Albert Manifold: So your question, just to be clear, Elodie, were with regard to our [Winterfell] program and how that’s going and then also what we should factor in for cost inflation for next year. Have I got that correct?
Elodie Rall: Yes, everything.
Albert Manifold: Maybe I’ll just do what the general cost inflation, I might ask Jim just to comment on the [Winterfell] program and how it’s going. I mean it’s very hard to know in terms of what’s going to happen with regard to energy. Our expectation for energy in 2024 versus 2023, broadly speaking, is flat with this curvature, we don’t have any expectations. So it’s at a high level. But broadly speaking with regard to energy it’s flat now, of course, we’ll react to that as it evolves in front us, but I don’t expect to see a significant drop or a significant rise with regard to that. With regard to the other costs across our business, we do expect to see inflation cost pressure on wages, logistics, other input costs, probably in the region of depending on where you are between 4%, 5%, maybe even 6% because there’s still a significant catch-up on the very significant cost of living increases driven by energy in 2022 across the broad economy.
So we’re expecting those. And again, that just again underlines the need for us to ensure we are progressive with our price increases to protect our margins in our business. With regard to the [Winterfell] program, Jim?
Jim Mintern: Yes, this year, firstly in ’23, we’ve had a very strong and good year around our [Winterfell] program and that was really on the back of kind of high levels of refining that was happening down on the Gulf Coast, and that enabled us to take a lot of that liquid off the — and storage throughout the winter of ’22 into ’23. Looking into next year, we’ll only now start thinking about filling up the tanks again. And as you know, Elodie, it’s as much about making sure we have surety of supply. We would typically buy up to about half of our annual requirement and all season and put that into [Winterfell] and make sure we have that product ready in the system to be able to meet the demand, which in some parts of the US is quite a short paving season, which starts in kind of mid-April to November. But looking forward again into next year expecting a good successful [Winterfell] program as well heading into ’24.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Will Jones with Redburn Atlantic.
Will Jones: Could I ask about Americas Materials Solutions — Americas Building Solutions, just the sharp acceleration in demand — in margin, in 3Q relative to the first half, just whether the — what you’d call out for us on that front as to why that happened, particularly given the sales didn’t really move relatively speaking as any one-offs or mix issues there around building solutions?
Albert Manifold: No real one-offs or no mix there. It really just is a continuation of the improving portfolio of assets we have within those two businesses, our two businesses. Let me just drive you within there, our Outdoor Living Solutions space which will be one of our strongest performing businesses in CRH over the last number of years. I mean there’s resilient RMI demand, because it’s not exposed to new-build construction, but we seem to be in a sweet spot there in terms of delivering our products and getting good volumes going through there, but particularly the change in our product portfolio in the last number of years has delivered a really strong performance in the online and looks at to continue into 2024. And the second business we have within our American Building Solutions business, our Building and Infrastructure Solutions.
And these are, as I say, it’s supplying, as I talked about, modern infrastructure, supplying a lot of the products that are involved in the transportation of light utilities, water, energy, communications and indeed supplying products to the [onshoring] manufacturing activities. And again, really, it’s the solution story coming in there, again, kicking in there providing extra added value on top of the products that’s delivering the extra margin and the extra profitability. So it’s really the solution story being really exhibited. That part of our business, the Americas Building Solution is the one that’s most exposed to the solution story, and it’s the one that’s been the best performing business we’ve seen across here, the best performing business across here for the last number of years.
Operator: We have time for one last question. Our last question comes from the line of Harry Goad with Berenberg.
Harry Goad: I mean we’ve obviously talked a lot about acquisitions today. But I guess the other side of that historically has also been divestments, and I don’t expect you to talk specifically about what might be for sale. But can you remind us how you think about the rationale for maintaining assets, particularly, I guess, in Europe? And it looks like, obviously, it’s a big incremental investment in American Materials. Is that where we should expect to see sort of the relative capital deployment to go in the future?
