Good afternoon. My name is Holly, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Avantor first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. After the speaker's remarks, we will have a question- and- answer session. To ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw a question, press the pound key. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. I will now turn the call over to Tommy Thomas, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Thomas, you may begin the conference.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. Our speakers today are Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tom Szlosek, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The press release and a presentation accompanying this call are available on our investor website at ir.avantorsciences.com. A replay of this webcast will also be available on our website following this call. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the line for your questions. I would like to note that we will be making some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our SEC filings.
Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we made today. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made, and we do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events and developments, or otherwise. This call will include a discussion of non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures can be found in the appendix to the presentation. With that, I will now turn the call over to Michael.
Thank you, Tommy, and thanks to all of you for joining us today for our first quarter earnings call. Tommy Thomas started with us in March, and we're excited to have him leading the Avantor Investor Relations program. Welcome, Tommy. I want to acknowledge the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had in the time since our last earnings call. Our team is doing a terrific job managing the business despite the challenges of the current situation. During the call today, we will share details about our efforts to provide the mission-critical products and solutions our customers need, while also ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our associates. I hope that each of you and your families are staying safe during this unprecedented time. I'm starting on slide three with a brief review of Avantor's revenue profile.
Our diversified revenue base, combined with the customized nature of our solutions, makes our business model very resilient, even in a recessionary environment. We are very well-positioned for continued growth in Europe and the Americas, and we are investing to expand our capabilities in emerging markets throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. More than 85% of our business is recurring, and approximately half of our revenue comes from the proprietary branded products and services. No single customer represents more than 3% of our revenue, and approximately 2/3 of our revenue is in the life sciences space in attractive end markets such as biopharma and healthcare. Moving to slide four, I want to provide some insights into our first quarter business highlights.
As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, we quickly mobilized a global steering committee of cross-functional leaders to drive a swift and collaborative response across our business with a focus on safely providing business continuity to our customers. Throughout the pandemic, our distribution, research, and manufacturing sites have remained operational. To protect the health and wellbeing of our associates in these operations, we are closely monitoring and implementing guidelines from credible health agencies, including the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, as well as taking other precautionary measures. For the remaining workforce of sales and support personnel, we have implemented work-from-home processes, which we believe are working very well in the circumstances.
I am extremely proud of all our associates around the world who continue their tireless work serving our customers, including many who are working to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. Our broad life sciences portfolio is being widely used in many COVID-19 related areas, including patient testing, vaccine and therapy development, clinical trial services, and ultimately in the production of approved treatments. We have moved rapidly to enable fast and accurate research results by offering products and protocols in sample collection, DNA and RNA extraction, serology, and real-time PCR. Our biopharma customers are aggressively focused on therapy and vaccine research, and our capabilities and workflows such as cell culture, QPCR, protein purification, and formulation are critical. With our broad customer access and extensive portfolio of products and solutions, Avantor is an important partner in the race for a COVID-19 cure.
We also advanced key elements of our growth strategy in the first quarter. For example, we launched PROchievA, a proprietary protein A chromatography resin. This new product innovation focuses on downstream processing, enabling best-in-class purification performance for customers working with monoclonal antibodies, Fc fusion proteins, and immunoglobulin antibody molecules. This product will expand our addressable market by over $1 billion and enhance our margin profile over time. As you may recall, we've invested significant capital to build a world-class technology and innovation center in Bridgewater, New Jersey to expand our bioprocessing capabilities. PROchievA is one of the first of many new product innovations to come out of this center. Our previously announced investments to expand our hydration, single-use, HPLC sugars, and biorepository capacity are proceeding on schedule. We're excited for the future growth prospects that our investments are enabling, even in this challenging environment.
We remain on track to complete the VWR synergy program in 2020, and our Avantor Business System continues to gain traction across the enterprise in driving growth and productivity. Turning to slide five of the presentation, I'd like to share a few financial highlights from the quarter. Organic revenue growth was 4.1% for the period, representing solid growth on our toughest prior period comparison. Growth was led by high single-digit expansion in our biopharma business, where demand remains robust around the world. Growth was impacted by academic and government lab closures in Europe and the Americas late in the quarter, as well as by supply chain challenges associated with government-imposed border controls related to the pandemic. Excluding adverse currency impacts, adjusted EBITDA on the quarter was up 7%, and adjusted earnings per share increased approximately 64% to $0.17 per share.
Double-digit revenue growth from our proprietary materials was a key driver of our margin expansion in the quarter. Cash flow was very strong in the quarter. We generated $241 million of free cash flow, an increase of 284% compared to 2019. Combined with our earnings growth, this enabled us to reduce net leverage to 4.4x , down from 4.6x at the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. We remain committed to continued deleveraging as we approach our target leverage range of 2x-4x EBITDA. Before I turn it over to Tom to discuss the financials in more detail, I want to emphasize the resiliency of our business model. We are well positioned with a highly recurring revenue base, a broad product offering, significant exposure to attractive end markets like biopharma, and a strong culture of execution enabled by the Avantor Business System.
Avantor's mission of setting science in motion is more meaningful and relevant now than ever before. Our Q1 results reflect this resiliency. With that, let me turn it over to Tom.
Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon. I hope everyone listening to our call is doing well. Let's start on slide six. We executed well in a challenging environment. Revenues, profits, and free cash flow were all strong. Our manufacturing and assembly plants and distribution centers generally have prioritized or essential status and, as Michael indicated, have continued to be operational throughout the pandemic. Vendor supply disruptions have been limited, although some categories like personal protective equipment, otherwise known as PPE, remain challenging given the extraordinary demand fueled by the pandemic. Organic revenue growth was 4.1% and should be considered in the context of the 7.9% growth in the first quarter of 2019. Overall, this was a good result against a tough comparison, especially with the additional COVID-19 challenges.
Growth in the quarter was driven by continued momentum in our biopharma platform that grew high single digits, with notable strength in our single-use solution, life science reagent, and personal protective equipment. This growth was offset by COVID-19-driven closures of academic and government research labs, K through 12 school closures, high single-digit declines in sales of equipment and instrumentation, and AMEA supply chain challenges. We believe that net of all of these factors, COVID-19 contributed approximately 50- 100 basis points of growth in the quarter. Looking at growth from a regional perspective, Americas, which represents approximately 60% of global sales, reported 5.4% organic revenue growth, driven by the biopharma and advanced technology and applied materials end markets, offset by flat healthcare and lab closures in the academic markets, as I mentioned.
Europe, which represents approximately 35% of global sales, reported 3.3% organic revenue growth, driven by the biopharma and healthcare end markets, offset by declines in the education and advanced technology and applied materials end markets. AMEA, representing approximately 5% of global sales, reported a 5.1% organic revenue decline. This region was impacted the earliest by COVID-19, with the largest disruption felt in India, where aggressive shutdown mandates were enacted, impacting market demand and supply chain infrastructure. Revenue growth in advanced technology and applied materials was offset by declines in our biopharma and healthcare end market. Slide seven shows our organic revenue growth by end market and product group for the quarter. I will also touch on what we have seen so far in the month of April.
Biopharma, representing approximately 50% of our revenue, experienced high single-digit organic revenue growth, which is notable in light of the low teens organic growth in the first quarter of 2019. We continue to see strong growth in our biopharma production platform, including continued double-digit growth of our single-use solution. Moving to healthcare, which represents approximately 10% of our revenue, we grew low single digits. We had strong growth in clinical and reference laboratory, especially in March, as demand for consumables, chemicals, and PPE ramped to support COVID-19 testing. Our biomaterials platform performed in line with plan. Education and government, representing approximately 15% of our revenue, experienced low double-digit organic revenue decline. As mentioned previously, this part of our business was most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, as many academic and government research labs and K through 12 schools were forced to close as we moved through the quarter.
Advanced technology and applied materials, representing approximately 25% of our revenue, experienced low single-digit organic revenue growth. We experienced strong growth in the defense and electronic materials businesses. The food and beverage and petrochemicals businesses realized low single-digit growth. These were offset by modest declines in mining and other miscellaneous industrial segments. By product group, proprietary materials and consumables experienced low double-digit growth, with particular strength in the Americas. Services grew mid-single digits, driven by continued strong growth of our on-site services model, especially in the Americas and in Europe. Equipment and instrumentation was down high single digits, reflecting reduced CapEx investment across our customer base. In April, the biopharma momentum has continued, with strong growth in lab products and biopharma production. We are actively engaged with our supplier partners and customers to bring COVID-19 related offerings to the market, including diagnostic kits and serological solutions.
The COVID-19 impacts we experienced in the second half of March have also continued. Academic lab closures and curtailment of customer capital spend continue to be headwinds to revenue growth. Additionally, there is some timing-related softness in our healthcare business as the COVID-19 impact of fewer elective procedures is felt. Also, growth in the industrial portion of the advanced technologies and applied materials end market has moderated from Q1. Considering these factors, we expect the April net revenue decline to be in the low to mid-single digit range. Given the uncertainties around the intensity and duration of the pandemic, however, we are withdrawing our guidance for the year. Turning to slide eight, let me start with our first quarter adjusted EBITDA. We achieved 7% growth in adjusted EBITDA and 54 basis points of reported margin expansion.
As you recall, we were still a private company in the first quarter of 2019 and have since added certain costs to support the public company status post our Q2 IPO, without which margins would have expanded by approximately 90 basis points in this first quarter of 2020. Key drivers of the performance were volume growth, price, and favorable mix, including strong growth in proprietary offerings, all partially offset by the impact of growth investments that we continue to make, particularly in the AMEA region. Free cash flow improved from $63 million to $241 million, an increase of approximately 284%. Unlevered free cash flow was $261 million for the quarter. We had very strong working capital performance, which contributed over $80 million to the increase. Lower cash interest and taxes contributed a combined $50 million to the improvement.
Finally, we reported 64% growth in our adjusted earnings per share for the quarter, primarily reflecting the strong operational performance driven by organic sales growth and margin expansion, as well as the ongoing reduction in interest expense from our deleveraging and the improvement in our income tax rate. Slide nine has our segment results. We have a minor change in the way we are measuring segment profitability. You may recall that previously we were using management EBITDA as a profitability measure for the segments, which reflected a few more adjustments than the adjusted EBITDA metric we use to measure profits for the entire enterprise. Effective January 1, we have conformed the two and are now using adjusted EBITDA to measure the profitability of the segment and of the entire enterprise.
While we have restated the segment results for 2019 for comparability purposes, there is no change to the adjusted EBITDA for the enterprise. Americas reported a 170 basis points improvement in adjusted EBITDA. Key drivers include volume growth, strong price management relative to COGS inflation, and positive mix driven by a higher proportion of growth in proprietary materials and consumables, all offsetting modestly higher SG&A costs. Europe reported 40 basis points of improvement in adjusted EBITDA. Key drivers include volume growth, strong price management relative to COGS inflation, and lower equipment and instrumentation, all offsetting unfavorable operating expenses driven by foreign exchange. AMEA reported 540 basis points decline in adjusted EBITDA impacted by lower sales volumes and higher operating expenses, including investments in research, marketing, and sales personnel. On slide 10, we provide a brief summary of our liquidity.
To start, it is noteworthy that despite the challenging environment, our deleveraging continued in the first quarter. We lowered our leverage to 4.4x EBITDA, and this continues to be a major priority for us. In January, we lowered borrowing costs by 75 basis points on the approximate $1 billion in term loans, and in March, we lowered borrowing costs by 60 basis points on our accounts receivable securitization program. We also upsized that program by $50 million to $300 million at the same time. Total liquidity at March 31st was $882 million, made up of $346 million in cash, $300 million in accounts receivable securitization, and the unsecured bank revolver of $250 million. Both facilities are largely unused, as our free cash flow is our primary source of liquidity.
We have no significant debt maturities until 2024, and we only have one substantive debt covenant, which is only triggered if we have more than 35% of the revolver drawn upon. Currently, there are no borrowings outstanding on the revolver. By any event, we retreat this threshold. Our first lien borrowings would be limited to 7.35x our EBITDA. Currently, our first lien borrowings are less than 3x EBITDA. To summarize, our liquidity and cash flow are strong, and we're committed to de-leveraging, even in these challenging market conditions. Our debt maturities and covenants are minimally intrusive, and we look forward to future repricing opportunities in our debt portfolio. With that, I will hand it back over to Michael.
Thanks, Tom. I'm on slide 11. We executed well in a challenging environment, and our strong revenue and EBITDA growth, outstanding cash generation, and continued de-leveraging reflect the resiliency of our business model. Challenging times like this highlight the value of our highly recurring revenue base, broad mission-critical product portfolio, and our exposure to attractive end markets like biopharma. While the uncertainty associated with the current pandemic has caused us to withdraw our previously issued guidance, our long-term growth strategy remains intact, and we are steadfast in our commitment to help our customers combat this virus by supporting ongoing initiatives in testing, vaccine, and therapy development, and ultimately the production of approved treatments. Our mission of setting science in motion to create a better world has never mattered more. I want to sincerely thank you for your interest and investment in Avantor and for your ongoing support.
I will now turn it over to the operator to begin the question and answer portion of our call. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star one to come into the question queue. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Thank you. Our first question comes from Tycho Peterson, JP Morgan.
Okay, thanks. Michael. With bio-manufacturing, I think it's a little bit over 10% of the business today. Can you maybe just talk about some of the investments you're making as we think about monoclonal antibody scaling up and vaccine production? Can you just talk about how you feel like you're positioned and the degree to investments you may be making now to meet the growing demands of the market?
Thanks for the question, Tycho. Good to hear from you. Yeah, I think you have it about right in terms of the exposure to bioproduction. Obviously, it's an important part of our portfolio that is experiencing double-digit growth for most of the last couple of years. We do continue to invest, whether that be in infrastructure in the form of our R&D centers that we've been building around the globe, most recently the inauguration of our new center in Shanghai. We also recently doubled the size of our center in Bridgewater. We highlighted in the press release or in the comments there one of the first innovations that came out of that new center in Bridgewater, our proprietary chromatography resin that will expand our addressable market.
We also continue to invest in manufacturing capacity, and we highlighted a number of those areas in recent months, whether that be in hydration capacity or single-use capacity or things like our HPLC sugar platform. We continue to invest ahead of demand to ensure that we can meet the robust opportunities that are out there. I'd say we're excited about what we're seeing and whether it's the traditional monoclonal antibodies that have been in the pipeline, we're well-positioned or the onslaught of new therapies that are in the pipeline to go after the COVID-19 virus. We're also well-positioned, Tycho, to have a lot of growth and success in some of the new modalities, whether that be in things like cell and gene therapy.
We continue to scale our infrastructure, our capabilities, and our presence to be able to get our materials specced into these platforms going forward.
One follow-up for Tom on Applied Technologies. You noted petrochemical up low single digit. Obviously, oil prices have been volatile. Just curious on your outlook for that part of the business in particular?
Yeah, we're watching it, Tycho, every day. We get daily sales reports. It's pretty modest part of that overall portfolio. The segment itself is probably 25% of revenues, but it's an aggregation of a number of individually small exposures to various industries. Petrochemical oil and gas is one of those. Like we said, it was flattish, low single digit, kind of continues on that pace. We are seeing a little bit of the industrial softness impacting that. That growth rate that we saw is moderating a bit, but it's not like there's some sort of curtailment of growth or major negative news to share. It's kind of okay, but not growing through the roof, if you will.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is going to come from the line of Derik De Bruin with Bank of America.
Hi, good afternoon.
Hey, Derik.
Hey, Derik. Good to hear your voice.
Hey. A couple of questions. I guess the first one, just to clarify, because I had a little bit of a cell phone garble here. You said down low to mid-single digits in the second quarter, correct?
Yeah, based on what we're seeing in April, that's kind of what we see for April. We didn't really comment on where we see the full quarter playing out. Just given the uncertainty of the situation that we're trying to call the quarter, just trying to give you some color on what we've seen through the month of April.
Great. That was going to be my follow-up question to that, I guess, what can you say in terms of our estimates would put somewhere around 50% of labs are closed. I'm just sort of wondering what your feet on the street or the ground are doing. Obviously, there's going to be some difference between the pharma labs and the academic labs. Just some color on sort of what closures are and, I guess, what would need to go? Is it just mostly duration of how long closures are sort of the biggest wildcard on how you're seeing the next couple of quarters play out?
I think, Derik, clearly the biggest headwind that we do see in our business at the moment is the research lab closures, in the academic environments, particularly in the university setting. We're seeing everything from complete lab closure to partial operation to around the clock operation of labs that are working on vaccines or therapies for COVID-19. We've got the full gamut of activities playing out. It does remain the biggest headwind in the business and at least in the current environment with the variables as we see them, a return to more normalized operations, in that space would certainly be a tailwind for our business. The uncertainty of we don't know when that's going to happen.
Great. If I can squeeze in one final one. A lot of us, I mean, nobody really has an experience with the legacy of Avantor business or going into the recession and sort of a follow-on into Tycho's question on if sort of the sensitivity of the overall business to a severe economic downturn and just remember your thoughts, just because it is a different animal than any of us have, looking at the old VWR and sort of getting an understand of like what your macro sensitivities are in sort of a recession environment.
Sure. I think clearly the situation that we're in now is probably unprecedented. I'm not even sure the financial crisis in 2008 or 2009 is even a good parallel, just given the extreme difference in the dynamics. I would say that we're very well positioned with a very resilient model, 85% of our revenue being recurring. A very broad portfolio, good diversification in both the lab as well as in production and at least in the current situation, the production environment has held up extremely well. The value chain for currently approved therapies that we're specced into continue to run at a high rate. Obviously, with the investments that we've made in single-use and some of our other proprietary technologies, we continue to outgrow that market by a bit.
In the lab, as we talked about, we're seeing some headwinds in the academic space to a lesser extent in the biopharma research labs. Certainly, some of those labs have scaled back activity, you have almost an equal amount that have ramped up activity to go after, whether it's a vaccine or a therapy for COVID. The legacy Avantor portfolio, to your question, is primarily a production-oriented portfolio, where the preponderance of the revenue of that platform is specced into the high growth bioproduction space. Tends to be fairly insensitive to economic shock. I think we're in a much different environment now, and the dynamics of what's driving the business, I think, are probably all agree, are a little bit different.
Yeah. The numbers weren't public back when Avantor was standalone, but they held up as well as VWR did, at least on the EBITDA side over that time frame. Cash flow was also pretty strong.
Oh, great. Thanks for that color. Thank you very much.
Our next question is going to come from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congratulations on really good prints here, relative to, I guess, some of the fears the Street had. Maybe starting on the comments around April, I guess, does it make sense to look at this business on a week-on-week basis? We're all trying to figure out if was April the bottom and should things improve month-on-month? That certainly seems to be the case for some of the other companies. What could go wrong from April, right? If all of the labs were closed, could anything else go wrong, which would cause me to be trend below April? Maybe just give us some sense on what happened in April, and maybe plus or minus where we could move from that line.
Sure, Vijay. Thanks for the question. Maybe I'll walk you through each of the four end markets that we serve, give you a little bit of color on that, and maybe that'll help with your question. Starting with biopharma, which is roughly 50% of our revenue, that platform remains strong around the world. The bioproduction piece of that running high single digits, double digit type levels. The research environment is holding up pretty well. There is a mix of some labs that are scaled back and some that are ramping up. Overall, the biopharma platform, whether it be in Q1 or as we saw it into April, continues to be strong. Healthcare for us, a little less than 10% of the revenue. A little bit of a mixed story here.
We have exposure, about half of that platform is in the clinical diagnostic lab, reference lab type setting, and you see a mix of things going on there. Obviously, some of the traditional clinical diagnostics, running a little bit below historical levels, and that's primarily being offset by the strong ramp in demand for our solutions for COVID testing. The other part of that platform is our biomaterials platform serving a pretty wide array of implant devices, medical implants. As we mentioned, that platform continues to run at least through the first quarter at a pretty high rate. Somewhat moderated in April, due to kind of postponement of elective surgeries. That's a variable that we're watching pretty closely. I think we've talked a lot about the academic and government environments. In aggregate, about 15% of the revenue.
The academic research lab part of that comprises less than 10% of overall revenue. As I mentioned, I think what we're seeing there is in line with what you see being reported publicly. In the advanced technologies applied materials part of our business, about 25% of the revenue split across a wide range of both industrial and non-industrial applications, grew low single digits the first quarter. I would say, strong momentum in defense, semiconductor, food and beverage that we saw in Q1 kind of carry into April. It's moderated sequentially a bit, in some of the industrial areas, as Tom mentioned, like oil and gas. Whether April is the bottom or not, probably speculation on our part to try to call that. We clearly are watching very closely, even on a daily basis, what's going on in these academic research labs.
We're in close contact with our customers. We do have a significant presence on site at these labs, through our services teams. Our teams, in the labs that are shut down, will likely be some of the first people back in those labs, to get them restarted. We're staying close to it, and fingers crossed that as the globe gets the pandemic under control, that we'll start to see some of that return, whether that's in May or June or later, probably a bit tough to call right now, Vijay.
That's helpful comments, Mike, and maybe one for Tom. Tom, on the cost structure, any comments on fixed versus variables? This Q1 was, margins were really strong. If I go back to your original guidance on free cash flow, $450 million-$500 million for the year, and given where 2Q could potentially shake out, and if we had to assume sequential improvements, that's how other companies are looking at the environment. 2Q is the bottom, and then we improve. It almost looks like free cash is almost down. Dare I say no change. Any thoughts on your cost structure and your ability to manage P&L, please? Thank you.
First on the cost structure, Vijay, we look at fixed versus variable. I'd say that when you look at the COGS, most of that is variable cost. Probably 70% of it is materials. Probably another 10% is people and overhead. I would say on the other hand, most of the SG&A would fall into a fixed category, but it's a broadly addressable category. It's not as if it's like depreciation, can't do anything about. There are actions you could take. When you think about cost containment initiatives, our focus right now is supporting our customers. That and employee safety are our top priorities right now. We have plenty to do. We also have a good track record of cost management, I would say. We're nearing completion on our synergy program.
In fact, on a run rate basis in the first quarter we achieved, we crossed the $300 million threshold line from a run rate basis. We have three quarters to go to continue to drive that, but we've achieved at least the bottom part of that. We're not oblivious to what's going on. We're actively monitoring headwinds and taking prudent actions. So far there's been just modest demand disruption for us. We're looking at things like discretionary spend. Obviously, T&E does its own work for you, with so many people not traveling. We've taken some other discretionary items around new hiring and so forth. To the extent the conditions become worse, we'd obviously have contingency plans in place. From a cash perspective, totally agree with your observations. Q1 was very strong. We were up $180 million year-over-year.
It really demonstrates the high conversion, low CapEx model that we have. We had better EBITDA. We had really strong working capital performance with obviously lower interest costs. As you said, our guide was $450 million- $500 million for the year. We've already got $240 million of that. You can do your own math and say where you think that takes you. We've also gotten some benefits. We expect to get some benefits from the CARES Act, particularly around freeing up some of this interest deductibility that we've been limited to 30% in the past, so that goes up to 50%. That should give us some tailwind as well.
I don't think we'll stand all the CapEx that we have in the plan, I think there's probably, at some point, will be an opportunity for refinancing. The Q1 performance and those factors I mentioned, I think instinctually, you're right. $450 million-$500 million, looking out, maybe there's an opportunity there. Because we're withdrawing guidance, we're not really going to comment on where we think that's going. This will continue to receive our attention, and we're optimistic that, if things turn, this will turn out to be what you're inferring.
Really impressive registration, guys. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is going to come from the line of Doug Schenkel, Cowen.
Hey, good afternoon, guys.
Hey, Doug.
First off, when we talked at some point, I don't know when it was March. I know it was in March, but every week seems like a month these days, so I'm not sure exactly when it was, but when we talked, it seemed like the company was seeing some activity that looked like stocking at the end of the quarter. In hindsight, was that the case? If so, how material was it? Did it carry into April, and where was it most pronounced by business area?
Sure. Thanks for the question, Doug. March, when we did speak, does seem like a while ago. As Tom mentioned in the script, I think as we look at kind of COVID related tailwinds, which would include any stocking that did occur in the quarter, as best we can bracket it, probably in that 50-100 basis point range. I don't think stocking ended up being that big of a factor. I think most of what we're seeing is related to meeting increased demand, whether that be in life science reagents or PPE to support COVID related testing or development. I think the other point to keep in mind here, most of the labs, for example, that we support, they don't really have significant space for a lot of excess storage.
In fact, I think that is part of what drives some of the value that we deliver in that they really rely on us to be able to carry the safety stock and provide timely deliveries. With the model that we have set up, we're able to do that in more than 170 countries around the world on a same day or next day basis. I'm sure there was some modest stocking in the quarter that got captured in that 50-100 basis points. I think net-net, we think that most of the COVID tailwinds that we saw were demand driven.
Okay. Super helpful. Maybe just a couple quick ones, and then I'll get back into the queue. I believe the vast majority of your diagnostic business is OEM. I just want to make sure that's right, and it's pretty clear based on your prepared remarks that that is an area that's a tailwind. I'm just wondering, how big is that business today, and how much of a tailwind is it? The second thing I wanted to ask was just on AMEA. Any update in terms of just what you've seen over the last few weeks? Specifically what I'm trying to get at is, you commented on supply chain challenges in India. I'm just wondering if that's freed up at all. Thank you.
Thanks for the questions. Maybe we'll go in reverse order here. We'll talk about AMEA first. Honestly, the pandemic hit that region first and hardest. The region's 5% of our revenue, in the end, not a major driver within the quarter. We tend to have a little bit different mix of business in the AMEA region relative to Europe or the Americas. It tends to be a bit more production heavy. You see a little bit more lumpiness in the business, just owing to the campaign and batch timings and schedules of our customers. We saw that play out pretty much as planned. Certainly on the consumables part of the business, we did see, obviously, some impacts, rather modest. There were some supply chain challenges.
When you think about the logistics environment in India, for example, just challenges in getting trucks and drivers and things to complete deliveries was a bit of a challenge as the country moved to lock things down pretty aggressively starting in the middle of March. As we move into April, I think generally, whether you're in China, Korea, Singapore, I think we've seen sequential improvement in those markets. I think even in India, we're starting to see some sequential improvement into April. I think we feel like the region is heading in the right direction.
Yeah. I will say the lockdown for India is May 2nd, I think, is the official date of when it goes down. I've heard recently that India could be changing, and it could be extending to the end of the month. Who knows, and we're subject to that. The challenges will continue to be there. To Michael's point, we are seeing a little bit of more upside as things start to come together in some of these COVID-19 related areas, whether it's testing, personal protection equipment, and other things that are coming through.
Doug, then back to your first question around diagnostics. We're going to play that space in a number of different areas. We have a pretty robust portfolio of proprietary reagents that are going to go on an OEM basis, that'll be specced into the various instrument platforms that are out there. We have a pretty robust infectious disease point of care testing kit business primarily focused on hematology centered in the AMEA region. Then maybe a little closer to home here, we have a pretty robust offering of sample prep, extraction reagents, and things to support qPCR workflows and other diagnostic workflows, both non-COVID related as well as COVID related.
To supplement that, our services platform is going to get pretty heavily involved in a lot of the diagnostic workflows, whether that be in the custom kitting that we would do to support sample collection, specimen collection, transportation. In fact, we're pretty heavily involved with most of the major labs in facilitating the COVID testing in that regard now. We also have one of the leading biorepository and archiving franchises that's going to be linked to a lot of the diagnostic testing that goes on around the world. Doug, we're going to be exposed to the diagnostic space in a number of different areas.
Thank you. Our next question is going to come from the line of Dan Brennan, UBS.
Great. Thank you. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the quarter. I was hoping to go to the more industrial parts of your business. I know you talked about it, I think, to Vijay's question. Maybe could you elaborate a little bit? It looks like that business is certainly holding up reasonably well despite what's going on in the broader economy. I'm wondering if you can maybe unpack that a little bit and maybe get a little flavor of how that business is doing.
Thanks for the question. Good to hear from you. Most of the exposure that we would characterize as in industrial is going to be mapped into the advanced technologies and applied materials portion of our business, which is roughly 25% of the revenue. Within that, part of that is going to be kind of non-industrial in nature, the way we play defense, the way we play semiconductor, for example. Then you are going to have a mix of industrial type exposure, in various end markets, none of which would be by themselves more than a couple of % of total revenue. That's going to pick up things like petchem, oil and gas, for example, mining to some extent. We are seeing kind of a mix of performance there. You take the mining business.
We have a pretty unique exposure there, particularly to things like gold mining, where, if you look at the price of gold, the demand curve has shifted from maybe being jewelry dominated to more currency driven in a kind of a flight to safety there in a macro crisis, propping up pricing and demand in that part of the business. Oil and gas, petchem held up generally pretty well in the 1st quarter. We have seen sequential decline as we move into April as things like oil price and production have fallen off dramatically in line with the oil prices. Think high single-digit type declines there. Pretty unique exposure to the space, and I think that, combined with the diversification, allows that part of our business to hold up reasonably well. We weren't expecting significant growth in that part of the business this year.
If you recall, in 2019, that was a bit of a headwind for us most of the year, just given some of the industrial weakness around the world. We did see sequential improvement moving into the first quarter, and while that's moderated somewhat, it's not a major headwind for us at the moment.
Great. Thank you for that. That was great detail. I was hoping, I know obviously the biopharma, the biologic production business obviously is kind of a highlight for the company, but just more broadly within that, your largest customer base, I think you talked about research holding up pretty well. Could you give a little more flavor besides the bioproduction piece and the research piece? How much of that business is maybe tied to clinical trials? Has that been a drag? Maybe get a little more flavor similarly for your biopharma business and the different pieces and kind of how they did in Q1 and how you think about the outlook. Thank you.
Sure. As you know, biopharma for us is roughly half of the revenue, and that's going to be split roughly 2/3 focused in biopharma research environments, the laboratory environment. Roughly a third of that is going to be focused in bioproduction. Within the research environment, obviously, we're going to be bringing to bear the full breadth of our portfolio, whether that be our proprietary materials or consumables or third-party materials or consumables. Our services is going to play a pretty important part in those labs where we'll have more than 1,000 associates embedded in our customers' research labs, either sitting on the bench running experiments or managing the labs.
Of course, we'll support our customers, and I think that's one of the unique aspects of our business model and a key point to understand about our model is that we have fully integrated the business such that we can support our customers and the scientists in the lab, to support their early phase discovery and process product development, and then scale with them as they move through clinical trials. We obviously have a pretty robust offering in that space. Ultimately serve their commercially approved platforms at scale with a pretty robust offering that allows us to participate in both upstream, downstream, and formulation activities in those environments with our GMP portfolio. We're pretty well covered in this space.
I would say, except for maybe a little bit of pullback in the first quarter in some of the research activities, as some of the labs did pare back their on-site presence, the overwhelming majority of what we saw in biopharma was a continuation of the strength that we saw pretty much throughout 2019, which means you're talking about high single-digit growth in the lab, and essentially double-digit growth in the production environment. We really see that continuing into April. We're well positioned across all the different modalities, whether that be vaccines or monoclonal antibodies. Obviously, cell and gene therapy are emerging environments that we're spending a lot of time in. Geographically, we've got good coverage, good presence at the CMOs and CROs.
Pretty important part of our business, and I think we're well positioned to continue to realize the upside of a pretty attractive end market.
Great. Thank you, Michael.
Thank you. Our next question is going to come from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi.
Great. Thanks, guys. Maybe I want to think about the April decline, and appreciate the color you gave there. Any chance you could break out, I know it's only 15%, but how should we be thinking about the instrumentation equipment decline versus kind of that more recurring revenue side during April?
You're hitting on, I think, a pretty important part of the story here, Patrick, so thanks for the question. That part of the business, and really anything that's kind of CapEx driven, whether it be in this downturn or in previous downturns, is the part of the portfolio that gets hit the hardest as our customers, regardless of end market, obviously look to optimize cash flow and squeeze capital investments. As you look at where the headwinds played out in Q1, it was disproportionate into that category. Fortunately for us, though, it's only 15% of our revenue. I think when we talk about the resiliency of our portfolio and our model, this is an important driver that we have relatively light exposure into that space. That category, down double digits in April, not a surprise to us.
I think we would expect to see it at those levels, high single-digit decline, low double-digit declines, until we start to see broader recovery. It really highlights then the strength of the rest of the portfolio and being consumable driven and being highly relevant in our customers' research activities as well as in their production activities.
That makes sense then. Then maybe one for Tom, just on the debt side. I know you've talked in the past, as recently as 4Q, about the repricing opportunities on debt. Assume things are maybe tabled a little bit for now. Maybe, can you just talk through when you think there's potential to do that as we get through COVID here and get to the other side, how much of a priority that is for you guys?
Yeah, I wouldn't be in this job if I knew exactly when the markets were going to return to the status that we were seeing in early mid first quarter. With that said, there has been some recovery if you just follow what's going on in the debt markets where we participate. Most of our debt trades and it's back to the levels that it was trading at. Not quite all the way back to January, a good degree of the way back. We are still very interested in going after and addressing the debt. There's nothing built into our guidance for 2020, our original guidance. We don't feel like there's any urgency. In fact, really, it wouldn't be in our best interest unless a real, something very attractive, which we don't see right now, came along.
It wouldn't make any sense to do anything before October 1st anyways. That's the first time our make-whole premiums expire. We would have to pay them. With that said, we are actively monitoring things. We have weekly discussions with advisors and banks that know the market pretty well. We're reasonably confident that as the year transpires, that our original plan of taking action on this would come into play. It's going to take a while for the markets to fully get back to a point where we can say with confidence that we know when and the degree of benefit that we're going to get.
Great. Thank you.
Holly, we're running up on the hour, so let's just take one more question.
All right, our final question then for the day will come from the line of Brandon Couillard with Jefferies.
Hey, thanks for squeezing me in. Michael, you mentioned launching a new protein A chromatography resin. Sort of talk through, sort of the go-to-market strategy there, initial conversations with customers, and how significant you think that could be kind of over the next three to five years for what is a pretty consolidated market, competitively, for that type of product.
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Brandon. As you know, innovation, particularly in our proprietary technology portfolio, is an important part of our business model. We have been investing to enhance our capabilities around the world, and over the last couple of years have opened up chromatography labs in Korea. Our new center in Shanghai will be heavily focused on chromatography and our flagship center in Bridgewater, where this technology was developed starting about three years ago, obviously has full complement of protein expression all the way through to formulation capabilities. We'll continue to drive a lot of innovation into our bioproduction portfolio, and this is a great example of that. We're pretty well penetrated into the chromatography space.
This was a gap in the portfolio, in not having a credible offering into the protein A space and it represents probably half of the chromatography market, and so it really does expand our total addressable market. Performance is obviously critical, in enhancing recoveries. I think the market is anxious to have alternatives, to your point, to the concentrated supply base that's there today. I think there's value in having independent supply chains for things like ligands and resins and such, which this will provide. I think the performance, as we have tested it and sampled it, would put it at the top of the market. I think there's a bit of a long cycle qualification time on these things, as you know. We'll get a lift into the lab market where we'll see these opportunities immediately. It's in the field.
We have a very robust launch plan that was cultivated in the spirit of our ABS program. Our sales force is actively sampling and selling columns into the lab space as we speak. That will scale over time and as it gets specced into new therapies and those become approved, we'll start to enjoy higher revenues as those columns become commercial. The impact will scale over time and we'll obviously continue to invest in optimizing the solution and bringing new versions of it to market over time, but pretty excited to be able to introduce that at this time.
Super. Thanks.
Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back over to management for closing comments.
Thank you, operator. Thank you all again for participating in our call today. As we close, I'd just like to reiterate our commitment to supporting our customers as they navigate this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and seek solutions to protect and detect and treat the virus. I also would be remiss if I didn't express my gratitude and admiration for the tireless efforts of all of our associates around the world who are living our corporate values every day. Their passion and dedication to our mission, which is setting science in motion to create a better world, positions us to help bring life-changing therapies that can improve patient outcomes for people across the globe. I think as we look at it, our mission has never been more important than it is today.
I'm certain we'll come through this stronger than ever before, and I'm optimistic about what lies ahead for not only our industry, but specifically for our business. Look forward to updating you all at the end of the second quarter, and until then, everyone please take care and be well. Thank you for joining the call today.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.