Good morning, and welcome to the CEMEX Second Quarter 2021 Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Chuck, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions]. And now I will turn the conference over to Ms. Lucy Rodriguez, Chief Communications Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today on our second quarter 2021 conference call and webcast. I hope this call finds you and your families in good health. I'm joined today by Fernando Gonzalez, our CEO; and Maher Al-Haffar, our CFO. As always, we will spend a few minutes reviewing the business, and then we will be happy to take your questions. I will now hand it over to Fernando.

Thank you, Lucy, and good morning to everyone. I'm happy to report another strong consecutive performance. Second quarter results are another important milestone in our growth story. What we highlight include the achievement of our long-term leverage goal, a 39% increase in quarterly EBITDA and our announcement of industry-leading climate action target. Additionally, consolidated sales have increased 15%, while EBITDA rose 31% relative to pre-pandemic levels of second quarter 2019. On a year-over-year basis, sales increased by 25% with all ratings growing double digit. EBITDA for the quarter was $818 million, again, with all bases contributing. Margin improved by 2.1 percentage points to 21.2%, well above our Operation Resilience target. The improvement was largely due to volumes and cost savings initiatives. We continue to make important strides in cost and operating expenses as a percentage of sales at 7.4%, a company record. We did see an escalation in variable cost during the quarter. This was driven nationally by imports, maintenance and rising energy costs. With strong demand momentum, we expect pricing in the near term to adjust accordingly. Free cash flow after maintenance CapEx of $401 million significantly outpaced the prior year and was the highest for the second quarter since 2015. In line with what we indicated at CEMEX Day in June, we ended the quarter with a 2.85x leverage ratio, achieving our September 2020 Operation Resilience target of less than 3x significantly ahead of schedule. Importantly, we are using this period of robust operational growth to prepare for what lies ahead and advance even more rapidly on our corporate purpose to build a better future. We are accelerating our investment in the business in the positioning of our products for a low carbon world as well as moving quickly to the carbonized power industry. Despite the favorable operating…

Thank you, Fernando. The U.S. continued to enjoy strong demand in the second quarter, with most of our markets sold out. Sales increased 13% while EBITDA rose 7% on the back of strong volumes and pricing. Despite heavy rains in Texas during the quarter, cement volumes grew high single digit. Volumes were again driven by solid residential demand. Residential construction spending grew 30% quarter-to-date in May. Forward-looking indicators remain strong, with single-family permits up 46% year-over-year in the second quarter and low housing inventory levels. The infrastructure sector was supportive and the outlook remains favorable, with May trailing 12-month contract awards for highways and streets rising 2% for our 4 key states versus flat at the national level. The industrial and commercial sector remains weak, but activity is accelerating as cement-intensive distribution facilities for e-commerce continue to grow. Our cement prices rose 3% sequentially, reflecting traction of our April pricing increase, which was implemented in all markets except Florida. To meet higher-than-expected demand, we significantly increased imports in the quarter beyond the level locked in for the full year. With industry spot shipping rates up more than 100% versus last year, these imports carried a steep cost and one that is not yet reflected in our prices. This led to a 1 percentage point decline in EBITDA margin. We expect this headwind to continue, and we are working hard to ensure that our pricing policy adequately reflects the true cost of imports. As a first step, we have announced a second round of price increases for July and August in most markets. In the case of imports, we believe we have superior supply chain capabilities with close to 9 million metric tons of maritime import cement capacity, rail capabilities as well as a strong production footprint in the Americas. We…

Thank you, Lucy, and good day to everyone. As Fernando and Lucy mentioned earlier in their remarks, this was another very strong quarter, with significant improvements in most of our financial metrics. Our business continued to show important operating leverage, with top line growing 25% and EBITDA expanding 39% on a like-for-like basis. Free cash flow for the quarter was up 187% when compared to 2Q 2020 and 85% better than 2Q 2019 pre-pandemic. This was driven primarily by strong EBITDA performance helped by savings from our Operation Resilience program, lower financial expenses and lower investment in working capital. Continuously improving our working capital management and particular attention to credit quality and receivables collection translated into a record for a second quarter of negative 13 days in average working capital. Net income increased $314 million year-over-year, driven mainly by better operating earnings and lower financial expenses. All of this culminated in the doubling of our return on capital employed to 10.2% when compared to last year. With regards to our debt maturity profile, we have the best runway to next maturities in a decade. We achieved a debt profile with very manageable maturities for the foreseeable future and still with ample potential for improvement in our debt stack. We have an average life of debt of slightly more than 6 years, and our expected free cash flow generation alone would be sufficient to meet our maturities in the near term. We were active during the quarter in terms of liability management and the enhancement of our capital structure. In addition to lengthening our maturity profile, our liability management efforts this year translated into about 50 basis points reduction in our average cost of debt, which today is around 4.6%. During the quarter, we repaid around $370 million of bank debt…

Thank you, Maher. As discussed in our CEMEX Day a few weeks ago, we expect EBITDA for the year to be around $3.1 billion. EBITDA should be supported by consolidated volume growth in the range of 5% to 7% for cement, 3% to 5% for ready-mix and 2% to 4% for aggregates. Please note that our regional volume guidance is included in the appendix. Regarding pricing, we believe supply/demand dynamic are supportive of pricing increases. And as I mentioned before, we have announced additional price increases in the U.S. and Mexico. For cost of energy, we now expect a 12% increase, with both fuels and electricity cost rising. Incorporating some savings from our Working Smarter initiative, we now expect $60 million in annual cost savings this year relative to 2020. Guidance for total CapEx, working capital, cash taxes and interest expense is unchanged. As we move beyond the favorable year-over-year comp, we expect more granular growth in most regions. We believe we will see isolated flare-ups of COVID in our markets, but the governments have learned how to more effectively conquer the pandemic with little disruption to the industry. Significant amount of government stimulus still sits on the balance sheets of households and should be deployed as economies reopen. Growth will be driven by consumer spending and investment in supply chain and manufacturing, coupled with the resumption of some former construction projects. Over the medium term, developed markets should benefit from additional stimulus in the form of infrastructure. With tight supply/demand dynamics in most markets and rising energy on import costs, we expect prices to reflect inflationary pressures. While we do not give guidance a year ahead, all of this give us confidence in the view that we expressed at CEMEX Day in June that EBITDA should grow double-digit in 2022. We will take advantage of the market environment and focus on our bolt-on investment strategy, deleveraging and investing to reach our new climate action target. And now back to you, Lucy.

Before we go into our Q&A session, I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are based on our current knowledge of the markets in which we operate and could change in the future due to a variety of factors beyond our control. In addition, unless the context indicates otherwise, all references to pricing initiatives, price increases or decreases refer to prices for our products. And now we will be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Gordon Lee from BTG Pactual.

A quick question on U.S. cement imports. I was wondering if you could give us a sense of how much of that is being sourced by other CEMEX operations and how much of that is being sourced through third parties? And if you could give us a sense of where in the CEMEX network this is happening, just to get a sense of whether -- what the other regions are that might be benefiting on the other side of the higher import costs into the U.S.

Can you take that one, Maher?

Sure. Yes. Thank you, Fernando. A significant portion, Gordon, of our imports now into the U.S. are coming from Mexico. We also have some coming from Europe and Asia. As you are aware, we started the CPN plant which has -- is not only very positive logistics vis-a-vis the U.S. market, but also it's us producing and the marginal cost of starting up that capacity is fairly marginal. So it's primarily Mexico, some from Europe, some from Asia. And this has translated into a change over the last couple of years. I mean so we -- because of the ability to ship from Mexico. Now of course, we will continue to look for the most competitive pricing and quality. And as Lucy mentioned earlier and Fernando mentioned earlier, we have natural competitive advantages in terms of trading and in terms of importing into the U.S. market. I don't know if that answers your question, Gordon.

Yes, that's very clear.

And the second question comes from Vanessa Quiroga from Credit Suisse. Vanessa, if you can give us one question, that would be great.

My question, I want to focus on Europe. Obviously, the comparison base reflects the pandemic versus 2020. So I'm wondering if you can give any color versus 2019, how the volumes of each of the main European markets is performing currently.

Maher, can you take it?

Sure. Yes, Vanessa, Europe, all 3 products are up between 14% to 23%. Obviously, it reflected an easy comp because of -- from last year. The biggest contributors, Vanessa, to the business has been residential and infrastructure throughout the region. And that's why we raised the volume guidance for the year, as Lucy mentioned, from 2% to 4% growth in cement, from 3% to 5% in ready-mix. Also, as a consequence of the -- most of these markets are fairly sold out. And so as a consequence, we did implement pricing increases in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, and we've gotten very good responses to that. Now in terms of volume increases, I mean it's a little bit -- to compare the quarters, it's kind of tough because in individual countries, because of the varying lockdowns and the easy comps, it doesn't really make sense. I think it's better to take a look at what's happening in the first half of the year. But the major drivers are residential and infrastructure.

Maher, if I could just add on -- if I could just add on there, Vanessa. Remember that last year, in second quarter, our Western European operations were hit significantly by lockdowns while our Central European markets were not. So you're seeing that come through in the results. Having said that, as Maher was saying, we are seeing strong growth in residential and infrastructure across the portfolio. The U.K. stands out in particular where we have seen very strong residential demand as well as several large infrastructure projects going out. So things are, I think when you look at residential permits and things there, they're operating at decade-high levels at the moment. And I guess the next question comes from Carlos Peyrelongue.

Congrats on the results. Yes, my question is related to U.S. pricing. I mean there's obviously several factors that are supporting a much higher prices, whether it's shipping, as you mentioned in the call, increasing more than 100% of the cost sold at market and the potential for an infrastructure package. So my question is, do you think that the probability of moving to now adjusting prices at least 2 times a year or more is increasing materially? Do you think that's something that we're entering a new phase or instead of having just price increases once a year, not just this year, but going forward, we might, you might have to adjust prices more than once a year?

Thanks for your question. I think that the dynamics, Carlos, are, is kind of clear and it's the one that we've been describing for some time now. The market is requiring a higher amount of imported cement capacity is fully utilized almost everywhere. For sure in ourselves, that's the case. And so what we see is imports serving additional needs from our customers. And as you know, imports nowadays have an additional component on inflation, which is the high inflation in shipping costs. So now we have additional portions of imported cement at a higher cost. And what I expect is from the dynamics to continue evolving, meaning we cannot offset inflation immediately, not in shipping costs increasing 100% or even increasing because of fuels. But what we can expect is for price increases either once or twice a year, but a price adapting to the new supply structure of the market. So yes, the time we've been describing once we get to full utilization, the dynamics on the pricing side should improve materially. Now is it going to happen with increases once or twice a year? That's difficult to say. This time, we were -- we thought it was the right thing to do. That's why we announced price increases for July and August, and we will continue trying to offset inflation, either it's mainly shipping inflation, but other type of inflation to pricing.

And the next question comes from Francisco Suarez from Scotiabank.

Congrats on super results, and thank you for the great disclosure on your progress on carbon intensity. That's fantastic. My question is on pet coke prices, your primary fuel in the U.S. and Mexico. Can you tell us a little bit about what you are doing in the U.S. and Mexico to cope with the huge increases in pet coke including the use of alternative fuels? And if that has anything to do with the major cut in carbon intensity that we saw in the first half.

Can you repeat the last part of the question, please?

Yes, I just wanted to know that if you, among your strategy to deal with the increases in pet coke, if that includes the higher use of alternative fuels. And if that explains the major cut in carbon intensity that you are reporting in this half of the year?

I see. I see. Thank you for clarifying. Well, the first part, we are always monitoring the availability, quality and cost of our fuel mix. And now we see sizable increases in the prices of pet coke. So of course, what we try to do is to find the cheap sources on the one hand, but on the other, is to reduce coke in our fuel mix. So in the case of this second quarter, we did manage to increase the use of alternative fuels, and I think we were at the highest levels ever. It's close to 30%. And we will continue -- we are -- we do continue with our strategy is one of the elements in our climate action strategy. We will continue increasing the use of alternative fuels with the preference for alternative fuels with very high contents of biomass, which is what we've been doing already for several years. We are developing new projects of alternative fuels for our business in the U.S. And as you know, we are close to finish 2 very sizable alternative fuel projects in Europe, in the U.K. as well as included in Germany. So yes, the increment in alternative fuels in the second quarter do place a role in the cost of the whole fuels.

And the next question comes from the webcast from Paul Roger, continuing on the climate action theme. Congratulations on the new CO2 targets. What has changed to give you confidence the group can go further and faster by 2030? Has the group validated the new carbon reduction targets with independent third parties like SPTI and align management incentives with the new targets?

Thanks for the question. Let me start with the second part. We are in the process of validating the targets with BPA. So we will soon have those targets validated. Now the reason why we adjusted our -- we bring forward -- we brought forward our previous 2030 targets for 2025 and established a new target for cement as well as for ready-mix by 2030 is because in the process on how things are evolving in climate change and how much we have learned and how much and how fast we think we can do, now we feel very confident that we can align, and that's what we did. We did align our climate action strategy and targets to the well below 2-degree scenario, which is nowadays the one that you can adhere to with very specific numbers. And the reason why we established this new target of 475 CO2 kilos per ton of cement and 165 per cubic meter is because we know and we are confident that we can achieve those without any -- without counting with any of the technologies -- new technologies needed to capture a new CO2, technologies that we are proactively investing in but that we already have the needed road maps to get to those objectives without the support of this new technology. So I'm referring to additional clinker factor reduction, additional -- I just mentioned because of the previous, but additional alternative fuels with high contents of biomass, additional fillers like [indiscernible] for blended cements on top of the ones we currently use, things like alternative raw materials for cement production and a number of other levers we have to manage that reduction. Again, we feel very confident that it's doable. To some extent, we have already done it in the case of Europe, with a reduction of 35% when we use figures based in 1990. And in this case, now it's a reduction again based in 1990 of about or close to 40%. So it is lots of challenges, lots of work, lots of proxy towards circular economy, different markets we participate, but again, it's doable, and we feel confident we will manage to achieve those targets.

Fernando, there was one last part of Paul Roger's question that maybe you'd like to address, and that is, are management incentives aligned with the new targets?

Okay. Yes. Fully. We are, starting this year, we include in our variable compensation system the targets of CO2 reduction for our personnel, particularly the one directly related with the different levers of CO2 reduction. So that started early this year. But in the last month or so, we included another element in variable compensation. We decided to try for the second half of the year to see how it works so we can put in place starting next year. We started -- we are calling it the CEMEX ETS, meaning a variable compensation, modifying our EBITDA with the cost of CO2 and resembling or trying to look at the impact of us achieving our targets and the economic impact of achieving them or underachieving them in variable compensation in all our executives. Again, we started early in the year with performance of prices, including a sizable proportion of the valuation on CO2 on achieving the CO2 reduction plan. And now we are adding this ETS concept in order to modify our EBITDA. We're currently trying using the European ETS for our business in Europe, and we are using currently our California ETS price for the rest of the businesses. Again, this is the second portion of the variable compensation is a trial, and we will fine-tune. And of course, we will communicate that the next year.

Thank you, Fernando. And the next question comes from Nik Lippmann from Morgan Stanley.

I'm going to try to cheat here a little bit. I want to ask 2 questions. So I'm just going to put them into one, and they both allude to pricing. But sort of Macroeconomics 101, you're doing a negative supply shock into Latin America. You're exporting more up to the U.S. What is sort of reflection on pricing locally in Latin America? And similarly, in Europe, where the marginal cost of production seems to be going out in line with the higher cost of carbon emissions, what's the reflection there on cement pricing in Europe? And congrats on the numbers.

Can you take that one, Maher?

Yes. Nik, I mean I think that you hit on a very good point, Nik. And the reality is that our market supply/demand dynamics are tight virtually everywhere. I mean -- and of course, in the case of Mexico, I mean I'll start with Mexico. In the case of Mexico, especially in the central and southern central regions of Mexico. I mean we and I believe most of our competitors are pretty much in sold out positions, and we're expanding capacity as much as possible. And so clearly, bringing in on the CPN plant to address the U.S. market, I mean it does have some impact in Mexico but not that much of an impact. But clearly, there are tight supply/demand conditions that are leading to positive pricing dynamics in the case of Mexico. And that is expected to continue. I mean we believe that the demand in the residential market and infrastructure, both of those 2 core businesses have a lot of legs. They will continue to contribute to demand. We're seeing also a lot more inshoring from China to Mexico. And so industrial and manufacturing is also beginning to grow. So I would say, definitely, we are benefiting from those dynamics in Mexico. In the case of the U.S., absolutely right. I mean we're sold out. There are some markets on allocation. As we discussed, we're bringing in -- we've increased our imports into the U.S. quite materially. And there, you do have pressures of transportation, as Fernando mentioned, which are escalating quite a bit. And pricing has got to react to it, and it is reacting to it. And as you know, we've increased prices for the second half of the year, and we should be getting those pricing increases. In Europe, you have a similar situation. You have tight supply/demand conditions. I mean even in some markets in ready-mix, we're able to start to cherry pick our most profitable projects because we're reaching capacity utilization even in ready-mix in some of the markets. So -- and that's what's leading to good pricing environment. And we've implemented pricing increases, I would say, in most of our European markets, and we're getting some very good traction on that pricing. I don't know if, Nik, that covers your -- if I missed anything, please remind me.

Yes. No, look, I think it clearly covers it. What I'm sort of looking at is to what degree -- I understand you're making money on the imports into the U.S., right, and that's profitable freight. My question is really, to what degree are you -- say that you're selling 2 million tons, 3 million tons to the U.S., which is wonderful. But are you repricing, say, 20 million tons of cement sales in Latin America because, all of a sudden, all of that excess is going up north? If it -- to what -- is there anything that will really prohibit you from taking that U.S. pricing power and use it as things get tighter across the region?

Well, I mean markets are fairly -- Nik, markets are fairly -- I mean obviously are fairly fragmented when it comes to cement and especially when the cement needs to go overland. So I think if you're saying that just because we're exporting out of Mexico into the U.S., is that necessarily pulling up prices throughout Latin America. I think the situation is a little more complex than that. I think you need to get more granular on a local market by local market. And that's why I -- in my comments, I separated kind of the northern part of Mexico and the central and southern part of Mexico, where they're less impacted by the exports to the U.S. and much more impacted by local supply/demand conditions. And we are increasing capacity and doing debottlenecking in the Central and Southern regions in Mexico as well. We are -- Tepeaca is coming onstream, and that should be supporting. But I think to talk about pulling up prices because of exports out of Mexico into the U.S., in Mexico and in Latin America, I think it's a little more complicated than that.

If I add to what Maher said, I think perhaps this is not the moment to do it, but Maher has already mentioned that capacity utilization is very tight all over the Americas. It's tight in several markets, not only in the Americas but mainly in the Americas. So exporting to the U.S., it might help, but that is not crucial. It's not the reason. Look at capacity utilization in the Dominican Republic, we already announced starting up of [indiscernible] that we're not using since ages because of capacity is fully utilized. We are proceeding with debottlenecking capacity projects in Jamaica. And we are doing the same everywhere. In the case of Mexico, debottlenecking Huichapan, increasing capacity in Tepeaca, starting up in Campana, that's for exports. So it's all over the place. I think the summary to me is the pandemic heated badly in Latin America last year. The -- mainly because of the informal economy, it came back very soon and it continues coming back and growing. And the speed at which the recovery has happened has surprised most of the industry, and everybody's trying to use almost 100% of capacity utilization and trying to debottleneck and expand capacities all over the market. So I think that's the part that we should go deeper to better understand the pricing dynamics currently.

And the next question comes from Adrian Huerta from JPMorgan.

Quick question just to clarify. Did you say that the impact from the increased cement imports in the U.S. was 1 percentage point? Just to clarify that first, and then my second was also very specific.

You mean in terms of the margin, you mean?

Yes, the margin impact from the increased cement imports was 1 percentage point on margins?

That's at the consolidated level, Adrian. It was higher than that on the U.S. level, just it accounted for almost a 3% headwind in margins.

Okay. Perfect. And just to clarify. So my question is which regions the increased imports were to? Was that in California, Texas mainly?

We don't break out where the imports are coming into, but the markets that we have been importing into have been Texas, California as well as Florida. I can tell you that in the quarter, due to bad weather in Texas, we did have a problem actually taking the shipments into the ports because of bad weather. So I hope that gives you some insights in the import activities. Sorry. And then the next question comes from the webcast from Alan Alanis from Santander. What is the outlook for imports of cement to the U.S.? And is this a risk or an opportunity for CEMEX?

Well, I think the outlook for imports is directly related to the outlook of volumes in the market. Again, once we have all of our local capacity utilized, the delta will need to come from imports. So we kind of expect for imports to continue increasing.

If I can add also, Fernando. I hope I'm not interrupting, Fernando, may I add?

No. Go ahead.

Yes. I think also, Alan, I think what we need to also take into consideration here over the medium term, meaning into '22 and '23, what's happening on the infrastructure side. I mean as you probably been following in the U.S., we are coming awfully close now to an agreement on an infrastructure bill and also an approval of the existing FAST Act. I mean if you take a look at what happened literally in the last 48 hours, we had a confluence of agreement between Republicans and Democrats. You have -- even though last night there was a procedural vote, it was a very important milestone. You have 17 Republicans, including McConnell, kind of voting to take the bill forward within the Senate. And that's going to be a $550 billion bill. Now a lot of people may say that, that bill is a smaller number than what Democrats wanted to do. But in reality, it's pretty much the same amount of what we consider to be cement-intensive projects. And no matter how you skin this cat, I mean $550 billion on top of the current FAST Act, which is probably going to be extended by 5 years, that's what's being proposed by the Biden proposal and the bill that has been put forward, is going to translate somewhere between 20% to 30% higher demand for cement in the U.S. And we all know that there are some very important environmental -- I don't want to call it prohibitions, but certainly environmental, let's say, pressures and headwinds in adding new capacity. So imports are going to play -- are going to continue to play an important role. But I, as Fernando said, I think because of what's happening on logistics, I think in reality that pricing is going to have to go up to increase, to make those imports be at par with domestically produced product in terms of pricing. So I hope that answers the question, Alan.

Thank you, Maher. And the next question comes from Anne Milne from Bank of America.

It took me a long time to go through all the quarters to see the last time you had EBITDA of over $800 million, not just even in the second quarter, so congratulations. I'm going to take the last question a little bit further, this whole question of capacity utilization. Clearly, you guys are going -- are bringing older kilns back online and looking to expand capacity in a number of markets. I've heard from other players in the U.S. and other regions that they are looking to do the same. Maybe you could just tell us in some of your key markets, how much additional capacity you think that could be brought online in the next, just say, 24 months. Obviously, to build a new plant would take much longer, and given the environmental issues, that might take even longer than it used to. And then maybe you could just comment in that whole context on Egypt and what the government is going to do, and how long you think that might take till you have a positive impact on, sort of, let's say, reduced supply in the market in Egypt.

Thanks, Anne. I think on debottlenecking, pass it in the U.S., we are already developing a few projects in some plants. We still don't have, let's say, a final number. We are right now studying and making engineering for some of those debottleneckings. And -- but you can expect -- let's say, for the time being, just to give an order of magnitude, it could be around 300,000 tons. Again, this is related to debottlenecking. At the same time, as you can imagine, we are looking for opportunities of expanding capacity, not just debottlenecking. But right now, we don't have a concrete info that we can share with you. We might be able to do that in the near future. Regarding Egypt, well, you already know the news. What the government is doing is what we've been supporting an idea that we've been supporting, which is finding a way for the industry to have, let's say, a reasonable context. And after a very large cement plant was built by the government. So what is going on now is rationalizing that on a temporary basis. It's 1 year, rationalizing that capacity, so the basic economics of the industry can be reasonable for investors. So we do expect that during this year, prices should be improving, not only because of that but also because we do expect the market to recover to growth. So it's 2 reasons why we should expect better pricing in Egypt in the next few months.

Fernando, do you know how much they're going to reduce their capacity by to help out the whole overall market at, let's say, that large plant?

I don't have the number with me. What I know is it's a sizable deduction. It might be slightly different on a per-player basis, I don't have the numbers with me to share it with you.

Okay. And just are you aware of any other, outside of CEMEX, any other new cement plants that are being commissioned at the moment?

Where, in Egypt or in the U.S.?

No, just in your footprint globally.

Well, there were some grinding mill cement and griding mills in Yucatan, Mexico. I'm trying to remember if there is any other [indiscernible], I don't remember any new capacity, not in Latin America. No, I don't recall any specific expansion project. I can imagine that because of the context we just described before, everybody is thinking on funding capacity.

Yes, I'm sure they're thinking about it with trepidation, do we do it or not?

We have time for one last question. Ben Theurer from Barclays, I think you're on deck.

Yes. Congrats on the results. I want to close my questions with one of your favorite topics from the past, Fernando, a little bit about the digital innovation and what you've been doing over the last couple of years, be it on the commercial strategy with CEMEX Go. Now you're laying out a couple of other things around business services, manufacturing. So the question really is, within your global footprint, what would you say is a reasonable target where you can get and actually maximize and optimize your operations, ultimately driving margin expansion through all the digital innovation you've been put in place, where you stand today, and how far do you still have to go to reach that target?

Yes, it's a very interesting topic. Let me first describe what our current status in our digital strategy, and then I will go through what this is that we can expect moving forward. Three domains. The first one is digitizing and developing a superior customer experience with digital -- with a digital platform, and that's what we basically call CEMEX Go. And as you know, CEMEX Go allows our customers and ourselves to have a seamless process to relate, to transact and to receive and to pay and to hit the whole spectrum of the commercial relation. And by now and with one section, this platform is available globally for all our customers. We are very pleased with the acceptance of the platform. About 90% of our recurring customers do use it as the way for them to get information, to get quotations, to buy, to pay, to receive, everything. So we are very pleased with that platform. What's next for that platform? Think on the platform as a minimum viable product. The platform nowadays is different to what it was 2 years ago, and 2 years from now is going to be different to where it is today. We are adding functionalities. The last one -- one of the last functionalities is digital confirmation in ready-mix, meaning now our customers can get into CEMEX Go and pick the slot at which they want the product, they will receive an answer and voila, transaction is done without any additional intervention. For our customers, we understand that's a very valuable functionality that they will start having durably very, very soon. The other features or the other ideas we have with this platform is that through that platform, but adding other pieces, we want to participate in the business models that are…

Well, we appreciate you joining us today for our second quarter webcast and conference call. If you have any additional questions, as always, please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team, and we look forward to seeing you again on the third quarter results webcast. Many thanks.

Thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the presentation, and you may now disconnect, and have a great day.