CRH sells the stone, cement and concrete that roads and buildings need, and its margins widened every year through 2025. Now a large, debt-funded purchase must earn its keep as earnings cover interest less comfortably.
Drive on a new road or walk into a new building in North America, Europe or Australia, and you may be relying on CRH's work. The company quarries aggregates (crushed stone, sand and gravel) and makes cement and concrete. It then sells those materials again inside the products and road work built from them. A tonne of stone can be sold as it is, go into cement, or reach a site inside concrete or a factory-made pipe. Each step earns revenue on the same base material.
Builders of roads, public networks, offices and homes pay CRH for materials, finished products and construction services. The heart of the group is North American materials, its largest business, which brought in $17 billion in 2025. Much of the work recurs, because roads and public networks need building and maintaining. What CRH keeps depends on whether its prices rise faster than the costs of running quarries, plants and deliveries. Those costs include energy, labor and depreciation, the accounting charge for wear on equipment. Growth has also been bought: CRH has acquired businesses year after year.
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