The company’s operating income rose 44 percent to 10.5 billion rubles, according to the financial statements. Kolesnikov said earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was 12 billion rubles in 2012, and that Technonicol has doubled its output per worker since 2008.

Margin Envy

The company is valued using the average enterprise value- to-Ebitda multiple of three publicly traded peers: Hedehusene, Denmark-based Rockwool International A/S, Courbevoie, France- based Cie. de Saint-Gobain SA and Baar, Switzerland-based Sika AG. Enterprise value is defined as market capitalization plus total debt minus cash.

“Technonicol managed to generate an Ebitda margin of 20 percent, which is impressive,” said Daniel Patterson, an analyst with Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken in Copenhagen in an e-mail. “Most European building materials companies would envy that.”

In 1995, four years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Kolesnikov and Rybakov used $40,000 in savings and debt to buy their first plant, a roofing factory complex constructed in 1918 in Vyborg, a city 75 miles northwest of St. Petersburg. They spent $15 million modernizing the facility, and have since built 36 more plants -- 30 in Russia, three in Ukraine, and one in Belarus, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.

Volcanic Rock

They expanded into insulation materials in 2003, acquiring a plant in the Chelyabinsk region of central Russia. Its main product is stone wool, a fiber made from melted volcanic rock that is used for insulation, fire protection, noise and vibration control. The insulation business is more profitable than the roofing division, Kolesnikov said.

“We expect that stone wool market will grow more dynamically in the mid-term than the construction market,” Evgeniya Sviridova, a spokeswoman for Rosizol, an insulation producers association, said in an e-mail.

The billionaires received a boost from the government in 2009, when it passed the Energy Saving and Increasing Energy Efficiency Act, a law that requires builders to use energy- saving materials in newly built homes.

Its industry dominance has rankled competitors. In 2008, Rockwool and St. Petersburg-based Penoplex sued Technonicol through Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service for violating Russia’s Competition Protection law.