It’s not a demand issue, it’s more an affordability issue. So you’re going to need that change on the interest rate cycle before we see that really turning around. But overall, as I said, kind of exiting this year, pretty much, I think we started to trough in the middle part of ’23 and looking forward into ’24 with that kind of backdrop. In terms of pricing, two strong years in 2022 and ’23 in Europe, really reacting to that period of hyperinflation that we saw on energy coming out of ’22, and we’re still playing catch up on that and we see good momentum in that pricing heading into ’24. We’re still recovering some of that inflation and looking forward to another year of pricing in ’24, which hopefully will be the seventh consecutive year of strong pricing across Europe.
Operator: Our next question comes from line of Kathryn Thompson with Thompson Research Group.
Kathryn Thompson: Circling back to the transaction today, buying assets from Martin. You did a great job of laying out the strategic reasoning why. But maybe stepping back in a bigger picture, this is — you’ll continue to have a close relationship with Martin Marietta, as you think about what is good for CRH, but also for the industry. Why does this make sense from an industry standpoint with the US, what does this mean for your ongoing collaborative relationship with Martin going forward? And what are your thoughts about the Hunter facility in relation to the terminals in the Gulf?
Albert Manifold: Look, we’re delighted to have the opportunity to acquire this business. We are experienced cement experts throughout the world and we’ve been in the cement business for almost 80 years. The ability for us to be able to transfer our knowledge and technology from other parts of the world, quite frankly, can bring new types of products and cements to the market that don’t currently exist. Jim already referred to different types of cement, subtype 1 cement. We use several different types of cements in Europe here and for different applications. There’s absolutely no reason why we couldn’t use those types of cements in the United States. And in fact, we’re already doing. Since we bought Ash Grove, have expanded out to three different types of cement.
What that does, though, is that it introduces different products to the market which have used less clinker, allow for better applications and indeed better performance by those different types of cements. So actually, what I think what we can do is over time, we can bring better types of concretes, more appropriate types of concretes to the marketplace. So in that way, I think bringing our expertise to the Texas market and that particular part of the text market would be very helpful going forward. I think the relationship that our cement businesses have as it did our aggregates businesses have as a basis for our solutions business going forward is really very, very interesting. Some of the construction work that’s taking place in Texas is some of the most complex construction we’ve seen, not just in terms of basic main traditional infrastructure but I mean the modern infrastructure we’re looking at transportation of [budget] utilities, whether it’s telecommunications or information technology, the transportation of water or indeed the complex construction in and around of the reshoring of manufacturing facilities, again, having the base materials and the knowledge how to manipulate those to create products, again, helps us and deliver what we say is higher quality markets, products to the market as we build back America better at a cheaper cost, better quality, more resilient and greater sustainability.
With regard to our relationships with our peers and our competitors, I think it’s interesting that some people focus on being single product players, some people focus on being broader building materials players. I think the space for each and every one of us in the marketplace, those who specialize can specialize in particular areas. It’s obviously a narrower field to be in. We choose to be a different type of company. We choose to do so because we believe the solutions approach that we take gives us greater opportunity to create value for our shareholders. And I’d like anyone to stand up our company in terms of profit growth, margins, cash generation and returns against any of the business, that’s why we choose to be in the business that we are, because we produce industry leading growth, industry leading cash, industry leading returns.
And I think that’s what our shareholders want to see. But I think there’s space for everybody in this industry and particularly the strong growth markets as we’re seeing in Texas going forward, I think the space for all of us.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Elodie Rall with JPMorgan.
Elodie Rall: So maybe if we can switch to cost inflation and have your early view on what we should expect for next year in both North America and Europe, if we take into account your [Winterfell] program. So what kind of cost inflation should we factor in and how about wage inflation as well?
