Dear colleagues.  I wish that you and your families are healthy and safe.  Over the last three months we have seen our world confront – and gradually begin to adapt – to the unprecedented dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is still high degree of uncertainty about the duration of this environment and the characteristics of all the additional changes we will be facing.

Three months ago we launched a series of bold actions designed to confront and mitigate the impacts we would be facing.  I have been positively impressed by the work all of you have done around the world. The Global Rapid Response teams, working closely with many of you throughout the company, have done an amazing job in ensuring we deploy a common strategy around the world, focused in deploying protocols to provide for the safest possible work environment, and in ensuring our ability to keep serving our customers around the world in the safest possible way. To this end, I want to congratulate all of you for your dedication and commitment in these challenging times.

In terms of our results and our financial position, the actions we put in place three months ago have significantly contributed to enhancing our performance and in strengthening our financial position. I would like to highlight:

• The suspension and/or reduction of discretionary expenses, and in salaries, has helped reduce our SG&A in a significant way over the last months.
• Suspension or postponement of CAPEX have supported our free cash flow generation which in turns enhances our liquidity position.
• Suspension of corporate activities and global networks have allowed us to focus on our core activities of producing, selling and serving our customers.
• We have completed actions to increase our financial flexibility and our liquidity position. Today there is no major concern from the capital markets, of CEMEX’s ability to confront this crisis from a liquidity and capital structure standpoint.

All of these actions are making a difference in our performance, and we should all be proud of the way we have confronted this challenge. While all of this is encouraging, as I mentioned before, there is still a high degree of uncertainty about how our markets will perform in the next months. To this end I want to highlight that for the remainder of 2020, we shall maintain the suspension or reduction of the following:

• Capital expenditures not related to managing the pandemic, with the exception of a recently approved CAPEX allocation to ensure we don’t miss high priority growth opportunities.
• Budgeted discretionary operating expenses. I want to reiterate that the budget for discretionary operating expenses (external consultants, travel fees, etc) for the rest of the year is cancelled.
• Production and inventory levels in all our markets, in line with lower demand conditions.
• Corporate and global networks activities that are not related to our priority of managing our core business activities in this time of crisis.

After having seen the highly proactive nature of our response to this unprecedented situation, and our focus in continuing serving our customers in the safest possible way, I am very optimistic that we will succeed during these challenging times.

I thank all of you for your hard work and wish that you remain healthy and safe.

Best regards,  Fernando