Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Juan, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to the Ferguson PLC first quarter results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any interference with the presentation. At the end of the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question at this time, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. To withdraw your question, please press star followed by the number two. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brian Lantz, Ferguson's VP of Investor Relations and Communications. You may now begin your conference.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Ferguson's first quarter earnings conference call and webcast. Hopefully, you've had a chance to review the earnings announcement we issued this morning. This is available in the Investors and Media section of our corporate website and on our SEC Filings webpage. A recording of this call will be made available later today. I want to remind everyone that some of our statements today may be forward-looking and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information is included under the legal disclaimer in our earnings announcement this morning. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the earnings announcement on our website for additional information, including a reconciliation to the most directly comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.
With me on the call today are Kevin Murphy, our CEO, and Bill Brundage, our CFO. I will now turn the call over to Kevin.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Ferguson's first quarter results conference call. On today's call, I'll give you some highlights from our Q1 results and an update on our end markets before I turn the call over to Bill for the financials. I'll come back at the end to set our outlook for the rest of the fiscal year before Bill and I take your questions. Let me begin by saying the group delivered exceptional performance in the first quarter, driven in part by strong market share gains. This success is due largely to our associates, who we would like to express our sincere thanks to as they continue to make our customers' projects simpler and more successful. We've continued to leverage our global supply chain and strong balance sheet to support our local customers through a period of supply chain disruption.
Reliably delivering in a period of industry supply chain pressures remains a gravitational pull for our customers to our business and has helped us to continue to capture these outsized market share gains. Technology remains a key strength, allowing us to make our customers as productive as possible, while at the same time enhancing our own productivity. For our end markets, residential, which comprises just over half our U.S. revenue, remained robust in the first quarter. Both new construction and RMI saw strong demand, and our residential revenues grew by approximately 24% in the first quarter. Non-residential end markets grew faster than residential as we lapped negative comparables in the prior year, with an acceleration of activity in areas such as education, healthcare, and hospitality. Our non-residential revenue grew by approximately 31%, and near-term economic indicators appear to be in pretty good shape.
Inflation trends stepped up further in the quarter, driven both by finished goods and commodities. Our pricing discipline and particularly strong gross margins contributed to profit growing significantly faster than revenue, delivering strong operating leverage in the quarter. On the acquisition front, we acquired four high-quality businesses, bringing in approximately $125 million in annualized revenue, and we're pleased to welcome these associates to Ferguson, as these local relationships help us drive further growth in the future. We initiated our new $1 billion share buyback program, completing approximately $100 million in the first month of execution. Finally, we remain on track to hold our second vote on listing in the spring of 2022 as we look to move our primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange.
Again, we are proud of our strong results in the first quarter and are confident in the ongoing strength of our business model. Now, let me pass you over to Bill, who will take you through the financial numbers in more detail.
Thank you, Kevin, and good morning or afternoon, everyone. As I start today, I wanted to remind you that we adopted U.S. GAAP effective August 1st, and therefore, the first quarter results we'll cover today are presented on that basis. Now, turning to the results. As expected, we've seen a continuation of trends from the fourth quarter, with strong market share gains contributing to revenue growth of 26.6%. Organic growth of 24.5% was at similar levels to Q4 of last fiscal year. As Kevin mentioned, price inflation stepped up in the first quarter into the low teens. Gross margins were 170 basis points ahead of last year, reflecting the value we deliver to our customers, the strength of our business model, and our ability to manage price inflation.
Operating costs continued to be well controlled as we focused on productivity and efficiencies while investing in our talented associates, supply chain capabilities, and technology program. As such, adjusted operating profit grew by $283 million, up 58.5%, and adjusted diluted EPS grew by 64.5%. Moving to our segment results, the U.S. business mirrors the group results with a strong performance. Total revenues grew 27.1%, with organic growth of 25.2% and a further 1.9% from acquisitions. Price inflation stepped up further in the first quarter into the low teens. We expanded gross margins, tightly controlled costs, and generated strong operating leverage.
Headcount and variable costs grew to appropriately support volume growth, and consequently, adjusted operating profit came in at $752 million, $280 million ahead of last year, with adjusted operating margins expanding 240 basis points to 11.7%. We've provided a breakout of the revenue growth across our largest customer groups in the U.S. We saw strength in both the residential and non-residential end markets, and our growth was fairly well balanced. Residential trade and building and remodel grew well, with strong demand coming from both new construction and remodeling project work. Residential digital commerce continued to benefit from elevated demand from the project-minded consumer and the light decorative pro. HVAC, where the majority of our business serves the residential end market, grew by 23% in the first quarter.
Waterworks continued to outperform, with revenue growth accelerating to 50%, driven by an increase in inflation and a balance of strong public works demand, good residential growth, and growth in non-residential end markets. The commercial, mechanical, and other non-residential customer groups saw good growth in the quarter. These businesses have lapped negative prior year comparatives. We continue to see growth in areas such as education, healthcare, and hospitality. The Canadian business performed well in Q1, with revenue growth of 19.6%. Organic revenue grew by 13.9% with a further 5.7% tailwind coming from the positive impact of foreign exchange rates. Residential end markets, which account for over half of our Canadian business, performed well in the period, with another particularly strong performance from our HVAC business.
We saw continued growth in civil infrastructure markets and a return to growth in our industrial markets. The good gross margin performance and tight cost control led to a $11 million increase in adjusted operating profit, with adjusted operating margins stepping up 170 basis points to 8.8%. As we focus solely on North American markets, we continue to see success as we leverage the considerable expertise, knowledge, and know-how from our U.S. associates to enhance operations and customer experience across Canada. Finally, the balance sheet remains in great shape. Our capital allocation priorities and leverage targets have not changed, and we continue to prioritize moving back into our stated leverage range of between 1x-2x . We are continuing to invest in the organic growth of the business and look to sustainably grow the ordinary dividend.
Acquisitions are an important part of our growth strategy. We've completed four acquisitions to date in the fiscal year, and we currently see a healthy future pipeline of bolt-on acquisitions. We remain committed to returning surplus capital to shareholders and continue to execute the $1 billion share buyback program, having completed just over $200 million to date. Let me wrap up. We're pleased with the start we have made to fiscal 2022. Strong earnings while continuing to invest in the business and a strong balance sheet put us in a great position going into the balance of the year. Thank you. Now let me hand you back to Kevin for an update on the outlook and his closing remarks.
Thank you, Bill. Since the start of the second quarter, we've continued to generate revenue growth similar to that of the first quarter. That being said, we do continue to expect a tapering of growth rates as we enter the second half. The recent tailwinds we've seen from inflation on our gross margins are likely to moderate, but the timing and the extent of this remain unclear. Given the momentum in the business and the strength of our business model, our full year expectations have now increased. To summarize the first quarter, the business is performing extremely well. We're leveraging our core strengths in the face of global supply chain challenges to deliver outsized market share gains. We believe we are well-positioned for growth and remain focused on executing our strategy over the rest of the fiscal year and beyond. Thank you for your time today.
Bill and I are now happy to take your questions. Operator, I'll hand the call back over to you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Will Jones from Redburn. Please, Will, your line is now open.
Thank you. Morning. A couple from me, please. The first is just whether we could or you could help us unpick the gross margin uplift in the quarter of 170 basis points by, if it's possible, to dissect it by factor. I'm particularly interested within that as to how much was inventory holding gains as opposed to other factors like servicing the customer as well and mix. The second one was really just more around market share, whether you had a view on your outperformance in the quarter.
I appreciate it's only a small period, but within that, how much do you think is as a function of constrained supply chains and really how you go about then retaining those customers potentially once supply chains normalize through, say, calendar 2022? I guess within the whole issue of market share, just interested in that Waterworks 50%, it's the standout versus the other areas. Is there anything particularly to note there around market share gain? Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Will. This is Bill. I'll take the first part of that question, and thank you for that question. If you think about our Q1 gross margins of 31.3%, they were really a continuation of what we saw in Q4, which was right about the same level, 31.4%, really driven by the continued step-up in inflation. As we said in our release, in our prepared comment, inflation moved from about 8% in Q4 up into the low teens. The majority of that further increase was driven by finished goods inflation, and that enabled us to continue to put up a very strong gross margin in the first quarter.
Again, very much as that inflation continues to move up, we're able to translate that, manage that price inflation and leverage the strengths of our supply chain, to produce those outsized gross margins. We would expect that as inflation tapers at some point in the future, that those margins will moderate at some point, but it is difficult to say when that's going to happen, and to what extent that will be. Certainly, the majority of that driven by our ability to manage price in the first quarter.
Yeah, Will, and if we tick down your question to market share, as we think about market share in the quarter, it's difficult for us to tease out exactly what that market share gain looks like.
I would think of it as broadly similar to what we experienced as we exited the fiscal year last year. That market outperformance is slightly above that 200-300 basis points that we normally target. As we said at the end of our fiscal year, really that's driven in large part by that supply chain chaos that's happening and our ability to service customers. Like we said at the close of the fiscal year, hanging on to new customers and the durability of those new relationships, we believe is, in fact, durable. The reason for that is these customers have been targets of ours for a period of time. Given the opportunity to service that customer, make their project better, we think is a bit of a durable proposition.
You're gonna win some, you're gonna lose some, but we think we win more than we lose over the long haul. In terms of the Waterworks outperformance, we're really pleased with the balance of that performance, that balance across municipal, public works, residential new construction, commercial. When you look across that performance, you've got a balance of inflation, especially in the commodity side of the business, things like PVC on the piping material side, with also good volume growth. We think that's about, call it half and half in terms of the growth inside of the quarter.
Really pleased with what that brings, because if you look at the totality of the project, that's the opening gambit, if you will, for our company, as we look to then take advantage of opportunities with the finished side of that building above underground construction, especially in residential and commercial settings.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Elodie Rall from JP Morgan. Please, Elodie, your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Maybe two questions on your end market. First of all, a follow-up on your Waterworks business. It's done really well indeed in Q1. How would you quantify the upside for this business from the U.S. infra plan that was just announced? Second, maybe could you give us a bit of an updated view on the new housing market in the U.S., in light of the rising interest rate environment, through the midterm? Thank you.
Thanks, Elodie. I'll take the beginning of that, and then if Bill wants to add in. In terms of that end market, residential, and infrastructure and commercial, when we think about Waterworks, the infrastructure bill will certainly be a tailwind, and it will likely play out over time as we think about what those projects are going to start to look like. As we discussed previously, there is a bit of a pressure on trade labor, and so putting those projects into action will take a bit of time in our view, but it certainly will be a tailwind for us. I reflect back to that residential commercial side inside of Waterworks because of the broad-based nature of that performance.
The residential new construction market across the U.S. in particular appears to continue to be quite strong. We've seen good bidding activity inside of that Waterworks business. We haven't seen any substantial reduction in lot count for subdivisions or postponement of new subdivision construction, which again points well towards our residential trade business, our building remodel business, and the rest of the construction process inside of Ferguson. In terms of the new housing market, the external indicators look to be good. Permit activity at 1.65, starts at about 1.52, look to be good. The new construction growth appears to be strong as we move into the next calendar year.
Great. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Keith Hughes from Truist. Please, Keith, your line is now open.
Thank you. Question on inflation. Can you give any sort of feel on the inflation levels you saw in your commodity products versus how much you saw on more of the value add of HVAC, finished plumbing and things of that nature?
Yeah. Good morning, Keith. Thanks for the question. Commodities really trended in a very similar level, from an inflation standpoint to what they did in Q4.
Think of that in the 50% inflation range year-over-year. Very similar. Some puts and takes in there between the different commodity categories, but overall, very similar level. As you know, commodities represent today what used to be about 10%-12% of our business. Today, it's more like 13%-14% just given the fact of that price increase. Where we've really seen the step up, and we talked about this a bit on the Q4 call, is we're now seeing the commodity and the input costs playing through to finished goods. We saw that finished goods inflation step up into the high single digits in Q1. It's really the combination of that and the acceleration on the finished goods side that drove that further uptick in inflation from Q4 to Q1.
Okay. Thank you. I guess one other question, maybe on our share repurchase. You talked about the progress on the billion-dollar plan. Can you just give us an idea where you are in share count right now, given all the repurchase activity?
Yeah. We're just under 221 million shares today, Keith. And to date, we've purchased about $225 million on that $1 billion share buyback program.
Okay. Just one kind of, I guess, bigger, biggest question to finish off here. As you had talked about, the inflation will probably subside. Do you have any historical evidence of when you have periods of inflation and then it goes away? How much of that you're able to keep? Is there any rough guide you use on? This is not on the commodity products, more on the finished goods, the more value-add product. Do you have any good historical examples?
Well, I tell you, Keith, we're in a period that is unusually high from an inflation standpoint, so we don't have any great historical data points. If you think about the gross margins that we delivered last year, stepping up to 30.6% and now stepping up further into the mid-31% range, we would anticipate that moderating somewhat, but really focused on the overall operating margins of the business. We were quite pleased with stepping that up from about 8%- 9.2% last fiscal year. We talked about that being a new base from which we could grow incrementally into the future. Sitting here today, we still believe that we can grow that operating margin over time.
Gross margins will come off a bit, but really difficult to say where they're going to ultimately settle.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please, Gregor, your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Couple of questions. I mean, maybe firstly, you say you have, you know, raised your expectations. If you could maybe share with us sort of what you're thinking about now, and I guess, or maybe putting it differently, what the sort of different building blocks are to get there. That's the first question. The second question is, on previous calls, you talked about, you know, fill rates, you know, into the DC, into the branch and so on. If you could just update us where we are on the whole supply chain challenges and if they're perhaps, you know, easing a little bit. Then maybe final question is, I think in the statement you reiterated your desire to, you know, have a vote for relisting in the spring.
Can you just share with us if there's any specific kind of, news or I suppose any incremental step towards that, perhaps compared to the last time you spoke in September? Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Gregor. If I go back to your question on expectations first, we started the fiscal year in strong fashion and really pleased with the growth, almost 24%-25% organic growth in Q1, and really pleased with the operating leverage that we produced. As we said, we've started from a growth perspective, even though it's early, we've started Q2 at a very similar growth range. I play that through, and we would expect to have a very strong first half set of results. As you turn to the second half, as we've talked about in the past, the organic comparables get much tougher. They move from roughly 3% in the first half to 22% in the second half.
There are some uncertainty, as we've already talked about a bit today, from an inflation standpoint, in terms of how that will play through to gross margins. We would expect a tapering still of growth. Sitting here today, you know, two months after we last spoke to the market, given the start to the year, given the momentum we have, we're incrementally more positive, for the full year outlook at this point.
Yeah. Thank you, Gregor. Building on to the fill rate and supply chain area, as we discussed previously, we were using our balance sheet to invest in inventory, using our supply chain to make sure that we took what were pressured fill rates at the time, call it in that 30% area on time and in full into our DC, and turning that into high 90s fill rate and in stocks for our customers at the branch level. That hasn't changed materially in terms of what that on time, in full looks like into our DC, and it hasn't changed materially in terms of our fill rate and in stocks at the branch level.
What has changed is we have seen, as we exited the quarter, some improvement and some firming up of the ground under our feet in that supply chain area, especially in certain product categories, certain SKUs. It has been intermittent. The way we've been looking at this is we have certain areas of our product catalog that are coming in
At normalized fill rates and normalized time horizons. The way we measure that is we look at the entirety of a purchase order to one of our suppliers, and how quickly we can get to, say, 75% of that purchase order being filled into our DCs. That time horizon to get that fill has improved by roughly 26% as we exited the quarter. We're starting to see some of that improvement. Now, that's gonna play out with a little bit of challenge inside of our network because you've got to make sure that you can take care of the project for the customer in its totality. We're gonna use that scaled relationship with the supplier.
We're gonna use our location base and our supply chain to make sure that we can aggregate that product and make sure that we can bring it to the customer on time and in full. It's improving, but there's still some inconsistencies that are gonna lead to a bit of challenge as we go forward into the new calendar year.
Thank you.
Last question on the vote. Nothing new to talk about as it relates to vote number two. We had talked about bringing that vote in the springtime. Originally, when we took the first vote for the additional listing of shares in New York, we said that we would bring that vote back within one year of stand up of the additional listing. We think that's largely still on track.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kathryn Thompson from Thompson Research. Please, Kathryn, your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions today. Just to follow up on supply chain and narrowing it a little bit. Could you give an update on the build-out of the MDC supply chain and tech improvements? In particular, given in light of continued challenges with supply chain, how is this contributing to gaining market share, in other words, with next day delivery bogeys that you've put out? Also any changes in terms of purchasing from key suppliers, in other words, doing some advanced purchasing to ensure that you have inventory for finished goods. Thank you.
Yeah, Kathryn, I'll start on your MDC questions. As you know, we opened our first new format MDC in the second half of last fiscal year in Denver. We have Phoenix under construction today, should open in the spring. We're well underway with our next one, which will be Dallas, which will then be followed by Houston. We are layering on that build-out of that MDC very much, that MDC plan very much according to our strategy and our plan. We're seeing early feedback in Denver in terms of having that product availability, that service offering, showing an ability to enhance market share gains. It's early days.
We're a few months into that building, but we're very optimistic and encouraged by not only the efficiency there, but also what we believe that can do for us in that market.
Yeah, Kathryn, thank you. In terms of changes in purchasing behavior, we haven't really stepped up any changes in purchasing behavior or forward buys to any discernible degree. This has been a very unique environment, as everyone knows, and we've been working together with our suppliers to make sure that we can be their best path to market and have the best fill rates for our customers and move product around our network to make sure that we can fill any gaps that exist in any local markets for that particular supplier. In terms of how we think about the go-forward purchasing behavior, though, one of the key things on our mind is even in normalized markets, we wanna help the manufacturer to make their manufacturing activity a bit more predictable. We wanna make sure that we are doing everything we can to smooth that out.
In unpredictable environments, we wanna also be helpful in that environment when we look at right now a tendency for end customers and our trade professional to wanna place orders earlier to get ahead of any supply chain disruption, we wanna make sure that we're getting the right required dates so that we can make sure that we have inventory on hand for their job when they need it and avoid an excessive pull forward of demand. That's important for us as we go forward.
Okay. A follow-up on the raised expectations for 2022, and I appreciate your earlier comments on that. I wanna dig a little bit deeper in the path in really understanding which bucket has improved. Previously, you had outlined a path for high single-digit to low double-digit growth of GDP growing to 2%-3%, industry growth of 100 basis points, and Ferguson growing above the market by 200-300 basis points and then, you know, another 100-200 basis points of M&A to growth. When you look at those disparate buckets, what is driving the raised expectations? Then is this from conservative estimates, or are there end markets or regions that are outperforming, that are raising some of those buckets for expectations?
Yeah, Kathryn, I think right now we're in a period where market growth is quite strong. As we've talked about both in the last fiscal year call as well as this morning, our market share gains are a bit outsized versus that traditional 200-300 basis points. We were closer to 400-500 basis points at the end of last year. As Kevin outlined today, while we can't pinpoint it in Q1, we're probably in a similar range. It's really the combination of market strength, but then our ability to generate those outsized market gains, again, driven by the strength of our associates, our supply chain and our technology platform.
Yeah, we're not seeing any major geographic disparities in terms of where that growth is coming from.
As you can imagine, we're seeing good growth in the Southeast, in Texas, in the Mid-South area. Generally speaking, that growth is strong across the nation and through Canada as well.
Okay, in that 400-500 basis points that you noted, and this appears to be a continuation of trend, what are the top two, three buckets that are driving that outsized growth, in your opinion? Thank you.
Kathryn, not to be evasive here, it really has been broad-based. You know, as we talked about earlier in the Q&A session of this call, the Waterworks performance at 50% growth has been very strong, aided in large part by some commodity inflation in that business. Really across the board, from residential trade plumbing through our building remodel business, our digital commerce business with that light decorative pro and project-minded consumer through HVAC and into that non-res space as well within industrial commercial mechanical. It has been a very solid, broad-based performance inside the business. When you look at the share gains in those individual customer groups, it really is a testament to what they're working on together for the construction of the project as a whole in both residential and non-residential.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ami Galla from Citigroup. Please, Ami, your line is now open.
Yes, thank you, guys. Just a couple of questions from me. If I could have one follow-up on the sort of gross margin question. Can you talk a bit about where we think the sustainable gross margins in this business should trend towards, even in the context of own brand mix that is there in the business? The second question was really on inflation on the overhead base. If you could give us more color around those elements.
Yeah, sure, Ami, thanks for the question. In terms of that gross margin, again, it's a bit outsized right now at 31.3%. It's, you know, difficult to pinpoint exactly where that will settle, but if you go back to the full year results from last year, where we were in the mid-30% range, so 30.6%, we think that's probably a more reasonable range. We do believe that we will continue to incrementally grow both gross margins and, more importantly, operating margins over time. Some of that driven by the own brand portfolio and strategy that we have, in addition to our overarching product strategy, and the strengths that we bring, from a global sourcing and supply chain and purchasing power perspective.
We do believe that gross margins will come off a bit as inflation normalizes, and then we'll continue to incrementally grow those over time, as we have done consistently over the last decade or so.
Sorry, and my second one was just on the overhead costs. Can you talk a bit about the inflationary trends that you're seeing on the overhead cost levels?
Yeah, sure. Apologies. We have seen wage inflation step up a bit. If you think about for our cost base, wages and labor costs are about two-thirds of our cost base, just over 60%. Generally, those would run kinda 3%-4%, kinda normalized wage increases year in, year out. We're seeing that at a higher level, largely driven by drivers and warehouse associates, where there's more pressure from an overarching market perspective for that type of talent and that type of labor costs. We've seen that increase. We would expect those pressures to continue as we step into calendar 2022.
Overall, we feel good about our ability to manage those wage increases and that inflation from a cost perspective driven by the growth we're seeing on the top line productivity, and continued focus there. It's being well managed, but we are seeing more pressure from a cost perspective.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please, Arnaud, your line is now open.
Thank you very much. Good morning, Kevin. Good morning, Bill. My first question is on M&A, especially in the context of your balance sheet, which is, I guess, in very, very strong shape and your net debt will be there below where you want it to be. I appreciate the priorities, organic growth. But do you see a strong pipeline? We heard about some potential changes in capital gain taxes in the U.S. I don't know if that's going ahead, but could you accelerate the M&A activity going forward? That's my first question. My second question is just a technical one, and I'm sorry if it's silly, but I still see $25 million income from discontinued operations.
I'm assuming this has nothing to do with the U.K., so is there something else here that you're selling? Thank you.
Yeah, sure, Arnaud. Thanks for the question. Our M&A pipeline is pretty healthy right now. You've seen us complete four deals to date in the fiscal year, and we have a number of other bolt-on and capability acquisitions in the pipeline. To your point, we have seen that activity pick up over the last 12 months after we got out of the immediate kinda concerns and lockdown periods early on in COVID. I think we've seen that pick up for a number of reasons. One, the market is fairly supportive right now. Businesses are performing quite well. Two, you have seen you know, most of our acquisitions and most of our competitive set is small to medium-sized family run businesses.
Those businesses having run through a COVID period and a lockdown period and looking forward to the future and understanding what it's going to take to compete, I think that spurred on some more people and more of those businesses to think about selling their firms. Certainly noise around potential capital gains rates has probably added to that a bit. We're seeing a fairly healthy pipeline, which we would expect to continue for the rest of this fiscal year, at least.
We're really pleased with that pipeline being very well-balanced. Well-balanced with bolt-on acquisitions geographically and the quality of companies that we're able to bring in to Ferguson. As you know, our markets are incredibly fragmented. As we look to consolidate those markets, we found some really strong opportunities with great associates and local relationships that we can bolt on to supply chain technology, global sourcing, and functional expertise. That together with some of our capability acquisitions, capabilities in business expansion, like geosynthetics, for our Waterworks business, but also in own brand. You saw a little bit of that in our first four deals in fiscal 2022. That will continue.
Bringing in good solid own brand companies that don't own manufacturing assets, but that have high quality brands that we can then drive through our bricks and mortar and digital channels and accelerate growth. That balance is pretty strong right now.
Last on your question on the $25 million, that related to the disposal of a property from a former discontinued operations. It was actually property from the Nordic business, not the U.K. You should very much consider that a one-time event.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have time for one more question on today's conference call. The last question comes from Dominic Edridge from Deutsche Bank. Please, Dominic, your line is now open.
Thanks very much. Just to go back to the point on the gross margins, maybe looking at it a slightly different way. Could you maybe just discuss how your gross profit per sort of unit is looking in terms of, you know, compared with history? And is there sort of any element of inventory gain on that in the current quarter that should sort of taper off a bit as we go into future quarters? I think there was a comment you made earlier on Waterworks was about 50/50 volume to price. Is that sort of? Did I get that right? And then the sort of second question was just more on demand side. On all these price increases, what sort of customer behavior are you seeing?
Are you seeing any signs of people putting off works because of price increases? Or are we still at a level where basically people are pretty price inelastic at the current time? Thank you very much.
Yeah. On gross margins, either gross profit per unit or more so across different product lines, where we've seen higher levels of inflation, we've been able to leverage that into higher flow through and higher gross margins. Some of that coming from certainly our ability to leverage and to sell through inventory. And so as we've seen that continued step up in inflation, we've seen that play through to more benefit from a gross margin perspective. And again, we would expect that to moderate and to come off at some point, but calling exactly what that will moderate to is a bit difficult. You did hear the Waterworks revenue description correctly. About half, maybe just over half of that 50% growth driven by inflation, the rest driven by volume.
In terms of demand and what we're seeing in the market from the customer base, we have been concerned that price inflation, especially as it entered the finished goods side, would cause some degree of concern for postponing projects. As you look at the balance of new construction and RMI that we have inside the business, we have not seen any discernible behavior of postponing projects. We have seen a touch inside of the public works infrastructure space, but as we all know, that's going to have some additional demand created from the infrastructure bill. On the residential and non-residential portions of our business, specifically commercial, we actually haven't seen any postponement of construction activity due to price. That demand continues to be quite strong.
In fact, as we discussed during Kathryn's question, we're trying to make sure that we understand exact needs and delivery requirements so that we don't have a dramatic pull forward of demand to get project product on site, early. We see a pretty consistent play of demand.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We currently have no time for further questions. I will now hand over to Kevin Murphy for any final remarks.
Yeah. Thank you, operator. Thank you all for your time today. Very much appreciated. Maybe just a quick close as we began. We're pleased with the growth and improvement for our organization in Q1. As you've heard through our Q&A, our markets remain supportive, both residential, non-residential, new construction and RMI. We're pleased with the continued investments that we're making in high-quality associates coming into our industry and into our company, and high quality associates coming in through acquisition. The investments we're making in supply chain for best breadth and depth in the local marketplace for same day, next day delivery, and the investments we're making from a technology perspective to make our customers more productive, as well as our associates. Most of all, we are thankful to those associates who continue to deliver for our customers.
They continue to deliver on the promise to make that customer's project more simple and successful, and to ensure their ongoing trust in our company as their supplier of choice. Thank you again, and we look forward to speaking with everyone again, very soon. Thank you for your time.
This concludes today's call. Thank you so much for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.