Our geographically diverse portfolio of cement, ready-mix concrete, and aggregates assets well positions us for the recovery of the global economy, providing us with the opportunity for significant organic growth over the medium and long term. By managing our cement, ready-mix concrete, and aggregates assets as one integrated business rather than as distinct businesses, we further improve their efficiency and profitability.

We always work to provide superior building solutions in the markets we serve. To this end, we customize our products and services to meet our customers’ needs—from home construction, improvement, and renovation to agricultural, industrial, and marine/hydraulic applications.

We also see abundant opportunities to deepen our customer relationships by focusing on more vertically integrated building solutions rather than separate products. By developing our integrated offerings, we can provide customers with more reliable, higher-quality service and more consistent product quality.

While we continually look to produce profitable growth over the short, medium, and long term, given the environment in which we are living, our priority is to regain our financial flexibility—which is key to our long-term growth.

Completed in the third quarter of 2009, our US$15 billion financing agreement provides us with the time and flexibility to deleverage our balance sheet—through free cash flow generation, asset sales, equity and debt issuances, and other capital market initiatives—as our markets and the financial environment recover. Indeed, with the net proceeds from our global equity offering, the sale of our Australian operations, and our issuance of notes achieved after the completion of the financing agreement, as of January 2010, we had prepaid US$4.8 billion of principal outstanding under this agreement, achieving its year-end 2010 milestone in advance.

We constantly look for ways to reduce our costs and maximize our operating efficiency. In 2009, we implemented a US$900 million cost-reduction program. Approximately 60% of these cost savings are recurrent—including initiatives to improve our operating efficiency. The remaining 40% is a result of the steps taken to align our operations with market demand, which we will reverse as the market eventually recovers. Moving ahead, we will continue to implement our cost-reduction and right-sizing initiatives and maintain tight discipline on our capital expenditures.

We are committed to the sustainable growth and development of our company. Our approach is based on working closely with our stakeholders—our employees and their families, our neighbors, our business partners, and our world at large—to help solve the local and global sustainability challenges of our business. To this end, we focus on three areas:

First, we continuously work to increase our competitiveness. We improve our operational excellence and efficiency and follow high ethical standards to achieve long-term sustainable growth. We also offer innovative products and services for a sustainable, energy-efficient construction industry.

Second, we reduce the negative impacts of our operations. We provide a safe and healthy workplace and work to minimize our environmental footprint and inconvenience to our neighbors. We also encourage our business partners to take the same approach.

Third, we reach out to our stakeholders, whose support is crucial for our success. Creating long-term relationships with these groups increases our competitiveness and helps us to find new ways to reduce our negative impacts.