French cement group Lafarge on Wednesday took a 385 million euro ($439 million) charge for impairment of assets in Syria and Iraq, and said it saw cement market growth of between 2 and 5 percent in 2015 with growth coming mainly in emerging markets.

Lafarge said it still hoped to complete its planned merger deal with Swiss counterpart Holcim in the first half of this year as it delivered fourth quarter EBITDA earnings of 679 million euros, down 4 percent mainly due to negative exchange rate developments and in line with analysts expectations.

It predicted EBITDA in 2015 of between 3.0 and 3.2 billion euros and reaffirmed its existing cost-saving targets. ($1 = 0.8767 euros)