Amrize completes $1 billion share buyback and cuts 2026 earnings outlook
Key Facts
The program was completed on October 28, after launching on May 6, and the company bought 22,446,667 shares, equivalent to 3.96% of its current share capital. It said the board intends to use its cancellation authority to cancel the shares bought. The guidance cut, which came despite third-quarter revenue and net income growth, reflects cost pressures and weakness in residential roofing activity. The company’s shares fell 5.3% in premarket trading on October 29 following the announcement.
The company posted revenue of $3.771 billion in the third quarter, up 2.2% year on year, while net income rose 3.3% to $558 million. But adjusted operating earnings growth was limited, increasing 0.2% to $1.076 billion. In the Building Envelope segment, revenue rose 3.6% to $929 million, while adjusted EBITDA fell 14.6% to $182 million. This gap between revenue and earnings highlights the impact of costs on the segment, which includes roofing. AMRZ shares closed at $41.61 on October 29, according to EL7 data.
The company attributed weak residential reroofing demand to lower existing-home sales, while saying commercial roofing volumes would remain resilient and demand for commercial reroofing had stayed resilient. It said cost inflation, driven by oil prices and subsequent increases in shipping, diesel and raw-material costs, weighed on results and the outlook. Chief Executive Jan Jenisch said the company was managing these pressures through pricing, fuel surcharges and the ASPIRE initiative. The initiative delivered $73 million in savings in the first nine months of the year and is on track to achieve $80 million in 2026. The company also said weather reduced construction volumes in the third quarter and that higher interest rates could affect fourth-quarter volumes.
Indicators in the building materials segment diverged from roofing performance: higher cement prices of 1.8% and aggregate prices of 6.9% helped expand the segment’s margin by 30 basis points in the third quarter. Energy, fuel and freight surcharges contributed $23 million during the period, and the company said these surcharges helped offset cost inflation. But it also reported cement volumes down 4.2% and aggregate volumes down 0.2%, due to weather in the Northeast, South and Midwest. Stable projects, along with federally funded and multi-year projects, partly offset the declines. The company expects the price-cost balance in Building Materials to turn positive in the fourth quarter of 2026.
In Building Envelope, Amrize expects a sequential improvement in the price-cost balance in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter, but pushed back a positive balance to 2027 because of the scale of inflation. It said commercial roofing volumes are expected to remain resilient, while residential roofing may stay weaker amid lower existing-home sales. In the second quarter, the company had indicated it expected high-single-digit growth in residential roofing volumes for the year, before linking weak residential activity in its October update to lower existing-home sales. In its fourth-quarter guidance, it warned that higher interest rates could weigh on construction volumes, with roofing market conditions continuing to diverge between commercial and residential.
The company declared a third-quarter dividend of $0.11 per share, payable on November 18, 2026. November 9 is the last day to trade with the dividend entitlement, while the shares begin trading ex-dividend on November 10, which is also the record date. The announcement follows completion of the buyback program, as the company faces divergent paths for its two segments in the fourth quarter: an expected improvement in the price-cost balance in building materials and continued pressure in roofing. Markets will watch how these trends affect delivery against the revised full-year guidance.