Wienerberger, we have solutions, and the one that we have now put in place is the first one for thin brick in Belgium. It runs very well. We're very happy with it. It's a new kiln that we have put in with zero emissions, zero CO2 emissions, and therefore, obviously a very interesting test case for us.
When you refer to 2030 and the goal, yes, it comes essentially from energy consumption reduction, and this is by technology, obviously, in our existing plants. I don't neglect also the aspect that we will rebuild certain plants till then. This will be then the so-called plants where we test the new technology and then can roll it out through the whole group. It will be part of the CapEx program that I have described, and this will be fully in line with our objectives that we have set.
Thank you. May I just ask, what's the kind of change between 2020 and 2021 in terms of renovation exposure? 2020 was 20% and 2021 is now 29%.
I don't know where the 20%-
No, 2012, I think.
Maybe it's a misunderstanding because I think what you have to consider here is that there is a significant share also in renovation, the façade business. And also basically, most probably when you refer to the 20%, maybe you only looked at the roofing segment, yeah, on the share of the roofing segment. You also have to consider the renovation share and infrastructure and the renovation share, the façade in the wall segment.
Okay, fine. I guess we can take it offline because slide seven of CMD, 2020 CMD talks about a 20% renovation, the pie chart. We can anyway take offline that one.
Mm-hmm. No problem. Will do. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Yves Bromehead from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. My first one is on the group medium-term growth potential, and that's aside from the 2030, but more thinking maybe in a three-year horizon. I think you've mentioned that you were running at around 90% utilization rate on your European building solution business. I think, Heimo, you mentioned that you were going to look at debottlenecking, but in the face of it, you're not really adding a lot of incremental capacity through greenfields or even brownfield, as far as I'm aware of. And maybe you can correct me on this. I guess the question is, you know, is your volume outlook for the next few years stable because of the supply constraint that you have internally?
Are you looking to change that through higher growth CapEx, or are you thinking about losing some relative market share to other substitute products? That's my first question. I'll let you answer that one before I go to the next one, if that's okay.
I can exclude the second or the third observation of yours that we lose here market share. Actually, on the contrary, if I look at market shares, we have gained momentum in the sort of inner market when you compare us to competitors of ours in, if I say, the clay roof tile market, for example, or the clay brick market for façade, or the clay block market. Even when I look in the broader scale, I've seen that the clay block market, for example, in a lot of our home markets has gained momentum in the one and two family houses because a lot of people have moved away from prefabrication into sort of longer-term sustainable solutions. You are referring to oone thing that obviously debottlenecking and creating capacity.
Keep in mind, Yves, that we are living in a different world because Wienerberger is changing actually dramatically its footprint also when it comes to product. Our product segment and product offering is very different from 10 years ago, and therefore, from an installation point of view, we need to debottleneck first and get the right products into the market. I talk about infill blocks, for example, where you need to have the installation to fill the stone wool in, for example. These are things that we do right now and try to move up in the product mix. Just creating capacity is not enough. On the roofing side, for example, debottlenecking means also moving up the ladder when it comes to higher value-added products or added margin products or some things like this or shift patterns that we change.
These are the most interesting parts that we currently do. Obviously, our volume estimations are such that we are positive. As I said, we see stable markets, and I'm not saying that we are pessimistic or conservative or whatever. I think we are fully in line with the market expectations. From a perspective of building new capacity, keep in mind also, Yves, if we were to decide to set the new operations up, it takes us about three to four years right now in Europe with all the permits and everything linked to it. What we are doing is extending kilns or extending dryers on existing sites. What you are referring to as brownfield developments, and that's what you see in this EUR 160 million of, for example, investment.
Very clear. Thank you, Heimo. My second question is also related a bit more medium-term and on the M&A side. I think, you know, if you work out your pie chart of 2021 revenue splits versus 2030, and I think let's not go into details of what the revenue implication is, but just looking at your sort of CAGR, plus 2% GDP to 2030, clearly it shows the renovation and infrastructure markets you expect them to grow at a much faster pace, and you've mentioned that those would be the M&A angle. I just wanted to challenge you on one thing is, on the roofing side, albeit you're looking at new verticals, if we're looking at the ceramic tile industry, it's never looked as good as it is today. Record high margins, record high volume growth.
You are a leader, but is there still space for you to do some M&A, especially in France? In Southern Europe, I think there's quite a few assets here for sale. Could you look at them or would there be an interest issue?
No, we don't face antitrust issues in the markets where we, I would say, would see or would like to see further consolidation. That's why we have them on the agenda. In the markets where we are strong already, we are looking at extensions and growing organically. Keep in mind also that we look not only at clay roof tiles, but accessories also because it's important to create more value per roof, especially when it comes to innovation. That's a key element for growth. I can also say today very calmly to you that the footprint, industrially speaking and commercially speaking, is more in the Nordic part of Europe and not so much in the south. That's for the fragmentation of the industry and the structure of industry.
To ease this argument, France is part, for me, of the Nordic part of Europe and not the South, even if they touch the Mediterranean Sea.
Sorry, did you say France is Northern Europe for you?
Nothing from our perspective.
Okay.
even if it touches the Mediterranean Sea, if I say so, yeah.
Okay, cool. Thank you very much, Heimo. Have a lovely day. Bye.
Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. My first question would be on pricing in 2022. It seems that your clay building material competitors that have not hedged their gas and electricity bills might have to increase prices by much more than 6%-8% to protect their margins. The question is, could you consider increasing prices in clay brick and tiles as much as your competitors that are not hedged, or would you rather consider giving the benefit of your cautious hedging policy to your clients?
To answer your question, first of all, the most of our competitors are family businesses with one or two sites. They have a completely different pricing policy already in the past and are obviously confronted to this situation in a way where they will have to cover their costs. They are not looking, as you and me, to margins, but more to cost coverage. If they increase their prices, they will sort of first of all try to cover their costs, as you correctly point out. Secondly, from our perspective, they've also been, in the past, lower than Wienerberger when it comes to pricing. There has been always a differential in pricing, be it in certain products, you know, 10% or even above 10%, in certain areas of the business.
Not that we neglect it, but obviously there's a completely different way how they tackle pricing and margin business. It's that they are not so much focused on margins. They are more focused on cost coverage right now.
Is it fair to assume that the recent developments in gas and electricity prices mean that they will have to increase prices much more in 2022 than in 2021, and that it could be positive for your pricing power?
The assumption is right that they have to increase more, but they did already in 2021, obviously a lot of them, because they were already confronted with these price hikes, and they will have to do it this year as well. When I'm saying this, pricing power with Wienerberger is already very strong because you have seen it last year, how we implemented it and how we moved the market as the leader, and we do it this year as well. As I said, clearly, these companies acting locally have a different agenda. It doesn't mean that they are disruptive, but they need to follow their way as well, and they will follow us, and therefore, the pricing of the product is certainly going to be strong this year.
The second question is, could you give a little bit more color on the EUR 30 million headwind that you're expecting in piping in North America? Does it mean that you're expecting pricing to be a little bit weaker than the rest of the group because you already implemented price increase in 2021? Or does it mean that you expect the cost to be higher than the rest of the group because of PVC prices?
Basically what we expect is more or less stabilizing price on the PVC side. What we see is still that PVC input pricing, raw material prices, is still increasing in the U.S. What we did in 2021 was a very proactive approach, that we increased basically the prices upfront, that we were hit by the cost increase of the raw material. If you consider that prices, PVC prices will stabilize, basically that means also that you cannot realize an additional margin how we did basically in 2021. That's the reason why we think that we cannot repeat this one-off, like we did in 2021, and therefore we have considered it as a EUR 30 million one-off effect in our guidance for 2022.
Is it fair to assume that you expect pricing to be lower than in 2021 because you will not be able to increase prices? Or do you expect margin pressure, or would you try to maintain the margin in North America?
We will try to maintain the margin, but we will not be able to increase like we did, yeah, in the last year, that we were always basically increase prices to the market earlier. Like basically we were hit by the cost increase from the supplier.
This will not be possible if the input prices from PVC will stabilize. There will be a kind of margin which we will keep, but it will not be possible that we earn an additional margin out of this proactive margin approach.
That's okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Two questions from me, gentlemen. The first one is on M&A. Can you give us a little bit more color on your M&A funnel at the moment? How many assets are sitting in due diligence phase? How many you've maybe signed an NDA with? Just to get a feeling for how active we should view M&A into 2022 and beyond. And it would be helpful if you could maybe give us some sort of parameters for M&A as a percentage of sales, in terms of how to think about that going forward, considering it's now a core part of the strategy. Then the second question is just briefly on the guidance.
When I look at your guidance slide, you're starting with a like-for-like EBITDA as your basis for the 2022 guide, but you're guiding to a reported EBITDA, or at least that's my understanding. If I look at that number and I use the same basis for both 2021 and 2022, so both reported, it's effectively implying limited organic growth, and that doesn't seem to be the message that you're giving. I just wanted to confirm what that chart on page 37 actually shows, because it's not entirely clear. That'd be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Cedar. I will leave the question number three to Gerhard and focus on the first two. On average, I'm not taking the year 2022 right now, but if I compare my experience with Wienerberger and what we have done so far. On average, we have sort of projects, about 10 projects that we are running simultaneously. That means that these are very small ones, mid-sized ones, and sort of bigger ones from our perspective. Yes, we are engaging with those people. Either we are participating in processes or we are negotiating with families or owners of such businesses.
The processes might last from, you know, anything from eight weeks to two years or three years, because that's how long it might take for a family to finally decide to step out of the business. Yes, there's a good pipeline. As I said, on average 10, I would say, but there can be more also and some go away. If I say 10, that they are fairly serious and we are focusing on those much more obviously that are floating around. This is my answer to your first question. I hope it gives a little bit color or it gives you a little bit of more meat to the bone, if I may say so.
Percentage of sales, if you bear with me, and I would say I wouldn't like to give you a guidance here because it's difficult for me to evaluate. I think from a perspective of what we spend probably and what we have available, I think, as you have seen in some years, it might be a little more. Last year, we had about EUR 0.5 billion That we dedicated to the M&A side. Anything between, you know, EUR 100 million and EUR 300 million or EUR 400 million is achievable for Wienerberger in this stage. I think that's where you situate yourself at this stage. It doesn't mean that we don't do a bigger deal if it comes along and makes a lot of sense.
That's what we sort of work on at this basis. Gerhard?
Right. Cedar, when it's about the EBITDA bridge, what we wanted basically to present is that we show in the bridge the full EBITDA contribution from M&A. The 60 what you see will be basically the M&A contribution, the full M&A contribution of 2022. You know that we had already in 2021 an M&A contribution of around 20. We considered or basically our idea was to start with 670 to add the full EBITDA contribution of 60 and to end up with 750-770. Maybe what was not clear enough, we do not see this 750-770 as a reported EBIT. We see it more as a recurring operating EBIT. Meaning excluding one-offs in the sense of sale of assets, restructuring costs.
We see this as an operating EBIT, EUR 750 million-EUR 770 million. That's why basically we decided to show the bridge as it is designed.
Okay, that's fine. If I look at slide—what is this? Slide 23, your operating EBITDA for 2021 starts at EUR 694 million.
Right.
You know, just the point is we don't have the same basis here, so the guidance is very confusing and, you know, it implies no organic growth, but that doesn't seem to be the message that you're giving on the call. Anyway.
I think the organic growth is not touched by this presentation, yeah. When we start with EUR 694 million, you have to then deduct the difference from the M&A because it is then not the EUR 60 million. It would be then EUR 60million minus the 20. But this was the reason, as I said in the beginning, what we tried to show is the full M&A contribution or the full EBITDA contribution out of M&A, and this will be in the year 2022, EUR 60 million, yeah. The organic growth is not touched by that, yeah.
Okay.
Maybe we can, in a separate session, yeah, to speak about it.
Yeah
Verify, to make sure that there is no misunderstanding, yeah?
Perfect. Okay. Thanks so much.
Next call is from the line of Markus Remis from Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, gents. One question also relates to this guidance issue, just to be clear. It's EUR 40 million, roughly EUR 40 million incremental contribution in 2022, EUR 20 million as we realized in 2021. That's the message, correct?
Markus, that's coming from M&A, is what you're saying?
Yeah. Yeah.
Only M&A.
You realize.
That's correct.
You realize EUR 20 million already and EUR 40 million is incremental in-
Spot on.
2022.
Spot on, Marcus. Spot on.
Okay. Got it. I appreciate the openness on the price-cost spread topic. Just to clarify on the price increases, is that already everything implemented? Kind of the spillover effect from last year and then coming on top the price increases you've implemented early or starting into the year? Or does it kind of assume further price increases moving forward into the year?
I think from today's perspective, we started the year, meaning in January, with the assumption of 5%-7% inflationary cost increases, and then we set our targets for the price increases. If I say 7%-8% in certain geographies, we were more to the 6% than to the 8% of price increases. I would say from our perspective today, end of February, beginning of March, that in some areas we will need a second price increase to cover the inflationary cost increases. Yeah.
Okay. All right. On the topic of shareholder returns, would you know buybacks be a topic at current levels for you?
You know, when I've that's why I inserted the chart on capital allocation. I think if you look at the interesting projects that we have when we talk about four years payback, five years payback, then I think from a growth perspective, Wienerberger is in a position to allocate its money now at this stage to further develop the company and not just so much think at current share prices. I obviously understand, you know, at EUR 2 million more or less is important for everybody and even for me, but I would say it's better to invest right now in the business and grow the business than to dedicate too much resources in buybacks.
All right. Okay. Last question related to the recent spike in oil price. I mean, to what extent is that reflected in the cost inflation of up to 7% that you've flagged for this year? Hovering now close to $100 per barrel.
Um-
Does that entail an upside risk to the cost inflation?
Yeah. Well, I think this is exactly the point where we were, sort of, hesitant. When I say second wave of price increases is especially those countries where we can't buy forward. You know them from Eastern Europe, it's Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia.
Yeah
Serbia, where we have to obviously then think of a second wave of price increases because obviously gas is going up. Yeah, you are right.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's it from my side.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question is from Ami Galla from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. A couple of questions from me. My first question was just a clarification on the EUR 30 million of the one-off gains that you flagged. Is it right to understand that that's mainly the delta between price and cost, and there is no element of the sort of supply chain disruption that the industry had seen and you were better able to support demand in the market last year? I mean, related to that, the question on shortage of plastic granulates, do you think that still is going to be as it exists in the market today, is it still a relative advantage that you have versus competitors because you are better positioned in at least in your supply chains? My second question really is on CapEx.
As I think about your carbon reduction, carbon CO2 reduction targets for 2023 and even beyond to 2030, should we expect the level of ESG and special CapEx to remain relatively high over these years? I know in 2020 Capital Markets Day, you'd given us some line of sight to 2023, but should we kind of think about it even moving forward towards 2030, a relatively high level of CapEx? The third question I have is really a clarification. Were there any government subsidy gains in 2021 numbers?
The last one I can answer with a clear no. There were no subsidy issues involved there. On the plastic granulate side, I would say, yes, we might see this year some shortages. I think that's certainly true for the North American business and to a certain extent also in Europe. You are absolutely right. We managed the supply chain well in Europe and continue to do so as a reliable long-term partner of our suppliers, and we are obviously looking for alternative routes as well. We are certainly, when I compare ourselves to other competitors, well positioned to do so. Keep in mind that our exposure in North America is smaller because we have one big plant and therefore from a supply chain it's a little bit more difficult than in Europe.
That's why I'm saying the exposure here to potential sort of hiccups in the supply is bigger in the U.S. than in Europe. Your question relating to the EUR 30 million of gains is price. Yeah, because as Gerhard has explained it, we were very good in putting price increases early in, and then the cost followed afterwards. As he explained, this will not be the case this year, and that's why we can't capture this additional sort of margin that we had due to our very good or proactive pricing policy. That's a one-time effect. It is a lot of money, I understand that, but it's a once in a lifetime opportunity and the American management did very well on this. As I said, this is a one-time effect.
Thank you, Heimo. I just have one last follow-up of one I forgot to ask is just on the tax rate. Is there any changes to the sort of underlying tax rate in the business after the Meridian Brick acquisition?
On the tax rate you ask? No, I would not say. You have seen most probably we have this year around about again an effective tax rate of 17%. The tax rate in 2020 was extraordinarily high due to some one-offs. 2019 was also around about 17%-18%. You can calculate with an effective tax rate for the group based on the tax loss carry forwards and the total structure what we have of around ±20% in the long run.
Thank you.
Your last question was relating to CapEx and how we structure CapEx. I think from my perspective, you see, we will guide this, and it is a discretionary one. To give you now numbers for the next five-six years would be not the right way forward. As I said, it's paybacks. When you look at them, the ones with 4x are very strong ones, and we might spend one year a little more and one year a little less. I think when you look at right now where we debottleneck a lot and where we improve decarbonization a lot, EUR 160 million is probably an amount that one could work with.
Thank you.
Mr. Gallo, are you finished with your questions?
Yes. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Tobias Woerner from Stifel Europe. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen and Heimo. Three questions if I may from my side. In terms of managing cost inflation, when you look at the various components, can you give us a little bit more sense what you do in terms of forward buying? In other words, excluding energy for the time being or gas for the time being, are you at the moment extending your normal requirements of input materials in plastics and or other areas or even services where you strike prices or contracts for extended periods, longer levels than you would have otherwise done? The second question, just very quickly, the breakdown of the EUR 20 million M&A impact in 2021, in terms of FloPlast and Meridian, what each part contributed, that would be helpful.
Just lastly, M&A. I mean, one of your peers in the building materials space is actually looking actively at building a large position in Spain. Clearly, the capacity utilization issue wouldn't be an issue in that country, i.e. your runway for growth would be years and very long, and the same is true in a way for Italy. Is that not something which could be on the cards for you, given the fact that you have no exposure to Spain and limited exposure to Italy?
The last question on potential M&A, I think we find from our humble perspective, Wienerberger's perspective, that we have very interesting potential to grow in the markets that we are strong in. Going into a market like Spain, where we have no presence, where we have no expertise and to build up something will take years and therefore it's better allocated, the capital allocation in areas where we know the market and can easily grab the potential for further growth. This is one thing. The structure of the market and the fragmentation is always the one where we always shy away from these Southern European markets. Keep in mind that, for example, we closed and sold off then our activity in Spain, in Greece also on the piping segment.
Because over years it was a single digit margin and not really improving. Payment delays are long, and we have to finance basically our customers, all things that are difficult to handle for us. Italy, as again, you need to divide Italy in more than just two regions, north and south. It's the middle also, and it's part of the north that are better than the others. But again, I think from a overall perspective, some potential interesting issues are there. But it's not that we would like to improve or increase our exposure to these markets now with big numbers because I think here again, the consolidation needs still to happen and capital allocation is not top priority to Italy. I hand over a little bit to Gerhard for the rest.
Right. Maybe if I may start about how the contribution from M&A looks like. You can think about
Half and half, whereby I would say you can think that the contribution from the U.K., Ireland business is slightly higher than from the U.S. business. Hopefully gives you some indication how this split comes together. The last one when it's about raw materials, hopefully I understood correctly your question. It's what we do is at the moment, when we work with forward buying, we focus really only on energy, on electricity, on then gas. We check many times if we find the right tools and instruments for plastic granulates. But there we see simply that there are not products available where we could go for a kind of a forward buying or a hedging strategy. We are thinking more for a possible physical hedging for in certain areas of raw material.
for that still, raw material prices at the moment are much too volatile to even think about the physical hedging on plastic granulates. For that moment, we focus on gas and electricity when it's about forward buying instruments.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Tobias.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch tone telephone. Next question is from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for your time and presentation so far. A couple of questions. Maybe first the strategic one, and I think you've kind of answered it earlier with the size of deals and things like that. I guess from your perspective, is there anything in the portfolio product-wise that you think is particularly missing? Secondly, I think you kind of said perhaps, but can you just maybe give us some clarity around your thinking around larger deals and thinking something more transformational or whether that's really not on the agenda? Maybe a second question, which is detail point. Could you just give us the incremental revenues to that EUR 40 million extra of EBITDA, just roughly so we can work out the margin impact? I appreciate there were some numbers before.
It would just be helpful as a reminder. Third question, just coming back on quarter four trading. Maybe my math is wrong, but I think you had north of 20% organic growth top line, which is obviously extraordinarily high. The comp was not particularly tough. Could you just dig into that a little bit? I think you talked about pre-buying, but just maybe give us some more feeling what happened there. Those would be my three questions. Thank you.
Sure. Let me start with the strategic ones. Gregor, I appreciate it and, obviously from a Wienerberger perspective, nothing is missing right now. We can always, as I said, add things and products and solutions that come with our products to the construction side. That's I think the extraordinary situation we are in from Wienerberger's perspective and the potential, because we can add on products and solutions to our existing ones. Be it in piping, be it in roofing, being also in facade or wall. It's not a must immediately. It's a huge potential that we have here, and that's why I'm saying I'm confident about the potential for growth in the future. We will build steadily our presence here.
If it's in accessories, it's in insulation, if it's in render. There's a lot of things you can add on to our existing business in the different fields and make it more solution-oriented and obviously, as I said, create more turnover by projects and obviously bring our sales and admin costs down per unit sold. This is I think the way forward, how we want to see it. On the deal structure, and you were referring to transformational deals. I think one needs to be very careful on this these days. Wienerberger has a strong set of values and how we do business, how we are perceived by the clients and the customers.
Therefore, a potential deal is also looked at not only from a perspective of financial and strategic and ESG, but also from a perspective of does it fit to our culture? Does it fit how we act in the market and our route to market? This is very important. It's not about making a huge deal and create a momentum here rather quickly, but does it fit to our strategy in developing the company further? If obviously there are some mid-sized or bigger sized potential deals out there, this fits nicely, comes at the right price. As I said, we will look carefully in order to create additional value for our shareholders.
From the momentum's perspective, I think with this mid to smaller sized deals, I think we have a huge potential for growth in the next coming years. This is on the M&A front. I would probably hand over a little bit to Gerhard for the rest.
Thank you.
On the revenue side, what we expect, what I have at the moment at hand is, the revenue contribution in total in 2022 will be around, concerning M&A, between, let's say, EUR 300 million-EUR 350 million. Yeah. What the exact contribution will be, only for the EUR 40 million, which is the incremental EBITDA contribution in 2022, we have to come back to you via Investor Relations afterwards.
Well, you had 100 last year, maybe we can deduct that.
I think we had EUR 120 million-EUR 150 million. I guess it would be somewhere EUR 200 million incremental, but
Yeah, yeah.
Let us at least.
Thank you.
I will get back to you on this.
Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Lasantha Mahindrarajah from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. The first is on sort of U.K. capacity, really. I know, you know, both of your competitors are having capacity this year and then next year. Is that a risk to the imports you're currently bringing in? Then if it is, I guess, can that capacity be used to sort of serve the European market? Or are there any reasons why those bricks can't be sold in Europe for aesthetic reasons, for example? Then the second question was just around the solutions part of the business. 15% currently, targeting 25%. Can you just help give a few examples of what you mean by solutions and what you're doing there and where there's additional scope to get that 25%? Thank you.
Sure. I'll give you a couple of sort of examples for the solution part. We invested in a company in Belgium for prefabricated wall systems, for example, where we see a potential for further growth, and this is exactly in the sense of solutions. We have in the part of water management also putting together recently acquired companies in the Netherlands and interact, for example, with our piping operations and building pumping stations in Finland, where we obviously have the whole package and now and not just the pipe. These are solutions and that's what we would like to drive forward. We have it on the roof, we have it on the façade, as I explained in the piping and also then on the wall segment.
These are a lot of initiatives that we have throughout the group where we combine different products and solutions and sell it then as a system. These are the two things. The first question that you had was on the U.K., and I'm sorry, acoustically, I couldn't grab the first part of your question, but it was a link to the sale of products that we ship in from the continent to the U.K., wasn't it?
Yeah. If that will get displaced by new domestic capacity in the U.K., and then if it does get displaced, can you sell those bricks into Europe?
It could be an advantage that I'm more than 20 years, it's more than 25 actually in the business. The U.K. colleagues have always said they can replicate these bricks over this period of time, and they never could. This momentum is building, and we have obviously completely different aspects and colors and shapes and bodies of these bricks that we bring in. I haven't seen a major change. Actually, on the contrary, we have built momentum in getting more bricks in. I'm not frightened about the capacity in the U.K. that has been essentially built by our competitors. If it were, we could easily sell them on the continent as well. There's no worries on this supply chain.
Okay. Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Excuse me. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back to Daniel Merl for any closing comments. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for dialing in today. The next conference call, as a short reminder, will be on the twelfth of May for our Q1 2022 results. Our annual report 2021 will be available for download on the twenty-eighth of March on our website. For today, I can only wish you a nice rest of the afternoon. Thanks again for dialing in today. Stay healthy and goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Wienerberger conference call. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.