Holcim CEO: Europe's Housing Shortage, Decarbonising Cement and Why Complacency Is the Enemy

**Nicolai Tangen** (0:01)
Hi, everyone, I'm Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and today I'm joined by Miljan Gutovic, the CEO of Holcim. Holcim, one of the largest building materials companies in the world.
Cement, aggregates, concrete, the stuff that the world is literally built from. So if you walked into a building today, drove on a road, crossed a bridge, hey, Holcim has probably been involved. And we own nearly 2% of the company. Miljan, warm welcome.

**Miljan Gutovic** (0:29)
Pleasure to be here, Nicolai. And thank you for a warm introduction. Thanks for selling Holcim.

**Nicolai Tangen** (0:46)
So, most people don't realize how embedded Holcim is in their daily life. So, in short, what do you guys do?

**Miljan Gutovic** (0:53)
So basically, we are producing and supplying to our customers building materials and building solutions that are used across built environment, in buildings, in industry, in infrastructure. So, the word is construction. And when you think about construction, you're probably thinking about concrete. And concrete is indeed one of the most essential materials. To put it in perspective, and maybe you will find this fascinating, after water, concrete is the second most consumed material on earth.
We use approximately 30 billion tons of concrete every single year. So, we can say it's actually a bedrock of modern civilization.

**Nicolai Tangen** (1:50)
But it's also, I mean, it's not like it's a very glorious sector, right? So, but it's a sector which is transforming fast just now. So what is happening?

**Miljan Gutovic** (2:01)
Indeed, beautiful times for the whole construction industry. And now I'll be talking to you as a civil engineer with PhD in material science. So this industry has been very conservative for many years, for many decades.
Recently, we have gone through massive transformation. The key word in our industry today and for Holcim is innovation and sustainability.

**Nicolai Tangen** (2:31)
Why is this?
What happened? Why is this a sudden change?

**Miljan Gutovic** (2:36)
The pressure to build better, to build smarter, to build more efficient is coming from our customers, from all the different stakeholders. And that's why we have positioned today Holcim as a leader in innovative and sustainable building products.

**Nicolai Tangen** (2:56)
Tell us about some of the innovations you have coming. What's the most exciting things?

**Miljan Gutovic** (3:00)
So we are really changing the way we formulate products, we produce products, and we use the products on construction side. I'll give you a few concrete examples, as we would say.
Formulation, we are changing the formulation constantly. A few years ago, we have launched the new generation of eco-friendly building products, cement and concrete. Today, after five plus years, these products represents more than one third of our sales. So what we are doing, we are replacing highly CO2-intensive raw materials, and you can say even expensive raw materials with more sustainable, more CO2-friendly and cheaper versions.

**Nicolai Tangen** (3:55)
Who are your biggest clients?

**Miljan Gutovic** (3:57)
I mean, you name it. We work with construction companies, we work with hyperscalers, we work with governments. So really it's a fragmented ecosystem.
We are building houses, we are building tunnels, bridges, we are building data centers, logistics centers all the way to the factories and high-rise buildings.

**Nicolai Tangen** (4:23)
Recently you made a big structural move in that you separated your whole North American business. Why did you do that?

**Miljan Gutovic** (4:34)
It was all about creating value, creating value for customers, for people and our shareholders.
We saw that strategies are diversifying between North America and Europe. So we wanted to create a new chapter of growth for Holcim to unleash actually this new chapter. And that's why we decided to spin off the North American entity. And now we are focusing on the most attractive markets across our 40 countries where we operate.

**Nicolai Tangen** (5:08)
It's interesting. We often see with spin-offs that the companies which are being spun off are so happy to get rid of their parent. You know, it's a bit like young kids moving out, get a lot of energy, do new crazy stuff. Have you seen any change in MRIs, which is the name of the company you spun off?

**Miljan Gutovic** (5:29)
No, it was a very healthy, constructive process that lasted probably more than a year and a half.
And at the end, we wanted this to happen as soon as possible because we were ready to take the next challenge and the result was very satisfactory for us, for Holcim. We finished 2025 as the best performing stock on Swiss market index.

**Nicolai Tangen** (6:01)
Do you now compete with them?

**Miljan Gutovic** (6:03)
Not really. There are a few overlaps, but this was a geographical separation.