CRH CRH

Reference table

1. The June quarter, filing-verified

Condensed consolidated statement of income, $M except per share, from the 10-Q filed 2026-07-30:

Two readings of this table and both belong in the dive.

The operating business grew mid-single digits and the margin improved. Revenue +5.6%, gross margin +40 basis points, operating income +7.4%, Adjusted EBITDA +6.7%. That is a steady, unspectacular, entirely respectable performance from a construction-materials group in a market that has marked the shares down 20.6% in six months.

The earnings-per-share growth of 13.9% is mostly not that. Pre-tax income rose 23.2% against operating income's 7.4%, and the whole gap is one line: other non-operating income of $282 million against MINUS $9 million a year earlier — a $291 million swing. Against that, the effective tax rate rose from 24.2% to 30.6% and interest expense rose 10.0%. Adjusting the quarter for roughly $291 million of pre-tax non-operating gain at the 30.6% rate — approximately $202 million, or $0.30 per diluted share — gives underlying EPS near $1.91 against a comparably adjusted prior year near $1.95. Underlying earnings per share were roughly FLAT, and the buyback did the work of offsetting the tax rate. We state this as our arithmetic, not the company's, and we do not use the 13.9% figure anywhere in the valuation.

Note the seasonality, which is severe and which the payload obscures. Six-month operating income of $2,041 million is LESS than the June quarter's $2,079 million, because the first quarter produced an operating LOSS of $38 million and a net loss of $180 million. Northern-hemisphere construction materials is a first-half-loss, second-half-profit business, and any quarterly annualisation of this company is meaningless.

Segments — where the quality is

Three months ended 30 June, $M, filing-verified:

And by business line, which is the disclosure that shows what CRH actually sells:

Three things to take from these two tables.

Essential Materials — the aggregates and cement business — grew 17.7%, the fastest line in the company. That is the highest-quality revenue CRH has, for the reason set out in the exponential note: quarries are permitted, finite and immovable, freight economics cap the competitive radius at roughly fifty miles, and the result is durable local pricing power. The 27.9% Adjusted EBITDA margin in Americas Materials Solutions against 21.8% and 21.1% elsewhere is that advantage in a number.

Outdoor Living Solutions fell 5.8%, from $1,647 million to $1,551 million, and it is the main reason Americas Building Solutions shrank. That business — patio, hardscape and landscaping products — is the most residential-and-discretionary-exposed part of CRH, and it is the part behaving like a consumer business in a weak housing market.

Road Solutions at $4,669 million is 43.3% of group revenue and grew only 2.9%. It is the largest single line and it depends on public infrastructure budgets, which is a political variable this file cannot forecast.

Portfolio reshaping in 2026

The 10-Q's XBRL tagging records two disposals held for sale or completed during 2026: construction accessories (2026-01-27) and lawn and garden (2026-03-16). The six-month income statement carries $48 million of impairment losses and the balance-sheet note attributes a movement to "the divestiture of the lawn and garden and construction accessories operations."

Read alongside the Arcosa acquisition, that is a deliberate rotation: out of consumer-facing accessory products, into US aggregates. It is intelligent capital allocation and it is exactly what a management team that understands where its margin comes from would do.

2. Arcosa — the acquisition, and the debt that funds it

From the 8-K filed 2026-06-22:

> "On June 21, 2026, CRH Americas, Inc. ('Parent')... Neon Merger Sub, Inc.... and Arcosa, Inc.... entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger... pursuant to which... Merger Sub will merge with and into Arcosa, with Arcosa being the surviving entity and becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Parent... each share of Arcosa common stock... will be automatically converted into the right to receive $150.00 in cash, without interest."

From the 8-K filed 2026-07-17:

> "...in connection and substantially concurrently with the Merger Agreement, CRH, as guarantor, and CRH America Finance, Inc.... as borrower, entered into a $5.75 billion bridge facility agreement... under which the amounts borrowed may be used to pay, in part, the consideration payable under the Merger Agreement, the refinancing of certain of Arcosa's existing debt and fees and expenses related to the Merger. On July 17, 2026, CRH... entered into a term loan facility agreement... pursuant to which such lenders committed to provide a three-year $2.5 billion term loan facility... As a result of the Term Loan Facility, the commitments under the Bridge Facility were reduced to $3.25 billion. Borrowings under the Term Loan Facility bear interest at the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) plus a margin determined in accordance with a ratings-based pricing grid... There are no financial covenants."

The facts, assembled:

Two observations that follow directly.

The financing is real, committed and sized. $5.75 billion of committed facilities against total debt of $19,705 million and net debt of $15,609 million at 2025-12-31. If drawn in full, gross debt rises roughly 29% and net debt roughly 37%. Net debt to trailing EBITDA of 1.44x would move toward 2.0x before any Arcosa EBITDA is consolidated, and below that once it is. That is a manageable step for an investment-grade materials group and it is not a small one, and it is the reason two of the six kill criteria in Section 9 are leverage tests.

The ticking-fee schedule tells you the expected timeline. A fee that steps up at three, four and five months from the 2026-07-17 effective date implies the company expects to close within roughly six months — that is, by early 2027. Nothing in this archive gives a closing date, an antitrust status or an Arcosa financial figure, so the accretion cannot be modelled here and is not modelled.

None of this appears anywhere in the vendor payload. bal_a ends at 2025-12-31, cf_a ends at FY2025, and there is no FY2026 row in either. This is the "corporate action absent from the payload" defect class, in the largest single instance in this batch, and it is the eleventh or twelfth consecutive batch in which it has fired.

3. Balance sheet and cash flow

From bal_a at 2025-12-31 (the last full balance sheet in the payload — note it PREDATES the Arcosa financing), $M:

Net debt rose 39.5% during 2025, from $11,190 million to $15,609 million, against acquisitionsNet of −$3,675 million in FY2025 and −$3,816 million in FY2024. CRH has spent roughly $7.5 billion on acquisitions in two years and is committing up to $5.75 billion more. This is a serial acquirer and the leverage trajectory is the thing to watch, not the current 1.44x.

Cash flow, from cf_a, $M:

Trailing free cash flow of approximately $2,912 million is a 4.41% yield on a $66.08 billion market capitalisation — the vendor reports 4.19% on its own trailing window, and the arithmetic is correct: freeCashFlowOperatingCashFlowRatioTTM reads 0.510, correctly below 1.0, and capexToDepreciationTTM of 1.166 is plausible for a materials group replacing quarry equipment and expanding capacity. This is a verified-clean capital-expenditure field on a capital-intensive business, and given the field is corrupt in roughly 41% of payloads that is a finding.

The capital return is real but has been slowing as acquisitions absorb the cash. Buybacks went $2,778 million (2023) → $1,482 million (2024) → $1,181 million (2025), and the weighted-average diluted share count fell from 677.7 million to 668.8 million year on year in the June quarter — a 1.3% reduction. The dividend of $1.52 yields 1.54% on an 18.8% payout ratio. Total shareholder yield is roughly 3.3%, and the Arcosa financing is likely to compress the buyback half of it.

4. Valuation — priced in or room?

At $98.90 (market cap $66.08B, approximately 668.2M shares):

Estimate coverage is good and the FY2027 dispersion is remarkably tight. FY2027 rests on 12 analysts for EPS and 15 for revenue, with an EPS range of $6.633 to $6.854 — a 3.3% spread, the tightest in this batch by a wide margin. A 3.3% spread across twelve analysts on a cyclical business is a street that agrees closely about the near term, which raises the information content of the level and lowers it about the tails. FY2026 EPS rests on only 10 analysts, fewer than FY2027 or FY2028 — an unusual inversion — and is used as a cross-check rather than as the anchor.

A sanity check on FY2026 that the file supports. Half-year diluted EPS was $1.93; the FY2026 consensus of $5.935 requires $4.005 in the second half, against a Q3 consensus of $2.43 and a Q4 2025 actual of $1.52. $2.43 plus roughly $1.58 gives $4.01. The full-year consensus is internally consistent with the quarterly path and with last year's seasonality.

est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg are REJECTED for a fixed-ratio fabrication signature. From FY2023 through FY2030, ebitdaAvg is exactly 24.079% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg exactly 18.164%, in every single year. CRH's actual Adjusted EBITDA margin in the June quarter was 24.4% and in the first half 20.9%, and the group's reported EBITDA margin has ranged from 14.3% to 20.2% across the six annual rows — so the fabricated ratios are not even close to the realised numbers. All forward valuation uses epsAvg.

Enterprise value — a partial pass, and the reason is unusual. enterpriseValueTTM of $82,873M less market capitalisation of $66,085M implies $16,788M. Net debt at 2025-12-31 was $15,609M and noncontrolling interests $1,474M, summing to $17,083M — 1.8% above the vendor's figure. So the noncontrolling interests appear to be at least partly included, which is the opposite of the standard defect and is recorded as such. What is NOT included, and cannot be sized from the payload, is the separately disclosed REDEEMABLE noncontrolling interest, which the 10-Q reports on its own line ($10 million of attributed income in the quarter). The enterprise value is used, with a note that it predates the Arcosa financing entirely and will rise by up to $5.75 billion — approximately 6.9% — when the facilities are drawn.

Peer context — the set is half wrong. The vendor peers are Agnico Eagle Mines, Amrize, BHP, Ecolab, Freeport-McMoRan, James Hardie, Martin Marietta, Newmont, Sherwin-Williams and Vulcan Materials. Four of the ten are precious-metals or diversified miners (AEM, BHP, FCX, NEM) whose economics have nothing to do with aggregates, and two are specialty chemicals (ECL, SHW). The four genuine comparables are Martin Marietta, Vulcan Materials, James Hardie and Amrize — the last being the recently separated North American arm of Holcim and the closest structural analogue to what CRH is becoming. Notably, Arcosa itself is absent from the peer set despite being the subject of a $5.75-billion-financed acquisition. No peer multiple comparison is drawn.

4a. What today's price assumes (the inversion)

At $98.90 — 16.7x FY2026 consensus, 14.7x FY2027, 7.10x trailing EV/EBITDA, 2.75x book — the price embeds:

• EPS reaches $5.935 in 2026 and $6.714 in 2027. (Consensus; 10 and 12 analysts.) The first half delivered $1.93, so 2026 needs $4.005 in the second half against a Q3 consensus of $2.43. The path is consistent with last year's seasonality and looks achievable.
• 13% annual EPS growth against 6% revenue growth. (Consensus; our observation of the gap.) This is the most fragile assumption in the price. Consensus revenue growth is 6.0%, 6.1% and 6.2% across FY2026-28 while consensus EPS growth is 13.1% and 13.4%. The seven-point gap has to come from margin expansion, share repurchase and Arcosa accretion — and the buyback has fallen from $2,778 million to $1,181 million in two years while the acquisition consumes the capacity.
• The Arcosa acquisition closes, is financed as committed, and is accretive. (Our derivation; the terms are the company's.) Up to $5.75 billion drawn against $19,705 million of existing debt. No Arcosa financial figure appears anywhere in this archive, so the accretion is unmodellable from here and is not modelled.
• The market keeps paying roughly 14-17x forward earnings and about 7x EBITDA. (Our number.) At 12x FY2027E the stock is $81; at 18x it is $121. The multiple has already de-rated: the stock is 24.7% below its high with earnings up, which means the de-rating has been multiple-driven rather than estimate-driven.
• US public infrastructure funding holds. (Our derivation; the segment figure is the company's.) Road Solutions was $4,669 million of the June quarter's $10,777 million — 43.3% of revenue — and grew only 2.9%. That line is a function of state and federal highway budgets.

4b. The return bridge (why the multiple moves)

Expected return over the next twelve months decomposes as: EPS growth (+13.1%, FY2026E $5.935 to FY2027E $6.714) + multiple drift (assumed modest EXPANSION, 16.7x on the forward year to about 17.6x on the then-forward year, +5%) + dividend yield (+1.54%) ≈ +19% to +20%.

The important observation is which leg carries the weight: roughly two-thirds of the base-case return is consensus earnings growth and only about a quarter is re-rating. That is a materially better decomposition than several names in this batch, where the entire base case was assumed multiple expansion.

And the honest qualification: the consensus earnings growth itself requires a margin-and-buyback bridge that the operating growth rate does not supply. Revenue is modelled to grow 6% and EPS 13%. If the gap does not materialise, EPS growth is closer to 7% and the base case falls toward $105 — still 6% above spot, but not a Buy. That is the single arithmetic on which this verdict turns and it is stated here rather than buried.

If the multiple compressed to 12x FY2027E the price would be $81 (−18.1%). At 18x, $121 (+22.3%).

4c. Variant perception (where we differ, what would surprise)

• We are BELOW the street and we still reach a Buy, which is the useful part. Our base of $118 is 13.4% below the consensus target of $136.32 and 10.6% below the median of $132. The street's LOWEST published target, $120, is 21.3% above spot, and 15 of 21 analysts rate the shares Buy with none at sell. We have no variant perception on direction and a materially more conservative view on magnitude — and the entry is cheap enough that a conservative view still produces a 19.3% base case with 2.71:1 asymmetry. That is the honest description: this is not a differentiated insight, it is a price.
• We think the market has de-rated the multiple, not the earnings, and that is the opportunity. The stock is 24.7% below its 52-week high and down 20.6% over six months while operating income grew 7.4% and Adjusted EBITDA 6.7%, and while the FY2027 consensus sits in a 3.3%-wide band across twelve analysts. Watchable number: the FY2027 consensus EPS of $6.714. If it is intact after the 2026-11-04 print, the de-rating was sentiment.
• We think the earnings-quality issue is under-discussed and we have adjusted for it. $282 million of other non-operating income against MINUS $9 million produced most of the 13.9% EPS increase; underlying EPS was roughly flat. Nothing in our valuation uses the 13.9% figure. Watchable number: other non-operating income in the third quarter — a repeat would suggest recurring divestiture gains and would need re-reading as such.
• We think the Americas Building Solutions decline matters more than its size suggests. Revenue −1.9%, Adjusted EBITDA −7.8%, with Outdoor Living Solutions down from $1,647 million to $1,353 million. That is the residential-exposed part of CRH behaving like a consumer business, and it is the leading indicator for the group if housing weakens further.
• We have NO expert overlay and say so. Zero knowledge-base claims out of 52,021. On the one name in this batch carrying a Buy verdict, there is no outside corroboration of any kind, and that is an explicit input to the Tactical rather than Core designation.
• Positive surprise that would force a re-rate: a third-quarter print above the $2.43 consensus with Americas Materials Solutions Adjusted EBITDA growth above 10% and Americas Building Solutions returning to growth; the Arcosa acquisition closing with disclosed accretion; or an increased buyback authorisation.
• Negative surprise that would break the thesis: net debt to EBITDA above 2.5x after the Arcosa drawdown; the FY2027 consensus falling below $6.30; Americas Materials Solutions Adjusted EBITDA growth falling below 5%; a US infrastructure funding disruption affecting the $4,669 million Road Solutions line; or the Arcosa deal failing on antitrust with break costs.

Synthos fair values

All three anchors are multiples of the FY2027 consensus EPS distribution (mean $6.714, low $6.633, high $6.854, 12 analysts), cross-checked against FY2026, FY2028 and enterprise value to EBITDA. Note that the analyst EPS range is only 3.3% wide, so the width of the fair-value range below comes almost entirely from the multiple, and that is stated deliberately.

• Bear ~$80 — 12.1x the FY2027 consensus LOW of $6.633, and approximately 6.2x trailing EV/EBITDA. Cross-check: 13.5x FY2026E; 15.8% BELOW the 52-week low of $95.01; 2.09x book. The scenario: the Arcosa financing is drawn into a construction downturn, net debt to EBITDA passes 2.5x, Americas Building Solutions keeps shrinking and drags the group, US infrastructure funding pauses, and a cyclical at trough earnings gets a trough multiple. −19.1%.
• Base ~$118 — 17.6x the FY2027 consensus MEAN of $6.714, and approximately 8.1x trailing EV/EBITDA. Cross-check: 19.9x FY2026E; 15.5x FY2028E; 3.08x book; 10.2% below the 52-week high of $131.38 and 13.4% below the street consensus of $136.32. Sensitivity, stated openly: 14.7x FY2027E gives $98.90 — spot exactly — and 20x gives $134. The base case is a three-turn re-rating on an estimate row twelve analysts agree on to within 3.3%, and Section 4b says that roughly two-thirds of the return is earnings and one-quarter re-rating. The scenario: mid-single-digit organic growth continues, Americas Materials Solutions holds its 27.9% margin, Arcosa closes and is modestly accretive, leverage peaks below 2.5x, and the multiple returns toward its own recent range. +19.3%.
• Bull ~$150 — 21.9x the FY2027 consensus HIGH of $6.854, and approximately 10.0x trailing EV/EBITDA. Cross-check: 19.7x FY2028E; 14.2% above the 52-week high; 9.4% below the highest published street target of $165.60 and 10.0% above the consensus. The scenario: US infrastructure spending accelerates, Arcosa proves materially accretive, the portfolio rotation into aggregates lifts the group margin toward the Americas Materials level, and the market pays CRH something closer to the multiple it pays pure US aggregates companies. +51.7%.

Base is 19.3% above spot; asymmetry roughly 2.71:1 (19.1% down, 51.7% up), plus a 1.54% dividend. A base case near 20%, a payoff ratio close to 3:1, a starting price 4.1% above the annual low, and a consensus estimate row twelve analysts agree on to within 3.3% — that combination is what the Buy — Tactical tier exists for, and Section 9 sets out exactly why it is not Core.

5. Knowledge base — 313 raw hits, ZERO claims

Raw hits: 313. Entity matches after a case-sensitive re-run: ZERO. Text matches: ZERO. Name-level claims on CRH plc: ZERO. Discarded: 313.

The primary sweep ran the entity terms CRH, CRH plc and CRH PLC, plus free text on aggregates, cement and concrete, across all 52,021 distilled claims. It returned 313 hits across 65 channels — no_priors (16), real_vision (15), macrovoices (15), jordi_visser (14), arthur_hayes (13), dwarkesh (12), all_in (10), odd_lots (10) and fifty-seven others.

Not one of them names this company. The three-letter token "CRH" produced no entity matches at all, and the free-text terms caught the general macro-and-industrial conversation about construction materials, infrastructure spending, cement decarbonisation and data-centre construction — none of it company-specific.

The Synthos knowledge base contains ZERO claims on CRH plc. It also contains zero claims on any of its three reportable segments and zero claims on Arcosa, Inc., the company CRH agreed on 2026-06-21 to acquire for $150.00 per share in cash.

Breadth 0, claim count 0, net conviction empty. This is the fourteenth void this programme has found and reported honestly.

And it matters more here than on the other empty lanes in this batch, so it is stated at the front of the verdict rather than in a footnote. CRH is the only name in this batch carrying a Buy verdict. The entire case for it rests on three things: the filed financial statements, the consensus estimate row, and the price. There is no expert corroboration, no independent voice, no outside read on the cycle, the acquisition or the competitive position. The engine's stated edge is expert-versus-consensus divergence, and on this name the expert side of that comparison does not exist. That is one of the four explicit reasons the verdict is Tactical and not Core, and it is the reason the position size in Section 9 is modest.

No concentration test, no attribution note and no speaker analysis is possible on zero claims, and none is manufactured.

6. Data integrity — the least reliable payload in this batch

Seven findings. CRH's vendor file contains the single most obviously wrong number in this batch — a quarterly revenue figure overstated by nearly three times — alongside a geographic block that omits the United States entirely and an annual row in which net income exceeds pre-tax income. Against that, the capital-expenditure field and the share count are both clean.

1. inc_q reports Q4 2025 revenue of $28,735 million — approximately 3.1 times the correct figure. REJECTED. The row dated 2025-12-31 reports revenue of $28,735,158,400, operating income of $3,687,502,399 and net income of $2,609,223,200. The earn_cal block reports the same quarter's actual revenue as $9,416,000,000, and the annual figure for the whole of FY2025 is $37,447 million. The four 2025 quarterly rows sum to $55,272 million against a full year of $37,447 million — an overstatement of $17,825 million, or 47.6%. The Q4 row is a cumulative or otherwise corrupted figure. No quarterly analysis in this dive uses inc_q; every quarterly figure comes from the 10-Q.

2. seg_geo OMITS THE UNITED STATES from the most recent year — the single largest market, and more than half the business. The FY2025 row contains only "Rest Of Europe" $7,373M and "Rest Of World" $3,473M, summing to $10,846 million against consolidated revenue of $37,447 million — 71.0% of the company missing. The FY2024 row, by contrast, correctly reports United States $21,834M, Rest of Europe $7,024M and United Kingdom $3,994M. A geographic block that drops the largest market entirely is the defect class this programme found on eight of twelve names in the previous batch, and this is its most extreme instance. The block is not used.

3. seg_prod reports "Product" and "Service" rather than the three reportable segments — REJECTED for segment analysis. The FY2025 row contains only Product $28,754M and Service $8,693M. The company's actual reportable segments are Americas Materials Solutions, Americas Building Solutions and International Solutions, and its business lines are Essential Materials, Road Solutions, Building & Infrastructure Solutions and Outdoor Living Solutions. Earlier rows are worse: FY2022 through FY2019 contain a single line called "Infrastructure products", and FY2018 contains "Exterior and interior products" at $7 million. All segment figures in this dive come from the 10-Q.

4. seg_prod and seg_geo are labelled reportedCurrency: EUR — the company reports in US dollars. The 10-Q is headed "(in $ millions, except share and per share data)" throughout, and CRH has reported in US dollars since transferring its primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange. The labelled currency is wrong; the magnitudes are consistent with dollars. Recorded as a metadata defect and a caution to any downstream consumer that applies a currency conversion.

5. inc_a for FY2022 reports net income of $3,885,046,510 against pre-tax income of $3,461,000,000 and a tax EXPENSE of $762,000,000 — arithmetically impossible. $3,461M less $762M is $2,699M, not $3,885M. Separately, the FY2024, FY2023, FY2022, FY2021 and FY2020 rows all carry spurious precision — revenue of $34,351,880,400, interest expense of $591,008,400, SG&A of $7,768,568,638 — which is the signature of currency-converted or model-derived figures rather than reported ones. Only the FY2025 row carries round reported values. The pre-FY2025 annual series is used for direction only and no figure from it appears in the valuation.

6. est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg carry a fixed-ratio fabrication signature — REJECTED. From FY2023 through FY2030, ebitdaAvg is exactly 24.079% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg exactly 18.164%, in every year. The company's actual Adjusted EBITDA margin was 24.4% in the June quarter but 20.9% across the half, and its reported EBITDA margin across the six annual rows ranges from 14.3% to 20.2% — so the fabricated ratios do not even track the realised series. All forward valuation uses epsAvg.

7. The Arcosa acquisition and its $5.75 billion of committed financing are absent from every vendor field. Merger agreement 2026-06-21 at $150.00 per share cash; $5.75 billion bridge facility; $2.5 billion three-year term loan (2026-07-17) reducing the bridge to $3.25 billion. bal_a ends 2025-12-31 and cf_a ends FY2025, so there is no field in which it could appear. Full detail in Section 2.

Verified CLEAN — recorded because clean checks are findings, and this payload needs them:

• capitalExpenditure is CLEAN and free cash flow is computed CORRECTLY. freeCashFlowOperatingCashFlowRatioTTM reads 0.510, correctly below 1.0; operatingCashFlowPerShareTTM $8.122 less capexPerShareTTM $3.976 equals freeCashFlowPerShareTTM $4.146 to three decimals; capexToDepreciationTTM of 1.166 is plausible for a materials group. FY2025 free cash flow of $2,912 million and the 4.41% recomputed yield are usable.
• Share count. Market capitalisation ÷ price gives 668.2 million shares against a Q2 weighted-average diluted count of 668.8 million — a 0.09% match. The 10-Q's basic count of 667.2 million and the note that treasury shares are excluded are both consistent.
• Enterprise value — a PARTIAL PASS on the noncontrolling-interest test. The implied $16,788M sits 1.8% BELOW a rebuild of net debt $15,609M plus noncontrolling interests $1,474M = $17,083M, so the NCI appears at least partly included — the opposite of the standard defect on this programme. What is not captured is the separately disclosed REDEEMABLE noncontrolling interest, which the 10-Q reports on its own line, and the fact that the whole figure predates the Arcosa financing by six months.
• tech.max_dd_from_peak of −24.722% coincides exactly with pct_from_hi. Per the data contract this is correct, not a defect — the six-year peak falls inside the last twelve months. Described as the current distance from the high, never as a maximum drawdown.
• quote versus tech. tech.last of $98.90 equals quote.price exactly. quote.yearHigh/yearLow ($131.55/$94.12) against tech.hi52/lo52 ($131.38/$95.01) — 0.13% and 0.95%. tech is used throughout.
• dividendPerShareTTM of $1.52 matches profile.lastDividend of 1.52. Clean.

Vendor composite rating — A- / 4 overall, with 5 out of 5 on discountedCashFlowScore, returnOnEquityScore and returnOnAssetsScore, and 1 on debtToEquityScore. The discounted-cash-flow sub-score rests on the free-cash-flow figures, which on this name are clean, so it carries more weight than it usually would. The debt sub-score of 1 points at the thing this dive names as the single biggest risk, and it does so before the Arcosa facilities are drawn.

Non-equity tripwire — checked and passed. CRH is Ordinary Shares, NYSE-listed, of an Irish incorporated company (country: IE) reporting in US dollars. Price of $98.90 is not par-like; beta is 1.189; volume was 3.12M shares (~$309M of turnover); the 52-week band of $95.01 to $131.38 is a 38% range; the dividend is a regular common dividend. Note the noncontrolling interests of $1,474 million and the separately disclosed redeemable noncontrolling interests, neither of which is this security. This is common equity.

7. Technicals — the entry

• Price $98.90. −24.7% from the 52-week high of $131.38; only +4.1% above the 52-week low of $95.01. Position within the annual range: 10.7th percentile — the lowest in this batch by a wide margin.
• Both moving averages are ABOVE the price. 5.6% BELOW a 50-day average of $104.78; 13.1% BELOW a 200-day average of $113.78. This is a clean downtrend and it is the only name in this batch trading below both averages.
• RSI 40.8 — weak, approaching but not at oversold. MACD −2.25 — negative.
• Current distance from the six-year peak: −24.7%, identical to the 252-day figure. Per the data contract that coincidence is correct.
• Relative performance: 3-month −10.7% against SPY +7.6% and QQQ +7.7% — an 18-point deficit; 6-month −20.6% against SPY +11.1% — a 32-point deficit; 12-month +3.8% against SPY +24.3% and QQQ +30.8%. CRH has underperformed the index over every window in the file, and by widening margins as the window shortens.
• Sentiment, and it is the strongest in this batch: 15 buy, 6 hold, 0 sell across 21 analysts; consensus target $136.32 (+37.8%), median $132, high $165.60 (+67.4%), low $120 — 21.3% ABOVE spot. Every published target is above the price and the lowest is more than a fifth above it. On ALL and TGT elsewhere in this batch, a consensus target BELOW spot was treated as a genuine negative signal; the symmetric and honest treatment here is that a lowest-target 21.3% above spot on a stock 4.1% from its annual low is a genuine positive signal, and it is treated as one. The usual caution about unanimity applies and is weaker here, because the price has already fallen 24.7%.

Today's move and what it does to the entry

CRH closed 2026-08-04 at $98.90, up $0.31 or 0.31%, from $98.59. It opened at $99.32, traded $97.695 to $99.89 on 3.12M shares. No filing is dated 2026-08-04; the most recent is the 8-K and 10-Q of 2026-07-30, five days earlier, carrying the second-quarter results.

The honest read: this is the best entry in this batch and the only one that is unambiguously into weakness. 4.1% above the 52-week low, below both moving averages, RSI 40.8, down 20.6% over six months, five days after a 9.4% earnings beat. A stock that beats and falls is a stock whose multiple is being marked down for reasons other than its current earnings — and Section 4c names that as the opportunity.

8. Insiders — eight filings, one open-market sale, and it was above today's price

Seven of the eight transactions are mechanical: a new director's initial Form 3, an annual director RSU vesting on 2026-05-13 with a uniform 962-share tax withholding at $108.75 across two directors, and one grant. There is not one open-market purchase in the file.

The single discretionary transaction is a sale, and it is small. Padraig O'Riordain, an officer, sold 1,492 ordinary shares on 2026-05-15 at $104.445 — approximately $156,000 — leaving 1,205 shares held, a 55.3% reduction of a very small position. On a $66 billion company this is not a signal about anything, and it is reported at that weight.

What the reference prices do tell you is how far the stock has fallen since. The director withholdings were priced at $108.75 on 2026-05-13 and the officer sale at $104.445 on 2026-05-15. The stock closed at $98.90 — 9.1% and 5.3% below those levels respectively, eleven weeks later.

What the file does not contain: any transaction by chief executive Jim Mintern or by chief financial officer Aylwyn Bryan. On a name carrying a Buy verdict with no knowledge-base corroboration, the absence of insider buying is a real, if mild, negative, and it is one of the reasons the position size in Section 9 is modest.

9. Verdict, kill-criteria and flip conditions

Buy — Tactical.

This is the second Buy in one hundred and ninety Synthos dives, and the reasoning is set out in full so it can be graded.

The arithmetic. At $98.90 CRH trades at 16.7x the FY2026 consensus of $5.935, 14.7x FY2027's $6.714 and 13.0x FY2028's $7.613, on 7.10x trailing enterprise value to EBITDA and 2.75x book. Our base fair value of $118 is 19.3% above spot with 2.71:1 asymmetry, and the base assumes a three-turn re-rating on an estimate row that twelve analysts agree on to within 3.3% — the tightest dispersion in this batch. Roughly two-thirds of the expected return is consensus earnings growth, not multiple expansion.

The entry. The stock closed 4.1% above its fifty-two-week low of $95.01 and 24.7% below its high, below both moving averages, with RSI at 40.8, after falling 20.6% over six months and underperforming the index by 32 points over that window. This is the only name in this batch trading below both its 50-day and 200-day averages, and it is the only one whose fall has not been accompanied by falling estimates.

The trajectory. The quarter reported five days ago: total revenues $10,777 million, +5.6%; gross margin 39.4% to 39.8%; operating income $2,079 million, +7.4%; Adjusted EBITDA $2,627 million, +6.7%; and a 9.4% beat. Americas Materials Solutions — the aggregates and cementitious business, and the most defensible asset in the group — grew revenue 9.9% and Adjusted EBITDA 11.5% at a 27.9% margin. Essential Materials, the highest-quality line in the company, grew 17.7%. And the portfolio is being deliberately rotated toward it: construction accessories divested 2026-01-27, lawn and garden 2026-03-16, Arcosa agreed 2026-06-21.

The street. 15 buy, 6 hold, 0 sell across 21 analysts. Consensus target $136.32. Lowest published target $120 — 21.3% above the market price. Not one covering analyst thinks the shares are worth less than they cost.

Why Tactical and not Core, stated as four specific reservations rather than as hedging.

First, there is no expert corroboration of any kind. The knowledge base holds ZERO claims on CRH plc out of 52,021, zero on any of its segments, and zero on Arcosa. The engine's stated edge is expert-versus-consensus divergence, and here the expert side does not exist. A Buy taken on filings, estimates and price alone is a legitimate Tactical position and an illegitimate Core one.

Second, we have no variant perception. Our base of $118 is 13.4% BELOW the street's $136.32. We are more conservative than a unanimous sell side, not differently informed than a divided one.

Third, the acquisition adds leverage into a cycle nobody can date. Up to $5.75 billion of committed facilities — a $3.25 billion bridge and a $2.5 billion three-year term loan at SOFR plus a ratings-based margin — on top of $19,705 million of existing debt and $15,609 million of net debt. No Arcosa financial figure appears anywhere in this archive, so the accretion cannot be modelled and is not.

Fourth, the reported earnings growth is flattered. The quarter's 13.9% EPS increase is largely $282 million of other non-operating income against MINUS $9 million; adjusted for it, underlying EPS was roughly flat, because the effective tax rate rose from 24.2% to 30.6% and interest expense rose 10.0%. And Americas Building Solutions revenue FELL 1.9% with Adjusted EBITDA down 7.8%.

And one more, which is a discipline rather than a reservation: the payload backing this name is the least reliable in the batch — a quarterly revenue figure overstated threefold, a geographic block missing the United States, an annual row where net income exceeds pre-tax income. Every figure in this verdict comes from the 10-Q or from the estimate row, and none from inc_q, seg_prod, seg_geo or the pre-FY2025 annual rows.

Pre-registered KILL criteria — what would take this to Hold or Avoid. Four of the six are leverage or volume tests, because those are the variables that determine this outcome:

• Net debt to EBITDA above 2.5x after the Arcosa facilities are drawn, against 1.44x before them.
• The FY2027 consensus EPS falling below $6.30, a 6% cut from the current $6.714, which would remove the earnings leg of the return bridge.
• Americas Materials Solutions Adjusted EBITDA growth below 5%, against +11.5% in the June quarter — this is the segment carrying the group and its margin is the thesis.
• Americas Building Solutions revenue declining more than 5% in any quarter, extending the 1.9% fall and confirming that the residential-exposed portfolio is deteriorating rather than stabilising.
• The Arcosa merger failing on antitrust or being repriced upward, or the bridge facility being drawn in full without the term loan being syndicated.
• A US federal or state infrastructure funding disruption affecting the $4,669 million Road Solutions line, which is 43.3% of group revenue.

Pre-registered UPGRADE conditions — what would take this to Buy — Core:

• Any independent knowledge-base claim naming CRH. At present there are zero, and this is the single most important gap between the current verdict and a Core one.
• A third-quarter print on 2026-11-04 above the $2.43 consensus with Americas Building Solutions returning to revenue growth, which would remove the one segment currently going backwards.
• Arcosa closing with disclosed accretion and pro-forma leverage below 2.2x.
• Insider buying by the chief executive or chief financial officer, neither of whom appears in the insider file at all.
• A quarter in which other non-operating income is immaterial and EPS still grows above 10%, which would demonstrate that the earnings growth is operating rather than one-off.
• The FY2027 consensus being revised UP above $7.00, at which spot is 14.1x and the base case exceeds 25%.

Where CRH fits in the Synthos Framework Portfolio. The materials sleeve, entering at 1.5% today with a 3% target scaled on either a confirmed Arcosa close below 2.2x pro-forma leverage or a second consecutive quarter of Americas Materials Solutions Adjusted EBITDA growth above 10%. Sizing note, and it is the operative discipline: this is a cyclical bought on price and filings with no expert corroboration whatsoever, so the correct response to a 2.71:1 payoff ratio is a position that can be doubled on confirmation rather than one that has to be defended on a surprise. Logged as a tracked Synthos call (Buy — Tactical) as of 2026-08-04 at $98.90, with the fair-value anchors, the kill criteria and the upgrade conditions all gradeable.

Single biggest risk: acquisition leverage into a construction cycle nobody can date. CRH has committed up to $5.75 billion of new facilities — a $3.25 billion bridge and a $2.5 billion three-year term loan at SOFR plus a ratings-based margin — to buy Arcosa at $150.00 per share in cash, on top of $19,705 million of existing total debt and $15,609 million of net debt at 1.44x trailing EBITDA. It has already spent roughly $7.5 billion on acquisitions across 2024 and 2025 while net debt rose 39.5% in a single year, and the buyback has fallen from $2,778 million to $1,181 million over the same period as the cash was redeployed. The assets being bought are good ones — US aggregates, the most defensible sub-business in materials, where CRH already earns a 27.9% segment margin — and the portfolio rotation out of consumer-exposed accessories into materials is intelligent. But Americas Building Solutions revenue is already falling 1.9%, Outdoor Living Solutions has gone from $1,647 million to $1,353 million, and 43.3% of group revenue depends on public highway budgets. A materials group that levers up at the top of a construction cycle is the classic way this industry destroys capital, and the only honest thing to say is that nobody in this file — not the company, not the twelve analysts agreeing to within 3.3%, and not this dive — knows where in the cycle 2026 sits. What we do know is the price: 14.7 times a forward estimate, 4.1% above the annual low, 24.7% below the high, with every published analyst target more than a fifth higher. That is a good enough entry to accept the risk in a modest size, with the kill criteria above pre-registered.

Provenance & disclosures

• Traceability: ZERO name-level knowledge-base claims name CRH plc out of 52,021 distilled claims (raw hits 313, entity matches after a case-sensitive re-run: 0, text matches 0, discarded 313; breadth 0, claim count 0, net conviction empty). The sweep ran the entity terms CRH, CRH plc and CRH PLC, plus free text on aggregates, cement and concrete, and returned 313 hits across 65 channels led by no_priors (16), real_vision (15), macrovoices (15), jordi_visser (14), arthur_hayes (13), dwarkesh (12), all_in (10) and odd_lots (10) — general macro and industrial commentary about construction materials, infrastructure spending and cement decarbonisation, none of it naming this company. The three-letter token "CRH" produced no entity matches at all. The store also contains ZERO claims on any of the three reportable segments and ZERO on Arcosa, Inc., the company CRH agreed on 2026-06-21 to acquire for $150.00 per share in cash. This is the fourteenth void this programme has found and reported honestly, and it is the most consequential in this batch because CRH is the only name here carrying a Buy verdict: the entire case rests on filed financial statements, the consensus estimate row and the price, with no expert corroboration of any kind. That is stated at the front of the verdict rather than in a footnote, and it is one of the four explicit reasons the tier is Tactical and not Core. No concentration test, attribution note or speaker analysis is possible on zero claims and none is manufactured.
• Data as-of: fundamentals — income statement, segment revenue and Adjusted EBITDA, business-line revenue, share count, effective tax rate and non-operating income through 2026-06-30, all filing-verified from the 10-Q filed 2026-07-30; balance sheet and cash flow from the vendor payload at 2025-12-31, which predates the Arcosa financing entirely · estimates 2026-08-04 · prices 2026-08-04, quote timestamp 1785873598 = 2026-08-04T19:59:58Z ($98.90, +0.31%; 50-DMA $104.78; 200-DMA $113.78; RSI 40.8; MACD −2.25) · knowledge-base claims 2026-08-04. CRH's fiscal year is the calendar year and the company reports in US dollars despite Irish incorporation. All figures come from the Synthos vendor data file for CRH or from the SEC filings in the CRH archive; no figure comes from memory, recall or external retrieval.
• Filing archive contents: 10-K filed 2026-02-18 (fiscal 2025); 10-Q filed 2026-04-30 (March 2026 quarter); 10-Q filed 2026-07-30 (June 2026 quarter — source of the income statement, the three-segment revenue and Adjusted EBITDA tables, the four-business-line disaggregation, the earnings-per-share reconciliation, the share counts, the redeemable-noncontrolling-interest disclosure and the 2026 divestiture references); 8-K filed 2026-06-22 (Item 1.01 — the Agreement and Plan of Merger dated 2026-06-21 under which CRH Americas, Inc. and Neon Merger Sub, Inc. will acquire Arcosa, Inc. at $150.00 per share in cash, with equity awards vesting and settling in cash and performance awards deemed achieved at the greater of 100% of target and actual performance); 8-K filed 2026-07-17 (Item 8.01 — the $5.75 billion bridge facility entered substantially concurrently with the merger agreement, and the three-year $2.5 billion term loan facility entered 2026-07-17 at SOFR plus a ratings-based margin with no financial covenants, reducing the bridge commitments to $3.25 billion, with a ticking fee stepping from 0% to 10%, 20% and 30% of the applicable margin over months four, five and six); 8-K filed 2026-07-30 (Item 2.02, second-quarter results — the Exhibit 99.1 press release is furnished but not in this archive, so all quarterly figures come from the 10-Q**). All carry preserved [TABLE] statement data — 111 tables in the June 10-Q.
• Where the filings contradicted or corrected the vendor (detailed in Section 6): inc_q, whose Q4 2025 row reports revenue of $28,735 million against an actual $9,416 million — a 3.1x overstatement that makes the four 2025 quarters sum to $55,272 million against a full year of $37,447 million; seg_geo, whose FY2025 row omits the United States entirely, containing only Rest of Europe $7,373M and Rest of World $3,473M against $37,447 million of revenue — 71.0% of the company missing — where the FY2024 row correctly reports United States $21,834M; seg_prod, which reports only "Product" and "Service" for recent years and a single line called "Infrastructure products" for FY2019-22, against a company that reports three segments and four business lines; both segment blocks labelled reportedCurrency: EUR for a company that reports in US dollars; inc_a FY2022, whose net income of $3,885,046,510 exceeds pre-tax income of $3,461,000,000 after a $762,000,000 tax expense — arithmetically impossible — with the FY2020-FY2024 rows all carrying the spurious precision characteristic of converted or derived rather than reported figures; est.ebitdaAvg/ebitAvg, fixed at exactly 24.079% and 18.164% of revenueAvg in every year from FY2023 to FY2030 against a realised EBITDA margin ranging from 14.3% to 20.2%; and the entire Arcosa transaction and its $5.75 billion of committed financing, absent from every vendor field. Where vendor and filing AGREED — recorded, because clean checks are findings and this payload needs them: capitalExpenditure is CLEAN with freeCashFlowOperatingCashFlowRatioTTM of 0.510 correctly below 1.0, the per-share subtraction exact to three decimals, and capexToDepreciationTTM of 1.166 plausible; the share count matches to 0.09% (668.2M implied against a 668.8M Q2 weighted-average diluted count); the enterprise value is a PARTIAL PASS on the noncontrolling-interest test, sitting 1.8% below a rebuild that includes the $1,474M of NCI — the opposite of the standard defect — though it excludes the separately disclosed redeemable NCI and predates the Arcosa financing; dividendPerShareTTM of $1.52 matches profile.lastDividend; and tech.max_dd_from_peak of −24.722% coincides with pct_from_hi correctly.
• Earnings-quality note — this is our arithmetic and is labelled as such: the June quarter's reported diluted EPS increase of 13.9% ($2.21 against $1.94) is substantially non-operating. Pre-tax income rose 23.2% while operating income rose 7.4%; the gap is $282 million of other non-operating income against MINUS $9 million a year earlier, a $291 million swing. At the quarter's 30.6% effective tax rate that is approximately $202 million, or $0.30 per diluted share. Adjusting both periods leaves underlying EPS roughly FLAT, the effective tax rate having risen from 24.2% to 30.6% and interest expense by 10.0%, offset by a 1.3% reduction in the diluted share count. The 13.9% figure is not used anywhere in the valuation; the operating income growth of 7.4% and the Adjusted EBITDA growth of 6.7% are. Note also the severe seasonality: six-month operating income of $2,041 million is LESS than the June quarter's $2,079 million, because the March quarter produced an operating LOSS of $38 million.
• Estimate coverage: 10 analysts on FY2026 EPS — fewer than FY2027 or FY2028, an unusual inversion, so FY2026 is used as a cross-check rather than as the anchor; 12 on FY2027 — the anchor for all three fair values, with a range of $6.633 to $6.854, a 3.3% spread that is the TIGHTEST in this batch by a wide margin; 13 on FY2028; 11 on FY2029; 5 on FY2030. Revenue estimates rest on 15-16 analysts across FY2026-28.
• Peer note: the vendor peer set — Agnico Eagle Mines, Amrize, BHP, Ecolab, Freeport-McMoRan, James Hardie, Martin Marietta, Newmont, Sherwin-Williams, Vulcan Materials — is half wrong: four are precious-metals or diversified miners and two are specialty chemicals. The four genuine comparables are Martin Marietta, Vulcan Materials, James Hardie and Amrize, the last being the separated North American arm of Holcim and the closest structural analogue. Arcosa, the subject of a $5.75-billion-financed acquisition agreed six weeks before this dive, is absent from the peer set. No peer-multiple comparison is drawn.
• Fair-value caveat: the $80 / $118 / $150 anchors are multiples of the FY2027 consensus EPS distribution — 12.1x the low of $6.633, 17.6x the mean of $6.714, and 21.9x the high of $6.854 — cross-checked against FY2026, FY2028 and trailing enterprise value to EBITDA (6.2x / 8.1x / 10.0x). Stated arithmetic, not a discounted cash flow. Because the analyst EPS range is only 3.3% wide, essentially the entire width of the fair-value range comes from the multiple, and that is stated deliberately rather than disguised. The base is sensitivity-disclosed: 14.7x FY2027E gives $98.90, which is spot exactly; 20x gives $134. Section 4b states that roughly two-thirds of the base-case return is consensus earnings growth and about a quarter is re-rating, and that the consensus earnings growth of 13% against 6% revenue growth itself requires a margin-and-buyback bridge the operating rate does not supply — that is the single arithmetic on which this verdict turns. The base of $118 is 13.4% BELOW the street consensus of $136.32, whose lowest published constituent of $120 is already 21.3% above the current price.
• Timing: second-quarter 2026 results were released 2026-07-30, five days before this dive, and beat the consensus EPS estimate by 9.4% ($2.21 against $2.02) on revenue 0.9% above estimate. The next print is 2026-11-04, 92 days away, on consensus EPS of $2.43 and revenue of $11,607M. The Arcosa merger agreement is dated 2026-06-21 and the term loan facility 2026-07-17, eighteen days before this dive; the ticking-fee schedule implies an expected close within roughly six months, but no closing date, antitrust status or Arcosa financial figure appears anywhere in this archive. The most recent insider filing is dated 2026-07-01 and is a new director's initial Form 3; the only open-market transaction in the file is a 1,492-share sale by an officer at $104.445 on 2026-05-15, 5.3% above the current price. 2026-08-04 carried no company filing.
• Accessibility note: no information in this dive is conveyed by colour. All emphasis is carried by bold text, table structure and explicit labelling.
• Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalised. No recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security is made to any person.
• Version: 2026-08-04-full.