Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Axalta's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the presentation by management. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available through May 3rd. Those listening after today's call should please note that the information provided in the recording will not be updated and therefore may no longer be current. I'll now turn the call over to Christopher Evans. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, and good morning. This is Chris Evans, VP of Investor Relations. We appreciate your continued interest in Axalta, and welcome you to our first quarter 2022 financial results conference call. Joining me today are Robert Bryant, CEO, and Sean Lannon, CFO. Yesterday afternoon, we released our quarterly financial results and posted a slide presentation along with commentary to the investor relations section of our website at axalta.com, which we'll be referencing during this call. Both our prepared remarks and discussion today may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the company's current view of future events and their potential effect on Axalta's operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties and risks, and actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Please note that the company is under no obligation to provide updates to these forward-looking statements. Our remarks and the slide presentation also contain various non-GAAP financial measures.
In the appendix to the slide presentation, we've included reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. For additional information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our filings with the SEC. I will now turn the call over to Robert.
Thank you, Chris, and good morning. As most probably saw a few weeks ago, Chris Evans recently joined Axalta as the lead investor relations, and we're very excited to have him as part of our team. With that, I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter 2022 earnings call. Let me begin by sharing how proud I am of what we have been able to accomplish this quarter and thank our global team for their hard work. Momentum continues to build in each of our businesses today because of our team's customer focus and dedication to ensure that we deliver on our goals. The entire Axalta team deserves credit for fostering growth and minimizing the financial impact of the various geopolitical crises and the ongoing supply chain challenges.
I wanna specifically call out our China team, where essential management and our manufacturing workforce volunteered to shelter in place at our plants and at our customers' plants throughout the weeks-long COVID-19 lockdown to keep operations running and meet the needs of our customers. Thank you for your incredible commitment and resiliency. Now to the key first quarter highlights on slide 3. We reported a strong result again this quarter and have a lot to be proud of given the overall environment. Constant currency net sales growth of 13% exceeded our prior estimate in both Performance and Mobility Coatings. Adjusted EBIT of $120 million achieved the very top end of our guidance. Adjusted EPS of $0.31 was above our guidance range given the flow through of strong earnings, modest benefits from a lower share count, and a slightly lower adjusted tax rate.
I'm pleased with these results given the unprecedented degree of challenges we had to overcome. These include, first, the rapid pace of variable cost inflation, which we experienced across most cost categories and well above what we had factored into our original Q1 guidance construct. Second, raw material and labor shortages, which created a difficult operating environment, constraining many customers and our ability to fully serve a healthy consumer demand environment. Finally, direct and indirect impacts from geopolitical and macroeconomic issues, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well as the effects of zero-COVID policies in China.
Despite the approximately $22 million in earning headwinds these three items created versus our January guidance framework, we were still able to deliver a solid quarter and exceed our sales guidance as strong pricing and better volumes yielded better than expected 10% year-over-year organic ex FX growth and also delivered EBIT at the top end of our range. Volume improved 1% year-over-year with positive contribution from three of our four end markets for the fifth consecutive quarter. Growth was supported by ongoing recovery as well as from share gains that we are driving across the portfolio. These achievements reflect our customers' preference for our differentiated technologies and are a nice recognition of the great work from our commercial teams across all of our business lines. Axalta is committed to driving secular growth, and we're making encouraging progress.
A stronger share position has allowed us to better leverage our fixed cost position, driving higher incremental margins, which will serve us well as markets continue to recover to pre-pandemic levels. We realized a remarkable 9% price mix in the quarter, up from a reported 3.6% last quarter, driven by pricing actions that we have continued to implement in order to offset the impact of cost inflation. Both segments have shown strong pricing gains from past quarters, with Mobility Coatings reaching record quarterly % growth. While we're happy with our pricing progress, the unprecedented rate of variable cost inflation has driven Q1 profitability well below our historical low- 20s percentage adjusted EBITDA margin range. New pricing actions are already underway to offset existing uncovered and anticipated further inflationary costs coming as a result of higher oil prices and tight supply-demand balances in many commodity chains.
We expect that our margins will begin to recover in the second quarter as we drive further price improvement and enhance our fixed cost leverage position. During the quarter, we also repurchased $175 million in shares. At the current valuation, we see tremendous value in our equity and will remain opportunistic as we prioritize capital deployment for generating meaningful shareholder return while balancing a conservative balance sheet. Moving on to slide 4. Axalta occupies unique and highly profitable positions in the coating industry. We're aligned with megatrends that we believe create a strong growth trajectory for years to come. However, supply chain challenges have drastically impacted global trade, constrained demand, and reduced global GDP. Recent geopolitical dynamics have only increased the temporary strain on global operations and worsened short-term visibility.
While we continue to have strong conviction in our strategic ambitions and direction, the degree of macro uncertainty today makes it challenging to forecast beyond the near term with high confidence. Therefore, we're only providing Q2 guidance today. Nonetheless, I continue to see strong underlying trends. We're launching new innovative products every quarter, and each business is making strong progress toward our growth ambition by executing on top-line growth. In Refinish, our highly profitable industry-leading aftermarket auto coatings business, the team is delivering on several strategic imperatives. First, increased market access. This quarter, we won over 500 net body shops globally and well over 200 new stock points through distribution customers. Second, we're growing our premium market leadership. We are the leader with MSOs who continue to be allocated more workflow from insurance companies in North America, as well as independent body shops.
We are retaining and winning new customers each quarter as we capitalize on our unique customer value proposition. Third, we continue to gain share in mainstream and economy segments where we haven't had as large of a historical presence. The addition of new points of distribution is helping to build a sales pipeline in underrepresented geographies and markets. We have witnessed good growth progress and execution on all fronts this quarter, as evident in our above-market volume growth. Another area of focus is the integration of U-POL. We are well underway in integrating the business and executing on cost synergies. Our true enthusiasm for the acquisition is centered around realizing commercial synergies, which we believe will further the U-POL value creation opportunity beyond what we had previously communicated.
U-POL gains us exposure to adjacencies in the automotive body repair business, namely in Fillers, Putties, Glazes, and Aerosol, where Axalta did not participate in a meaningful way. Moving into these categories positions us to capture more repair dollars per vehicle. We can also drive commercial synergies through maximizing the cross-selling of Axalta and U-POL products across our global customer base. We're already beginning to see the value creation play out as our distribution partners and key body shop accounts are beginning to stock U-POL products. In addition, U-POL gains us exposure to adjacencies in both consumer and industrial protective coatings. In Industrial Coatings, we're driving organic growth in a constrained environment led by strong pricing gains. Industrial price mix increased by a mid-teens percentage year-over-year and by a mid-single-digit percentage sequentially.
A number of additional pricing actions were instituted in late Q1, which should sustain positive pricing momentum into the remainder of the year, supporting a return to significantly higher profitability. In Mobility Coatings, our industry-leading light vehicle and commercial OEM business, we secured record pricing gains and outperformed the market from a volume perspective in Q1. Pricing momentum is building every month. While we're negotiating better pricing, we are also building a more inflation-resilient portfolio by partnering with our customers to increase the percentage of mobility customer contracts with indexed pricing mechanisms, now between 35% and 40% for the entire segment. Recent share gains in Light Vehicle are driving above-market growth and setting us up with the right customer mix for when global production returns to normalized levels in the future. In Commercial Vehicle, we continue to hold the leadership position globally in heavy-duty truck markets.
We are focused on pricing traction to help offset cost inflation and see strong market demand despite customer production constraints. We're driving growth across all end markets with innovative and differentiated product offerings. Two new exciting product launches just received recognition with the prestigious 2022 Edison Awards, which honors some of the most innovative product developments in the world. Our patented Spies Hecker full-waterborne repair system technology was awarded Bronze in Edison's sustainability category and represents the first paint offering for the collision repair market where all coatings layers from primer to clear coat are water-based. This truly sustainable solution provides best-in-class appearance and performance while reducing solvent emissions by more than 60%.
Next, Axalta's high-resolution digital paint coating system won Bronze in the Edison Awards' Materials Science category. This patented coating technology supports the mass customization megatrend with a novel coating that can be applied with zero overspray and reduces energy consumption as well as waste generated from the masking process. These are just two great examples of Axalta's innovation pipeline and product differentiation, which are supporting customers' productivity needs and sustainability ambitions, creating a large market pool for our offerings. Turning to slides 5 and 6 for a discussion of key market and demand trends. Vehicle miles traveled in the United States and Europe have nearly recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but changes in driving behavior, namely the prevalence of work from home, seems to have led to lower congestion levels and less collision claims than before the start of the pandemic.
Based on paint consumption data from our proprietary e-commerce platform, we estimate Q1 body shop activity remained in the mid-80% and low- 90% respectively for the U.S. and Europe relative to 2019, consistent with the level of collision claims. Within the quarter, our U.S. body shop customers reported a step-up in activity during March that we believe reflected some modest market improvement, though remains constrained by a growing backlog of repair work given parts and labor shortages at the body shop level. We believe that the return to in-person work is an important factor in driving market recovery and are encouraged by U.S. office occupancy, which improved from the low- 20%s to 42% versus prior year. In Industrial Coatings, a healthy demand environment was again limited by supply constraints, namely in Building Products and General Industrial.
In total, these constraints represented mid- to high single-digit percentage drag against our 1% volume growth in the period. Regionally, North America and Asia Pacific contributed most significantly to our year-over-year growth. Moving to Mobility Coatings, the expected normalization of global auto production rates in 2022 has been impacted by the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well as China COVID-19 lockdowns, resulting in downward revisions of earlier production estimates. Full year 2022 global production industry estimates are now forecasted to be 80.6 million, 4% above 2021, but still 9% below pre-pandemic 2019 levels. Once supply chain constraints and cost headwinds abate, the benefit to Axalta will be significant.
This is highlighted by an approximately $140 million earnings gap between our trailing 12-month Mobility Coatings adjusted EBIT and our pre-pandemic 2019 profitability levels when global auto builds reached 89 million. We're not sitting still and waiting for the market to recover. In the current environment, we focus on what we can control, prioritizing productivity, better price to offset cost inflation, and new market gains. Following these actions, we expect to be in an even better position once supply chain constraints diminish and the market recovers. In Commercial Vehicle, where we have an industry-leading share in North America and EMEA, strong demand is outpacing constrained production rates. Heavy-duty and medium-duty truck order backlog is now 11 months and eight months respectively, creating a long-dated growth dynamic for production rates to climb beyond 2022.
Moving to slide 7, I'll cover price cost and our focus on margin recovery. First, I'd like to remind everyone that we have a successful history of managing inflationary periods and quickly recovering lost profitability. Our business is resilient. We have the ability to increase price when it's needed. From the chart on this slide, you can get a sense of the pace of inflation we've experienced. Even though this inflationary period is uniquely rapid and broad-based, we are already making great progress toward offsetting the impact. In Performance Coatings, we've been able to quickly raise price and have offset the majority of the $220 million cumulative year-over-year variable cost and logistics inflation incurred since the second quarter of 2021. In Mobility Coatings, lagging index pricing mechanisms in some contracts and multi-quarter pricing discussions in others mean we have begun to accelerate pricing.
Every business at Axalta is focused on margin recovery, and we expect to cover the majority of existing price cost gaps and incremental headwinds by Q4 of this year at the consolidated level. Before I turn the call over to Sean to discuss our financial results, I wanted to touch briefly on some ESG highlights from the quarter on slide 8. As you may remember, we announced our 2030 ESG goals in January, which reflect how meaningful progress in environmental, social, and corporate governance is central to Axalta's strategy and success. We've already begun to execute against these goals and have engaged with many of our customers and other stakeholders to discuss our plans. A major commitment is for us to develop new sustainable technologies and increase the proportion of our sales in sustainable solutions.
As many of our mobility customers are rapidly shifting to produce more electric vehicles, we're aligning our technology to support them and to drive growth in our own business. Our new AquaEC Flex product for the mobility sector is a great example of our technology and innovation investments being deeply connected with key sustainability megatrends. In addition to the two Edison Award products I mentioned, this product enables our OEM customers to reduce CO2 emissions in their own operations by lowering the curing temperatures required for an electric vehicle's more intricate body frame. This is a great launch for us, well-aligned with our ESG commitment. Now I'll turn the call over to Sean to discuss our financial results, beginning with slide 9.
Thanks, Robert, and good morning. As you heard, the first quarter delivered strong pricing execution with contributions from across the portfolio. A healthy demand environment supported volume growth, but the continuation of supply constraints was a headwind and also contributed to further challenges from cost inflation. Net sales of $1.2 billion increased 10% year-over-year for the first quarter, while constant currency net sales increased 13%, driven by pricing actions, demand strength across most of our businesses, and benefits from two acquisitions we completed in 2021. Constant currency net sales growth included a 19% increase from Performance Coatings and 3% growth from Mobility Coatings, reflecting Light Vehicle up 1%, while Commercial Vehicle was up an impressive 10%.
First quarter volume improved 1% with positive contribution from three of four end markets, offset by a low single-digits percent decline in Light Vehicle volumes, which outpaced the approximate 5% decline in global auto production in the first quarter. Price mix contribution increased 9% in the aggregate, up from our reported 3.6% last quarter, with improvement across all end markets led by mid-teens improvement in Industrial Coatings. FX translation was a headwind of 3% for the first quarter, driven by the weaker euro and Turkish lira.
First quarter adjusted EBIT was $120 million versus $183 million in the prior year quarter, reflecting pricing actions, strong demand and volume trends across all end markets except Light Vehicle, which was more than offset by substantial increases in raw material and logistics cost inflation realized versus the first quarter of 2021. I did want to note that we took a $6 million accounting charge associated with accounts receivable and inventory obsolescence reserves, and these are excluded from our adjusted EBIT stemming from sanctions imposed on Russia. Turning to slide 10.
Performance Coatings Q1 net sales increased 15.1% year-over-year and 18.6% ex FX, driven by 2.5% higher volumes, a 10.7% increase in average price mix, up from the 4.6% reported last quarter, and a 5.4% increase from acquisitions. Refinish reported a 15.6% net sales increase, or 19.7% ex FX, driven by high single digit price mix benefits, above-market volume growth, and by a high single digit contribution from the U-POL acquisition. Volumes increased in every region despite raw material supply impacting our ability to meet all of our demands with the exception of China, where the COVID lockdowns drove a modest volume decline.
Industrial Q1 net sales increased 14.5% or 17.3 ex FX, driven largely by mid-teens percent improvement in average price mix, as well as low double-digit acquisition contribution and slightly positive volume growth. Demand trends in most of the industrial end businesses we serve remained healthy during the period, though supply chain constraints were a limiting factor, representing a high single-digit percent drag on sales. Performance Coatings reported Q1 adjusted EBIT of $95 million versus $117 million in Q1 of 2021, driven by ongoing volume growth and drop-through benefits of price mix, which were more than offset by headwinds from higher variable costs. The adjusted EBIT margin for the segment decreased to 11.6% from 16.6% the prior year period, given the drivers noted. Moving to slide 11.
Mobility Coatings net sales increased 3% in Q1 ex FX, including a 4.9% price mix tailwind, offset by 1.9% lower volumes. The 1.9% volume decrease has improved markedly from the 11% decrease last quarter, thanks to stronger demand from our customer base, including new business starting to come online. Light Vehicle net sales increased 1% ex FX in the quarter, including a 3.5% volume decrease, which outperformed the global auto production decline of approximately 5%. Price increased by mid-single digits. Commercial Vehicle Q1 net sales increased 10% ex FX, driven by strong truck production globally, excluding China. Price mix also increased mid-single digits. Mobility Coatings reported Q1 adjusted EBIT of $1 million versus $39 million in the prior year quarter.
Adjusted EBIT and associated margins in Q1 were impacted by variable cost inflation, with only modest offsets in positive pricing. Pricing gains are accelerating, and we expect to cover the majority of incremental variable cost inflation between the second quarter and the fourth quarter. Moving to our debt and liquidity summary on slide 12. Axalta's Q1 balance sheet and liquidity profile remain solid. We ended the quarter with slightly over $1.1 billion in total liquidity. Our net leverage ratio ended the quarter at 4.1 x, reflecting an increase from 3.5 x at December 31st. Net leverage remains somewhat elevated due to the seasonal phasing of free cash flow and share repurchases totaling $175 million in the quarter.
We continue to expect this to drop as we move to the back half of the year on stronger full-year operating results and normal free cash flow generation. On slide 13, we'll review Q2 guidance and full-year commentary. For the second quarter net sales, we expect between 11% and 13% year-over-year growth, including a 4% FX headwind and a 4% positive M&A contribution. The top-line guide assumes low double-digit better pricing, continuing the acceleration of gains we've seen in recent quarters. Our forecast also includes a 2%-3% sales headwind from China COVID lockdowns and from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. We expect to generate adjusted EBIT of $135 million-$165 million in the second quarter, with D&A of approximately $80 million, inclusive of $24 million of step-up D&A.
Interest expense for the quarter is anticipated to be approximately $34 million. For adjusted earnings per share, we anticipate a range of $0.35-$0.45 for the second quarter, inclusive of an FX headwind of $0.02 per share. Within our second quarter forecast, we further assume raw material inflation in the high 20%s versus Q2 2021. As we look for the full year, it remains challenging to provide a detailed forecast given the degree of supply chain and geopolitical uncertainty. Nonetheless, looking ahead, we expect strong mid-teens annual organic growth in both Performance Coatings and Mobility Coatings, driven by pricing actions already being executed and volume growth from modest market recoveries and share gains.
We are encouraged by Refinish recovery given improved vehicle miles driven and upward trending office occupancy rates, but we remain measured in our outlook as we monitor the possible impacts from regional and global impacts from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as impacts from the extended COVID-19 lockdowns in China. For Mobility, global auto build rates have been revised lower month after month by industry consultants and have settled close to our current 80 million production rate assumption, which is slightly above the 79 million we last forecasted. At these levels, we expect to see annual volume uplift from market growth plus upside from new customer wins. Likewise, global medium-duty and heavy-duty truck build rates are projected to increase 4% in 2022 ex-China, with our Commercial Vehicle volumes likely to exceed market rates given our strong and growing positions.
Regarding cost factors, our current assessment is that rates of overall raw material and cost inflation will continue at high levels, given current baseline expectations and assuming Brent Crude between $110 and a $115 per barrel. We expect to largely cover the existing price cost gap and incremental headwinds this year with some lag in Mobility Coatings being offset by strength in Performance Coatings. Altogether, we anticipate stronger earnings performance this year versus 2021. Lastly, our typical second half-weighted distribution of operating cash flow and a favorable outlook for sequential earnings growth should reduce our net leverage considerably by year-end.
Thank you, Sean. It was indeed a remarkable quarter. Our teams delivered very strong organic growth and remain focused on driving margin recovery with additional pricing actions underway in every business. I believe that we are laying the groundwork to deliver substantial earnings growth as supply chain constraints wane and end markets recover. With that, we'll be pleased to answer any questions. Operator, could you please open the lines for Q&A?
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. In the interest of time, we ask that you each keep to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson with Mizuho. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thank you so much. Robert, your team's taken out a lot of costs over the years. You know, I think most investors understand there obviously could be further volatility in variable costs. But could you just help us, and perhaps Sean as well, how should we be thinking about the broad framework for incremental margins as volumes fully recover, you know, especially Mobility? If you wanna hit on intermediate and then long-term next one or two years, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Chris, as we look at our cost structure, as you point out, we've made great strides over the past couple of years, especially during the COVID period, where we took a lot of structural costs out of the business. We now feel that we have the cost structure where we want it, and the biggest lever is really gonna be the return of volume and leveraging our operating model. As we see volumes come back and costs abate, the drop-through will actually be very attractive for our business.
Got it. Just a quick follow-up. Just relative to, you know, all of our own end market assumptions, can you just discuss Axalta's ability to outperform its respective end markets, you know, starting with Light Vehicles, especially given some of your new business wins, and just perhaps obviously just the structural longevity of the refinish market and any key themes in industrial that would also be particularly helpful just so we can get a hand on the growth outlook over the next one or two years. Thank you so much.
Yeah. If you look at things overall, I think, you know, we're seeing strong underlying market demand, really across the board within our different businesses. Really, you know, the primary issue right now are just supply constraints, as it is for everyone. I mean, within Refinish, market conditions continue to be supportive, but supply constraints are somewhat limiting our ability to fully serve demand. We do believe that there is recovery coming, and we're starting to see that as office occupancy rates tick back up, as we highlighted from the low 20% in the U.S. last year to 42% this quarter. That should lead to more congestion on the road. I think our expectation continues to be that we'll see the Refinish market recover to pre-pandemic levels.
We, again, remain very bullish on that business. I'd highlight with the acquisition of U-POL, we just have a wonderful opportunity to leverage our sales and distribution channels further by pushing additional products and services through existing sales and distribution channels. That's also an added plus to the secular direction of the Refinish business. Within Industrial, very happy to see the strong sequential volume growth as well as robust pricing gains that led to the 15% sales increase. If we look at some of the markets within Industrial, just in the first quarter, Building Products sales were up 22%. Energy Solutions sales were up 25%, and General Industrial was up 11% for the quarter versus the prior year.
What that just highlights is that we're executing extremely well against our strategic plan, which was to accelerate growth in Building Products and Energy Solutions, and further build out our platform and Energy Solutions, which we'll be talking more about in the future. With regard to Mobility is showing strong signs of return as we see sequential year-over-year volume improvement. Obviously, it's still early, but as global production improves and then also the new wins that we had last year and that we continue to generate this year come to fruition. The one area to really highlight there is our sequential price improvement. Again, I would just highlight that, you know, in that business, our business includes only exterior body paint as we define it.
There are elements of the automotive business, automotive OEM business that actually reside within Industrial, where we had 15% price capture. Therefore, on a like-for-like basis with some of our peers, our actual price capture in mobility was much higher.
Very helpful color. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. In the Mobility business, you had commented you're, you know, about $140 million behind kind of where you were pre-COVID. I guess, can you help us to understand how much of that is volume driven and how much of that is price versus raws as you're starting to kind of see the acceleration in pricing and starting to catch up? Maybe how much of that we can narrow back down even without a recovery in the volumes. I guess, can you help us to think about that?
Yeah, John, it's probably 50/50 going back to 2019 levels. We're at 89 million builds. Certainly the controllable right now is, you know, catching up on price, and clearly you saw that amount pick up, you know, from fourth quarter to first quarter, and you're gonna see it again, you know, essentially double in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. Yeah, once we get back, you know, to sort of that 89, 90 million build scale, coupled with the fact of pricing traction, you're gonna see the effect. To Chris Parkinson's earlier question, you know, the volumes are camouflaging all the progress we've made from a cost structure perspective, so it's really gonna help margins when we get back to those levels.
Got it. No, that makes sense. From a capital allocation perspective, so the buyback was kind of off the charts, right? At least relative to kind of how we were expecting things to play out, at least in the quarter. I guess, can you speak to how much of that was just, you know, the buying opportunity, just given how weak the stock had been earlier in the quarter, versus how much is around your confidence in the ability to squeeze out more cash as the year goes on, to kind of further kind of build up or strengthen the balance sheet and get the cash flows back on track again? Can you help us to think about that?
The magnitude of the buyout that you saw in the first quarter was really a reflection of how undervalued we believe our equity was. As we'd always stated, you know, we would have a stock repurchase program that would offset dilution plus an additional few percentage points each year. However, we would remain opportunistic, and if we ever really saw a dislocation in the intrinsic value of the company and the equity price, that we would step in strongly. That's what you saw in the first quarter.
Yeah. John, on your point on cash flow getting back on track, I mean, 2020 we did over $440 million. Last year we did $455 million. We've been dropping through cash flow over 50% of EBITDA. We're happy with the progress we're making. You know, we're confident we're gonna delever as long as we don't do anything big on the M&A front. We're, again, being opportunistic given where the share price sits in the first quarter, but we expect a normal seasonality of cash flow build in the back half of 2022.
Got it. Thanks very much for the color. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Hi.
Hi, everyone. Good morning. This is actually Matt Krueger on the line, sitting in for Ghansham. You know, my first question is, obviously you delivered results that were ahead of your initial first quarter expectations. Can you talk about some of the key variances relative to your initial guide, that drove that and how those variances have fared as we've moved into early 2Q?
Yeah. I mean, volume was probably the bright spot on the Light Vehicle side. You know, we had initially assumed, you know, 17 million global builds. You know, IHS, you know, came in closer to 19.5 million builds, and certainly we benefited from, you know, outperforming the actual overall market. We saw volume improvement also within the Performance side of the business. The other bright spot is clearly pricing. You know, we were initially expecting around 7% price, we got upwards of 9%. That had to actually offset the impacts that we saw with Russia and the China dynamics, as well as the fact that we saw incrementally about $20 million in variable logistics and variable raw material costs.
I would just add to what Sean said, Matt, to the second part of your question, regarding April conditions. You know, I think when you look at what we accomplished in the first quarter, it's really impressive. I mean, we would have had a blowout quarter, you know, had we not had the incremental headwinds and approximately $22 million more in earnings, and I think that's worth noting. Thus far in April, top-line sales conditions really appear to be similar to what we've seen in the first quarter. On the cost side, we're seeing oil trade slightly better than our guidance outlook, but the price does remain pretty volatile. So that could be the other variable as we think about the second quarter. We're also closely monitoring the developments in the Russia-Ukraine situation in China.
Really, at this time, April hasn't given us much of a reason to move guidance up or down at this point.
Great. That's definitely helpful. Then just focusing on the bottom line here, can you provide some added detail on what a realistic timeline for price cost parity across your various business units might look like? Then expanding on that, what level of pricing do we need to see across your portfolio to offset the level of inflation that you're currently experiencing in the high- 20%s range? Is that mid-teens pricing, high-teens pricing, 20% plus pricing, flow through? Give us a sense of what we should be looking for from that perspective.
If we hit average oil, and there's not a perfect correlation with all the raw material baskets, but if average oil, you know, for 2022 is up around $115 per barrel, you know, we're gonna need to get almost 10% in price to offset. You know, exiting 2021, we had roughly a $70 million gap, including logistics. You know, we had called out roughly $50 million just raw materials, but we're solving for the full cost stack for the full year.
Great. That's helpful. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of P.J. Juvekar with Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. You know, question on your Industrial business. You know, you got really good pricing there. Volumes were a bit soft due to supply chain issues. Seems like the underlying demand was still strong, but, you know, you had some the supply chain issues. But, you know, the question on this underlying demand, with Europe slowing down with the war and China shutdowns recently with COVID, how do you see the underlying demand perform for rest of the year?
I think it's, you know, t here's a question of underlying demand, and then there's a question of what we're able to supply. Just given the mix of raw materials, as well as the overall volume of the Industrial business, that's really the inhibitor, P.J. If you look at the demand profile of the business, demand was exceptionally strong in North America in particular. Again, we talk about each one of our unique businesses. We did see Building Products, as well as Energy Solutions grow quite strongly. Even General Industrial being up 11%.
Could we see some softness in particular in the General Industrial business in Europe, just given some of the pressures there? Yeah, you know, we could see some softness there. I think it's too early to really tell. You know, each one of the regions is stronger in each one of the individual industrial segments, so they do kind of balance each other out somewhat. It's also just important to remember that it's a very highly fragmented customer base. We are able to increase price, and it does also give us some insulation from some of those macro trends.
Great. Thank you. Can you talk about your battery coatings products for EVs at the pack level and what's in the pipeline there? What would you say your market share is in that business?
Well, I'd highlight that, in particular, I know you're asking about batteries, but we're really, you know, one of the top companies in the world when it comes to electric motors. In our Energy Solutions business or Energy Solutions coatings, for which we've won multiple technology awards, you know, they're used in electric motors and vehicles, industrial applications, wind turbines, transmission towers, electrical conduits, but also fuel storage containers, battery trays, closures, and covers. We've now leveraged our Energy Solutions business to grow into battery cells, battery modules, and battery packs. That being said, we see a much larger opportunity in the global electrification market, and we'll be talking about that more in the future.
In terms of market share at this point, it's a nascent but a quickly growing market share.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Robert, you mentioned some new wins in mobility. Could you discuss how are you pricing those wins? Are they being done at m argins sort of similar to what we see today in the segment or some normalized level?
How you make sure that there's good return on capital for those new deals?
Sure. At a variable contribution level, we've been pricing all of our new business at what we have historically deemed to be attractive levels, and I would say that are reflective of current market conditions. In particular, the business that we have won in China has been at very attractive margins.
Yeah. Aleksey, just on return on invested capital, I mean, we don't necessarily need to invest, you know, additional assets. I mean, we're essentially filling up our plants with the volume. As far as the incrementals on those, they're also very attractive.
I mean, I'd , really just to add to your question, I think, you know, the increasing sales in Mobility has really been through our technology, our customer intimacy and relationships, and frankly, our service. Our team in mobility, in particular in Asia, has just been doing an outstanding job.
Thank you. Very helpful. Turning to Refinish, it sounds like your customers continue to face shortages of, you know, materials and personnel. Do you have any insight, you know, whether these issues are getting better, not getting better, or and what could be the pace of improvement here, you know, for the rest of the year?
It does still remain an issue, for body shops, in particular in the U.S. Anecdotally, we have heard over the last month that it has been getting better, but again, I would characterize that as anecdotal as opposed to data-driven.
Got it. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Yes. Good morning. Robert, in your prepared remarks, you referenced the company's stronger share position and, you know, you went on to allude to penetration in the economy segment of Refinish, and it sounds like you picked up some share in Mobility. Is there a way to size how much volume uplift you might be enjoying in those businesses or perhaps other businesses where you've gained share relative to underlying market growth?
Well, I think we can take a look at volume in particular. You know, if we look at volume in the first quarter at least, you know, our volume growth was the strongest in Refinish, in particular in North America and Latin America, followed by Commercial Vehicle in EMEA and Latin America, and then Industrial in North America, and then as we've highlighted, our Light Vehicle business in China. Our penetration, I think, would have been even greater if we had had sufficient raw materials. If you think about it, you know, the lack of raw materials has kind of left us with a current backlog in Refinish and Industrial of approximately $50 million, which is about 4% of Q1 sales.
We actually had, you know, even more demand and potentially could have had even more share if we had been able to get our hands on those raw materials. I think, you know, the team is doing a great job, not only in the Mobility business, but also in the Industrial business and in Refinish. In Refinish, as we highlighted, the mainstream and the economy segments have been areas of focus for us, and we've made, in particular, good inroads there in Latin America with a new business model, as well as with China.
U-POL only allows us to further leverage that position because most of U-POL's sales and distribution network goes to more mainstream and economy sites, which has allowed us from a cross-selling perspective to more deeply penetrate with our Refinish products, as well as getting our U-POL products into more of our distribution, as well as some of our larger body shops in Europe and in the U.S.
Then secondly, if I may, can you comment on what you saw in China in the first quarter in both your auto and industrial businesses? What was the trajectory as COVID resurged in March into early April? Curious as to your thoughts on the underlying, you know, economy there.
I think when you look again at underlying demand in China, demand there has remained really strong. The lockdowns, however, have made it more challenging to service our customers, but our team there has been doing a great job keeping customers running, even if it's meant living at their sites, which they've voluntarily been doing. So I think we feel really good about what's going on there. On the Mobility side, again, we've made some changes from an organizational perspective over the last 18 months that have really helped us more deeply penetrate the market, in particular, with Chinese domestics. We've had a pretty significant amount of growth in China.
On the Industrial side, we've also brought in, you know, new talent over the past year with very specific domain expertise in the industrial markets that are the largest and play best with our technology portfolio in China. They've also made, you know, really good inroads. Now, in terms of the financial impact, as we look at the quarter, the COVID-19 lockdowns in China we saw really kind of create a relatively modest headwind in Q1. We expect it to be a little bit more material in Q2 with the shutdowns. You know, the April results we expect to be most impacted as the lockdowns are kind of in full swing in Shanghai. We expect that business should start to normalize in May, unless we see COVID-19 spread to other areas.
Our you know our guidance assumption is kind of that there's a full return to normal operations in June if the lockdowns are lifted. All of that depends on the trajectory of where we go from here. Again, as a reminder, you know, China's about 10% of our annual sales, and we've assumed about a 1.5-month impact in the second quarter.
That's really helpful. Thank you, Robert.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Just wanted to get a little more insight into the 35%-40% of the index pricing you have now, which is, you know, up from prior indications. Where are you looking to get that figure? And what is it that's driving those customers onto those contracts versus the ones that are staying off? And is it, you know, new folks that are coming in at where you have new wins, or is it you're converting existing customers, or both?
As a follow-up to that, just when we get to a period of deflation, which hopefully eventually we will get to, presumably those contracts will automatically reset on some timeframe, but then you'll be looking to hold on to price in the balance of the business. I just wanted to sort of get some insight into that interplay.
I'd say the optimal level of index contracts is difficult to say. It's really more of a customer preference. There are some customers that prefer to have an index contract in place. It just makes the amount of time that, you know, we as well as our customers spend on price negotiations run a lot more smoothly. Every customer is different, and every purchasing organization within each OEM is different. Some prefer not to have an index contract and just to, you know, have price negotiations verbally. It's really more a function of what our customer preferences are. Most of the contracts on average have about a six-month adjustment. For example, July first, you know, we'll see an adjustment to the majority of the index contracts.
We'll start to see that flow through at the beginning of the third quarter. Then likewise, if you were to see raw material prices come down, you would see those prices come down six months later. I think you know the important element to emphasize there is the through-cycle profitability. As we've structured these arrangements with our customers, we have tried to you know put them through the midpoint of the cycle an attractive level of profitability for us, which we think we've achieved in terms of how we've structured those contracts, and in particular you know versus the amount of value that we actually create for our OEM customers, which as you know is quite substantial.
Maybe just to follow up on U-POL. You know, I think you've had the business since September, and obviously it's been a tricky time with raw materials and pricing. Have they been able to be as nimble as you wanted them to be, or have you had to come in with best practices, or just how's pricing going with the acquisition?
Yeah. I mean, as far as the integration activities, they're going very well. I mean, we're essentially seven months into the journey right now. On the cost side, we only had roughly $10 million of synergies. We're well on track. We had targeted 12 to 18 months on that front. We're in good shape on the cost side. As far as the commercial synergies, Robert covered this a bit in his prepared remarks, but we're making really good progress as far as integrating their commercial teams and really driving those efforts and actually seeing the progress. The expectation pre all the additional pricing, we were expecting to do high teens as far as growth rates and slightly higher than that from an EBITDA perspective.
With the additional pricing, we expect to be north of that. I would characterize U-POL very similar to the overall Refinish with good pricing power, and we're making good progress on that front.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Sison with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys. Good morning. In terms of Mobility, at the 80.6 auto build outlook that you have for 2022, is there good improvement in the second half as pricing catches up, or are we still sort of at this break-even point? You know, given you gave us an outlook for the auto build.
Yeah, we'll be making steady progress as we work through the year. We're expecting volumes to continue to pick up sequentially, coupled with the fact that, you know, pricing will start to outpace the VCOBS inflation rates.
Got it. Yeah. Now just as a quick follow-up on the business, you know, there's not a lot of businesses I don't think that are kind of losing money in coatings, and I think that's probably for everybody. Yeah, is this a good business for Axalta longer term, given, you know, how cyclical it's been? I understand it's been kind of weird, unprecedented times, but when you think about where you could redeploy, you know, potentially, and I know timing isn't bad, is this something that you should hold on to or maybe, you know, divest at some point and invest in things in Performance Coatings, which has held up a lot better?
I think to answer your question, we have to look at kind of the moment in history that we are right now, which is fairly unprecedented. I think if you know, you take COVID, and then on top of COVID, you add massive cost inflation, and then you add a semiconductor shortage, and then on top of that, you add supply chain issues. It does create a rather unique point in history that we would certainly hope would never be repeated. As we think about the business, over the longer term, again, we think that over the next five years, once those conditions ameliorate, we are going to see secular demand that is gonna make this business an extremely strong performer within our portfolio.
You know, the lack of inventory, you know, at OEMs, at dealer lots, the need of car rental companies to replenish their fleets. There's just a tremendous amount of secular demand in addition to the continued conversion from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles where we have additional, you know, content per vehicle. That will also be an impetus. As that business changes and morphs, we also have some additional technologies as well as some additional areas of market focus that we think are gonna even improve potentially the margin profile of the business to that of a higher level than sort of the 2016, 2017 period. Again, as far as Light Vehicle, we do remain positive on that business.
It's just a tough point in time when you have this many exogenous variables go against you.
Yeah. Mike, I did wanna call out one point because I think some folks lose sight of this. Light Vehicle is still EBITDA positive. You know, EBIT is being impacted by all the depreciation and amortization from the carve-out from DuPont back in 2013, but it still is generating cash, and I did wanna highlight that point.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Mike Leithead with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just one from me. I want to circle back to John's earlier question on the buyback. Robert, you obviously talked about finding great value in your equity price in 1Q. When I just look at your current share price, it's maybe, I don't know, 10-ish percent below your average acquired price in 1Q. Should we expect healthy buybacks to continue into 2Q here?
We're not providing discrete guidance on that. I think we're gonna remain opportunistic. We also are keeping an eye on M&A activities as well as, you know, de-leveraging over time. It's certainly on the agenda to continue to look at.
I guess maybe a different way to come at it. We have your average 1Q share diluted count. What did the quarter end at? I'm just trying to back into your 2Q shares outstanding guidance there. Thanks.
We acquired 6.4 million shares. We got roughly a $4 million, you know, diluted average benefit in the first quarter, and we're expecting Q2 guide to be at 222. Not sure if I answered your question precisely there.
No, I think that's helpful. We can follow up offline. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joshua Spector with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning. This is Lucas Beaumont on for Josh. Just wanted to go back to the contract repricing in light vehicle, if we could. Could you tell us sort of roughly how much of your contracts have sort of been repriced already today, and how much you expect to be repriced by the end of the year, please?
The way to think about that is that the contracts vary in length between three and four years. In any given year, there's about 25%-33% of the contracts that are coming up for quote or for rebidding. You have a built-in price adjuster of about a quarter of the business at least kind of every year as business is rebid and requoted. The other element to keep in mind is that, you know, the color palette evolves. As you might have a given vehicle platform, if there is a color change, of course you'll be repricing those colors at current economics.
Great. Thanks. Just thinking about if the mobility markets kind of fail to improve or end up remaining, like, constrained for a number of additional quarters, do you guys have any, like, contingency plans where you would think about taking any temporary or sort of permanent cost actions? I guess how meaningful could that be? Or is it more you would just wait it out until we sort of get through it? Thanks.
At this point, you know, over the last two years, we've done a fair amount of reductions, both structural as well as, you know, holding on to some of the temporary savings. Unless we saw significant demand destruction, I think we're in a pretty good place. Right now it's just the focus on price. I think what you're gonna see in the second quarter is a nice uptick in price realization to continue to help out margins.