Amrize Ltd 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to Amrize's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We released our second quarter financial results yesterday after the market closed. You can find both our earnings release and presentation for today's call in the investor relations section of our website at investors.amrize.com. On the call with me today is Jan Jenisch, Chairman and CEO. Before we begin, during the call and in our slide presentation, we reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to US GAAP in our earnings release and slide presentation. As a reminder, today's call is being webcast live and recorded. A transcript and recording of this conference call will be posted to our website. Any statements made about future results and performance, plans, expectations and objectives are forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those presented during the call due to various factors, including but not limited to those discussed in our 2025 Form 10-K and in other reports filed with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Please also note that in today's presentation, certain prior period financial information includes revisions that were not material to any previously issued consolidated financial statements. Additional information regarding these revisions can be found in our Form 8-K filed with the SEC yesterday after the U.S. market close. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jan.

Thank you, Baris. Thank you all for joining us today. I will begin with our highlights and takeaways of the second quarter. We delivered strong revenue growth of 8.6%, driven by increased mega project demand from data centers and energy to advanced manufacturing plants and infrastructure modernization. With the strength of our network and strategic footprint in the most attractive markets, we were able to achieve industry-leading organic growth of 6.7%. We also grew net income by 14.4% and adjusted EBITDA by 5.8% with this strong customer demand, as well as leading aggregates pricing and excellent progress in our ASPIRE program. Diluted earnings per share increased 14.7% and adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 8.6%. Oil price-driven cost inflation drove higher freight, diesel, and raw materials costs, which we are proactively managing with pricing, fuel surcharges, and ASPIRE.

In our Building Materials business, we had a strong quarter with above-market volume growth, premium cement pricing, and leading aggregates pricing growth. Our Building Envelope business achieved above-market sales momentum, driven by a strong pipeline of large-scale commercial projects and growth in residential roofing. Segment pricing improved sequentially as increases phased in throughout the quarter. We are also successfully executing on our capital allocation strategy of investing for growth through CapEx and M&A while returning cash to our shareholders. We invested $241 million in CapEx in the quarter as we expand production and improve efficiency to best serve customers. We had excellent contributions from PB Materials, our recently acquired aggregates business in West Texas, and in July, we acquired Rapid Redi-Mix, bringing significant synergies with our cement and aggregates network in Texas. In the second quarter, we also returned $502 million to shareholders through dividends and our share repurchase program.

Our board has also declared a second quarter dividend of $0.11 per share. Let's now look to our market environment. We have a strong order backlog led by commercial and infrastructure demand. We are actively quoting new projects. In commercial construction, which makes up half of our business, the momentum with mega projects continues to drive demand for building materials. As we said last quarter, we are seeing the strong commercial new starts from building materials convert into new commercial roofing demand. The new AI-driven economy in North America not only needs data centers, but also energy, water, and transport infrastructure. Many of these projects have a significant runtime that drive consistent long-term demand for our solutions.

The Dodge Construction Index shows there are more than 300 new data centers planned across North America. Our leading footprint and distribution network positions us to serve over 90% of these projects. Within infrastructure, demand continues to be strong across all levels of government and provides us with a steady multi-year running projects. The Infrastructure Act still has significant funding to be spent. We are encouraged by its successor bill, which should extend the infrastructure tailwind. The BUILD America 250 Act includes strong funding for cement and aggregates intensive projects that are well-aligned to our footprint. The overall policy environment supports locally made materials for infrastructure. America and Canada are prioritizing domestic materials, and Amrize is positioned exceptionally well for this with our local-to-local model and Made in America and Product of Canada offerings.

As I discussed last quarter, our strategy is not to import, but to invest domestically, to expand production in local markets to serve local builders. Within the residential sector, new construction remained soft in the second quarter. However, within this environment, we were able to grow residential roofing market share and gain volumes. We expect that seasonal patterns will support stable roofing demand in the second half of the year and over the long term. The need for housing in the U.S. will drive significant growth opportunity. Overall, we see mega projects leading the way. Growth trends from infrastructure modernization and onshoring of manufacturing to data center expansion and the digital economy are taking shape on the ground. These projects have significant size and scale for Amrize. Let me share some examples of these mega projects underway.

Our Elevate roofing system, which is ideally suited to support data centers, is being installed at a massive new data center in West Texas, an area where we are also well-positioned with our aggregates network. In Illinois, we are delivering aggregates and cement for a new data center build. We have projects underway in virtually every region of our footprint. Advanced manufacturing and onshoring is also driving growth. In Arizona, we are supplying building materials to a large-scale semiconductor manufacturing plant now under construction. In Louisiana, we are delivering materials to multiple LNG facilities as energy infrastructure builds up. Alongside these, we are supporting key transportation infrastructure projects across North America. In Canada, we are delivering to a massive multi-year modernization of Montreal's airport. In New York we are providing high-performance materials for the Hudson River Tunnel.

These are just some examples of our projects. New ones are kicking off every month. Mega projects require highest performing materials, manufacturing scale, and the distribution network to deliver reliably. This is Amrize's strength and a key part of how we were able to achieve market leading organic growth in the quarter. We are excited about the opportunities ahead to keep winning and delivering on new mega projects. Let's talk about our ASPIRE program. As we deliver for our customers, we are also driving synergies and operational excellence with our ASPIRE program. We delivered $29 million of savings in the second quarter. We have hundreds projects underway across raw materials, services, logistics, and equipment, and have now onboarded over 650 new suppliers, optimizing our third-party spend with competition and scale.

We are on track with our savings for this year of $80 million, as well as for our goal of $250 million through 2028. Let's talk about our growth investments. We invested $241 million in CapEx projects in the second quarter to expand production and to improve efficiency to best serve customers in the most attractive markets. We have completed a 660,000 ton capacity expansion at our flagship cement plant in Missouri, the largest market leading plant in North America. With cement demand accelerating, this expansion comes online at the ideal time for us. We also broke ground on the modernization of our Saint-Constant cement plant in Quebec to expand production by 300,000 tons and improve efficiencies. In Texas, work is underway to add 100,000 tons of additional production capacity at our Midlothian cement plant near Dallas.

In Alberta, we are adding 50,000 tons of capacity to our Exshaw cement plant outside of Calgary, where we are seeing growth driven by energy projects and new data center demand. In addition to our cement network, we are expanding and developing greenfield aggregate quarries across our footprint, where we currently have five quarry projects in multiple attractive markets across North America, adding more than 150 million tons of reserves. In Building Envelope, we are making progress on our new Malarkey shingles plant in Indiana. This new plant will be state-of-the-art, and will allow us to expand our footprint into highly attractive Midwest and Eastern markets. Looking to our M&A, we are executing our strategy with a strong focus on synergies and growth markets. In July, we closed the acquisition of Rapid Redi-Mix, a fast-growing concrete producer in Dallas-Fort Worth.

This acquisition is expected to be EPS value accretive this year. Rapid Redi-Mix has a network of modern batch plants and mixer fleets, and brings significant synergies with our aggregates operations and cement network in the region, complementing the plant expansion of our Midlothian cement plant. Our acquisition of PB Materials, the aggregates leader in West Texas, is proving to be an excellent addition and is exceeding our initial expectations. These actions show how we coordinate our M&A and CapEx investments to connect our network and focus on high growth markets such as Texas, where data centers, energy projects, infrastructure spending, and population growth are driving demand. We are also delivering cash to our shareholders and returned $502 million to shareholders in the second quarter alone. We launched our $1 billion share repurchase program and repurchased $197 million worth of Amrize shares in the second quarter.

Our dividend program is also running well. We paid $305 million of dividends, including the special dividend for 2025 and the first quarter dividend of $0.11 per share earlier this year. Adding to this, the Amrize board of directors has declared a dividend of $0.11 per share for the second quarter to be paid on August 26th. Importantly, these dividends are paid out of capital contribution reserves and are not subject to Swiss withholding tax. I'm very pleased that our shareholder return program is executing well. We will continue delivering for our customers, investing for growth, and returning cash to our shareholders. Now I'd like to turn it to Baris to review our quarterly financial results in more detail and discuss our full year guidance.