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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Vulcan Materials Company Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Christie and I will be your conference call coordinator today. During the Q&A portion of this call, we ask that you limit your participation to one question, plus a follow-up. It will allow everyone who wishes the opportunity to participate.
Now, I will turn the call over to your host Mr. Mark Warren, Vice President of Investor Relations for Vulcan Materials. Mr. Warren, you may begin.
Thank you, operator. Good morning to everyone and thank you for your interest in our company. With me today are Tom Hill, Chairman and CEO; and Suzanne Wood Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Today's call is accompanied by a press release and a supplemental presentation posted to our website vulcanmaterials.com. A recording of this call will be available for replay later today at our website.
Please be reminded that comments regarding the company's results and projections may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks, along with other legal disclaimers, are described in detail in the company's earnings release and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures and other information are available in both our earnings release and at the end of our supplemental presentation. As the operator indicated please limit your Q&A participation to one question plus a follow-up. This will help maximize participation during our time together.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Tom.
Thanks, Mark and thanks to everyone for joining the call today. We appreciate your interest in Vulcan Materials Company. As always, but particularly in today's world, we hope you and your families are safe and healthy. In spite of the difficulties caused by the pandemic, our company is thriving, which demonstrates the strength of our people and of our core business.
I'll take some time to comment on three accomplishments. First, our employees have continued to shine. I'm proud of how quickly they've adapted to rapidly changing environments. Since the start of the pandemic, they've shown again and again their flexibility, their tenacity and their commitment to everything from ensuring a safe workplace to taking care of our customers. Our workforce is second to none and I appreciate everything they're doing to grow Vulcan Materials, regardless of challenges.
Second, our teams executed well on the operational and the financial contingency plans that we developed in the early days of the pandemic. Our approach was to identify, prioritize and focus on what we can control and then to take the appropriate and decisive actions.
At times like these, the ability to have vision to make decisions quickly and accurately and to execute effectively is critical. We continually review our location-specific contingency plans and make the necessary adjustments all the while sharing best practices across our network.
The combination of these proactive plans, solid execution, good communication and the strength of our aggregates-focused model gives us confidence that we will continue to be successful.
And third, our strong second quarter and year-to-date results clearly demonstrate our ability to grow our unit profitability and to improve our return on investment. We remain focused on what we can control including maintaining our pricing disciplines and controlling our cost.
Our success here is supported by our four strategic disciplines, particularly commercial excellence and operational excellence. You saw this in the second quarter. Despite a 2% decline in aggregates volume, we improved our adjusted EBITDA by 10%. Our cash gross profit per ton by 9% and on a trailing 12-month basis, our return on investment by 100 basis points. Suzanne will review the quarter results in more detail shortly. But first I want to describe some of the demand trends we're seeing.
Certainly the indicators of construction activity appear to be showing signs of improvement both sequentially and year-over-year. Housing has been the most resilient of our market segments with June data showing improvement and single-family housing leading the way.
Permits and starts have improved at a faster rate in our footprint than in other states. Private, non-residential construction is the most variable end use, reflecting a wide range of building categories, each driven by different factors. At the end of 2019, the pipeline of new projects measured by square feet of contract awards had increased 10% from prior year in our markets compared to down 3% in other markets. This momentum reflected winners and losers both categorically and geographically.
In April, this momentum was interrupted by the pandemic. However, June showed improvement over April and May. As a leading supplier in 90% of our markets, we are well positioned to supply all types of nonresidential construction, regardless of the category.
As we think about current trends, it's important to keep in mind that unlike the Great Recession of 2008, private construction going into the pandemic was not overbuilt, both residential and nonresidential demand were below long-term averages. This suggests that a slowdown from the pandemic could be short in duration assuming that the trajectory is not significantly interrupted by additional ways of new COVID cases.
Highway construction was deemed an essential business at the onset of the pandemic and so has pretty much been business as usual. Now with shelter-in-place, gas consumption fell and disaffected state DOT revenues. But with reopenings, the revenues are recovering. The recovery coupled with proposed COVID-19 relief has the state DOT's outlooks improving.
We are encouraged as work continues in Congress to backstop DOT revenues lost to COVID-19 and to reauthorize the FAST Act. The House has already passed backstop funding for DOTs as well as a reauthorization bill. The Senate is working toward a COVID-19 recovery package now and we expect they will address reauthorization in September.
To summarize, the economic environment and certain leading indicators of construction activity showed improvement during the quarter. However, the evolving pandemics effect on demand in our markets and the broader economy remains unclear. The volatility of new COVID cases restricts our visibility into the second half and as a result, the pace and scope of recovery and therefore our shipments volume is uncertain.
As a consequence, we are not reinstating earnings guidance at this time. We will continue to monitor all aspects of our markets and as our visibility improves with respect to the economic effect of the pandemic, we will resume our usual practice of providing guidance.
As we move forward, we will remain focused on the things that we can control, keeping our teams safe and healthy, servicing our customers and executing on our operating disciplines. The maturing of our four strategic initiatives will continue to expand our margins. Our second quarter results clearly demonstrate that our strategic disciplines are working. The pandemic has not changed the underlying fundamentals of our aggregates-focused model.
Our business is sound, resilient and more easily adapted to the changing market conditions. We also have the solid foundation of a healthy balance sheet, strong liquidity and the full support and engagement of our people. Despite near-term uncertainty, we remain confident about our long-term prospects for growth.
Now, I'll hand the call over to Suzanne for some additional comments.
Thanks Tom and good morning. I'll cover some highlights from the quarter and comment briefly on our balance sheet and liquidity position. As Tom mentioned adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter increased by 10% to $408 million. In all three product lines aggregates asphalt and concrete, we achieved improved profitability. This was particularly noteworthy in the aggregates segment in which cash gross profit per ton increased by 9% to $7.69.
For the trailing 12 months cash gross profit per ton was almost $7 thus continuing our progress toward our goal of $9 per ton that we shared with you at our last Investor Day.
Our second quarter aggregate shipments declined by 2% from Q2 2019's level. Shipping patterns varied widely across our geographic footprint but were generally supported by healthy backlogs and our designation as an essential business. Key markets in the Southeast and Coastal Texas were negatively affected by wet weather, while shipments in California were impacted by shelter-in-place ordinances.
Year-over-year shipment activity improved in Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee and the rest of Texas. In July our aggregate shipments declined by mid-single-digits compared to a strong year-over-year comp. The decline reflected some project delays and reduced non-residential activity.
During the quarter, our aggregate selling price improved by 3.3% on a mix adjusted basis with all key markets reporting improvement. Total unit cost of sales declined by 1% and 3% on a cash cost basis as compared to the same quarter last year. This was despite lower sales volumes and a reduction in inventory.
We carefully managed our production schedules and prudently controlled inventory, particularly in areas like Northern California which were more acutely affected by shelter-in-place orders. The associated cost of reducing inventory offset the majority of an approximate $14 million tailwind from lower diesel fuel costs.
Moving to our non-aggregate segments, I'll start with asphalt. Our gross profit this quarter improved by $3 million as compared to last year's quarter. Although asphalt shipments declined by 5% we captured the benefit of lower liquid asphalt costs.
The concrete segment's gross profit grew by 10% to $14 million. Shipments decreased by 4% while average selling prices rose by 1%. And in the quarter SAG expenses declined 5% as a result of the continued execution of earlier cost reductions lower incentive compensation expense and general cost control in response to the pandemic. As a percentage of revenue, the improvement was 31 basis points.
We were particularly pleased, as Tom said, with our improving return on investment profile. For the trailing 12 months ended June 30, it improved to 14.2% and consistent with past practice, this has been calculated on an adjusted EBITDA basis.
Turning now to the balance sheet and our liquidity. We took further steps this quarter to enhance our position. We issued $750 million of 10-year notes with a coupon of 3.5%. The purpose of this bond issuance was to retire a $250 million note that matured in June 2020. And the remaining $500 million prefunded the maturity of another note due March 2021. That note is not callable so we will hold the cash on our balance sheet until then.
Our weighted average maturity of debt is 14 years and our weighted average interest rate is 4.1%. Our total gross debt to EBITDA leverage ratio is two and a half times but on a net debt to EBITDA basis it's 1.9 times, reflecting the $817 million of cash on hand. At June 30, our available liquidity was a healthy $2 billion.
Cash generation has been strong through the first half of the year. Operating cash flows were $426 million through June, an increase of 41%. Capital spending is slightly less than the prior year's first six months. We still anticipate spending between $275 million and $325 million this year mainly on operating and maintenance CapEx.
Most of our growth projects remain on hold and we'll continue to evaluate our CapEx as we gain further visibility into the second half of 2020. Our capital allocation priorities remain the same. Operating and maintenance CapEx remain our first priority followed by dividends.
Looking at M&A, we will remain disciplined in the evaluation of opportunities. And as I mentioned last quarter, we have temporarily paused our share buybacks until visibility improves.
I’ll turn the call back over to Tom now for closing remarks.
Thanks Suzanne. Before we go to Q&A, I want to again take this opportunity to thank the employees of Vulcan Materials company for their efforts. Nowhere is their hard work and dedication more evident than our safety record.
Our year-to-date MSHA/OSHA injury rate is 0.82 accidents per 200,000 employee hours worked. That's a record safety performance and we remain committed to keeping our employees' health and safety as our top priority.
And now we'll be happy to take your questions.
[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Trey Grooms of Stephens.
Good morning, Tom and Suzanne. Nice quarter in a very challenging environment. Hats off to you and the team.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So clearly there's still a lot of uncertainty out there in the face of the pandemic. But Tom, can you talk about both what you feel good about? And also what gives you some concern as we look ahead into the back half of the year?
Sure. I think I would frame that in what we know and what we don't know. And starting with the unknowns, it's really driven by the pandemic. The trajectory of new cases is just dramatically changing month-to-month making it really difficult to us to accurately evaluate the impact on our business. And I would break that into three buckets: number one the severity of shelter-in-place with the spike in new cases will it slow work, will slow jobs, will it postpone jobs. Number two non-residential construction. We've seen a bit of slowing in non-res construction. We saw jobs postpone in April picked back up in May. And now with spikes we've seen some other jobs postponed. We think the jobs are going to go. The work is going to happen but the timing is going to be tricky of when they start back up. And then the third bucket would be highway work. The state DOTs they've been impacted with loss and loss revenues. Right now, it's much better than we would have expected 90 days ago. Most DOTs state DOTs are on the road to recovery but further shelter-in-place orders could set this back. Most of our states are giving pretty good signs right now and they just released -- many just released their budgets which they say they'll reassess mid-fiscal year based on growing revenues in states and based on acts of Congress or what we get to backstop in the COVID Phase IV Act.
Going into the third quarter, I would remember three things. First, third quarter is our largest quarter. It also can be our most volatile quarter with -- because it's hurricane season. We're also comping over 2019 third quarter which had no storms for the first time no impactful storms for the first time in four years and volumes were up 8%. So a little bit of a tough comp going into the quarter.
And turning to things we do know. I think what we do know gives me confidence. We come at this in a real position of strength regardless of what happens. Our Aggregates business is advantaged particularly if demand should fall. Our footprint is also advantaged and it's broad it's diverse. Our people are really engaged. You saw that in their health and safety performance they've done an excellent job being nimble being quick being responsive to a rapidly changing environment. They went into this earning the highest margins and then they improved that by 9% in the second quarter with volumes down. That improvement is not an accident. They've done the prework over the last three years to earn this. What you're seeing is our four strategic initiatives enhance our execution. We always said that those would help us in good times and protects us in challenging times and you've seen that in the first half of the year. Our balance sheet liquidity is strong. So we're going to control what we can control. And I have a lot of confidence that our people will be successful whatever the world throws at them.
All right. Thanks for that. And that actually leads me to my next question, controlling what you can control. And I'm looking at your cash gross profit per ton here increased 9% on volume that was actually down a little bit. And clearly, diesel was your friend, but more impressive is you pulled that off, while reducing your inventory. So can you talk about some of the puts and takes of that unit profitability improvement reduce cash spending and operating efficiencies that you put in place and you mentioned. And how we should be thinking about that in the near to medium term?
Yeah. Well, I think hats off to our operating teams and our sales teams, they should be – they're the ones that need to be congratulated on that performance. Solid – you saw solid price and we'll talk more about that later. But from an operating side, it was just good execution, with unit margins down 3%. We had the tailwind of diesel offset by inventory reduction. And the inventory reduction is just the prudent thing to do in places like San Francisco, where we had just a lot of unknowns to what shipment is going to look like. I wouldn't expect us to see that in the second half. But the real driver was – and the cost reduction was driven by operators' performance.
It was things like plant throughput plant availability labor productivity, all of which improved. And what you're seeing there is just experienced operators and engaged teams executing on those operating disciplines, which I'm very proud of. So, just a really good performance and just good disciplines throughout the organization.
And I'd just add to that. I think this is where having those operational contingency plans in place at the plant level that we talk so much about in the first quarter, having put those in place. I think this is where they really pay off. If you know going in based on certain conditions, and certain trigger points, what you plan to do at the time then it can all be executed in a very consistent and controlled manner and you're not sort of scrambling around trying to figure out what actions to take. And when you have those in place, there's just a built-in flexibility there, because the conditions they are changing.
Jobs are postponed jobs are back on. And so I really think that having the plans in place helped and also our folks having the daily flexibility of changing to meet whatever the situation was helped as well.
Yeah. It sounds like those plans are really paying off for you in a pretty challenging environment for sure. Okay. Take care and thanks for taking my question. I will pass it on. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Anthony Pettinari of Citi.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Regarding the stimulus that's currently being negotiated, when you talk to customers and going back to the DOTs, is it possible to talk a little bit more about what folks are ultimately expecting to see or need to see with regard to states and infrastructure earmark to feel comfortable about going forward with projects?
Yeah. I think as you look at, just highways in general overall the highway funding situation is improving, as I said it's a lot better than what we had expected 90 – 60, 90 days ago. With the shelter-in-place lifting you're seeing those gas tax revenues up in May and June. And also, you got to remember in nine of our 10 states – of our top 10 states they're all going into this increasing user fees. So that also will help offset any setback that we saw from fall in usage. Hopefully, we'll get progress out of Congress on COVID full relief.
The AASHTO asked is $37 billion, which is down from the $50 billion which we talked about 90 days ago. There's a lot of work going on in that. So hopefully, that will happen. But as I said earlier, we're hearing better signals as we continue to go through this from state DOTs, and I think they're getting them self in a better place. And all of them are saying they're going to reassess the situation as we get to midyear, and hopefully, funds have grown.
Okay. That's helpful. And then on aggregates pricing, I'm just wondering, did you see any changes in pricing as you moved through the quarter and into July and August? One of your competitors have spoken about maybe minor delays to price initiatives in the early days of COVID, when there were some disruptions. Just curious, if you saw anything similar?
Yeah. I would take it in pieces of this. The reported price we had was 3. We talked about unfavorable geographic mix which cost us about 30 basis points and that was really North Carolina volumes being down and the Mississippi River in Illinois being up. That was really the basis of those 30 points.
Then if you remember, in our last call, we talked about some of our markets where we normally have an April 1 price increase to fixed ready-mix plants that that may push 30 to 60 days, but it would come through. And all those increases did come through a number of them did push 30 to 60 days.
And if you step back and look at that delay in pricing in the quarter, it cost us about 40 basis points. So that was the outlier, I would say, in the quarter that won't have any further impact as those are all in place. And I don't see any -- the pricing characteristics we see right now are -- aggregates is normal, they're resilient and I don't see anything that would change that environment at this point.
Okay. That’s very helpful. I’ll turn it over.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Kathryn Thompson of Thompson Research Group.
Good monring, Kathryn.
Good morning.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions today. First on the policy side, we've heard some very positive feedback from Caltrans on the fiscal 2021 budget and lettings. Could you give a similar update for Illinois? And has the state been able to move forward with the rebuild Illinois yet in terms of funding and lettings in the face of COVID and lighter traffic volumes?
It's steady. They have a big goal to be a logistics center. It is a priority for them. We would think -- we don't think we'll see any fall in funding in Illinois. They are -- as you know, they raised -- they had legislation raised gas taxes a year ago. And that is in place. So we think Illinois will come through. And they have the ambition to come through.
But like you said about California, we heard really good things out of Caltrans. As you know, it's actually in very good shape, because their gas tax numbers index went up July 1, and it's increased over last year. So, despite of issues with shelter-in-place and usage going down, they're quite ambitious in 2021, which -- fiscal year 2020 just started.
So to put that in perspective, the revenues for SB1 in 2020 were around $3 billion. They're expected to be $4.4 billion in 2021, now that's over 50% increase. But as ambitious as Caltrans is that's down from the 5% to 7%, but again, an over 50% increase from last year. So, they'll see a good year in fiscal year 2020 and lettings in 2021 in California.
And just to clarify before moving to my second question. Was the increase in volumes in Illinois a function of higher infrastructure funding?
I believe that's correct.
Okay. Then looking at cost, that's definitely been, the theme this quarter for so many companies, not just in heavy materials but other construction-related companies. When you look at some of the changes that are more structural versus transitory, could you maybe go through those? And then also, think about how this experience change -- how has it changed, how you think about cost structure? Thank you very much.
Yeah. The fundamentals of what drive costs haven't changed, and it's really the operating efficiencies and disciplines that are fundamental to our business. It's based on what I talked about earlier, which is maximizing your throughput and matching what you're producing, to what you're selling, having the disciplines to where you do the pre-inspections of equipment so you don't run it to failure, and making sure that you get most and also so that you have the plan availability, and lack of downtime and then just making sure all of that matches with labor productivity.
Those are hard to do in good times. They're even harder to do when you have volatile volumes or falling volumes. So, I think our folks did an excellent job on those and they stayed focused on their plans and their execution and taking care of themselves. So, again, helps us make progress towards our longer-term cash gross profit per ton of $9.
Yes. And while we're on that, Kathryn, I'll just comment on SAG, our administrative costs. In the quarter, they improved 31 basis points as a percentage of revenue that keeps pushing us toward our goal, because we're always looking for ways to try to leverage that overhead structure. And we had several things operating in our favor.
We took a pretty good look at the cost structure at the end of the year last year, beginning of this year. And so, we have a number of those that are continuing to play through until that comps over a little bit in the fourth quarter, but certainly in the first quarter of next year.
A little bit lower incentive comp in the quarter, but also just general cost control along the way. And some of those things we're finding, as people work from home, some are perhaps a bit transitory, but not all of them are, you find ways to be more efficient and that's really -- you automate things and that's really what we're looking for, because those are structural in that arena in things that can play forward.
And, I would say, if you think about probably what's the most transitory kind of cost evolve and the one that people would typically think about rising when we hopefully all get to the point where we can all be back in the office working together, everyone always points to travel expense and those sorts of things.
But, I think, Vulcan has learned something over this time of the pandemic and I think other companies will as well, that there are certain ways and times to communicate using video or other technology, where your communication is actually, I think, more succinct and more clear, because everyone's managing their time. And while you need to be out front and in front of your employees and I'm not implying that we would ever step away from that. I think there are ways that you can utilize that technology to even manage those costs when things get more back to normal.
Great. Thank you, Tom and Suzanne. Have a good one and best of luck.
You too. Stay safe.
Yes. Thanks, Kathryn.
Thank you. Your next question is from Jerry Revich of Goldman Sachs.
Yes. Hi. Good morning, everyone.
Hi. Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm wondering if you could comment on how much visibility you have in the near term, Tom? I understand the comments about the tough comps, but are you seeing the normal sequential build in activity heading into the third quarter? The concern is, we've seen some camera-level data on the construction side that suggests that activity slowed in the back half of July specifically. So I'm wondering if you could just comment on that relative to the visibility comments that you spoke to earlier please?
July, I don't think, surprised us. July was also impacted by wet weather, really across our foot -- we were wet across our footprint with the exception of California and I'm sure that had an impact on us. But the volatility is really, for me, it's not if the jobs are going to go, it's when they're going to go. And I think that, that timing is hard to call, but the fact is, I don't see many jobs that were canceled as opposed to being postponed.
Okay. Thank you. And I'm wondering can you talk about what you've seen in California, Florida and Texas, since we've seen the lockdown steps kicking back in? Any meaningful impact on activity levels as a result from what you can tell?
Jerry, the short answer to that question is, nothing meaningful at this point, with the exception of volatility in mainly commercial jobs, which we've talked a lot about already. California was the toughest hit. I talked about Caltrans, which looks good. The res and non-res in California were hit hard, just because of more severe shelter-in-place, but are rebounding.
If you -- I'll give you some examples in residential there's two mega projects -- residential projects, one in L.A. and one in San Diego that we're supplying, the developers, even though the res seem to be a little slow, decided to go ahead and accelerate putting the infrastructure in, so that -- because they feel like the job market -- the house market will come back quickly. And that allows them to build out faster. So they go ahead and took the investment to put the infrastructure in.
So while California is the hardest hit. It's a little behind everybody to recover but the fundamentals for the private side are still in place and we know we're going to see substantial growth because of the funding the substantial increase in funding in Caltrans, in fiscal year 2021.
So overall, so far so good, Texas, we've not seen any impact of the spikes at this point. So hopefully they'll get that under control. And I think it's trending in the right direction. Florida same answer. I don't think, we've seen any impacts in the second half of July the first few days of August, because of spikes in new cases at this point.
Yeah. And I would just add to that. And this is more a comment on your first question, where we operate our geographic footprint is important and this too as Tom was just pointing out. And certainly when you look at res in terms of permits and starts trailing six-month data, trailing three-month data.
And even the most recent month of June, you're seeing some sequential improvement there on res and even on non-res which is, the one that is most often talked about it certainly took a big step backward in April when the pandemic really hit and there was a heightened sense of uncertainty. And we try not to over read this but as you can imagine we do study all these indicators very, very carefully.
And you've heard me say before I'm a big fan of Dodge data. But even there from that low point of April, we've begun to see some little bits of sequential improvement as we've moved through April, May and June. So I think we are encouraged by that. I think it shows that the economy wants to recover.
And as Tom said, there's lots of work out there to be done. But I think it really does just come to what happens with the surges in case. But we -- as we said earlier, we'll be ready when it goes, because we are in the right places.
Okay. And lastly from a margin standpoint, congratulations to your team from us as well, as I hear you step through the drivers of the cost reduction both SG&A and COGS. It sounds like none of those are onetime items. So as we think about the third quarter and layer on, the additional pricing that you spoke to earlier Tom it sounds like, margins could actually expand on volumes that are down mid-to-high single digits.
And I just want to make sure that we're not missing any potential headwinds for us to think about whether it's further headwinds from inventory reductions or other pieces as we think about what the better margin performance this quarter means about the go forward?
Yes. So as we said solid performance by our folks, in the first half both, in price and in their operating disciplines. I don't -- as I said, I don't see anything changing our price cadence. As we look forward at the operations and costs, there's always some headwinds out there for repair and maintenance. The tailwinds from diesel were a big advantage in Q2 maybe not, be as quite as advantaged in the second half.
But we think there will be tailwinds there. I would not see us have again, the inventory hit that we took we're back in the game so to speak and those plants are back operating. So I don't see that happening again. I believe our operating efficiencies you saw them improve in Q2. We're working hard on that to keep those.
Remember third quarter is hurricane season, we've already seen two don't think it was a big impact. But those storms can have an impact on cost. I don't think they will at this point from those two. We've got our strategic initiatives that are working for us. So right now there's too many variables to call out a specific number.
But I think we have the right people we have the right plans, we have the right execution and I would expect our unit margins to grow in the second half. And so that, we'll make progress towards that longer-term goal that, we've talked about of $9 a ton cash gross profit per ton.
We will see it grow again a little bit too hard to call out that number. Just variables but I have confidence in growth.
Appreciate the discussion. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question is from Mike Dahl of RBC Capital Markets.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning. Hope you guys are doing well, thanks for taking the questions.
Yes, thank you.
Sure.
First question, obviously 3Q is a tough quarter overall from a comp standpoint in aggs but looking at the monthly comps, could you give a sense of how your July comp stacks up relative to what growth you saw in August and September last year?
I don't remember, if I remember exactly that sequentially, it was a kind of a steady growth quarter. It wasn't choppy if memory serves me right. And so I don't know that there was a lot of volatility last year between months within the quarter because the weather was pretty consistent.
As I talked about we didn't have the storms that we see in prior years. As I said, July this year was in all of our markets except for – I think except for California and Arizona was a fair – a quite a bit wetter. So that had some impact on that mid-single-digit decline in volume. As did we talked about the volatility in the markets with jobs postponing. But I don't see a lot of volatility month-to-month in last year's quarter.
Got it. Okay. And second question just on kind of the state DOTs and Tom and given your opening remarks talked about potential for stimulus to shape up in a way that backstops some of the states. That's obviously been one of the more controversial parts of the different stimulus bills and debates in Washington right now. So I guess a couple of questions related to that.
What are you hearing on the ground in terms of the likelihood of that getting through in a final negotiation? And to what extent are your conversations with the state DOTs? And the – I guess the encouragement that they've had lately how much of that is tied to an expectation that there is some state backstop in one of these COVID stimulus bills versus their specific funding that's been in place?
Well, obviously the DOTs want that. They need that. They were negatively impacted by the pandemic and as those falls in revenues are absolutely caused by the pandemic. So it's the right thing to do to backstop those. I think that – and they're all hopeful they will. I think that state-level funding is likely to be part of the final package.
As a result of the House in Senate negotiations and state governments will have flexibility to how to use that. We're hopeful that the COVID four package is going to provide dollars targeted at state DOTs. I think they know and AASHTO wants that has asked for the – they just reeled the $37 billion.
As far as the conversation with the DOTs, I don't think they are putting their eggs in – all-in the basket of getting that backstop, although they need it. But I think what they're looking at is twofold. One is and I said earlier, they've all increased nine of our – most states have already – in our footprint had already increased funding for highway. So that's helpful in the recovery. And then the lift of shelter-in-place is dramatically improving usage and so that's something else they're watching how fast does that come back and how that will – if it continues will positively impact funding for the rest of fiscal year 2021. Those are the two buckets I think that they're looking at when they want to reassess their midyear budgets.
Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Phil Ng of Jefferies.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Congrats on a pretty solid quarter here in a tough backdrop.
Thank you.
And really good to hear that trends are picking up sequentially on the nonres side. But curious, if you can provide a little more color on the bidding activity, how extended are your backlogs? And while there's not a lot of cancellation, we're just trying to gauge new work that's being put up for bid perhaps for next year for nonres?
So if you just look at backlog, we were down a little bit but we've seen improvement in the last – in the trailing three months in our backlog. So things are getting better and improving. And so I think that that's looking better.
Yes. Let me just walk through a few of these things to see if I can give a little bit of color around that. I mean clearly, as we were going into the start of the year, all three of the primary areas res, non-res and highways were moving along very well and had some positive momentum and we talked about that on the call in February. COVID-19 was the big disruptive force. And as I said earlier, all the -- all of those areas took a pretty sharp decline in April. I think being in the states we're in that's shown some resiliency and certainly as the states began to reopen that helped as well.
If we just sort of take them one by one and we talk about residential, clearly that one has been the most resilient, it's bounced back the most quickly and we really have the most visibility around that area. When we look at a couple of things, certainly look at starts, but we also look at sort of pre-leading indicators if you will to that.
In terms of permits on a trailing six-month basis, a trailing one-month basis, particularly the trailing one-month basis and look at June, year-over-year we're up double digits in our states and that compares to kind of a mid-single digits in other states, so that one appears to be moving along very well. We saw a couple of postponements there early on. And those within about three weeks flipped and are back on track and have begun.
On the non-res side, again the new project pipeline was positive coming into the year. At the end of the year actually, if you looked at the trailing 12-month starts, they were up about 10% in our markets which were a fair bit ahead of other markets. Again, we saw some -- your non-res is a broad category but even then and certainly now we see winners and losers both by category and geographically. And we do -- we have seen these small sequential improvements that are just these little what I refer to as baby steps in the right direction. So, it's encouraging. But we are watchful and we are trying not to over-read that. And Tom has talked about highways there, the awards activity is certainly up in our markets. And so, we are feeling pretty good about where we stand relative to that.
Yes. Specifically on non-res, we saw the monthly private non-res square foot starts dropped dramatically in April. They stayed down in May. And then in June, we made up about half of that drop. So one of the questions, I guess going forward is again timing on those projects and when they start going, how does that trend look in July and August and what's going to happen. So Phil, but we've made progress back in non-res and hopefully that will continue over the next few months.
Got it. That's super helpful. And on the public side, it sounds like the bidding activity in backlogs, remain pretty strong. Any particular states that we should have a more watchful eye, when we think about activity going into next year? The reason why I'm probably asking is, your backlog and bidding activity sounds pretty good, but one of your competitor kind of signaled maybe a modest deceleration of trends in the coming quarters. Appreciating footprint does matter. But any color on that front would be really helpful. Thanks a lot.
Yes, the state I would be most watchful for in our footprint would be Kentucky. It was just been hard hit and basically shut down their DOT. South Carolina has had some challenges and obviously North Carolina which has been -- what everybody has talked about has had its share of challenges. But if you look at our top five states which Virginia DOT looks pretty good. Georgia at this point, they're saying that until they see more they're maybe down 11%. But you got to remember that's coming off of an all-time record 2020 DOT year for Georgia. And our starts are up 15% there and our backlogs are very good going into this.
Tennessee had no impact in 2020 a little bit of a wait and see on 2021. But at this point, they don't see any high-level change from 2020 and 2021. And that's kind of same story for TxDOT. 2020 held -- legs were very good. Their fiscal year '21 doesn't start till September, so they got some time. But at this point, they think they're in pretty good shape. So, for our big states, I think the DOTs as we said we're getting good signals and hopefully, we'll get improving signals as we travel through their fiscal year.
Thanks a lot. That's really great color.
Thank you. Your next question is from Stanley Elliott of Stifel.
Hey good morning everybody. Thank you all for taking the question.
Good morning.
In terms of the debt due next year so the $500 million that you all are going to pay down. Are you all thinking about the leverage ratio that you all want to carry any differently at this point? Because I mean you think about by 2021 you should be down below kind of the one and a half to two and a half sort of target. But just curious to see how you all were thinking about that with that commentary?
Yes. No, it's a very good question. I mean we -- the market was pretty choppy in that sort of March April and even early May time period when we would have normally been out in the market to take out the $250 million bond that was due in June. And so when we had a decent window to go in, we just decided kind of as the abundance of caution to go ahead and issue the long-term bonds, 3.5% is a very good long-term coupon rate. And so we decided to go ahead and just prefund if you will that maturity of the $500 million bond in March 2021.
And you're right to point out that our leverage on a net debt basis is now down at 1.9 times just slightly below our often stated range of two to two and a half and so with that as sort of the backdrop.
The answer to your question is look the Board and management take us through the cycle approach to our leverage and our strategic planning. And we are absolutely comfortable within that two to two and a half times range.
Certainly, we prefer to be at the lower end of it during times of a bit of uncertainty like now. And so that's really the reason that you have seen us drift toward the lower end of the range because we just like to have a little bit more visibility around the depth and the duration of the pandemic.
So, I'm a conservative at heart but I wouldn't read us sitting at 1.9 times and as necessarily any long-term indicator that we're going to move to one and a half times for example.
We're going to be prudent and we're going to do the right thing for the business and we're going to make sure in our debt structure and in our leverage ratio that we maintain maximum flexibility and optionality for the company. That's the main goal.
No, that's perfect, right? Because I think going into next year there's just additional flexibility with the cash flows that you guys should generate. I'll stop there and pass along to somebody else.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Adam Thalhimer of Thompson Davis.
Hey good morning. Next quarter.
Thank you.
Hi. Thank you.
Most of my questions have been answered. I was curious though on the downstream side. So for asphalt and concrete kind of what your high-level thoughts are both for volumes and for margins in H2?
I would tell you that both -- well, let me take asphalt first. Our volumes really got hit in two places; California with shelter-in-place and then Tennessee, we had a very large paving project last year that didn't repeat. So, I would expect our volume -- I don't see a big change in the volume trends as we go through as we look at our backlogs and the projects that are out there.
I would -- right now, I would expect liquid to stay down. It can be volatile. So, I would expect this -- a similar type of unit margin improvement as we march through the year on asphalt.
To ready-mix, the volumes there were impacted by shelter -- in the second quarter by shelter-in-place in Northern California with the jobs we see the pushback timing may be a little tricky. Volume is going to be hard to guess on that one at this point just because there's so many variables there. But I think our unit margins we'll hold on too.
Okay. And then Tom you've watched geographically I think you did that walk on the public side and on the resi side just curious on the non-resi side kind of which markets would be a watch?
The California as we've talked about while the fundamentals there are very good. It's just behind the rest of the country. And I think it will continue to heal itself as shelter-in-places lift. But that one is going to be the most tricky one. As you look at going back to the East in Virginia non-res construction is good. Georgia non-res is actually quite good driven by warehouse and distribution construction which is no surprise to anybody. And I would tell you same story in Tennessee non-res and res are both shipping strong. Texas res is good. Non-res good again like everywhere else warehouse and distribution. We -- what's interesting about the coast with non-res will be an interesting we'll see what happens with LNG projects. And these are so important because they are such large projects. The projects we said nothing has changed there with the exception of the outlook. We said at the end of the last quarter was the projects that we had started are going to go, the projects that had not started were pushed that's still the case today. However, we're starting to have conversations about those projects those future projects you're starting to have the conversations about them restarting back up in 2021. So that could be some tailwinds for us as we go into '21, but too early to tell.
Okay. Good color.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Dudas of Vertical Research.
Good morning, gentlemen. Suzanne?
Good morning.
Good morning.
Following up on the question before about capital allocation and the balance sheet. You've deferred your growth capital spending prudently for 2020 lease to date. Any thoughts on -- are there changes into where that growth capital spending or level could be given how things are emerging given the uncertainty and where some of your important states are benefiting or not benefiting from COVID restarts? And is that something that we could see once there's more visibility maybe later this year to maybe have a catch-up on that spending in 2021?
I think we need to see more visibility before I would be comfortable releasing growth capital again. And that's not a statement about anything about the market there's more a statement as we said all along there's a lot of volatility and too many variables to make a call. So we just want to see more before we would be comfortable going back and restarting some of those growth projects. Now if you look at replacement capital that's one that we'll be watching throughout the year. And at this point we're comfortable where we are ,but again depending on how the year goes we might we would be we would flex off of that one faster than we would the growth capital.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from Seldon Clarke of Deutsche Bank.
Morning.
Good morning.
[Technical Difficulty] SG&A costs going forward. Is that $91 million you saw in 2Q sort of the right run rate to think about for the rest of the year?
First half of your question was cut off if you could repeat it would be helpful?
Apologies. I'm just asking what the right run rate is for SG&A costs?
Sure. Yes that falls into the category of not giving guidance for the rest of the second half. So I will decline to comment on a very specific number, but look we've said that we're going to leverage our overhead costs that has been a long-term goal the company has been at a long time. And I think we made a lot of progress in the first half. So I would certainly expect us to continue to do that in the second half. But with respect to what the precise number or decrease is we'll see when we get there but continue to monitor it.
Okay. And just switching gears. Did you have to furlough any employees in the quarter, or do you expect to have to do so in the back half? And if so are you having -- or seeing any issues on the hiring side in regions that might be a little bit stronger than others? And if you do have to rehire, should we expect any temporary cost inflation from either hiring costs or just a lag to get employees more productive?
So to answer your question, in the second quarter, we did furlough some -- temporarily furlough some employees and that was in an effort to make sure that we had the appropriate control of inventories going into unknown times.
As we said, we're past that. The vast majority of those employees are back to work or scheduled to be back to work. I don't see us doing a lot of that in the second half as we see work coming on and our shipments hopefully stabilize. Again there's a lot of unknowns to that.
At this point I would -- if we did that it would be minimal in a few select places, off the top of my head I can't name any right now. So as far as hiring, we're able to find employees when we fill positions. I think, again I'm very pleased with our workforce, which is very experienced and very disciplined and you saw that in the quarter. But new hires have been a little bit of -- actually there's not just very many right now but we're able to find people when we need to.
Got it. Okay. I’ve got my answer. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Garik Shmois of Loop Capital.
Hi, Garik.
Hey, good morning.
Hi. Thanks for squeezing me in. So as far as the volumes we saw in the quarter, I think the rate of declines weren't as bad as first feared. Do you think you're taking market share? And can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about volume versus price moving forward in a bit of an uncertain market? Does the relationship between the two change right now just given the uncertainties that you've talked about moving forward?
No. I don't think you took any kind of market share, and you don't do that when you're disciplined on price, it's the wrong thing to do. I think what I -- you heard me talk about is the volatility in geographically in the quarter on volumes. We had those states where we lost substantial volume North Carolina being one, California being another one. And then we had states where -- Tennessee and the Mississippi River. So this -- you can't -- you're comparing apples to oranges when you look at other companies because all of our footprints are different.
And going forward, the balance between price and volume is in my world is disciplined on price and we plan on having that discipline. And that's what you heard me talk about the cadence looking out. I don't see any change in that. And that is servicing our customers and being disciplined.
Okay. Follow-up question. Just you talked about geographic mix impacting pricing in the quarter. Just curious if you look out is there anything that we should be thinking about as it relates to product mix whether it's a ramp in residential construction does that impact pricing materially or anything like that?
Yes. I don't see any particular volatility in product mix. Now you're always going to have it. It was geographies and that's weather and timing of projects. But product mix, I don't see any big changes between the different market segments. And I sure don't see any pricing changes between the different market segments.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Adrian Huerta of JPMorgan.
Good morning.
Hello. Good morning, Tom and Suzanne.
Good morning.
Most of my questions have been answered. So just congrats on the nice results on margins which I think, I mean, given the comments that you made since the -- they will continue to trend upwards at least on a year-on-year basis. So congrats again. And the only question that I may ask on the capital deployment, you did mention that you're going to wait to restart the growth projects. But as you mentioned it is already -- you've leveraged this below the range that you expect. What else can we see over the next couple of quarters, or can we see the company for a couple of quarters and even probably all the year next year with the leverage in the 1.5% et cetera?
Yes. You know, as I said our range is 2 times to 2.5 times and we're comfortable in that range just mathematically. We've dropped a bit below that, but I'm perfectly comfortable with that right now for the reasons I stated earlier. There are those growth projects that we have postponed look we evaluate all those on a returns basis. They're high yielding. They're very good projects. And so at the appropriate time I would fully expect to see those start back up. But I think we just want to get a little bit more visibility on what happens over the next couple of quarters. And hopefully we'll get that visibility and things can continue on.
And what is the size of those growth projects that you could start over the next couple of quarters?
Well we -- if you go back to the guidance that we gave at the beginning of the year in terms of CapEx, the growth CapEx element of that I'm doing this from memory, but I believe it was $200 million. And so we certainly spent a bit on that on some things that were already started in the first half. But that was the expectation at the beginning of the year and we will just continue to watch that as we go forward and gain visibility and decide, which ones we start back up or if we start all of them up again.
It's just prudent, get some visibility, make sure that we keep our flexibility of an optionality of leverage and cash flows. And that's the way that we'll continue to look at it. The beauty of this and we've said this before is that those projects are such that they can be easily stopped and started. And so we're really not -- other than wanting to get on with them and do them because we think they're good projects, we're really not missing very much at this point.
Understood. Thank you so much, Suzanne.
Thank you.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I will hand the floor back over to Tom for any additional or closing remarks.
Well, thank all of you for taking the time to listen to our call today. We appreciate your interest and your continued support of Vulcan. Please stay healthy and we look forward to talking to you in the weeks and months to come. Have a good day.
Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.