CRH public limited company (CRH): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $95.86, CRH public limited company (CRH) is priced for +3.0% growth. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Exported: 2026-08-31 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CRH

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

Solve inputs: computed at a 8.5% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

Valuation X-Ray

Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

Families that justify the price: Growth Families that call it expensive: Earnings

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 7.1%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=13)

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

Bullet Takeaways

• This is a road builder first and a quarry operator second: Road Solutions is the largest revenue line at 46%, ahead of Essential Materials at 28%, Outdoor Living Solutions at 14% and Building & Infrastructure Solutions at 13%.
• The growth has been bought as much as grown, with acquisitions completed in 2025 for total consideration of $4.1 billion after $5.0 billion in 2024, plus $2.7 billion of growth and maintenance capital expenditure.
• The number to watch is aggregates pricing, which fell 1% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 even as aggregates volumes rose 14%, because pricing power is the entire argument for owning a materials business.

Bull Case

The economics of this industry come down to a fact about weight. Crushed stone is cheap per ton and expensive to move, so a quarry serves the ground within economic trucking distance of itself and nothing beyond. The point is made precisely in VMC's own annual filing, which notes that "the markets for our products tend to be localized around our quarry sites and are served by truck. New quarry sites often take years to develop". That sentence is the whole moat. Permitting a new pit near a growing city takes years and often fails; the reserves already permitted near that city therefore carry a position no amount of capital can quickly replicate.

What CRH did with that position is the part worth understanding. Rather than sell stone and stop, it built forward into the work that consumes the stone. Road Solutions, at 46% of revenue, is the paving and readymixed concrete business that buys aggregates and asphalt from the Essential Materials operations at 28%. The company describes developing its roads offering to give customers "quality, flexibility, speed, expertise and convenience through our deep market knowledge and highly capable team of professionals". In practice, a state highway department awarding a resurfacing contract is buying a schedule and a crew as much as a material, and the bidder who owns the pit twenty miles away has both a cost advantage and a delivery advantage over one who has to buy from a competitor.

That structure is why the blended margin looks lower than a pure quarry operator's and why the comparison misleads. VMC converts 20.6% of revenue into operating profit and MLM 22.1%, both selling aggregates and little else. CRH's trailing operating margin is 11.3%, but roughly half its revenue is contracting work with contracting economics, and contracting revenue is high-volume and low-margin by design. The correct read is not that the materials are worse; it is that the materials are wrapped in a service business that adds revenue and dilutes the percentage while capturing demand a pure quarry has to compete for.

The 2025 numbers show the machine working across both halves. Total revenues finished 5% ahead of 2024. Essential Materials revenues rose 8%, with aggregates volumes 4% ahead. Road Solutions revenues rose 7%, with readymixed concrete volumes and prices up 11% and 4% respectively, while asphalt volumes fell 4%. The first quarter of 2026 pushed further, with Essential Materials revenues up 31%, aggregates volumes 14% higher and cement volumes 10% higher. Group adjusted EBITDA came in at 8.0% of revenue against 7.3% a year earlier, a 70 basis point improvement in what is seasonally the weakest quarter of the year.

The capital return record is the strongest single piece of evidence that management believes its own asset base. The 10-K states that "Cash paid to shareholders in 2025 through dividends was $1.0 billion and through share buybacks was $1.2 billion", and the buyback continued into 2026 with a further $0.3 billion in the first quarter. Across the three years to March 2026 the share count has fallen roughly 3.5% a year. The return on the equity behind that, at about 15.9%, comfortably exceeds what the capital costs. A company earning that on its book while simultaneously buying its own shares and spending billions on new quarries is not a business running out of places to put money.

Bear Case

The competitive picture changed in a way that has nothing to do with CRH's own execution. AMRZ, the newly independent North American arm of a European cement group, now runs $11.15 billion of revenue with revenue growth of 66.8% as it stands up as a separate company, and it is pointed at exactly the same infrastructure spending. VMC and MLM, the two pure aggregates operators, convert 20.6% and 22.1% of revenue into operating profit respectively, against CRH's 11.3%. That gap is partly structural, since contracting revenue carries thinner margins by design. But it also means the two competitors with the cleanest business model have roughly twice the margin cushion to absorb a price war, and a materials company with a thinner cushion is the one that feels a downturn first.

Then there is the datapoint that should worry a holder more than any of that. In the first quarter of 2026, aggregates volumes rose 14% year over year while aggregates pricing fell 1%, which the company attributes to geographic and project mix. For a business whose entire investment case rests on local pricing power, volume growth accompanied by price decline is the wrong combination. It may well be mix. It is also what taking share on price looks like, and a single quarter cannot distinguish between the two. The 10-K itself is unsentimental about the underlying reality, noting that "Many of the Company's products are commodities that face strong volume and price competition".

The growth model carries its own arithmetic problem. Acquisitions in 2025 came to $4.1 billion of total consideration after $5.0 billion in 2024, with a further $2.7 billion of growth and maintenance capital expenditure in 2025. Single deals have been large: the Hunter acquisition alone carried consideration of $2,106 million, and a 57% stake in the Australian business Adbri was taken in July 2024. Buying growth is a legitimate strategy in a fragmented industry, and the company says as much, observing that "Fragmented markets continue to offer focused growth opportunities". But it means the reported growth rate is a function of the acquisition budget, the acquisition budget is funded partly with borrowings, and the borrowings are a claim that ranks ahead of the shareholder. Roughly seven billion dollars a year of acquisition and capital spending has to keep earning its cost, every year, for the compounding story to hold.

The residential end market is already soft. Outdoor Living Solutions revenues fell 3% in the first quarter of 2026, which the company attributes to subdued new-build residential demand and adverse weather. That segment is 14% of revenue and it is the one most exposed to household budgets rather than government budgets. Meanwhile the infrastructure half depends on public capital programmes that are set by legislatures on multi-year cycles, so the diversification across the two is less than it looks: one is cyclical with rates, the other is cyclical with politics.

Which brings the argument to what the price requires. The market pays about 21 times company-wide operating profit, and unwinding that gives a requirement of roughly 14.4% annual operating growth for the next five years. The company's own recent mean is nearer 12.9%, so the required pace sits above what it has actually delivered on average, and of companies that have reached that pace only about 52% held it even five years. Hold the precise figure loosely, since each percentage point on the discount rate moves the requirement by more than seven points. The shape is the point: the price needs the acquisition machine to keep working at full speed, in an industry where the pure-play competitors earn twice the margin and the most recent quarter showed prices going the wrong way.

Valuation

Start with the requirement rather than the multiple, because the requirement is the thing a buyer is actually agreeing to. At today's price the market pays about 21 times company-wide operating profit, and that unwinds to roughly 14.4% annual growth in operating profit sustained for five years. The company's own recent average is closer to 12.9%, so this is not a fantasy figure; it is a demand that the good years become the normal years. Treat the number as directional, because a single percentage point on the discount rate applied moves the implied pace by more than seven points. Of businesses that have reached that growth rate, roughly 52% held it for five years, which makes this closer to a coin flip than to either a certainty or a stretch.

The methods sort into a clear pattern. Peer multiples land essentially on top of the price, within a rounding error. The methods that project forward cash generation land above it, so the price is roughly three quarters of where they centre. The approaches anchored on recorded book value sit below, with the price about 1.4 times where they read. And the lens that capitalizes current free cash flow with no growth at all sits far below, which is arithmetic rather than judgement: a company spending $2.7 billion a year on capital projects and billions more on acquisitions is poorly described by a method that assumes it stops.

Where the price is unambiguous is that it is neither cheap nor extreme. The book value behind each share is $34.51, and the return being earned on that book runs near 15.9%, comfortably above what the equity costs. That combination is precisely why the peer-multiple and forward-growth methods reach the price while the static ones do not: a business earning well above its cost of capital should trade above its book, and the question is only how far above.

The peer set is where the composition matters most. VMC converts 20.6% of revenue into operating profit and MLM 22.1%, but both are aggregates producers rather than road builders. WMS earns 20.3% and TREX 22.1% in building products. AMRZ, the closest structural analogue as a diversified North American materials company, converts 12.1%, which is much nearer CRH's 11.3%. Compared against the businesses that actually share its mix rather than against the pure quarries, the margin sits where it should. OC, at 0.7% with revenue down 5.1%, is the reminder of what a residential-weighted building products business looks like in a soft year.

Solvency here is best read through what the company chose to do with its money rather than through a ratio. In 2025 it spent $4.1 billion on acquisitions and $2.7 billion on capital projects while returning $1.0 billion in dividends and $1.2 billion in buybacks, and it bought back a further $0.3 billion of stock in the first quarter of 2026 despite that quarter being seasonally loss-making at the per-share line. Doing all four at once requires borrowing, and the borrowings are substantial. The share count has still fallen about 3.5% a year across the three years to March 2026. What a buyer is underwriting, then, is not the balance sheet and not the current margin. It is the continued availability of quarries and paving businesses to buy at prices that earn more than the debt used to buy them costs.

Catalysts

The first quarter of 2026 gave two signals pointing in opposite directions, and the second quarter will say which one was noise. Essential Materials revenues rose 31% with aggregates volumes up 14% and cement volumes up 10%, while aggregates pricing fell 1% year over year on geographic and project mix. Group adjusted EBITDA improved to 8.0% of revenue from 7.3%. Volume and margin moving up while price moves down is a combination that resolves one way or the other within a couple of quarters, and for a materials business the price line is the one that matters over time.

Management's stated view of demand is unchanged and specific about where it comes from. The company writes that it continues "to expect favorable underlying demand across our key end-markets, underpinned by significant public investment in infrastructure and continued reindustrialization activity", while flagging that new-build residential remains subdued. That is a forecast with a policy dependency attached: the infrastructure half runs on appropriated public money, so the relevant catalysts are budget cycles rather than product launches.

The acquisition programme is the third thread and the most controllable. Deals totalling $4.1 billion of consideration closed in 2025, against $5.0 billion in 2024. A material slowdown in that run rate would change the growth arithmetic quickly, since a meaningful share of reported revenue growth has come from businesses bought rather than built. Watching what the company pays, and whether the pace holds, is a more direct read on the thesis than any single quarter's volumes.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Americas Materials Solutions (reported)

• VMC (VULCAN MATERIALS COMPANY)
• FY2025 10-K: …and Superior Ready Mix, L.P. (Superior), which solidified our position as the leading aggregates producer in Southern California. We also completed two bolt-on acquisitions during 2024 in Alabama and Texas, strengthening our position in two of our top 10 revenue states. From 2023 to 2025, we invested $2,310.6 million…
• FY2025 10-K: …U.S. Virgin Islands, Freeport (Bahamas), Puerto Cortés (Honduras) and Quintana Roo (Mexico) West market - Arizona, California, Hawaii, New Mexico and British Columbia (Canada) Form 10-K 88 Part II Product Revenues Revenue is recognized when obligations under the terms of a contract with our customer are satisfied;…
• MLM (MARTIN MARIETTA MATERIALS INC)
• FY2025 10-K: …and poured at the project site of a customer of the Company. The coarse aggregates used for ready mixed concrete are a washed material with limited amounts of fines ( i.e. , dirt and clay). The Company operates ready mixed concrete plants in Arizona and Texas as of December 31, 2025. The Texas ready mixed concrete…
• FY2025 10-K: , construction, consumer and specialty applications. The Specialties business also produces dolomitic lime, which is sold primarily to external customers for use in steel production and soil stabilization, and is used internally as a raw material input in synthetic magnesia production. The July 2025 acquisition of…
• EXP (EAGLE MATERIALS INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …Since 2012, we have invested approximately $2.6 billion to expand the Heavy Materials sector. These investments have more than doubled our U.S. cement capacity. Growth in the Heavy Materials sector has been achieved mainly through acquisitions, which have expanded our geographic footprint, resulting in a contiguous…
• FY2025 10-K: …and taxes are managed on a centralized basis, and not included in segment operating information. Our business is organized into two sectors within which there are four reportable business segments. The Heavy Materials sector includes the Cement and Concrete and Aggregates segments. The Light Materials sector includes…
• USLM (UNITED STATES LIME & MINERALS INC)
• FY2025 10-K: …limestone deposits at Monarch Pass, Colorado. Existing crushed limestone stockpiles on the property are being used to provide feedstock to the Company's plant in Delta, Colorado. Access to all properties is provided by paved roads and, in the case of Arkansas Lime, St. Clair, Carthage, and Mill Creek, also by rail.…
• FY2025 10-K: …any increase in demand is uncertain and subject to weather, political, economic, and other factors. Our modernization and expansion and development projects in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, our acquisitions in Oklahoma and Missouri, and our Texas slurry operations have positioned us to meet the demand for high-…
• AMRZ (Amrize Ltd)
• FY2025 10-K: …from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis. Overview We are a building solutions company focused on the North American market, offering customers a broad range of advanced building solutions from foundation to rooftop. We serve…
• FY2025 10-K: …as well as a variety of downstream products and solutions such as ready- mix concrete, asphalt and other construction materials. • Our Building Envelope segment offers advanced roofing and wall systems, including single-ply membranes, insulation, shingles, sheathing, waterproofing and protective coatings, along with…
• MDU (MDU RESOURCES GROUP, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: , deferring the increased costs to the annual fuel clause adjustment. In Montana, the waiver request is filed monthly and was unopposed by the MTPSC. Effective April 1, 2024, as approved by the NDPSC, Montana-Dakota started recovery in North Dakota of these increased costs over a period of two years rather than one…
• FY2025 10-K: …2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0000067716 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember mdu:CommercialUtilitySalesMember mdu:PipelineandMidstreamMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0000067716 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember mdu:CommercialUtilitySalesMember us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0000067716…

Americas Building Solutions (reported)

• WMS (ADVANCED DRAINAGE SYSTEMS, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …solution for our clients and customers with this combination forming a key strategy in our sales growth, profitability and market share penetration. The practice of selling a drainage system is attractive to both distributors and end users, by providing a broad package of products that can be sold on individual…
• FY2025 10-K: …not only contributes to our sustainability initiatives through the promotion of a circular economy, but also allows us to better and more quickly serve the needs of our customers. OUR MANUFACTURING AND DISTRIBUTION PLATFORM We have a leading domestic and international manufacturing and distribution infrastructure,…
• MWA (MUELLER WATER PRODUCTS, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …Water Management Solutions business unit were approximately 42% of fiscal 2025 consolidated net sales. Business Strategy Our business strategy is to capitalize on the large, attractive and growing water infrastructure markets worldwide. Key elements of this strategy are as follows: Improve operational excellence and…
• FY2025 10-K: …to offer non-invasive leak detection and pipe condition assessment services is a key competitive advantage. With our Singer Valve and i2O products, we provide a range of intelligent water solutions including pressure control valves, advanced pressure management, network analytics, event management and data logging.…
• OC (Owens Corning)
• FY2025 10-K: …and renovation and residential, non-residential construction industry patterns. Demand for residential insulation in North America typically follows housing starts on a three-month lagged basis, although the new residential construction cycle can elongate due to labor availability and other factors beyond our…
• FY2025 10-K: …residential construction. Roofing also manufactures and sells glass mat and specialty veil materials used in building and construction applications. Insulation - Within our Insulation segment, the Company manufactures and sells thermal and acoustical batts, loose fill insulation, spray foam insulation, wet use…
• FBIN (Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …faucets, accessories, luxury hardware, kitchen sinks and waste disposals, predominantly under the Moen, ROHL, Riobel, Victoria+Albert, Perrin & Rowe, Aqualisa, Shaws, Emtek, Schaub and SpringWell brands. The Outdoors segment includes fiberglass and steel entry door systems under the Therma-Tru brand name, storm,…
• FY2025 10-K: Segment Raw Materials Water Brass, zinc, resins, stainless steel and aluminum Outdoors Wood, aluminum, steel, plastics, resins, glass, vinyl and insulating foam Security Steel, zinc, brass and resins Intellectual property. Product innovation and branding are important to the success of our business. In addition to the…
• TREX (Trex Company, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …and point-of-sale display support. We believe that attracting wholesale distributors, who are committed to our products and marketing approach and can effectively sell higher value products to contractor-oriented lumber yards and other retail outlets, is important to our future growth. Our distributors provide…
• FY2025 10-K: …material processes, and developing the next generation of low-cost materials. Our growth and margin expansion strategy positions us well to expand our leadership position in the category with beautiful, high performance, low-maintenance products and includes the following initiatives: • Accelerate material conversion…
• JHX (JAMES HARDIE INDUSTRIES PLC)
• (no filing in the citation store)

International Solutions (reported)

• JHX (JAMES HARDIE INDUSTRIES PLC)
• (no filing in the citation store)
• AMRZ (Amrize Ltd)
• FY2025 10-K: …from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis. Overview We are a building solutions company focused on the North American market, offering customers a broad range of advanced building solutions from foundation to rooftop. We serve…
• FY2025 10-K: …represents more than 10% of the Company's revenues and there are no material dependencies or concentrations of individual customers that require disclosure. Research & Development Research and development activities include the development of new product lines, the modification of existing product lines to comply…
• OC (Owens Corning)
• FY2025 10-K: …options that are factored into our determination of lease payments when reasonably certain. These options to extend or terminate a lease are at our discretion. We have elected to take the practical expedient and not separate lease and non-lease components of contracts. We estimate our incremental borrowing rate to…
• FY2025 10-K: …and remediation of cybersecurity incidents. Our CIO is responsible for our information security organization, which is comprised of internal Owens Corning employees and external security suppliers. Our information security organization provides security monitoring and response and provides regular reports to our CIO…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.