CEMEX, S.A.B. de C.V. (CX) Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

2025-02-06 16:28:05 ET

CEMEX, S.A.B. de C.V. (CX)

Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call

February 6, 2025, 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Lucy Rodriguez - Chief Communications Officer

Fernando Gonzalez - CEO

Maher Al-Haffar - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Ben Theurer - Barclays

Carlos Peyrelongue - Bank of America

Alejandra Martinez - Morgan Stanley

Gordon Lee - BTG Pactual

Adrian Huerta - JPMorgan

Jorel Guilloty - Goldman Sachs

Yassine Touahri - Onfield

Presentation

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the CEMEX Fourth Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Charlie and I'll be the operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions].

And now I will turn the conference over to Lucy Rodriguez, Chief Communications Officer. Please proceed.

Lucy Rodriguez

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter 2024 conference call and webcast. We hope this call finds you well. I am 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 outlook for 2025, and then we will be happy to take your questions.

As you know, in connection with the announced asset sales in 2024, we closed the sale of our Guatemala and Philippines operations as well as the remaining minority stake in New York. Our Dominican Republic operations remained accounted for as discontinued operations as of the end of 2024. This divestment was closed last week on January 30. Our reported results assume the sale of these operations for the full year and year-over-year like-to-like variations are for the current footprint.

And now I will hand it over to Fernando.

Fernando Gonzalez

Thanks, Lucy, and good day to everyone. I'm very pleased with our achievements in 2024, which represents [indiscernible] year in the corporate transformation we ambition in 2020. Setting the backdrop early in the year, we achieved our long-running goal of recovering our investment-grade rating. While we remain committed to additional credit improvements in the near term, this achievement provides a runway to more aggressively pursue our growth strategy and lay the foundation for a sustainable shareholder return program. Our leverage ratio stood at 1.8 times and its lowest level since the outbreak of the global financial crisis.

With the restoration of our financial health and several years of progress on our growth strategy, we took the first step on a shareholder return policy with the announcement of a progressive dividend program in March 2024. We expect to expand this in the future years with opportunistic use of our $500 million share buyback program. Through the execution of $2.2 billion in announced divestitures in 2024, we significantly rebalanced our portfolio towards developed markets with more consistent and attractive growth potential....

Read the full article on Seeking Alpha

For further details see: