Speaker 1:

From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now, let's go inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Lance Glinn.

Lance Glinn:

Welcome in to another episode of the Inside the Ice House Podcast. Our guest today, Jim Mintern, is CEO of CRH. That's NYC ticker symbol, CRH. Jim has been with the company since 2002, but 2025 marks his first year leading the company as CEO. He's guiding CRH into its next chapter where strategic acquisitions are accelerating growth, global megatrends are reshaping the industry, and a bold vision is driving both short-term performance and long-term transformation. Jim, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE house.

Jim Mintern:

Great to be here, Lance. Yeah, absolutely.

Lance Glinn:

So Jim, it's been two years since CRH made the strategic move to list its primary shares on the New York Stock Exchange. You were CFO at the time when that move happened, just what did that milestone represent for CRH as a global leader in building materials?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, obviously, listen, it was hugely strategic for CRH and from a lot of our stakeholders, not just our shareholders, but also our employees and our customers as well. In some ways, CRH is the largest building materials globally. It's number one in the US. It's the biggest infrastructure player in the US. So in some ways, it was a bit of an anomaly that we were not listed on the NYSE, from that perspective. So I think we found our home from that perspective in getting the listing.

Lance Glinn:

And we're so happy to have CRH listed on the NYSE, of course. So you rang the bell on September 25th, 2023 to celebrate that transition. When you just reflect on the last two years, that decision up until now, just what were some of the hopes and the expectations you had and how have they played out over the past two years? Obviously this past one now with US CEO.

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. It's probably what I'd say, Lance, and it's been a learning for us. It's two years to the month since we listed. My own sense of this and transition from CFO to into the CEO. It wasn't an event, it's a process. It just doesn't happen on the day. Of course, you relist, but it takes some time and it's that learning. There's a lot that goes with it. So from a pure shareholder value accretion, it's been very successful. Since we announced our plans to list in New York, our share price up over 140%, right? Our liquidity is up very significantly, Lance.

So compared to the liquidity in London, we're up over 40% on a daily basis. And right now, over 90% of our daily volume trades in New York with the remainder in London. From a US shareholder perspective, we were in the mid 20% before we listed. We're now over 60%. So from that, the pure, I guess, mechanics or plumbing of the share side, it's been tremendously successful.

Lance Glinn:

So every company has a mission, but CRH's work, I think, touches communities in very tangible ways. As it's written on the website, what we make at CRH is essential to life and living. So how do you personally define CRH's mission? How does that mission then guide the leadership team as well as the company's 80,000 employees forward?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. Our mission, our purpose statement is we stand together to reinvent the way our world is built. And I always look at it's almost split in two parts. The first bit is who we are as a company. We're 55 years a company. We have a strong culture, but it's based on people. It's based on relationships, right? Whether that's our own employees, our customers from that perspective, that matters to us. We're sitting here down on Wall Street.

If you look very close to us here, the whole reinforcement in the Lower East Side, that's all our product that got goods into that. So we connect communities, we protect communities. You yourself today have probably already interacted with CRH in some way. Whether you came by the subway, whether it came by road, the supply of the infrastructure, the water and energy into your own home as well. That's what we do.

And if you look, we're here in New York, it's really at the heart of some of the most connected assets we have in CRH. Our products have built well over half of Manhattan over the last century, right? So we're a very important part of the fabric of the community here in New York.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely. And it's subway for me, getting in from New Jersey to train into Subway here into New York, here into World Trade Center, and then obviously walking over to the stock exchange. And you mentioned in your answer, obviously, the people. And with the people obviously comes the culture that needs to be instilled in a company to have that success, to have that long-term success and obviously keep building it forward. You've been with CRH since 2002, so you've seen the culture over the last 20 plus years. How now as CEO, since the beginning of this year, are you continuing to mold that culture to make it so that these 80,000 employees continue to build, continue to grow, and the company as a whole continues to thrive?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, great question, Lance. If you ask me even a slightly different way, what keeps me awake at night? It's exactly that question. How do you perpetuate the culture? What's interesting for me is that the culture today is very similar to the culture when I joined. And the day I joined, my boss at the time sat me down and said, listen, this is what CRH is about. This is the culture. It's very, very similar. It's about that entrepreneurial spirit. It's about that low ego, that persistent drive to continuously improve as an organization. A lot of those culture values, and I said about people, relationships, right? If we shake the hand of somebody from CRH, whether that's an employee, a customer, we move heaven and earth to try and make sure we deliver on that. That is our culture.

And for me as CEO, what really focuses my mind is how do I perpetuate that culture? What's made us a success today, that's what really keeps me awake at night.

Lance Glinn:

So CRH operates in a highly competitive industry, but again, as we talked about earlier, has positioned itself as a leader. What would you describe as really the core differentiators, excuse me, whether they're operational, cultural, strategic, that allows CRH to maintain that leadership edge and continue to touch so many aspects of daily life?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, absolutely. If you look at it first, we're 55 years as a company, Lance. And if you look at our shareholder return over that 55 years, firstly, it's 16% per annum, right? It's unmatched simply in our industry. So we are really the reference compounder at Capital. I don't know how familiar, but we've done over 1,250 acquisitions, right? That's one every two weeks for 55 years.

There's very few companies in any industry has that record. And then you start to unpack that, right? What differentiates us? What differentiates us is we're here in New York. We don't trade as CRH. We trade us Tilcon. You go to Ohio, we trade as Shelly. So we are a network of locally leading brands because construction is local at the end of the day and local brands matter. They connect to the communities from that perspective. When we buy a business, we don't change the name, we don't change the management, and we really kind of foster an entrepreneurial spirit. I think that then together with our connected network of portfolios. We're very different to a lot of our peers here in the US. They tend to do ... In some ways, they're very specific in what they do, right? 95% of what we do starts with rock, with aggregates, right?

But we just don't supply rock. We turn that rock into asphalt. We pave roads. We put in the concrete infrastructure for water and energy. We also obviously produce concrete and cement as well, right? So it's that connected nature of the portfolio that we have is what really differentiates us. And that connected nature kind of gives two or three benefits. One, it improves the operational efficiency of the core manufacturing of rock, right? But it also makes the business way more consistent, way more predictable, right? We're the largest paver of highways in the US, right? We're actually five times bigger than the number two. 90% of that revenue stream is publicly funded, so it's actually quite repeatable. And if you think, and why is that? If you look at the ... Particularly up here in the Northeast and the Midwest and Great Lakes, the severity of the winters tears the roads up. They need a lot of maintenance.

Lance Glinn:

Oh, trust me. Try living in the Northeast my whole life. That is a true fact. As true as I've ever heard.

Jim Mintern:

So as a management team, we stood back a decade and said, how can we really make the business more predictable and more occurring? And that differentiates us. It also, that connected nature of the portfolio lands, it gives us way more optionality to deploy capital, right? Being able to invest in a pure aggregates business or a paving business or a cement business or a concrete infrastructure business. Now, everything's connected back to rock, right? But it just gives us more optionality to deploy capital. And I think that's ultimately what has come true. And as I said, we are the reference compounder of capital in our industry.

Lance Glinn:

So the company, I want to speak more to sort of that portfolio and really the company's versatility played and is currently still playing a key role in some of the most high profile infrastructure and tech development projects in the US. I'm talking about chip manufacturing plants in Idaho and Texas, data centers in Nebraska. Obviously you mentioned highways and roads, highway work in Utah. These are only some of the many projects that obviously CRH is involved in. When you look at CRH's involvement in these projects from tech to transportation, as I just mentioned, what does it say about the company's capabilities and versatility to meet the demands of diverse and obviously complex builds?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. Again, great question. Why is that the case first? We operate over 2,000 locations in the US. Basically there isn't any significant re-industrialization project or infrastructure project that we're not touching in some way, right, because of the connected nature of the portfolio. Why are we particularly attractive? Because if you're building a data center, chip plant, quality and speed matters, right? They want to get it done quick and they want assurance and quality. That's what CRH gives, right? So we get pulled from state to state by big contractors who have a good experience with us, whether that's building a road or building a chip plant or supplying the materials rather into it. And that matters, right? They know with CRH, they're going to get certainty of delivery, they're going to get quality, and they're going to get that more holistic product offering, right?

We're not just dropping a load of rock. We actually know. We can provide a lot more of a solution to them, work with them in terms of the design of it, and then actually to help all products get specified and supply on the job.

Lance Glinn:

So you've, as I mentioned before in our conversation, you've been with CRH since 2002. So we're talking over 20 years with the company. Your tenure as CEO obviously began at the beginning of this year, succeeding Albert Manifold upon his retirement. What have just been your initial priorities since the start of 2025, over these now first 365 days, and how have you begun really shaping your vision for the company and building off of its past successes?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. Obviously, I worked very closely with Albert, right? So over the last decade and the strategy we've put in place, and maybe take a back step first, right? CRH, I'm CEO, but it's not run by any one person. We have a very experienced leadership team. In fact, the leadership team we have today, I think is probably one of the strongest, if not the best we've ever had in CRH. Our leadership team is over 200 years experience in the industry, right? So it's a highly experienced leadership team and a lot of that leadership team worked with Albert and formulating the strategy we put together a decade ago. So a lot of it is a continuation of that strategy. I'd say it's a refinement of it. In terms of my own priority, as I stepped into CEO, firstly it's for us and CRH, it's about performance and delivery, right?

We're only two years into listing on the New York Stock Exchange. It's an interesting point because we're 55 years as a company, but in some ways when we relisted, you're starting again because you're building that trust with the US investment community quarter after quarter. And it's actually palatable because we have a reputation that we don't do surprises as an organization, but yet you have to build up that trust here with a different investment in community.

So every quarter we put under our belt, when I meet shareholders, it's almost palatable. They say, "You've done what you said or what you would do." So firstly, performance and then we talked about it, the listing, it wasn't an event, it's a process. So we're still working on that. We have to transition a lot of the financial analyst community from Europe to the US. That takes time, right? And I think yesterday's investor day was a very key day for us. Sorry, we had a capital markets day yesterday for the US and it's two years post the listing. And it was really kind of a refinement of the equity story and really lifting the hood on what CRH is as an organization.

Given the US investment community, much better understanding, going back to your original question as to why we operate a connected portfolio as opposed to maybe some of our listed peers in the US, right? And what's better with our strategy and really to try and explain why year in, year out, quarter in, quarter out, the consistency of a performance really comes from the strategy we have, which is based around a connected portfolio rather than a kind of an isolated ring fence part of it.

Lance Glinn:

And so you mentioned all the experience that obviously comes with the leadership team. You said over 200 years with the leadership team as a whole. And again, you yourself starting with CRH in 2002, most recently before becoming CEO, you were CFO. So I'm sure it helped that you were not coming in as a novice, right? You knew the industry, you knew the company, obviously that helps when any incoming CEO is rising up the ranks. The company knows you, you know the company, you know what to expect, they know what to expect from you. But your time over these last really 23 years has spanned numerous roles, not just the CFO role, but numerous roles and different places across CRH's platform and portfolio. How have your previous experiences prepared you for this role and really shaped your leadership style overseeing, again, these thousands of employees across dozens of countries?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, it has been absolutely, I would say, foundational, right? I've been very fortunate. I've worked in 24 years in CRH. I think I've worked Worked in 12 different roles over that period. I've actually either worked in or been responsible for over 26 countries. I've worked a lot in the US, Europe, in the Middle East and Africa. So I think those experiences have been hugely foundational for me, particularly from many aspects. Firstly, in our industry, there's lots of global companies. So as competitors, you come across them in different countries. So from an industry knowledge perspective, it's been very helpful from that side. I would say from a cultural perspective, right? I've worked with so many different cultures. I think that's been very beneficial for me in my management style and how I interact with our own team and with customers, et cetera, and shareholders.

So I've been very fortunate. I've worked and lived in many different countries, and I think that's been really helpful for me in terms of developing who I am as a CEO.

Lance Glinn:

And with all those different countries, with all those different cultures that CRH touches, how do you go about balancing or what are some of the challenges and obviously balancing different country here, right? It's one thing to be doing a project in the United States, a whole nother thing to be doing in the country and doing a project in another country in Europe, different rules, regulations, things you have to follow, things you can, can't do. How does CRH go about balancing all of the changes that come from doing one thing in one place and doing maybe even that same thing in another place?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. Again, we've done a lot in the last ... First thing maybe to explain, we've done a lot on the portfolio in the last decade now. And I explained this in a second why, but we've divested about 13 billion of assets in US, sorry, in CRH in the last decade. Half the assets that were in CRH a decade ago are no longer there. So we have a portfolio today, which is the best portfolio we've ever had in CRH. How we go about managing that then is we're very happy where we are today. It's 75% of our businesses in the US. 25% is in Europe and Australia.

For us, Europe is particularly important, right? Because Europe, your question and regulation, Europe drives a lot of regulation, which forces innovation in building materials. So what we see a lot of is we're able to innovate from a product perspective, whether that's in cement or asphalt, and bring that and scale it in the US. And that's a real competitive advantage we have right from that perspective. We highlight often the deal we've done here was a large deal for us. It was a $3.6 billion deal with Ash Grove in 2018. It's probably the best deal we've ever done on CRH, right? But we could not have done that without the kind of product and process innovation that was coming out of other parts of the CRH organization, mainly Europe and bring that to the US. So we leverage that. Ultimately, how we run it is about people, right?

Getting the right talent into the organization and retaining that talent. And I think we do a very good job on that. I think people like to come to CRH and work in CRH because of that entrepreneurial culture that we have. If you're running a country in CRH, you're running a business here, Tilcon in New York, you have a mandate to go out and grow the business, buy other businesses, buy new quarries, buy competitors, businesses if you can in that position.That empowers people at a local level and I think really helps us attract good talent. So it comes back to people ultimately. And as I said, we're a very good destination for attracting talent and then retaining them.

Lance Glinn:

So you mentioned the 2018 acquisition and then you mentioned early in our conversation over 1,200 deals in the company's history. So I want to pivot the conversation to M&A for a little bit. Obviously, as we've talked about, a big part of the company's DNA in September, so recently, CRH completed the over $2 billion acquisition of Echo Material Technologies, excuse me, a major player in the SCM space. What was the strategic thinking behind this move and how does this acquisition align with your broader vision for the company and really fit into that portfolio that you've been speaking to?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. We entered the US in 2018 with this Ash Grove acquisition, 3.6 billion. So we were already a significant player in the US cement industry. We identified back then that cementitious space in the US was attractive to us strategically. Why? Because US is in structural deficit for cementitious. The US has to import about 25% of its annual cement requirement in the US. And obviously as the US economy grows, that deficit is increasing all the time. So we were looking for opportunities, particularly in the SCM space, which eco materials is the leader. And what that business does for us is that it's the fastest growing part of the US cementitious market. So if you take that as a country as a whole, it has a deficit of 25%, as the population grows, as the economy grows, it's just going to be an increasing demand for cementitious products.

This particular area, SCMs, where eco material is a leader, we estimate it's going to double in size between now and 2050. So it was an opportunity for us to buy the leader. In one step, it gave us a 60% increase in our capacity in US cementitious. So it was very significant from that perspective and it was hugely complimentary to our existing portfolio. Now I should have said as well, we were Eco Materials number two customer anyhow at the outset. So we knew them very well. We knew the management, we knew the business. And some people would say, did we buy it because it is more eco-friendly, right? No, we bought it for growth reasons, but it is a super product too from a sustainability perspective. And the final bit of is, customers love the product. It actually enhances the quality of concrete.

It makes concrete more durable. It can speed up the setting time of concrete, et cetera. It makes it more flowable. So customers can't get enough of it really. So it ticks a lot of boxes for us from that perspective strategically in terms of growth, high growth markets in the right parts of the US, and very complimentary to our existing footprint.

Lance Glinn:

And having been a customer of Eco Materials, how reassuring was it when bringing them into the portfolio? Having been a customer, knowing the people, knowing the team there, knowing what they were all about, I'm sure that played a large role in knowing going in that they were the right fit to be with CRH.

Jim Mintern:

Absolutely. Yeah. We knew the management team well. We knew the company very well. We had a good look five years ago with the business as well. It set it up by Grant and the team. So we were very comfortable with that perspective and delighted to be bringing them into the CRH team, right? And it really puts us at the kind of forefront of the next generation of cement and concrete in the US, right? Again, so a lot of boxes ticked with the deal and very happy to get it closed last week.

Lance Glinn:

And in that press release upon the closing, it specifically spoke to how this acquisition could unlock significant future growth opportunities for CRH. Can you unpack that, what that means, whether it's in new markets, new technologies, expanded partnerships, where do you see Eco materials really making the biggest impact and providing these future growth opportunities?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, absolutely. It comes back to the point, again, if you take the US as a structural deficit of 25%, right? And the last new cement plant that was really incremental capacity that was added in the US is almost 16 years ago. So it's not easy to get permitted and build new ... So what eco material does, they're able to work with a fly ash product and particularly the main technological investment in the last number of years is that they're now able, from a technical perspective, re-beneficiate or reactivate old stockpiles of this material. And that is transformational really, right? So that really gives a new supply source and that's what is driving the growth, Lance.

Lance Glinn:

And so I asked before about the benefit of obviously knowing the Eco Materials team, right? And being a former customer, having been a customer, bringing it into your portfolio, the added benefits of being familiar with what they do and who they are. Now, as I said earlier, and as you mentioned in our conversation, over 1,200 deals in CRH's history, I know 40 in 2024 alone, what are the guiding principles that help you decide when and where to invest? How do you determine the right fit at the right time for growth through this route?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. Again, because it's a real differentiator for us in CRH. I said it at the outset, is that we are the leading compounder of capital, right? Let me explain this, because there's a lot in this, right? It goes right back to the fact that firstly, we brand at a local level, right? If you're selling your business, right, a family business, it's a huge decision, right? The fact that we don't change the company name, right? We had an investor day yesterday, two of the presenters yesterday were family members of businesses we bought two, three decades ago in the US. So we have an ability where we can offer family members very successful careers in the largest building materials company in the US. We don't rebrand the company's names. That makes it very attractive if you're going to sell the business. And it results in a situation where often we are the buyer of choice in the industry, in the US.

If you take, we did 19 deals in the first half of this year, 17 of them were based on relationships, no banks involved, they were excluded from that perspective. And that kind of attractive offering we have is what really fuels that ability to execute the number of deals. Now, in addition to that, we have an incredibly rigorous, mature investment appraisal assessment, right? So we have certain strategic and financial criteria that every acquisition must meet, right? And they don't come across my table for approval unless they meet those financial hurdles. We then follow up.

At the end of every three years, we go back in and we kind of do a post-acquisition review of all those deals we do. And if you're not meeting the criteria, you kind of stay on a health checklist and what are the plans to make it work? So it's a very rigorous financial discipline we have around the investment appraisal. And then finally, we have a real fantastic integration playbook and sometimes we take it for granted. Somebody asked me this, how do you do 19 deals in one half a year? I mean, how do you physically integrate? And we take it for granted because it is a bit in our DNA. It's a very well-developed muscle that we have and it really is part of our secret sauces and organization and what drives that growth.

Lance Glinn:

Has it just become muscle memory at this point?

Jim Mintern:

A lot of it has. It is. But it goes all the bit back to the entrepreneurial spirit as well, because people want to grow their business. And that attracts good talent. So it's kind of circuits us in a way.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to pivot the conversation away from M&A and now towards a few macroeconomic trends that I think are driving the industry and moving and helping move CRH, excuse me, forward. There's been a re-industrialization movement driven by a lot of on-shoring and re-shoring of critical industries like semiconductor manufacturing and data infrastructure. How is CRH positioning itself to meet that demand and how is the trend overall reshaping the need for building materials?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah. Again, yes, they would have called this out. The three megatrends which are really driving us at the moment are around infrastructure and re-industrialization. And in infrastructure for us, it's roads and water. But then in re-industrialization, it's having a very material impact, I would say, on our underlying business at the moment. We talked about it earlier, but it's data centers, chip plants, right, EV battery plants, et cetera. We play a very significant role in those businesses, right? And why do we do that? Because again, it's the more holistic product offering we have.

If you take a data center and you look at the amount of water cooling and energy that must go into them, we're often the first supplier on site because all the subterranean infrastructure that goes in for the water and the energy to get it onto the site, that's what we do. Then we come in with our aggregates, our concrete, et cetera, to supply it. So it's a key part of the underlying business right now for us. So I think it's fantastic from a US general economy perspective that this re-industrialization is happening, that critical industry is coming back onshore, but for us, how it benefits us is that the infrastructure to support it as well is critical.

We've seen it time and time again as well. If you take a big chip plant, say up in Ohio or in Boise or whatever, it's fantastic as a project, but actually for us, what's even more interesting and exciting from a business perspective is the build out of everything around it, the communities, the schools, the shopping malls, the road infrastructure. And that goes on for kind of five, six, seven, 10 years after the actual original big investment. So every time we get one of these big investment, it's very significant in terms of the runway of construction that it leads to for the next five to 10 years.

Lance Glinn:

It's making that impact on the community around wherever a said project is?

Jim Mintern:

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Lance Glinn:

So you mentioned, and we talked a little bit about earlier in our conversation, aging roads and how roads need to be repaved and redone, especially here in the Northeast. So I'm going to skip that question, but alongside aging transportation infrastructure, America's water infrastructure is also aging and climate resilience is becoming a real top priority. What role do you see CRH, excuse me, playing in addressing this issue and helping communities manage water and water systems?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, we play a key role in this, and particularly we operate a lot in the capture and conveyance of water, and particularly stormwater control, right? That's exactly what we do from that perspective. So we have a very significant role to play. You called it out. The ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers would typically rate most of the US infrastructure, water infrastructure at a D. I think well over a third is kind of not fit for purpose or past is useful. So there's this huge investment requirement in the water infrastructure. And unfortunately because of the, you talked about maybe some of the climatic challenges that tend to be either too much or too little water, right? So we have a huge role to play for that. We see it in the performance of the company. In the last five years, it's one of the fastest growing parts of CRH.

Our profitability in our water infrastructure business has grown by 32% per annum compound over that period. So that reflects the kind of mega trend that supports that. And it's not even just replacing the kind of aging infrastructure up here in the Northeast with the very high population density, but then in addition to that, it's all the water infrastructure that's required in some of the faster growing parts like the south or the west are going back to that re-industrialization point. I mean, they need significant water infrastructure for cooling data centers.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah. So when you look at these megatrends, re-industrialization, water, which we just talked about. I obviously mentioned and we talked earlier in our conversation about transportation. We talked about climate resilience a little bit too. Is there a common thread that really ties them together for CRH? How do these forces shape your long-term strategy and really shape your investment decisions?

Jim Mintern:

Absolutely. We talked about it at our investor day yesterday. We call it the CRH growth algorithm. So firstly, it's the megatrends, particularly for us around roads and water. They're two large total addressable markets with high growth rates. In addition, then re-industrialization. So all the on-shoring, re-shoring from that perspective, they're kind of the three megatrends that are driving our business. We then goes back to the core of who we are, our winning way. So our superior strategy, our performance, how we deploy capital and our M&A ability. So when you put together the mega trend growth rates and the markets we play in, multiply that by the CRH winning way, that's what delivers that performance. If you look over the last decade, our compound profit growth over that period has been 15% per annum of decade. Our earnings per share has grown by 17% per annum over the last decade.

It comes from that, A, identifying what markets we want to play in first. And for us, it's mainly the south and the west of the US and central and Eastern Europe. And then within that, playing in the spaces where the megatrends are in the road space, in the water space, in the re-industrialization. And that's what's been fueling the consistency and growth of the company. So it plays a huge part in the strategy of the company.

Lance Glinn:

So Jim, as we begin to wrap up our conversation, you have obviously talked throughout it and we spoke to it a little bit earlier when asking about the move two years ago to the NYSE about the increase in share price and in growth overall for the company. And obviously numbers will tell a big story on a company's success, whether it is successful, whether it's not successful. But what are some of the intangibles that you really look for that away from the numbers, away from the Excel spreadsheets, away from the share price, whatever it be, that to you help show that what CRH is doing is really making an impact and really helping the company be successful?

Jim Mintern:

On a number of fronts. One, I think it's the impact we have in communities, right? We talked about it here. The fact that we've built well over half of Manhattan with our products, that we're helping the coastal resilience down the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Played a key part in the reconstruction of LaGuardia or material. So we have the Mario Cuomo Bridge, right? We play huge part in local communities. That's what we do.

Also then for me, also we have 80,000 employees. I didn't appreciate, I have to say, the pride the employees got out of the listing on the NYSC. A number of my colleagues came up to me and said that after the wedding day, it was the most significant day for them. That matters. And the pride they get from that existing employees and also the ability to attract in new talent. That's a very intangible benefit we get from it too.

Lance Glinn:

So Jim, as you look ahead to the next chapter of CRH, obviously still in your first year as CEO, what's your vision for where the company's headed, not just in terms of growth, but in terms of impact, innovation, and leadership in the building material space?

Jim Mintern:

Yeah, it's firstly super positive. We have a proven superior strategy as an organization. So I think our growth capabilities that we've set out for the next five years, firstly, from a financial perspective first, but we have a financial capacity of over 40 billion for the next five years to deploy. That's going to deliver a lot of that growth. And we talked about that muscle memory from an M&A perspective. So we have the growth and we have the footprint, the products to really help support US infrastructure and to make communities more resilient. And when US infrastructure is strong, the US economy is strong.

Lance Glinn:

Jim, I really appreciate all the work CRH is doing in helping build up Lower Manhattan, all the work it has done in building up Lower Manhattan. And I really thank you so much for joining us inside the ICE house.

Jim Mintern:

Happy to be here, Lance. Yeah. Thank you.

Lance Glinn:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. And follow us on X at icehousepodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House.

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