Mexican cement company Cemex posted a net loss for the second quarter as higher financial costs and foreign exchange losses combined with lower operating profit from a year ago. Cemex reported a net loss of $301 million for the April-June period, or $0.31 per American depositary share, compared with a net profit of $173 million or $0.23 per ADS in the year-ago quarter.

Second-quarter sales were around $3.8 billion, a 3% drop from a year ago when adjusting for the sale last year of Cemex's Australian assets. Sales in Mexico rose 8%, while in the U.S. sales fell 8% and in Europe sales fell 10%, Cemex said in a press release.

Consolidated cement sales volume rose 3% from a year ago to 17.9 million metric tons, while ready mix concrete volumes fell 5% to 13.5 million cubic meters, and aggregates volume fell 4% to 43.1 million metric tons. "Despite the prevailing headwinds, we believe that economic conditions in most of our markets have stabilized or reached inflection points, as evidenced by positive cement sales volume performance in several of our markets," Fernando A. Gonzalez, executive vice president of planning and finance, said in the release. Cemex said the infrastructure and residential sectors were the main drivers of demand in most of its markets.