Hello, and welcome to the CRH April trading update. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions later on in the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero, and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Albert Manifold, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Albert Manifold, CRH Group Chief Executive here. You're all very welcome to our conference call this morning, which accompanies the release of our trading update in advance of tomorrow's annual general meeting. Joining me on the call is Senan Murphy, our Group Finance Director, Frank Heisterkamp, Director of Capital Markets and ESG, and Tom Holmes, Head of Investor Relations. Given the current circumstances, we're all in different locations and dialing in remotely. Please bear with us over the course of this morning's call. Following some short opening remarks, we will be available to take any questions you may have on our announcements. We have approximately 30 minutes scheduled for our call. We aim to finish up at about nine o'clock or so.
Now, before I take you through the key points of our announcement, I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that this has been a very challenging and unprecedented time for all of us. Our thoughts are first and foremost with all of those affected by COVID-19 and the people who are on the front lines dealing with this global health emergency. As ever, the safety of our employees, contractors, and customers is our number one priority, and every effort is being made to ensure that we provide a safe working environment for them to carry out their activities in accordance with the various public health and safety protocols currently in place across our markets.
Our businesses across the group are deeply embedded in our local communities, and in an effort to help them in whatever way we can, several of our businesses are donating personal protective equipment and other essential supplies to help local hospitals and communities deal with this crisis. The global spread of COVID-19 has significant implications for the economies and construction markets in which we operate. We're following the advice and direction of the World Health Organization, as well as government and public health authorities across our markets, and an extensive range of business continuity measures are in place across our operations globally. This includes enhanced safety and sanitation protocols, as well as adjustments to work practices to ensure social distancing is observed.
In an effort to slow the spread of the virus, governments around the world have implemented various restrictions on public gatherings, the movement of people, and certain business activities, including construction. The impact of these measures on our operations has been visible since the middle of March. The severity and the operational impact of these restrictions varies significantly from country to country. In North America, while emergency restrictions have been implemented in all U.S. states, construction has been deemed an essential activity in most of our markets and is permitted to continue, provided appropriate safety measures are implemented. At this point in time, our operations in the Southeast, Central, and Western United States have been less affected. While our businesses in Pennsylvania, New York City, Washington State, as well as Ontario and Quebec in Canada, have been impacted by government restrictions on construction activities in those markets.
Nevertheless, healthy backlogs and a favorable bidding environment continue to provide support for our business. Although the situation remains fluid, we are starting to see early indications of restrictions being lifted across a number of markets. Our operations in Europe have been more impacted to date, with nationwide shutdowns implemented across a number of Western European markets, including the United Kingdom, France, and Ireland. As a result, operations in these markets have been significantly impacted in recent weeks. In contrast, in the absence of nationwide restrictions on construction activity in our Central and Eastern European markets, our businesses there have been less impacted to date. In the Philippines, government restrictions implemented in March have resulted in significantly lower cement volumes and activity levels.
Turning now to our trading performance for the first three months of the year, and notwithstanding the evolving situation with regard to COVID-19, the group had a positive start to 2020. Group sales for the first quarter were 3% ahead on a like-to-like basis, reflecting a positive underlying demand environment in our core markets and continued progress on pricing across our businesses. I'm now going to take you through each of these businesses in turn. Starting with the Americas Materials division. First quarter like-to-like sales were 8% ahead compared to 2019, with good underlying demand and milder weather conditions in our north and western regions, providing support in higher volumes and prices across all product areas.
Turning to Europe Materials, our like-to-like sales were broadly in line with the prior year as a solid start was offset by the impact of COVID-19-related government restrictions being implemented across a number of our major markets, such as the United Kingdom and France, towards the end of the quarter. Finally, to our Building Products division, where like-to-like sales for the first quarter were 3% ahead of 2019. Favorable volumes, together with pricing progress across most platforms, was partly offset by the impact of government-implemented COVID-19 restrictions on a number of our operations in Europe and North America during the last two weeks of March. Overall, as I said, a positive start to the year, but of course, quarter one is long since faded into the rearview mirror.
In these unprecedented times, we are firmly focused on protecting our business, mitigating any potential adverse financial effect, and ensuring the group is well-positioned for the future recovery in our markets. We have a wealth of experience across the group, and our management teams have been through periods of uncertainty and business disruption several times before. At times like this, it's crucial that we take immediate and comprehensive early action. In our announcement this morning, you can see just some of the measures being implemented across the group. We've suspended all non-essential and discretionary expenditure. We're restricting capital expenditure only to essential maintenance levels. Strict working capital management measures are being implemented across all of our businesses. Significant cost and restructuring actions are being taken to right-size our businesses in line with evolving demand levels.
As before, we're consolidating our operating locations as we adapt to lower levels of production activity. A group-wide recruitment freeze has been put in place. We've implemented temporary layoffs and furlough arrangements in areas experiencing significant demand weakness, and we've implemented 25% salary reductions for all leadership teams and board members. This should give you a flavor of the types of initiatives that are underway across our group, but this is a very fluid situation, and further actions will be taken as required. You've heard Senan and I talk about the financial strength and discipline of CRH many times before, but it's times like this, in periods of crisis and uncertainty, when balance sheet strength and liquidity make a real difference and are absolutely crucial. In this regard, we're in a very healthy position.
With the year-end net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.7 times, we entered 2020 with significant cash and liquidity available to us. Having taken the precautionary decision to draw down our EUR 3.5 billion credit facility, we now have current cash equivalents of over $6 billion. This is sufficient to meet all maturity debt obligations for the next four and a half years. Our remaining debt has a weighted average maturity of over 10 years. We're well-covered from a liquidity perspective. Before I turn to outlook, let me briefly touch on some important updates from this morning's announcement. In March, we announced the completion of our most recent phase of our share buyback program, returning a further EUR 200 million to shareholders and bringing the total cash returned under our share buyback program to EUR 1.8 billion since its commencement in May 2018.
In light of the recent market volatility, the board, however, has decided to postpone our share buyback program until further notice. With regard to the dividend, and as announced in February, the board has proposed a final cash dividend of EUR 0.63 per share for consideration of shareholders at tomorrow's annual general meeting. Turning to outlook, the global COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have a material impact on economic and construction activity across our markets in 2020. Due to the unprecedented level of uncertainty regarding the extent and duration of the government restrictions being implemented across the different countries we operate in, the impact on our profitability for the year ahead cannot be reasonably estimated at this time. We continue to monitor the situation closely and will provide further updates when visibility improves and we have greater clarity regarding our expected financial performance in 2020.
Looking beyond the crisis, I'm convinced that the longer-term prospects of CRH remain positive. Our financial strength, our significant financial strength and resilience, combined with our portfolio of high-quality assets in attractive markets, leave us well-positioned for the future recovery in our markets. Of course, as we've seen in prior economic downturns, construction tends to be one of the key beneficiaries of any future stimulus measures. With that, I'm now going to hand you back to Q&A. I believe there's some questions on the line. May I ask you, as before, to please state your name and the name of your institution that you represent when posing your questions. Now I'm going to hand you back to the moderator to coordinate the Q&A session of our call.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and you will be advised when to ask your question. First question comes in from the line of Robert Gardner calling from Davy. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all. Robert Gardner from Davy here. Hope everyone's safe and well. Two questions from me. One, I wonder would you mind commenting on trading in April, where you're seeing activity levels, and if it gives a kind of sense of what's happening on the ground across your markets, how those markets are doing. Any color there would be helpful. Two, maybe on pricing, just if you could touch on your pricing levels. Certainly, the like-for-like sales levels through Q1 suggest pricing's held up very well. We're just wondering how that's kind of trended as you've gone into Q2. Thank you.
Thanks, Robert. Nice to talk to you. I hope you too and your family are well as well. Just let me take the second part of that question first with regard to pricing. It's an easier one to answer and a little bit shorter. I have to say I'm very pleased with the pricing performance in the first quarter of the year and indeed up to date, both in North America and Europe. Solid pricing across our main markets in North America, in line with what we would expected, despite any slowdown we have seen in some of the markets in North America, not all markets. The pricing has held up across all markets and in all products, and we're quite pleased with that.
Particularly pleased given the turmoil we've seen in Europe, that pricing has also held up very well, that's good to see that discipline again for, we're in the third or fourth year of the recovery, but it seems to be deeply embedded. Of course, we have a number of years of pricing to go to get back to what I would consider to be proper pricing levels for our main products in Europe. Pricing discipline holding up well across our two major markets. With regards to the current trading activity and how this pandemic is impacting upon our business, if I start in North America first, probably the regions of the North America and the United States in particular, I should say, that are being impacted are the coastal markets.
Specifically in and around the Northeast, in and around New Jersey and New York, up into New England, Connecticut, Vermont, places like that are impacted. In the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Washington state, Oregon, and down into California. There are some other clusters in and around Miami and Florida, New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago. Largely, our businesses tend to be outside of those areas. We're fortunate in that's where our businesses are. With the exception of the Northeast and Northwest, they're largely the central interior America business. Broadly speaking, even though there have been shelter-in-place orders put in place in all 50 states, construction has been deemed to be an essential service, and therefore, in effect, to be in 49 of the 50 states, it's carrying on, particularly horizontal construction.
Residential and non-residential construction is carrying on as normal in 38, 39 of the 50 states as well. I would say at the current run rate across the United States, we're probably operating at about 85% of normalized levels because of the closures in the markets in the United States. Canada, which is a smaller market for us, is more impacted. Quebec shut down early in March, and that's effectively been mid-March, and it's been shut down since then. Ontario, less so. Ontario is two-thirds of our business, by the way, in Canada, and that's effectively all horizontal construction has pretty much been open and going well. We're probably operating across North America in total, probably about 80, 85% of normalized levels currently at the current time. If I go to Europe, really it's two stories. It's Western Europe and then Central and Eastern Europe.
As we said in our statement this morning, there's been a progressive slowdown and shutdown of businesses from about the middle of March. As you would know, we would have no business in Italy, so we weren't impacted by the terrible events there. Spain went next, then France, then U.K. and Ireland, and then Belgium. They're the ones that have been progressively slowing down. Currently, they are operating, the U.K. is operating probably at about 40% of normalized levels. France and Spain probably at about 30%, 20% of normalized levels, and Ireland is about 20% of normalized levels. I should say those four countries operate in total, they generate in total probably about 12% or 13% of group EBITDA, so they're not that significant in terms of the impact on our business.
If I move further east, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, the whole swathe of business we have in Central and Eastern Europe, from Poland all the way down to the Balkans, continued good levels of activity. There hasn't been a huge impact there, even though there has been some impact. Operations there are probably operating at somewhere around 80%-85% operating levels across those markets. It's very variable, and it depends where you are. What we have seen over the course of the last, I would say there's been a change in tempo over the last seven to 10 days. The conversations that we're having with the various national construction industry federations are very much about how we go back to work. I think that in the industry that we're in, construction, we're fortunate in that it is an industry which is largely done in the open air.
Whilst some parts of it, particularly vertical construction, is quite labor-intensive and you work inside in quite tight, confined environments, most of the products we sell are for horizontal-type construction. It's in the open air, and actual physical distancing, social distancing is quite easy, and safe working practices are easier to embrace. Certainly, we're working with the authorities now towards moving back towards back-to-work protocols. We can see that both in North America and in Europe, and the conversation is moving back towards that, and we can see the progress those conversations are taking place. I would expect during the course of the coming weeks, I would expect by mid to end of May that most of those markets will be back to work at some level of activity. What that will be, we'll find out.
I think there's a keenness to get back to work in the markets we talked about, and I think the protocols are being observed and looked at. I think that the type of business we do, which is largely capital-intensive from a CRH point of view, producing building materials, it's largely providing materials for horizontal-type construction. It's done in the open air. They probably are some of the easier areas to get back to work. That's currently what we're seeing in our major markets at this moment in time.
That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch calling from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Can you hear me well?
All very well, Gregor. Good to hear you. Hope you're keeping well.
Same to you. Two questions, please. Firstly, if you could elaborate a little bit on the cost trends, particularly variable costs. Energy, obviously being the topic, oil price, bitumen. If you could just give us a bit of a sense where kind of unit costs are trending, perhaps in the U.S. and Europe, just sort of a picture that would be helpful. Secondly, if you could just flesh out a little bit more on the cash generation and liquidity side, if you could help us understand, obviously in a scenario where earnings come down, how you can protect free cash flow generation. Obviously, you've talked about some of the levers, CapEx and so on. If you could just perhaps wherever you can, put some numbers around where you can mitigate some of the earnings impact.
I think if I look back in time, back in 2008, 2009, the group generated quite a lot of cash flow, which I think is important. If you could just give us a little bit more detail, it would be helpful. Thank you.
Gregor, I might start then with us in terms of cash generation first. I'll come back to the energy trend second. In terms of the cash generation, a couple of things to say. First of all, we come into this crisis with a very strong balance sheet, as you know. At the end of last year, we had net debt to EBITDA at 1.7 times. Also, you saw at the beginning of the year, we obviously started into the year with three and a half billion euros of cash on the balance sheet, on deposit at that point in time.
Since then, obviously, as you will see in the announcement this morning, we drew down on our revolving credit facility, which is a further EUR 3.5 billion. As of today, even taking into account the seasonal investments that you would make in the beginning half of the year in terms of working capital and CapEx, and also the first EUR 200 million buybacks that Albert mentioned in the first part of the year, we still find ourselves today in a position where we have got over $6 billion of cash on deposits at this point in time. We are starting in with a healthy cash position. The real focus is on making sure that we mine and we preserve and look after that cash as we look through the first number of months, but also looking out to the second half of the year.
There's a number of actions that we've taken. As we've highlighted today, we're very focused on making sure that all discretionary expenditure has been paused, and anything that's not essential is not being incurred. To take one example of that, CapEx is a good one that people have seen the way we behaved in the last crisis and the way we intend to behave in this crisis. From a CapEx perspective, you know that about 50%-60% of our spend in any year is on maintenance, and the rest is on usually expansionary type activity. It won't surprise you that we've been active on the CapEx already, and that we will be looking to pull our CapEx numbers this year back to, again, somewhere in the region of about 60% depreciation. Somewhere close to the maintenance CapEx as required.
Likewise, on the working capital side, we get very focused on working capital, and obviously paying a lot of attention to our inventory levels, paying a lot of attention to our receivables in the current environment. Again, we are, I would say, are in full-on mode to make sure that we're watching those two measures, making sure that we're not building up any excess inventory, and we're taking account of some of the shutdown activities that are going on in our business, and also making sure that we're paying close attention to our customers and working with them to make sure that we're managing our receivables. Those are areas that are a big focus area.
We've talked a lot as well about obviously reducing our cost base in terms of the opportunity to restructure businesses, but also to have temporary layoffs where we have seen production activities shut down. All of these are all about preserving cash. What I would say, if you look at our balance sheet, one other comment I'd make is if I look at the health of the balance sheet this year versus last year, we're comfortable that when we get to the half year this year, that our net debt levels will be well below what they were at the half year last year. We obviously traded very strong in 2019, and we had a very strong end to the year in terms of cash generation, which obviously is reflected in the balance sheet position at the end of the year.
I think that's really how we feel about the strength of the balance sheet, the strength of our liquidity position. Obviously while we're on that topic, we have engaged with our rating agencies as well over the last number of weeks. Again, we're, I think, in a very positive place with the rating agencies, and they continue to affirm our BBB+ rating at this stage. Coming back to energy and the cost trends, I think if you look at it, in terms of the main item that you probably are referring to is really what's happening in terms of energy costs. In the first quarter of the year across the group on average, you see our energy costs are down about 9%, 10% across the group, so in the first quarter of performance.
The big feature we watch obviously is looking at what's happening in terms of oil price, and in turn, what that means for us in terms of our bitumen activities or asphalt activities. As you can see, oil price is down a lot at this point in time. At this stage today, bitumen prices are not yet tracking that decrease in oil. Were they to track that, then obviously that's something that we've talked about in previous calls, where we will look to pass that on to customer. As we pass it on to customer in a declining price environment, obviously there's a benefit to us in our margins as we will look to hold on to some of that cost reduction into the second half of the year.
I think probably more longer term, if you look at, if we do live in a lower oil price environment and we do live in a lower bitumen cost environment, then that means that for some of our customers who are spending fixed quantities of dollars every year, it means that they can get more volume done for the same price. I think they're the main trends we're seeing in the business at this point in time.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
The next question comes in from the line of Arnaud Lehmann calling from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions from me, please. Firstly, maybe a general question. When you look at this crisis, how do you think it compares with 2008 and 2009, and generally how you think you are positioned for it relative to 10 years ago? That's my first question. Secondly, back on capital allocation, is M&A activity completely frozen at this stage, or could you see in the coming months maybe some small mid-size acquisition opportunities, maybe from some of the smaller players in the industry? Thank you.
Hi, good morning, Arnaud. I hope you are all keeping well and your family too. I think it's quite different to 2008 what we're seeing here. The unprecedented speed of the collapse of markets by the shutdown of those markets is very different to what we saw in 2008, hence our response is going to have to be different. There are certain things that are the same. We operate in a cyclical industry. I don't know whether this is my fifth or sixth recession. Whatever it is, it is. I think CRH and the industry is starting from a very different place. If you go back to 2008, there were bubbles all over the place in terms of construction. We had overbuilt, and we would have hangover from that. There are no bubbles here.
This has been caused by an external event. It's very different in terms of its nature. Also CRH, by the way, is also a very different business than we were back in 2008. We're a much narrower business, much more focused business, much leaner business.
I also think, and I think it really matters at this stage, is the gray hair that is on my head and at the heads of my executive colleagues, experience matters. Knowing what to do in these times and knowing how to manage significant downturns and having been here before, I would notice very interesting how myself and my executive colleagues, within 24 hours, moved into action mode on this when it became clear what the issue was. I think also our financial strength of CRH is very different to what it was in 2008. Senan has very well set out for you the strength of our balance sheets and the cash generation capability of our business. I think that stands to us as well.
I think another thing that's different is the fact that our geographic footprints, we're a much more focused business across Europe and the United States. If I look at some of the deals that we've done and the portfolio of work that we've done over the last few years, that helps us. The addition of the Ash Grove business to our materials business in North America means we're much more focused on the central part of the United States, which of course is the area that's protected most from this terrible crisis, this terrible virus.
The addition of the business we bought as part of the Holcim in 2014 and 2015 in Central and Eastern Europe on the heavyside business is again, the parts that are being sustained and held up more, those strong materials businesses there, which will continue to benefit from the stimulus packages that they currently benefit from. The European Union continues to be strong. Of course, a simpler business because we don't have the big distribution arms that we had in the past, which would have been, I think, impacted by this. I think also quite importantly is that our work is very much focused on all the positive things that we're doing.
We had a lot of cleanup to do at the end of the last financial crisis, we spent maybe two and a half years doing very significant portfolio work to decide what we wanted to keep and to shape the business. In doing so, we've ended up, as I said to you, with a leaner business, a more focused business, focused on two parts of the world, North America and Europe, which we think will benefit from stimulus packages because, quite frankly, the governments of those parts of the world can do so. They have the financial capability to do that. I think also with the focused end markets that we're in, we have very heavy exposure to government-funded projects, particularly in North America, but also in Central and Eastern Europe.
That, combined with the financial strength of our business, I think will lead us to weather this storm particularly well and come out into the other side of the recovery and continue not only to grow organically but also inorganically. Which brings me to your second point. During the course of the last crisis, I remember sitting at Myles Lee, the Chief Executive at the time, at his right hand as he guided us very skillfully and carefully through the 2008-2013 crisis. During that time, we invested over EUR 6 billion in M&A and capital expenditure during those 5 years, about EUR 3 billion in each area. I know our industry very well. During that time, we saw that people looked ahead and saw four or five tough years ahead.
We have conversations with many people in our industry about opportunities to buy their businesses that go on for decades. One would find that what will happen is an issue like this will crystallize in their mind the decision that they want to align themselves more. We'll find more and more people, particularly the bolt-ons, particularly the mom and pops, which are the bread and butter of CRH, they will come to us, and the value opportunities there really would be too good for us to turn down, particularly if we have got the financial strength that we have, which we have going forward. Look, I expect CRH to be careful and prudent as we always are.
I don't think this is the time for any large-scale M&A, but when you see some strong value accretive additions to your portfolio of businesses, I would expect us to capitalize on those, and I would expect it to continue on in the same vein as we did during the course of the last crisis. Selective M&A in a prudent way, discipline as always within CRH, positioning ourselves not just to deal with the day-to-day crisis we have now, but our minds very much focused on the recovery, the shape and speed of that recovery, and making sure that we can benefit from that recovery when it comes not just with organic growth being in our market positions, but also with the benefit of some inorganic growth as well.
That's very clear. Thank you very much, and stay safe.
Thank you, Arnaud .
The next question comes in from the line of Paul Roger calling from Exane. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Hope you're well in Dublin, however you're calling from today. Just a couple of questions from me, most answered. First of all, you referenced the U.S. backlog situation, and I think you said they continue to be quite good. Is it possible to put any numbers on that just to sort of help us understand the sort of pent-up potential and what sort of demand we could see when the restrictions are lifted? Secondly, also on the U.S., you've made some comments by region, but I wonder if you can say a bit more by end market and specifically whether you're seeing any concerning signs in the non-residential sector. Thank you.
Okay, Paul, two questions there. I'll take both just because they're related to some extent. With regard to U.S. backlogs, even at this stage, probably ahead by about 2% to 3%, actually. Actually, even before backlogs, there's bidding season. Bidding turns into backlog when we win bids. The bidding season is also a good indication of what the backlogs turn into business and the bids turn into backlog, if I put it that way, too. The bidding season is very strong. In fact, what we're getting from a lot of the states is clarification that they have surety of supply. I think at this time, states realize it's important to keep their economies moving. Construction is one of those areas that can go, and they want to make sure that we can continue to supply their markets.
By the way, that's not just in the U.S., that's in all markets in the U.K. as well, by the way. I think the backlogs are ahead by about 3%, broadly speaking, but even stronger indication on the bidding side as we go forward. That would give us a look forward to probably about 12, 16 weeks ahead. We will be bidding work now for sort of July, August kind of work. That looks particularly strong. With regards to the individual end-use markets, well, look, I've just answered the question there for public infrastructure there by telling you that in terms of what the outlook for that market looks, it looks good in terms of going forward. With regards to res and non-res, some trends out there, some contrary out there with regards to non-res, which can look very black.
I saw the ABI overnight there. Broadly speaking, actually, I think the non-res construction, it's hard to really look through it because you find in areas where there's a shutdown in vertical construction, it's obviously very impacted. In areas where there's no shutdown on vertical construction, it's not as much impacted. Some good strong growth in particular areas, in data centers, warehousing in particular, particularly out in the western part of the U.S. It's a little unclear to draw any long-term trends on that yet. I'd watch it carefully, though. Residential, the way residential goes, you really won't know where residential is until about 3 to 6 months. What will happen is, there's projects that are ongoing at the moment. All developers will finish out the work that they're doing. There's no point in leaving a housing scheme half built.
They must be finished and completed, because then they can convert them into cash. No matter what happens, the banks, whoever it may be, they will continue to finance the developers doing that. I think we'll have to watch and see what the next phase is like to get a longer-term trend. Other than to say that we didn't recover back to one of the long-term housing demand levels. We're still at sort of at 1.2, even though it had started off end of the year quite well last year. Interest rates continue to be very low. It's a question of exactly how we start to get through this next phase and how the U.S. economy starts to reassert some confidence in itself, I think will determine particularly the residential sector.
I don't think you'll see a clarity on the residential position until they finish out the current works that are underway, and that will usually unwind over the next two, three, four, five months. With regard to non-res, it's tough in the places that are shut down, but then again, that's because they've stopped all vertical construction. In the places where it's not shut down, it's broadly carrying on reasonably well, yeah.
That's great. Just one very quick supplementary. I see U.S. aggregates prices are up 1% year to date. That's a little bit shy of maybe what the industry was talking about. Is there anything specific going on there?
No. That just makes it early season mix. If you're looking at early season, volumes are very low, and if you have a slightly higher percentage of low-grade fill, it looks very low. As the year unwinds and you start to get a more normalized mix and balance through your businesses, that'll come out. I expect them somewhere between reasonably 3%-4% during the course of this year.
That's great. Stay safe. Thanks, guys.
You too, Paul. Mind yourself. Thank you. I think we've time maybe if we could just have one more question. We're about five minutes over, but I could take one more question if that's okay.
Okay, the final question comes in from Elodie Rall from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I hope everyone is safe as well. Maybe if you could, first of all, quantify a little bit on the impact that you've seen on EBITDA. Q1 sales up 3% like-for-like. We have an early cost tailwind. Is it fair to assume that the EBITDA went up over proportionally then versus sales? Speaking about operating leverage in general, you've talked in the past about drop through of around 20% between the last crisis. Is this still a fair assumption to have in mind, or should we think about something even lower given the cost actions that you have taken already? Lastly, on CapEx, you're talking about reducing CapEx, obviously. Could we have a little bit of an idea of what the maintenance minimum would be like if you could quantify a bit versus the $1.4 billion spent in 2019?
Thanks very much.
All right, Elodie, I'll have a go at those questions. In terms of the first one about EBITDA, in terms of Q1, yeah, as you pointed out in the results this morning, obviously our first quarter sales are ahead on a like-for-like basis, 3% over last year. Basically, we don't disclose Q1 EBITDA within that, but you can rest assured that the EBITDA performance was better than 3% like for like, so that there was positive leverage in that performance in the first quarter. Basically, first quarter, as you know, is a small quarter anyway, so it's not that significant, and we've obviously moved on and the world's moved on since then. In terms of leverage, I think your overall comment, we guide, as you said, to a 20% leverage scenario in the long term.
When you look out to that way, I would still hold to that type of number in terms of the performance. I think specifically on your CapEx then, yes, as I said, our ambition and the actions we've taken are about taking our CapEx numbers back down to somewhere in the range of about 60% of our depreciation. As you point out, looking at our performance last year, pre the lease accounting activity, we would have been at about $1.3 billion. Then, obviously, we're talking about taking that number down to somewhere in the region of about 60% of that in the current year. There's obviously some of these costs as well, but they'll likewise come down from last year.
Great. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thanks, Elodie. I think that's all we have time for this morning. I just want to thank you all for your attention, and as always, if you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to get in touch with our investor relations team. We look forward to talking to you again on the 20th of August, when we report our interim results for the first six months of 2020. All of you, just mind yourself, and stay safe. We'll talk to you then. Thank you very much for your time today.
Thank you.