Holcim de Costa Rica S.A.

What it is

The group operates across four business lines: cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregates, and construction solutions and products. Since 2022 it has also moved into building concrete works, prefabricated heavy structures and related services.

Holcim Costa Rica, S.A. was incorporated under the laws of Costa Rica on 25 May 1960, though it has operated in the country without interruption since 10 August 1964. It also controls Holcim Nicaragua, S.A., giving the group a two-country footprint in Central America.

Who owns it

The group is a subsidiary owned, at 31 December 2024, 66.4% by Holcim Auslandbeteiligungs GmbH, a company domiciled in Germany, whose ultimate controlling entity is Holcim Ltd, a company domiciled in Switzerland. The remaining roughly 33.6% is the public free float, traded on the BNV.

Holcim trades its shares on the Bolsa de Valores de Costa Rica (BNV). The authorised, issued and fully paid share capital at 31 December 2024 consists of 8,577,370,731 common registered shares with a par value of one colón each.

Who runs it

Holcim Costa Rica named Natalia Soler as its new CEO in May 2024; she has led the company since then, bringing 22 years of experience across commercial, operational and strategic roles at major global companies. The board chair is a senior executive with engineering and finance credentials who previously served as CFO across multiple Holcim Latin American operations, including Argentina and the regional LATAM role from 2018 to 2024, and has served as president of Polpaico in Chile.

Dolly Janeth Urrego Morales heads the local finance function; she is a Colombian-national certified public accountant with an MBA from EAFIT and joined the LafargeHolcim group in 2007, holding senior finance and control roles in Colombia and Mexico before Costa Rica. She signs the company’s quarterly financial filings as legal representative.

The money, in plain words

Full-year 2024 net sales came to ₡124.8 billion (≈ $277.1 million), fractionally below the ₡126.4 billion recorded the year before, while group net profit rose to ₡17.1 billion (≈ $37.9 million) from ₡16.8 billion — a revenue dip of 1.2% but a profit increase of 1.5% (our calculation).

The company kept about 13.7 cents of profit from every colón of sales — a net profit margin of 13.7% (our calculation), solid for a building-materials manufacturer. For every colón of owners’ equity in the business it earned back roughly 19 centimos a year — a return on equity of ~19.0% (our calculation), which is high for an industrial company in a small economy.

The balance sheet is conservatively financed: at year-end 2024, total assets were ₡138.6 billion (≈ $307.7 million) against a total equity of ₡92.2 billion (≈ $204.7 million), with no financial debt — only lease obligations — leaving the group in a net cash position of roughly ₡1.6 billion (≈ $3.5 million) (our calculation). Shares outstanding total 8,577,370,731, with 2024 basic earnings per share of ₡1.99.

The company distributed ₡12.8 billion (≈ $28.4 million) in dividends to controlling shareholders during 2024, implying a payout ratio of about 81% of profit attributable to controlling owners (our calculation) — a very generous return of cash to shareholders.

What it is doing now

On 1 May 2024, Holcim Costa Rica completed the absorption of its environmental services subsidiary Geocycle SAG, S.A., of which it already held 100%, folding the unit into the parent company. Then, in the most recent move, on 1 July 2025 it absorbed Holcim Modular Solutions S.A. (formerly Construcorp Internacional SCI, S.A.), a prefabricated construction company it fully owned — streamlining the group structure as it pushes deeper into turnkey construction.

The nine months to September 2025 show the strategy working: unaudited net sales of ₡104.8 billion are running well ahead of the ₡93.9 billion booked in the same period of 2024 — a 11.5% gain year-on-year (our calculation) — suggesting full-year 2025 revenues will materially exceed 2024. The company was the first building-materials firm to join the UN Global Compact’s “Business Ambition for 1.5 °C” commitment, with its climate targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

What to watch

• Parent ownership creep. Holcim Ltd lifted its stake from 66.4% to 66.67% between December 2024 and September 2025; further increases would narrow the free float and could eventually trigger a full buy-out.
• Construction solutions growth. The shift from selling bags of cement to delivering finished prefabricated structures carries higher revenue per project but also higher execution risk and longer cash cycles — the 2024 accounts already show average collection days widening from 27 to 33.
• Costa Rica macro. Construction contributes roughly 4% to Costa Rica’s GDP and represents 12.5% of national employment — making Holcim’s volumes a direct read on the country’s economic health.
• Market price opacity. The BNV secondary market for this stock is thinly traded; no live price is consistently published, making it impossible for outside investors to judge value in real time.

This is news, not investment advice.

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