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Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I hope that you have received our press release and that you have been able to go through the main highlights. Let me sum up our strong third quarter sales performance. We saw a sequential acceleration in organic growth in the third quarter, up 13.3% compared to 2019, a faster rate of growth than the 11.9% we had seen in the first half. Good trends continued in renovation in Europe, construction in the Americas and Asia Pacific as well. Importantly, we were successful in increasing prices further with an acceleration to 8.7% in Q3 versus 2020. We took an active decision to prioritize pricing over volumes, given the very inflationary context, but still achieved volumes up 3.6% versus 2019. Once again, we are confirming our full year guidance, 2021 will be a new record high for Saint-Gobain in terms of results. I am very confident about the strength that the group is demonstrating and all the actions that we are taking to deliver great results in a volatile environment. We have also continued to make very good progress on our strategic initiatives, including the optimization of our profitable growth business profile. Since the beginning of the year, we have closed divestments with EUR 1.85 billion of sales and signed or closed acquisitions, representing EUR 850 million of sales. The last 2 ones being the closing of Chryso ahead of plan on October 1 and the interesting acquisition of IMPAC, a leader in construction chemicals in Mexico that we announced a week ago. Since our Capital Market Day on October 6, we have launched our Grow & Impact plan throughout all the group. I can tell you, our teams are too excited about it, and they are fully aligned and committed to make it a collective success. Personally, I was in the U.S. for a week right after our Capital Market Day and the energy there was extremely strong. I now hand over to Sreedhar, who will give you additional information about our third quarter sales.
Thank you, Benoit, and hello, everybody. Let me give you more details about our Q3 sales. We saw a sequential improvement in organic sales in Q3, up 13.3% versus 2019. Compared to 2020, Q3 organic sales were up 9.4%. The currency impact turned positive in Q3, up 1.1% mainly because of a less negative impact from the U.S. dollar. We saw a negative structure impact of 3.8% in Q3, reflecting, in particular, the divestments in distribution Lapeyre, the Netherlands, Spain and Graham in the U.K. as well as Pipe in China. Now coming back to the like-for-like growth. Pricing accelerated to 8.7% in Q3 as we prioritize price over volume. As we mentioned at the Capital Market Day, given the current context of accelerating inflation in energy costs, we now expect energy and raw material inflation of around EUR 1.5 billion for the full year, up from the EUR 1.1 billion that we estimated back in July. This means around EUR 1.1 billion of inflation for H2 alone. We are confident that we will offset the inflation for the year as a whole, even though we will have a negative spread in H2. As we said, we needed to achieve pricing of 8% in H2 in our manufacturing businesses to compensate this inflation on a full year basis. For Q3 alone, we had 8.1% price increase in our manufacturing businesses, and we continue to push for additional price increases across the board. Coming to volumes were up by 0.7% in Q3 versus June 2020 and 3.6% versus 2019, with a slight negative working day impact of 0.5% overall, but negative 1.5% to 2% in Southern Europe for both periods. In Q4, the working day impact will also be a small negative of around 1% compared to 2020. As anticipated, there was a high comparison basis in Q3 2020 in Southern Europe, in particular, as craftsmen had taken very few holidays during the summer period in Europe due to coronavirus pandemic. Note that we will have the same technical impact in December for both Northern and Southern Europe. Underlying trends continue to be good in renovation in Europe and construction in the Americas and Asia Pacific in particular. I will now give some details by segment. High Performance Solutions saw continued sequential improvement apart from the European automotive market, which worsened. The like-for-like sales were up 7% versus 2020. Mobility saw sales decrease because of the deterioration of the European market, whereas the sales to the Americas and China continue to grow. Supply chain tensions linked to semiconductor strategies are weighing heavily on car manufacturer production capacity and thus, the demand of our automotive solutions. Like-for-like Mobility sales were down 7% versus Q3 2019, as against a market which was down by 20%. So we continue to clearly outperform, thanks to our exposures to electrical vehicles. Industry continued to improve sequentially, even with activities related to our customers' investment cycles remaining below 2019 levels.The Construction Industry business continued to enjoy good growth driven by external thermal insulation demand for the sustainable construction. Now turning now to Northern Europe, where we saw a strong pricing acceleration, driving the 10.7% organic growth achieved in Q3 versus 2020. Volumes grew slightly. Nordic countries continue to see solid growth, especially in light construction solutions for the renovation market. In Germany, growth slowed down due to spillover impact of lower sales of automotive glass. However, the country's light and sustainable construction markets, such as modular construction remain dynamic. In the U.K., growth accelerated due to pricing. In the context of our distribution network optimization, note that the U.K. market has been also impacted by some supply chain disruption, like shortages of truck drivers. Eastern Europe continues to have a good momentum, both in volumes and prices. Now coming to Southern Europe, where organic sales grew 4.7% on a high comparison basis as craftsmen did not take their usual holiday in summer 2020 due to the pandemic. This is as we anticipated and had told you at the end of July. Over a 2-year period, the region was up 12.7% in Q3, led by pricing and dynamic growth in solutions for light and sustainable construction. France continued to show good trends driven by renovation and energy-efficient solutions, benefiting from the stimulus plan for households, MaPrimeRenov and our strong presence across the value chain more widely. Spain saw a good growth in light construction solutions and Italy continued to benefit from its support program for energy-efficient renovation. Turning now to the Americas. We saw strong sales growth in Q3, up 14.9% versus 2020 and 28.2% versus 2019, driven by pricing as the region had a very high comparison basis for volumes post COVID catch-up. North America grew 13.6% versus 2020 and 18.3% versus 2019, with an acceleration in pricing and good trends in the light construction solutions aided by the successful integration of Continental Building Products. We were able to minimize the negative impact of the significant supply chain tensions, especially for raw materials. As a result, Q3 production was only slightly disrupted. Latin America continued to see strong growth driven by both prices and volumes, with organic sales up 18% in Q3 versus 2020 and up 50% versus 2019. In particular, Brazil and Mexico continued to show a very strong growth momentum over the quarter. Lastly, our Asia Pacific region saw strong sales growth with like-for-like up 20% versus 2020, driven by strong pricing and double-digit volumes. China continued to see dynamic growth, thanks to a good underlying market. In India, the recovery accelerated even versus 2019 due to strong volumes and pricing actions. However, sales were down in Southeast Asia due to coronavirus restrictions. Sum up, overall, a very good quarter. Acceleration in pricing, reflecting our continued strong discipline on track to offset the full year inflation. Trends remain strong in our key markets.With the launch of Growth & Impact, as Benoit said, we are confident our underlying markets will continue to grow and that we will continue to outperform the market. Now I hand over the floor to Benoit for concluding remarks.
Thank you, Sreedhar. So I would like to make a few comments about the outlook and our strategic priorities for the rest of the year. For the fourth quarter, we expect the following trends for our segments. High Performance Solutions, supportive industrial markets, excluding the contraction of the automotive market, particularly in Europe. Businesses related to customer investment should rally steadily, although are expected to remain down versus the good level recorded in 2018. In Europe, continued sales outperformance on the dynamic renovation market, albeit with a high comparison basis for December, as Sreedhar highlighted, with top professionals having worked over the 2020 Christmas and New Year period. In the Americas, market growth, particularly residential construction in both North and Latin America. Asia Pacific, see also market growth with continued good momentum in China and India, but with the situation still affected by health-related disruptions in Southeast Asia. Our strategic priorities are: first, accelerate growth as a leader in light and sustainable construction, offering decarbonization solutions for Construction and Industry. As we set out at the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago, we'll be able to outperform our attractive underlying markets, thanks to our performance-driven local operating model and comprehensive set of solutions to help our customers on both sustainability and performance. Secondly, continue our initiatives focused on profitability and performance, maintaining robust margins and strong free cash flow generation. To conclude, as you will have seen in the press release, for the full year 2021, the group is targeting a very strong increase in operating income to a new all-time high with like-for-like operating income in second half 2021 close to the previous record of second half 2020. Now Sreedhar and I are happy to answer any questions you may have.
[Operator Instructions] We have a first question from Jean-Christophe Lefèvre-Moulenq from CIC.
Do you hear me?
Very well, currently.
So I have a couple of questions with Ebrahim, my colleague, he's junior analyst. First, a general question on the acceptance of the price hikes, will it continue? We have a very strong price hike over the third quarter, will it continue? Secondly, could we have the traditional answer to my traditional question on the price of 4-millimeter? And last question regarding the distribution in Europe. We have a strong organic growth, both in the third quarter and 9 months cumulative, could we have the price effect, both for 9 months and third quarter?
Thank you for your questions. So general acceptance is, yes. Our #1 priority has been throughout the year and has continued to be in the third quarter to first service well our customers. And I'm happy to say that we didn't shut down any customer around the world. So service to customers has been paramount for all our businesses everywhere in all countries. We have made sure also on those price increases because, indeed, we have had a price increase every quarter, every second month in the U.S.; every quarter in Europe, which has been a bit unusual in some countries, but we have made sure that we could anticipate, one, our customers upfront, and therefore, the acceptance has been there based on relatively good service, shorten also the lead times in the last few weeks.So acceptance is there in Q3. As Sreedhar said, we'll continue to push prices in the fourth quarter because that's our priority, and we'll do that. I'm confident the further price hikes will continue to land well around the world in the market, whether it's in Europe or in North America or Latin America.
So your question on 4 mm. In the first place, the glass, we have been quite successful in making price -- frequent price increases. I mean almost every quarter, we increased the price increase in the range of 5% to 7%. And if you look at the Q3 versus last year Q3, we are talking about an increase of close to 26%.So the price increase -- the price of 4 mm end of September was EUR 3.7. So there is a good progress in the price increase of glass. Coming to your third question on distribution, the price increase for the first 9 months was 5.4%, that is YTD. And the last quarter was 9.8%. So once again, we have been able to push the prices up across.
Okay. Ebrahim has a follow-up question.
Yes, could you please remind us the market share of Isover in Europe and especially in France? And is it outperforming Kingspan in 2021?
Well, it would be a bit too long to go country by country for our Insulation business. In France, yes, we have a strong market share. And based on the trends we have seen in volumes for insulation in Europe and partly in France, we are confident that indeed we are outperforming, but it's broader than insulation. It's our overall solutions, whether it's partitions, whether it's external insulation on facets. These are all the solutions we push that we had highlighted during the Capital Market Day, the use case we mentioned to you. So those mid- to long-term trends are there. We have seen that. We have mentioned, I think, the number of MaPrimeRenov projects we have seen in France this year. It's going to continue next year. We'll see next year also the public buildings picking up, and all that is a big ask for our energy efficiency solutions.
Next question from Yves Bromehead from Exane BNP Paribas.
I guess the first one is on the comments that was made on the H2 price cost. I think if I heard correctly, you said it was going to be negative. I mean in light of what your competitors have been publishing over the last few days, actually, Q3 seems to suggest that both in distribution and in construction products in Europe and the U.S., the price cost spread is actually positive for some of your peers. So I guess the question is, how do you recalculate the bridge to help us understand how you get to that forecast of negative? Is it because in Q4, you've got much more cost inflation than in Q3? And how should we think about ‘22? I appreciate we're not talking yet about the guidance there, but any indication on whether the negative price cost rate continues into H1 would be interesting?
Yes. So Yves, as you know, that we were ahead of the curve. We had a positive price cost spread of EUR 125 million in the first half. It is true that the inflation has gone up significantly starting from September. So we would have a significant inflation in the last 4 months of the year. We are -- we have been quite successful in, again, by anticipation, we have been able to push the prices up and that's why we have in Q3 already 8.1%. To offset the total inflation, which I guided of EUR 1.5 billion, we need to have the full year price increase for industrial businesses for 6%, which means for the second half, I need to have 8% price increase. It is true that we have got Q3 8.1%. To have Q4 similar 8%, I need to constantly push the prices because you have to keep in mind there is a base effect. Last year, Q4, the price increase impact accelerated. So we are talking about additional -- getting an additional 1% to 1.3% price increase. We are confident to push the prices up. That is why I believe for 2022, we should start the year in a positive note, but we have to be realistic, given the fact that there is an acceleration of inflation, there is always a little bit of a time difference. You would have a negative impact in the second half.
Okay. So essentially, you don't think you can push for that additional Q4 '21 price hike?
We're pushing for additional price increase in Q4. We have announced some price increase in October, and there will be more in November, so that we continue our actions. We have given that a clear priority, and we want to enter -- finish the year well and enter 2022 in good shape without losing any single week or month on price cost in the beginning of 2022.
And every single segment, we have announced a new price. I mean it's like the focus on price is pretty, I would say, at a very detailed level, at the country and business levels.
And Sreedhar mentioned a lot on the Manufacturing business. On our Distribution business, we have done a very good job to pass the price increase to customers, and we have done that for the last 18 months in a higher inflation environment.
And just a second question on the working capital. Can you maybe give us an indication of what is going to be actually the outflow for the full year in 2021?
One point even that, and then Sreedhar will complement. We need and we have done a bit of that if and when we can to rebill a bit of our inventories in some markets, if I take North America, we are hand-to-mouth to our customers on most product lines. So any time we can build a bit of raw materials or bit of finished goods, we do that. So that's high-level comment on the business side. Back to the first question, we want to service our customers very well, so that it makes it easier to land the price increase. Sreedhar?
So -- and on working capital, we remain again, very focused, Yves. As I said, throughout the organization, there is a lot of focus on cash. So if you recall, again, we had reduced 9 days of operating working capital last year. I had guided that half of that, I want to keep the flexibility to have the corrections in the raw material levels. As of now, we are still not succeeded in building that necessary extra inventory. So we just have to keep this flexibility. I can only tell you that there is a lot of focus.
Next question from Elodie Rall from JPMorgan.
Sorry to come back to that price cost spread in H2. But maybe another way to ask the question would be, what kind of price increases would you need to see in H2 to be flat in terms of price cost in H2 specifically instead of referring to H1? So that would be my first question. And my second question is on Southern Europe. You've said the trade professionals worked over the Christmas period last year and New Year. So are you suggesting that volumes will be weaker than last year and in line with what we've seen in Q3 into Q4? And just a housekeeping question on working days. It was minus 0.5% indeed in Q3, what do we expect for Q4?
I can take the second one on the high-level comment in South Europe. Yes, we -- last year, we have seen the craftsmen working between Christmas and New Year, so all year until the very last period of the year. What we have seen in the third quarter, we have seen some craftsmen coming back the first week of September, not even in August, but the first week of September, and we have seen week after week September accelerating for the craftsmen in Europe. So we expect that kind of technicality in South Europe in the fourth quarter. If I normalize that, so if I exclude the impact of working days or those kind of holidays, we have a good trend. We have a single digit good trend on volumes in South Europe. And these are the underlying trends that we expect and we have seen in our markets over the last 18 months, and we expect that to continue into next year. I can tell you the month of October is strong in terms of volumes in South Europe. So we have to bear in mind that, yes, there is a bit of technicality by the end of the year on the craftsmen. It could be in terms of working days minus 2%, I think for South Europe. And holidays, we never know exactly what they are going to do between Christmas and New Year. We never know also what the weather is going to look like. There is always this kind of wild card by the end of the year. But overall, the trends, again, the underlying trends are solid. And even when I compare with the trend of 2019, there is nothing new to report in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter versus 2019. So we cope with all the supply chain challenges. We have a lot of agility, but we have strong underlying trends versus 2019 and the market dynamics be there.
Yes. So Elodie, for the second half, we are talking about the inflation -- total inflation of EUR 1.1 billion. So to compensate the whole inflation, we are talking about something like close to 9% price increase instead of 8%, which I'm guiding at this point of time for the full year. Again, just keep in mind, again, once again, I'm insisting on that, that the Q4, a lot of new price increases has been announced. So that is why we are very confident that we should not have a challenge at the full year basis, not only in 2021 but also in 2022.
Did we answer your question on the working days, Elodie?
So you said minus 2%, right, working days in Southern Europe, is it the same for...
Yes. Minus 2%...
And for the group in general?
No, it will be, what, 0.5%...
0.5% for the group and minus 2% for the Southern Europe.
Okay. Okay. And just on the H2 price cost, so I understand what you're saying for the full year, but what price increase would you need to have in H2 to offset H2 inflation?
9%. Yes.
And what was the exit rate in October, like in September?
We have Q3 8.1%, and I'm telling you we have made new announcements for Q4. And I'm very confident that we will keep pushing the prices up, as we have demonstrated in the last 18 months, you have seen that we have been quite successful in pushing the prices up.
Next question from Sven Edelfelt from ODDO.
I'd like to come back on the price cost spread as well. You mentioned negative price cost spread in H2 because of a miss of 1% in Q4. So that makes it to EUR 100 million negative at the operating profit level. Is that correct? Or...
Yes. I mean we are talking about -- we had EUR 125 million positive price cost spread for the first half. So that's why I keep saying that I'm very confident that we will have a positive price cost spread for the full year.
And in terms of business management, you have seen the priority we have put on prices in the third quarter without waiting, we have been anticipating also to make sure that we could explain all this to our customers so that it would land correctly. So all the countries, and they are all extremely agile country by country based on their market situation, they are all pushing that. So we are confident we are taking the right actions in due time.
Okay. And on the pricing, on the High Performance Solutions division, it is lower than the rest of the group. So I understand these activities are less energy intensive. But to what extent the current environment of higher energy bill will translate into higher raw material and then there will be a need for higher pricing in this division? Can you, in fact, remember us the dynamics there?
Well, indeed, as you said, it's less energy intensive. You have within HPS, the mobility market where the prices historically in such a business are declining. We always improve the margin by adding new models. But during the lifetime of the model, the prices are declining. So this is the main impact within the High Performance Solutions business. The rest, they are managing prices versus cost reasonably well. Keep in mind that this automotive impact in the third quarter, it's going to continue. You have read across all the news that the supply chain within the automotive sector has not improved, has actually deteriorated. So we expect that to remain the same in the fourth quarter. So auto will remain difficult. And actually, we are also preparing ourselves for something difficult in 2022. We have taken actions. We have announced the shutdown of a plant in Portugal a few weeks ago, and we are restructuring also in other countries. And overall, it will weigh a bit on the High Performance Solutions margin in the second half, which will be clearly above the second half of 2020, but below the second half of 2019 because of this mobility, automotive sector, which is not improving in Europe, even though we are doing well in North America and in Asia because we grew in those regions. And we are clearly unhappy because we are clearly outperforming by, I would say, 10 points the overall Mobility market worldwide. And this is due to our very strong positioning on electrical vehicle. It's 20% of our sales by the end of the year. So outperforming by 10 points when we are down minus 7%. I've seen a lot of reports at minus 20% on the automotive sector around the world. So clearly outperforming, but it has an impact though on the overall picture for High Performance Solutions in the second half.
Next question from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America.
Two questions on my side. Firstly, and I appreciate we're only in October 2021, but I'd like to try it about 2022. And it's a simple question. Are you confident that you can increase volumes in 2022, taking into account the base effect and maybe a bit of faith on renovation, but at the same time, you've told us with the Grow & Impact plan that maybe you can outperform underlying markets? So that's my first question. My second question, maybe just a technicality, if my estimates are correct, you're going to have about minus 5% effect from deconsolidation in the second half on the sales. Could you give us an indication of the profit effect? We know that Lapeyre was loss-making. I'm assuming Graham and the Dutch distributions were low margin, but at the same time, you’re adding Chryso, should it be more or less a neutral impact on your operating profit in the second half?
So Sreedhar will take the second one and I take the first. We see good trends on our underlying markets. I mentioned that we see that in October, currently. Again, outside of any holiday, working days impact. So the trends are solid. And if I take the first half of 2021, we said out of the 7.6 or 7.5 volumes, maybe there was half of that, which was a catch-up effect after the COVID; the rest was normal and this is the kind of underlying trends we are seeing as we speak. So housing momentum in the U.S. is strong. Clearly, there is a backlog of orders, if I think of gypsum, roofing, et cetera. Same in Europe. The backlog of craftsmen is very high. We will see in some countries next year, the public building renovation to take place. So we are confident that those underlying trends on volumes, the midterm trends that we have outlined -- highlighted, sorry for the -- during the Capital Market Day, are there to stay. So we'll give you more color and outlook, of course, end of February when we'll publish our full year 2021 and outlook for the year, but yet the underlying trends are there. And based on any backlog, customer feedback and various actions we see on energy efficiency renovation, public buildings, et cetera, I'm confident it will stay and will continue on this strong momentum. Of course, we have to cope on our side with the right workforce in our plans with the right supply chain. I was in the U.S. 2 weeks ago right after the Capital Market Day, and we have faced 240 force majeure in the U.S. between January and early October. So that's the kind of initiatives we have to cope with, but we have done that successfully. So I think those hiccups, we are now -- we know how to manage them, and we are confident about 2022.
Coming to the scope effect, Arnaud, we should continue to be negative in Q4. Even though we have a positive impact of acquisition of Chryso and Panofrance, these are the 2 big acquisitions closed in end of Q3. Given the divestment of underperforming businesses, the impact on sales will be bigger than the operating profit. So it won't be equal.
Could it be a positive impact on operating profit or that's too optimistic?
I would say that it will be -- the sales will have a bigger impact than OP. I don't want to be very precise at this point, but it will be meaningful, not so much -- because at the end of the day, we are talking about a couple of businesses which are underperforming. So it's not going to be such a big difference between -- in terms of OP.
Next question from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley.
One question just on a clarification and then another one in terms of inflation into next year. I think you said that the calendar effect for Southern Europe in the third quarter was negative 1.5%. Can you just confirm that I heard that correctly? And then the second question, could you quantify at spot prices what you think the impact to costs would be in 2022, if those spot prices held for the full year? Obviously, no one's got a crystal ball in terms of what happens with cost, but it would help us understand what would need to happen on the product pricing side in order to defend margins into next year, that would be helpful?
Yes. So in terms of working days, you're right, it would be between 1.5% to 2% in Southern Europe for Q3, negative impact. Coming to your question on the next year, I mean, it all depends on how the inflation will take on. At this point of time, we are focusing on increasing the prices as if this inflation is going to be there, and that's the idea. And as we make progress, we will certainly talk about it end of February where we stand. I mean again, I -- the way we have done in the last couple of years, the systems and the processes we have on price increase, I remain very confident that the pricing is a clear focus, and it is happening at a very micro and grassroot level. So that's why I remain confident that we should be able to pass on the inflation even in 2022. Saint-Gobain has demonstrated it in the past, there is no reason to believe that why we will not again do it in 2022.
And to add to what Sreedhar said, you have seen what we have been doing, pushing our solutions and, therefore, our pricing power. I think we have demonstrated clearly in the third quarter, our strong pricing power will be clearly a double-digit margin in 2021. You know our ambition to be double-digit margin. We have outlined that very clearly during the Capital Market Day in early October. Usually, we don't give annual guidance on the margin, but we'll give you some outlook and some flavor in February. So we are clearly pushing in the minds of all our managers around the world this margin drive and margin focus.
Next question from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research.
I will have just a couple of questions. My first question is on your distribution business. Could the acceleration of price increases that we have seen in the third quarter and that you are planning for the fourth quarter more than offset the lower activity compared to the first half of the year? Another way to formulate the question is, do you believe it's possible to reiterate the very strong margin achieved in distribution in H1 2021 or is it too optimistic? And then my second question is on your hedging policy. I think we've seen today some of comments by Russia that they could supply a bit more gas to Europe. Could you just give us a little bit more color on your hedging policy in this very, very volatile energy environment? Is there any update that you could give us since the Capital Market Day?
So maybe I'll start with hedging policy because this is not -- the policy has not changed. We remain at 50% level of hedging is something which we have been doing consistently. And you know that we made 1 exception for 2022, we are hedged for 60%. You are right that it is quite a volatile situation, and we do monitor it very closely. We do take some steps, which are short-term steps on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis to make sure that everything is not exposed on a spot basis. But in terms of broad policy, we have still maintained that, but very, very close monitoring on an actually daily basis. I get a report on a daily basis, what is the level of energy at the country level and what is it that's happening every single day.
And to your question on building distribution. Keep in mind that this year, we don't have a normal seasonality on distribution. I think we told you about the extra volume catch-up we have seen in March, April, May, we were running at high double-digit volume of activity, which was a bit crazy and extremely tiring for our team. So we don't have the normal seasonality between first half and second half of distribution, if you were to take, I would say, a normal year. And that being said, our different banners of distribution, whether it's in the Nordics, in the U.K., in France have done very well in terms of outperforming the market, in terms of pushing their prices and passing that to the customers. So they are doing very well, and they are doing what's necessary to keep a healthy level of margin, but don't take the usual seasonality of distribution in 2021 without mentioning again the impact of those working days of the craftsmen, whether it's in South Europe, but in August or Christmas, et cetera.
Next question from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS.
Just a couple left for me then, please. The first one is just on autos. I thought you did relatively well. I think you were only down kind of 5% in the third quarter. I think auto production was down, whatever, 15%, 20%. Do you think you can hold that kind of decline, assuming that the sort of market backdrop or is there a timing difference that we need to think about? I'm not quite sure when you sort of deliver your glass compared to production or should it be sort of simultaneous? The second question is on the Americas, where I think volume growth in the third quarter kind of basically was 0, right? Can you just maybe flesh out a little bit what happened there? And maybe I think there was some roofing statistics that suggest that was maybe down, and maybe plasterboard was up. But maybe you could just give us a sense why that kind of slowed to 0? And then just, sorry, coming back on the volume kind of comp next year, you kind of alluded to it, but I think you said at the time, if your volume growth was, say, 8 to a year, right, in the first half, I think you said maybe 3 percentage points of that was underlying. So therefore, you'd be kind of 500 basis points short everything else equal for the first half. Is that the right way to think about sort of -- obviously, you may grow against that, but sort of as a clean starting point when we think about the first half at least?
Well, I'll take the first 2, and Sreedhar will complement and take the third. Auto, it's just in time within the automotive sector. So there is no delay in terms of what we would see in terms of requests from our auto customers and what we would deliver, and therefore, see in ourselves, it's just a matter of 1 or 2 days. So it's purely based on our market share and the role outperformance we have done because, again, we grew in North America and Asia, thanks to our electrical vehicle position. And of course, we dropped in Europe because the market is much tougher there. I don't expect that to improve, as I said in Q4 and 2022, I think will remain challenging a good part of 2022. It's hard to be a bit more precise. In the Americas, a high-level comment and then Sreedhar will complement. Yes, we are at 0-plus in terms of volumes in Q3, but I would not look at it that way. You have to bear in mind that, for instance, last year, Q3, we had a lot of inventory because we exited the COVID lockdown with a lot of inventory, so we could sell that inventory. Today, we are on allocation to customers in most of our product lines. So that makes quite an impact when you compare just quarter-to-quarter, which I think is not the most relevant measure in such a difficult period. If I take the year-to-date in the U.S., then we are up slightly more than 10% in North America and close to 25% in Latin America. And I think this is the more relevant picture. So we are on strong volumes in North America. And by the way, we may announce in a matter of some days or weeks, some expansion plans in North America. We have been working on that for several months already. And we may announce that in the coming days, partly for insulation, gypsum and roofing in the southeast part of the country. So volumes are strong, and that should continue into 2022. Sreedhar, you want to add to that?
No, I think, again, I would reiterate what you said, Benoit. It's important that we need to look at, first of all, the comparison, it makes sense to look at from 2019 and not 2020 that so many things have happened, and that is actually reshaping the comparison. So it's good to look at 2019. And when you look at 2019, we are talking about 6.3% volume increase at the group level, and we are seeing a good trend across. So if you're talking about the guidance, what we are saying, it's like 3% to 5% is what we are saying in the medium term. And this is something which we need to keep in mind that we are confident to continuously grow in our underlying market and also outperform as we talked about, the way we are moving towards the solution-driven organization.
But I see that you are all already switching to 2022. Let's finish the year in good shape. We are actively working day in, day out to finish the year strongly, and we'll give you more flavor in February of 2022, but thank you for those questions.
We don't have any more questions for the moment. [Operator Instructions]. We have a new question from Mike Betts from Data Based Analysis.
Yes. My question is on the price increase in the Americas. I mean I don't know if you've seen, but Eagle today highlighted that their prices for wallboard were up 33% in the latest quarter. So my question on that is, were you kind of something similar? And also, are you willing to just give me some idea of how big gypsum now is as a percentage of sales of that division? And then secondly, has there been any delay in implementing price increases just because you haven't got the product in reality to sell. When you're on allocation, it must be quite difficult to sell, some of the prices going up 10%, but you can't have it for 3 months. I mean has that been an issue at all?
Well, thank you, Mike, for your questions. Sreedhar will give you the precise percentage. I would say, yes, I've seen -- we have seen the announcement from Eagle. We are in the same ballpark exiting the third quarter. And again, as we said at the Capital Market Day, we are extremely happy about the momentum we have in gypsum North America, as we speak, very strong in the U.S. We have also a good dynamic in Canada. So keep in mind that in some of the prices and numbers we give to you, it's all North America for us and the pricing momentum has been stronger in the U.S. than in Canada. But yes, we have such a similar picture and more pricing measures have been announced for the coming months.
When you have -- when you are in an allocation and actually it creates the right dynamic for the pricing. And this is not just an allocation only for Saint-Gobain because it is -- most of the players in the U.S. are in the same boat. So that is why we are able to push the prices up. I mean when you look at just the Americas, the price increase in Q3 was 15% which is a significant price increase, and this is happening. It's also because there is an allocation and everybody is trying to push the prices up.
And specifically, Mike, versus other years, usually, you have 2, 3 months type of delay or warning, I would say, for the customers to prepare them on the price increase. This time, we are much more in a matter of 3, 4 weeks. So it's much shorter, and therefore, I don't see any delay in terms of price increase landing on the market, based on the capacity that we face.
And it's been quite a unique situation that we have actually had a frequent price increase in this year. I mean we're talking of most of the businesses 3 to 4 price increase in this year.
I think there was a question for Mike on the percentage of gypsum. As part of the total North America, I think that was your question, Mike?
It was as well, please.
Well, it's a growing part, both in terms of sales and profit, but maybe we'll take this question off-line. It's still below half of the business we have in North America. We are still bigger in exterior products, what I call exterior products, roofing and sliding versus interior gypsum and insulation, even though across North America we have been making very good progress on interior.
And it has done well. Yes.
Next question from Harry Goad from Berenberg.
I've got a couple, please. One of the sort of key messages from the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago was your sort of intent on taking market share, which is going to drive that 3% to 5% organic sales growth over the next couple of years. And a key driver of that was what you talked about solutions and cross-selling. As you've sort of rolled this strategy out, I mean, you mentioned you've been out across the business in the last few weeks, what's the sort of feedback you're getting from colleagues and businesses on the ability to hit those targets from sort of what you talk about in terms of solutions? So that was the first question. Second question, a separate topic. You talked about a favorable order backlog across Europe and the U.S. Is that predominantly driven by private sector demand or are we beginning to see some of the sort of public works projects, whether that be European Union or state -- national government projects beginning to impact on demand as well?
Thank you. Yes, we continue to look and measure our market share and performance. And I'm happy to say that we have increased our organic growth between end of June and end of September versus 2019 even though some markets like Mobility dropped, so we have increased our top line organic growth versus '19 end of June versus -- end of September versus end of June. When I communicated our Grow & Impact plan and now it has been done throughout the group with the live communication on my side on top of what I have done with the 150 managers in -- of Saint-Gobain in early September, they are all motivated, committed, excited about that, the Grow & Impact actions. I think it's very clear in terms of strategic vision, worldwide leadership in light and sustainable construction. The plan we have outlined it with the 6 priorities of action, and they know what they have to deliver on that. And we are competitive within Saint-Gobain. And I can tell you, a lot of managers are competitive. So yes, they are eager to outperform. They are measuring that country by country. And they have this fighting spirit for the Saint-Gobain team to win. So the reaction, of course, I'm biased, maybe Sreedhar will complement, but the reaction has been extremely positive on all the actions, on the clarity and the simplicity of the vision. And I feel confident that we have all the teams of Saint-Gobain behind us.
I think the one big difference is a lot of discussion has happened when we had presented finally, it has happened because a lot of engagement. There is a bottom-up approach. Many people were involved in the thought process, and that is why there is an emotional bond on this whole plan. And I clearly see that. And I know when we talk of our performance, as Benoit is saying, then I can tell you that the moment the competition results are out, by end of the day, we get an analysis from the CEO of the country, where we are, so that also reflects they are keeping track of the performance and looking into the details.
And maybe something which is not even made public within the group, but every year, we measure the employee satisfaction and engagement. I received that last night. I looked at that. The participation rate is even higher than a year ago, which was higher than 2019. So it's extremely high and the engagement and what we call the promoter score, employee promoter score is much higher than 2020 and much higher than 2019. So it's increasing year after year. And I think part of that is also related to our new ways of working, our clear organization, where our teams are empowered. They are trusted, they collaborate and also the robustness of the vision and the Grow & Impact plan. So I feel all the Saint-Gobain teams are fully engaged. On your question on the backlog for...
I just want to add one more thing. Benoit, there's another difference. Every 3 months, Benoit connects to a live chat with the whole organization. So that is another way of communicating, articulating the priorities and bringing that alignment throughout the organization.
And to add to that, the top 150 managers, I don't want to be too long on that, but the next day after the Capital Market Day, we had the live chat with the top 150 managers of the group. And I told them what were your questions, what were the expectations and what we have committed to altogether as a team during the Capital Market Day. So this is the same story and everyone is aligned on a simple way. On your question regarding the private sector. Yes, so far, we have seen most of the backlog being related to the private sector, but we expect the public want to ramp up next year. Clearly, we have signed for that in France. I know that recently, for instance, in France, we have seen some heavy work, the groundwork picking up, which means it's going to lead some additional activity next year on the second more interior products after all the heavy work. So it's picking up also for next year in some markets and some countries like France and commercial is also picking up in the U.S., as I mentioned earlier in the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, we don't have any more question for the moment. [Operator Instructions]
Well, if there is no more question, I think it's time to conclude. I would ask to add one word also we didn't have questions about that, but I would say the first weeks of the Chryso integration are extremely good. The teams are all aligned and engaged. I was in the U.S., as I told you, 2 weeks ago, and I met with the Chryso U.S. manager, who is all excited. So, so far, so good. We are on track with our plan with a lot of ideas for synergies for Chryso. So that's a good addition. And you have seen we have been active also in acquisitions within the construction chemical space, the latest one being in Mexico. So to conclude, thank you very much for your questions. You have heard our confidence with Sreedhar. All the teams are aligned. The priorities of actions are clear. So thank you again for all the interaction and the question. I would just like to flag that our full year 2021 results will be published on the 24th of February 2022. So thank you very much for participating in this call, and have a great evening. Thank you.