Wienerberger Trims Full-Year EBITDA Guidance to €700 Million as Brick Demand Wilts

Wienerberger lowers full-year operating EBITDA guidance to about €700 million, closes brick plants and expands renovation and water infrastructure.

Wienerberger is redrawing its production map and reworking its revenue mix at the same time, as a stubborn downturn in European residential construction forces the Austrian building-materials group to lower its sights for the year.

Management now expects operating EBITDA of roughly €700 million for the current financial year, scaled back from an earlier projection of €810 million. The revision, announced about a month ago, reflects a residential new-build market that has yet to find a floor. Higher interest rates and markedly more expensive construction costs have sapped demand from both private homeowners and commercial developers, leaving the brickmaker to lean on tighter cost control and higher-margin specialty products in the renovation segment to cushion the revenue shortfall.

Portfolio Shift Toward Renovation and Water Infrastructure

The company's answer to the cyclical squeeze has been a deliberate broadening of its business base. This past spring, Wienerberger completed the acquisitions of Italcer and the NEWS Group. The Italcer deal — a 50 percent stake plus one share — deepens the group's renovation footprint, with a call option on the remaining shares exercisable in the first half of 2027. Alongside renovation, water and infrastructure technology is moving toward the center of the corporate strategy. On a regional level, Wienerberger also agreed to take over Serbia's Univerzum Group to expand its presence in southeastern Europe.

Those moves are intended to reduce reliance on the swings of new-build activity and widen the earnings base beyond the traditional brick business.

Plant Closures and a Solar Investment

Operationally, the group is consolidating capacity across several European regions. On September 14, Wienerberger halted brick production at its St. Andrä site in Austria, which will continue as a pure warehousing and logistics hub to keep regional distribution intact. In the UK, difficult conditions in the brick market have weighed on results; according to media reports, the Hartlebury plant has been shut or is being prepared for closure.

Not all of the site-level news is about cutbacks. On September 17, Wienerberger Italia, together with Edison Next, brought a ground-mounted photovoltaic park online in Valenza with a capacity of nearly 3 megawatts, supplying the site's terracotta roof-tile production and chipping away at energy costs.

Leadership Transition at the Top

The operational pressures have coincided with changes in the executive suite. Heimo Scheuch, the long-serving chief executive, stepped down roughly a month ago for health reasons, and Gerhard Hanke has taken over as interim CEO. Hanke previously served as COO Central & East and as deputy chairman. A structured search for a permanent successor is under way. In a separate move aimed at reframing its dialogue with the capital markets, Wienerberger appointed Claus Ehrenbeck as Senior Vice President Investor Relations on September 15. Ehrenbeck succeeds Therese Jandér and reports to CFO Dagmar Steinert.

Market Reaction

Investors have not been forgiving. The stock closed Thursday at €17.18, down 2.6 percent on the day, and has lost 44 percent since the start of the year. At one point in recent trading the shares changed hands at €17.28, a level that underscores how heavily the sector's troubles are weighing on the equity.