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JOST Werke AG
XETRA:JST

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JOST Werke AG
XETRA:JST
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Price: 46.5 EUR 1.97%
Updated: May 27, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2020-Q1

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J
Joachim Dürr

Yes. Good morning. This is Joachim Durr from JOST Werke. Welcome to everybody. I hope everybody is doing well. And together with Christian Terlinde, the CFO of JOST Werke, I will present to you the Q1 results for JOST Werke. Let's go straight into the presentation. As you all know, we had a major M&A. We acquired the Alo Group. That was closed January 31, and we have a very solid financing that Christian will elaborate on later. Alo has already contributed positively to our business in February and March. So the numbers you will see will include Alo starting first of February. The post-merger integration work is on track, and I'm actually quite positively surprised that despite the travel restrictions that we have and the fact that we have to meet these people only online, we're making very good progress with the post-merger integration. Sales for Q1 were strongly affected by the outbreak of the coronavirus, especially in Asia, and we closed sales at EUR 192 million for the first quarter. That's minus 3.8% as compared to last year. However, since we have Alo included. Obviously, organically, our sales declined by more than 19%, 19.5%. Europe sales were down 0.5% to EUR 123 million. North America actually grew EUR 45 million, also because of the Alo effect. And APA, Asia Pacific, Africa, declined considerably due to 8-week shutdown that we had in our production plant in Wuhan and the shutdown at our customer's side. The operating results, despite this massive decline, we were still able to generate 7.4% of EBIT margin -- adjusted EBIT margin. However, it decreased to EUR 14 million EBIT. Obviously, harshly impacted by the shutdown that we had in China, where we had to stop operations more or less immediately and have to continue to pay our workers at the normal rate. And also, we had higher logistics costs in the first quarter because we needed to maintain global supply chain. On cash flow, very happy with the free cash flow that we were able to generate. That increased to EUR 18 million, and that was mainly a working capital impact. Net working capital improved by 1.7 percentage points to 20%. It was at 21.7% the year before. Net earnings, however, were burdened by lower operating results, higher financial expenses. And the noncash effect in our financial results that Christian will be explaining later has to do with the financing in the foreign currency. In view of the negative impact that we have seen on the market due to the corona pandemic, the management Board will propose to skip the dividend in 2020, and the Annual General Meeting will be held on first of July of this year. Let's come to the market development. This has been in the market for Q1 2020 as compared with Q1 2019. Based on the OEM vehicle manufacturer production numbers, we can see that in Europe, we had a market contraction that was somewhat expected in trucks. But obviously, in addition to that, we had a shutdown that starts with the truck OEMs at the end of March. So all truck OEMs had 1 or 2 weeks in March that they were shut down, and that contributed to the market decline in trucks. On trailers, we have not seen it as strong. The trailer operators usually don't shut down as much. They reduce the ship since they have a more flexible operating model because they have lower-cost assembly. We've seen a 15% decline in production numbers. On tractors, and that's very positive. I think, in the current circumstances, we have only seen 6% decline, and that was not necessarily demand-driven. It was more driven by the effects of the supply chain because parts of China and later out of Italy did not come in time. North America, demand decline has been expected at 33%. On -- we have organically only lost 9% in the North American market, and that's mainly due to the higher aftermarket. That's content that we have. Meanwhile, in the North American markets, that we're very happy with. On trailers, we've seen a minus 29% decline. However, in North America, we did not see shutdowns yet due to the COVID-19 impact. So this is the only market that was more or less free of any COVID-19 impact in Q1. Also, the truck to market had a small decline due to supply chain issues mainly. The big hit was in APA, where obviously, our Chinese plant in Wuhan was shut down in the end of January with Chinese New Year and did not open up for a total of 7 weeks. And therefore, same or similar things happened with our customers. So therefore, the market demand has gone down. Production numbers have gone down in APA considerably in truck and in trailers, and that's where you will see in the JOST also the biggest impact. With that, I would hand over to Christian to explain in more detail the key financial numbers.

C
Christian Terlinde
CFO & Member of the Executive Board

Yes. Thank you very much, Joachim. This is Christian Terlinde speaking. Welcome to our Q1 conference also from my side. It's been an interesting first quarter for JOST. That I can say. And some of the interest was coming from expected ideas like the Alo integration, but obviously, the coronavirus pandemic was not expected. If we take a quick look at the results for the group, you will see the already mentioned only small decline of 3.8% in sales from EUR 199 million in Q1 2019 to EUR 192 million in Q1 2020. However, if you switch your view slightly to the right, you will see that the organic development of the, I would call it, old JOST world without Alo was quite different. And that is down to -- down by 19.5% to EUR 161 million. And this is, as already mentioned, extremely impacted by the immediate shutdown of the production plant in China. And we were, unfortunately, at the epicenter of the of the current -- of the outbreak of the corona crisis. Unfortunately, what later on happened in March, especially, is that 2 other Asian economies -- like one other Asian economy in India and also in South Africa, we had forced shutdowns in the plants because the whole countries were shut down. So that was a dramatic -- had a dramatic impact on sales. And if we now turn to the results, you will see that the result impact was slightly even aggravated, and there were some reasons. So just looking at the numbers, you will see a decline in EBIT from EUR 24 million to EUR 14 million. And if we take out the Alo acquisition or the Alo impact, you will see that this is going down from EUR 24 million to EUR 12 million. So what is the reason why our operating earnings and, therefore, also are margins contracted? Obviously, first of all, the significant lower sales in Asia. And as you know, China is the biggest country for us, for JOST world in Asia. But also the decline in truck sales was, especially in Europe, stronger than we had anticipated. That's on the top line level. On the bottom line level, we do see the already mentioned higher logistics costs because of disruptions in the supply chain, especially coming for parts out of China. But also, what's been an extreme impact on our results is the fact that in all of the 3 countries I mentioned before that were China, India and South Africa, where we had complete shutdowns of our plants, we were forced by the government to continue to pay all of our employees at their regular salary levels. So we had barely any turnover in China, and we still had to pay our workforce as if we were producing 100% of our capacity. So that's basically, in a nutshell, the main reason why we had this decline in earnings. Alo, on the other hand, contributed positively to earnings and margins as the agricultural business was much less affected by the pandemic during Q1. If we take a closer look at the different -- 3 different regions, let's quickly go to Europe. First of all, the Alo acquisition contributed positively in terms of sales, EUR 23 million to just ERP sales. And therefore, somewhat offsetting the weaker demand, especially on the truck OEM side. Therefore, our sales are basically flat, including Alo. Just excluding Alo, our sales would have been down by about 20%. And again, this was somewhat expected. We knew going into 2020 that this would be a year where we would see some contraction in the market, and it happened. However, the decline, especially on the truck side, turned out to be stronger than we had anticipated, especially for Europe. In contrast to that, we were quite happy to see a significant uptake in aftermarket sales, and also the trailer part were more or less in line with our expectations, but the aftermarket business was relatively stable compared to prior years. Looking at the adjusted EBIT in Europe, you will see a decline by 32%. That is the combined number for JOST and Alo. If we separate the the 2, you would see a decline of roughly above 45% for JOST alone. And this is, again, partly, is it due to the much lower sales volumes, but also the higher logistics cost. And bear in mind, when you analyze our 3 regions, that Europe is the region that is burdened by all the central functions. All central functions like -- especially R&D and admin functions are all located in Europe, and there's no cross charge to other regions. So obviously, these are fairly fixed cost with low flexibility. And therefore, if there's ever a significant impact on sales, you will see it -- see the flexibility more in other regions like Asia and North America rather than Europe. So with that being said, I already said it, let's go to North America. North America has been the stronghold of last year, and I'm very fortunate to report that also this year, even though we were expecting the worst for North America, and a lot of you that are following us and the market have seen the predictions that market should contract above 30%. And actually, this turned out to be true in Q1. We were able to generate organically only a decline of 9%. If you look at the orange bar or orange number there that -- and obviously, with Alo including, we were actually seeing an increase in sales from EUR 40.4 million to EUR 45 million or EUR 44.9 million. So that's the positive sign that's coming out of North America. I think it needs to be commended that our operation was able to significantly outperform the market. And how did they do that? And this is also visibility if you look at the EBIT development. The way they did it is really -- we benefited from the significantly higher portion of aftermarket sales that come as always at a higher margin. And that is, again, going back to the market share gains that we were able to generate over the last 2 years. So JOST stand-alone had a very, very positive margin going into -- or coming out of Q1 going into Q2. And even though the overall sales volume, our parts sold declined much more than our profit decline. So again, profit up by 1%, EUR 3.3 million, and this is basically the same number for Q1 2020. So overall, we're quite happy with the development in North America despite all of the issues that are also affecting North America, where we did have supply chain disruptions and also some additional costs that are coming out of the Alo plant relocation from Tennessee to South Carolina. And last but not least, we moved to the East, looking at our Asia-Pacific-Africa region. And this is obviously the region most heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. You can see it here also already on the sales numbers, down more than 32%, both organically and inorganically. And here, you see only little difference between JOST stand-alone and Alo because Alo has hardly any business in in the Asia Pacific region. That is something we highlighted already when we announced the acquisition. So looking at the EBIT, it's, of course, a not so pleasant view. If you see that the EBIT is going down by 95%. And that is, as we said, it's attributable to 2 reasons. Basically, the planned shutdowns in China, South Africa and in India. Obviously, China was the region -- or the country which was mostly impacted. But in all 3 regions -- or all 3 countries, we were forced to continue to pay our employees for the full period of plant closure without getting any sales into the companies. And that is the reason why our EBIT contracted so much. Additionally, part of this region is also Australia. You may recall, even though it kind of turns out that a lot of people have forgotten that, but at the beginning of the year, when there was a summer in Australia, we had severe bushfires in Australia, and they basically forced a lot of infrastructure investments to be delayed. And this is, on the other hand, also our hope for the next month to come, that now that the bush fires are under control, a lot of the infrastructure delays and repairs that need to now be done will have a positive impact on our operations down in Australia. So overall, we were able to at least break even in Asia Pacific, Africa, and this is, again, due to the hard work of the teams that try to manage the crisis, even though it was very, very challenging. Okay. Now Joachim already mentioned that we are quite busy with integrating our friends from Sweden into our group now, and the acquisition is still continuing despite all the travel restrictions. We have very active integration teams that are utilizing the benefits of remote working and all these items very much. So -- but just from a pure financial perspective, you will see this in our Q1 report. And going forward, you will see fully consolidated Alo numbers in our balance sheet, in our income statement and in our cash flow statement. So just for those of you who are interested in how much did we pay, how much did we get, what you see here on the left side is the result of the purchase price allocation. So we acquired additional -- and I'm not going through the numbers that you can read by yourself. But basically, we acquired significant intangible assets, and they include a step-up of about EUR 80 million. We acquired additional inventories of EUR 50 million. And then on the liability side, we -- you see additional loans of EUR 90 million or EUR 100 million and other assets which are predominantly including deferred tax liabilities. And last but not least, a goodwill of roughly EUR 80 million or EUR 79.7 million. These are the effects of the purchase price allocation that you will see going forward in the JOST balance sheet. Some of those step-ups will be amortized. Some will not. For instance, what will be amortized, obviously, are the intangibles, property, plant and equipment and especially inventories. And with what is not being amortized is -- at least not plant amortization and goodwill. So -- and this is a good segue into our overview of the exceptionals. What you see here is Q1 exceptionals, we were at EUR 6.7 million. The vast majority of those were amortization from prior purchase price allocations. Now this has changed to some extent. So what you're seeing here is you see an increase in depreciation and amortization from PPA. There included is roughly EUR 300,000 of amortization for intangible assets on property, plant and equipment of Alo. This is a number that you will see going forward. So you do see that the impact on PPA is some -- of the PPA on of the Alo acquisition is limited. The next big item is the EUR 1.7 million. That is what we are -- what you saw on the left side, where you see that the inventories, this includes a roughly EUR 9.5 million step-up. This step-up will be utilized over the course of this year. So you will see -- for 2020, you will see a step-up utilization of EUR 9.5 million because we are utilizing the full inventory within one year. Then in between, you see a EUR 2 million exceptional. These are some of the consulting fees that we had incurred for the Alo acquisition. They are adjusted as exceptionals. And last but not least, you see on top, EUR 1.3 million. This is something that we had also spoken about. We acquired Alo in the middle of an optimization project. They had started the optimization project back in 2018, continued all the way through 2019. And this optimization project is geared toward operational and administrative improvements. And this project will continue throughout the year 2020. For the first 2 months, we had acquired expenses of EUR 1.3 million. This cannot be straight line. So they're fluctuating. So as I said, the EUR 1.3 million, this is the current result, but this will not be straight line. So it's a different pattern that's applicable here. Now let's speak about the development of earnings. What you see here is our reported EBIT for Q1 developing into the adjusted EBIT. So we we had the already previously mentioned, different exceptionals, EUR 6.5 million for amortization of PPA effects and EUR 5.3 million of other exceptionals, bringing us to an adjusted EBIT in Q1 of EUR 14.3 million. Now this -- then we would take the finance results, and I will speak about that a little bit later, of minus EUR 6.5 million. An adjusted pro forma tax rate of EUR 30 million brings us down to an adjusted net income of EUR 5.4 million. Now let's quickly speak about the financial results. Included in this financial result is about -- of minus EUR 6.5 million is approximately EUR 5.5 million of unrealized currency losses. And where do these unrealized currency losses come from? We had given Alo approximately EUR 100 million loan to pay off the existing debt. So this is an intercompany loan of EUR 100 million denominated in euros, but this -- due to the severe contraction of the -- depreciation of the Swedish krona at the end of last month, where you see approximately 5% change towards the beginning of the quarter, this led to unrealized foreign currency losses of EUR 5.5 million. In addition to that, we have a similar effect on the British pound. But in the end, both of these will not be realized unless there would be a loan repayment, which is currently not anticipated anytime soon. And therefore, we will see that. But also if you were following the development of the Swedish krona, you will see that a vast portion of this loss will be already compensated in April because the Swedish krona appreciated against the euro over the following weeks. So now let's speak about -- a little bit about our balance sheet structure. If -- obviously, the inclusion of Alo had a significant effect on our balance sheet structure, we are acquiring a EUR 200 million turnover company with associated assets and liabilities, and that certainly changes the picture of the company. First change, what you are seeing is, obviously, the capital employed increased significantly from -- sorry, decreased -- no, the capital employed increased significantly from the prior year-end numbers because we have included the Alo acquisition. And therefore, our return on capital employed, unfortunately, decreased also from 18.2% to 12%. That is obviously also driven by the lower earnings that we recorded in Q1. Equity ratio now is down from 40.4% to 27%. Again, same reason. And our net debt due to the additional loans that we took on increased from 0.5 to 2.4x net debt. So now more -- some -- a few more operational numbers, looking at the cash flow. So our cash flow is slightly down only from EUR 26.3 million to EUR 17.9 million, which is significantly better than our results. What you see here is really what Joachim already mentioned that we continue to work our working capital and generated some additional cash from working capital. Our cash conversion rate is absolutely under focus, so we are trying to limit our capital expenditure spending as much as possible and are able to continue to have a cash conversion rate above 80%. CapEx is in line with our expectations. This does include also, obviously, the Alo capital expenditures. We are at a rate of 2.1%, and this is well below the expected range of approximately 2.5% of sales. And we -- again, let me reiterate, we have no reason to believe that this rate will change. We -- again, we are scrutinizing every investment very much, especially in these current times. Net working capital is down to 20% of sales so that's a positive development, and we're quite happy with that. Also bear in mind that due to the abrupt shutdown in China, and you can see it here in the inventory development, that we did have an increase in inventory because obviously no one was expecting that our people would not come back to their plant and not return, so we see an increase in inventories. However, also part of that increase is due to the inclusion of Alo. Now that was a lot of numbers. I hope that everything could be understood very well. And with this, I would like to turn it over back to Joachim, who will give you the outlook for the coming months.

J
Joachim Dürr

Yes. Thank you, Christian. Before I come to the outlook, Q1, I think if you summarize what you've just heard, in APA, we had a very strong hit with the coronavirus in our Wuhan plant, but I'm actually quite proud of the team that they were able -- we still have a positive result in these difficult circumstances. I think they've done an outstanding job. North America, we are having a very strong performance in a weak market, and I think it cannot be emphasized enough that the fact that we were able to increase our aftermarket share in sales is really helping our customers and our organization in North America. And the same is true for Europe. The strong aftermarket business has been carrying us quite a bit. So the cash generation is very strong. So despite all the difficult circumstances, I think looking at the cash position and looking at region by region, it's a situation that we have to be alert, but you don't see us in the panic mode. You see us in a mode where we just apply the right measures. So how do we see it from here? If we look at the market outlook, the truck market, especially in Europe, is going to be hit more than we initially expected. All the projections that we receive from the institute, they have lowered their projections in Europe. We expect minus 35% to minus 40% in the market for trucks, minus 20% to minus 25% in trailers. Only tractors will be more resilient. What we've seen in agricultural tractors so far has not been a demand-driven reduction, has been reduction driven by problems in the supply chain. There will be some impact, but we don't see and institutes don't see an impact as harsh as in truck and trailers. North America situation, even more dramatically, you could say, was minus 50% to 55% in both truck and traders based on production. That's also due to the fairly high inventory level that all OEMs and dealers are carrying at this point in time. Everybody has been trying to ride the wave of production as long as possible, and they have accumulated relatively high inventories. So we expect the build rate to really be down at The States here, around 50%. Versus our agricultural tractors, also, there will be a much lower decline, a much more stable business. APA, we've seen, hopefully, the worst in China, where we had a several week shutdown, as stated. The remainder of the Southern Hemisphere, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, they will obviously be carrying some burden in Q2 with the corona pandemic. But in China, we have already a strong comeback in our plant and in our delivery to the production. So if there is no second wave, we see the Chinese part of APA are quite strong. But in the other regions, obviously, still some impact. So what is the impact? Let's go to Slide 16. The -- in Europe, all the European truck OEMs had a shutdown in April, but they have all restarted. However, they are still ramping up the volume. Basically, the European truck OEMs have shut their plants end of March and then carried that shutdown until after Easter. The ramp-up has been quite slow, and they're still in the process of ramping up. On trailers, we have a situation that's not quite as dramatic. The trailer builders, they have more capacity to breathe. But of course, they also are all back to work now, but they are also operating on low volume. We adjust -- we are adjusting our capacity. We're using the short-term work in Germany, where we have a quite good system, that we're using a blue collar and a white collar. We have, in some countries, similar concepts. And of course, that's what we try to use as much as possible in order to retain the educated and trained workforce. Where that's not possible, we have to release the workforce in order to bring the overall capacity down. On tractors, the operations are right now back to normal, as said. The declines that we have seen that were mainly driven by supply chain issues or by other operational issues. There was a fire in Finland with one of the OEMs or close to one of the OEMS. And so these are not demand-driven impacts. And we see maybe the demand go down a little bit, but there's really no good reason for the demand to go down because agriculture will still continue. And as long as financing is available and crops prices are at a reasonable level, farmers have the capacity and capability and the interest to invest. North America, as stated already, the -- we've seen massive declines in order intake with the OEMs. There's high stock levels of finished vehicles. But our aftermarket business that we have been able to grow nicely over the last years is remaining very strong, and that is helping us right now in North America. It's also helping us that we have a very flexible organization and a very experienced team there that is adjusting our capacity and our cost accordingly. Same for the trailer, we also see very high stock levels at the trailer producers and also at the trailer dealers. Also there on tractors, we don't see a big impact in the professional tractors. Of course, there's a lot of tractors for the so-called moonshine farmers. These are people that have normal jobs and then have a farm on the side that they work on the weekend. There may be a bigger impact, but with the more professional farmers should maintain their business as in the previous years, more or less. APA, as said, in Wuhan, we were able to restart. We're actually producing at full capacity right now. Our teams have done a great job with the different circumstances to bring the production volume up again. As you can imagine, there is a lot of constraints in the Wuhan areas when it comes to health and safety and protection. There's additional hygiene measures. There is a temperature measuring of employees, which does not help productivity but it does not reduce our output. So I said, our teams are doing a very excellent job in bringing the volume up. Volume on truck side and demand on truck side right now is very high. On trailers, it's slower, picking up. But on the truck side, I think the Chinese government is really trying to bring the industry back, and therefore, it's encouraging truck production. And we are back to very high levels, and we're also replacing that we were not able to deliver in the first bit, and we're delivering it in retrofit to the dealers. So we have right now, extremely high levels. However, the rest of APA, especially South Africa and Australia and also Brazil, they will be considerable in the Q2 of 2020. For our agriculture in China, we have a plant in Ningbo that has only had a small period of shutdown with no major impact, and they're also back to normal. So you see a very different picture through the regions, but I think a very active management of the situation by our local organization. And I think also here, it pays out that we have what we call a local-for-local focus. So our local organizations, they have the means to run their business and to adjust their business as they need. And in these times, where we have very different circumstances in the different regions, I think that's very positive for our organization. The outlook for 2020, we have suspended. The results of the pandemic has led to a lack of visibility, and we see still that lack of visibility. Even though, as just mentioned, the OEMs are coming back, we still -- we also heard just now that Volkswagen is going back to reduce their production volume because the demand side is not there. They now have all the parts. They have the people to produce, but the demand side is really hard to judge. I think for us, it's -- we're not in a situation yet where we can give you a reliable picture. And therefore, we want to continue to work with our flexible organization and to inform you on a constant basis of how we see the world, but we will not be able to give you a reliable outlook and forecast that we want to be hold accountable for. We currently expect the economic impact in Q2 to be the strongest. We had Q1 impact in APA, but the big impact in Europe and North America will be in Q2. And the economic recovery, we expect from Q3 onwards. So provided there's no second wave, we believe that in Q3, everybody will come back to a more normal level, and then we can have a more reliable view on the future. We're closely monitoring the developments and provide with the guidance for the full fiscal year as soon as we have sufficient reliable insights. And as stated at the beginning already, we have decided to propose to the general meeting that we will not pay a dividend in 2020 for 2019. The Annual General Meeting will be held on July 1, 2020. So with that, let's come to the executive summary. The focus that we have been focusing on in the Q1 was to ensure the health of our people, to make sure that we supply to our customers and that we manage cost and cash. And that's what you see in the summary here, too. It was strongly affected by the spread of the coronavirus, especially Asia Pacific, Africa. Also in Europe, we had some negative impact. North America, not so much in Q1, but certainly, we will see that in Q2. The Alo business performance, we're very happy with to be in a bigger role to play a bigger role in agriculture. It did have a positive impact in February and March on our business and on our operating results, and it's also less impacted by the pandemic. Our strong aftermarket business also had a positive impact, and especially in North America. We're very happy with that, that we were able to grow that so nicely over last years, where in Europe, we already had a fairly strong aftermarket business also in the last years. We will continue to use all insurance vehicle considering the impact of the pandemic. We continue with our focus on cost and cash. And we have some flexible -- some flexibility all over the world. And especially in Germany, we are using the short-term work quite extensively at this point in time. It will continue to do so to adjust our cost to the new levels. We are expecting an economic recovery from the third quarter onwards. The business in China has come back very strongly and shows positive signs. And as I said, Q2 will more be a problem for North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere. We have a very strong worldwide team that has been capable of managing the volatility, I think, in an exceptionally good way. We have a very strong customer contact. I'm also not worried about the foundation of the business. We've seen the financing structure. We've seen the cash generation. So with that, I think we have a very solid basis. Our overall basis of transport will be affected somewhat, but transport will always be needed. The basis of agriculture will always be needed. So we don't have any danger of our business model not being needed in the future. And therefore, I believe we will go through this very professionally. Of course, we will have an impact from this pandemic, like everybody else, but I think we can build on a very solid basis on a very experienced team. And we'll manage that situation quite well for our shareholders, for our customers and for our people. With that, that's the summary, and we're open for your questions.

Operator

We will now take our first question. Please state your name.

N
Nicolai Kempf
Research Analyst

This is Nicolai Kempf speaking from Deutsche Bank. Two questions on my side. Can you first give some more color on the countermeasures you've done in Europe and also in North America? I assume short-term work is one. Can you name some other measures? And the second one is maybe some comments on Q2 and maybe April. One of your competitors has been quite vocal on their comment on April that they were actually breakeven in that month. Can you maybe say something similar? I know you've said that Q2 earnings will be significantly down compared to Q1 also compared to Q2 with last year, but maybe some more insights.

J
Joachim Dürr

Okay. Yes, concerning the measures, as you mentioned, short-term work is obviously one that we are using. However, we are looking at all cost positions. As you can imagine, we're going down through all our cost positions. That includes rental payments to landlords and vehicles, and we don't have to -- and fortunately don't have to worry as much about our travel and hospitality because a lot of the travel is not possible anyhow. But of course, we are looking at our cost positions, but also looking at our financing situation and our income. So I think we're very actively managing that, and it goes way beyond the personnel costs. We have released the flex workers that we have in Germany. We have also released people in other countries. So our headcount is dropping dramatically as we speak, but we like to use the short-term work as much as possible where we cannot lay off people during that period. And we're not planning to, while we do that because it gives us the flexibility to restart, and we can maintain the educated people that we have and the trained people that we have. But of course, as you can suspect, there is a lot more cost positions that we're looking at, and it includes everything. We're looking to our investments, our R&D projects, but have decided that we will continue with the future projects. So everything that has to do with new technology will not be impacted by this crisis, but of course, we are reviewing some of the investments because we have to expect lower capacity requirements in the future. And so there's -- if you want a whole bundle of measures that we go through, but personnel costs, especially in Europe and in North America, are always sticking out. And that's why those are the most relevant, and there we have the means of flexibility. We do -- on the results, we have seen an activity level that is very low in April, to your question about April. We've seen, especially on the truck side, a very low activity level. But on trailer and aftermarket, aftermarket has been -- has not been impacted as much. We only see an impact in the vehicle utilization. If you look at the usage -- or the road coverage, the default system in Germany that is representative for Europe. We see in the kilometers driven dropped about 20% beginning of April before Easter and then come back to minus 10%, minus 15%, where we are right now, and I expect that to go to single-digit decline versus the average of last year. So that's a good indicator for our aftermarket business because the kilometers driven on the road means consumed aftermarket parts. And then of course, there's a few impacts around that. People will keep the vehicles longer, and therefore, may need more spare parts than with new vehicles, but they may replace less. But overall, you can use that more or less as a guidance for the for the aftermarket business. So we saw the aftermarket business at those levels. We saw trucks dropped dramatically because everybody will close. So more or less, there was -- could say always no sale to truck OEMs because they were all closed in April. What does it mean from our results side? We see that our countermeasures are now kicking in, in April because we are using the short-term work. We are sending people off. So we have the flexibility to counteract. And therefore, I cannot give you a full result, and I don't want to for April because we typically don't do that. But on a worldwide basis, I can assure you that we have the situation very well under control, and that I'm sure we're not in a negative on a worldwide basis.

Operator

We will now take our next question from Sarth Patel of JPMorgan.

S
Sarth J. Patel
Analyst

This is Sarth from JPMorgan. Few questions from my side, please. First, I would like to understand to what extent are the cost measures you're taking. What -- to what extent are they structural? And how much of these measures are permanent once we're done with COVID? How do you see that impacting your cost, please? That's my first question. I can give you the next one later.

J
Joachim Dürr

Okay. Your question was concerning the cost structure, how much of these measurements are permanent. The -- of course, when we use the short-term work, that's just a temporary measurement, but we also only need temporary measurements to a certain extent. Others are permanent when we lay off people, and we have flex workers that we don't use. These are permanent measures. So we have, of course, a mix of permanent and nonpermanent. We've always said that with our flexibility that we typically have, we can reduce -- other than the overhead cost, we can reduce to 20% to 30% decline. So if we go down 20% to 30%, that's what we typically are able to manage on a cost basis and on a variable cost basis without having to cut into the fixed cost. Of course, there's overhead costs that will remain. We're also working on that. We have to use short-term work and other measures also on white collar, but that will be a bit slower.

S
Sarth J. Patel
Analyst

Yes, that's helpful. Second question would be, can you tell me about the Alo revenues in the first quarter of 2019, and also just how it's split through the year? So it just makes more sense for us to model it through the year.

C
Christian Terlinde
CFO & Member of the Executive Board

Yes. Let me take that question. So Alo revenues -- I mean first of all, bear in mind that we acquired Alo at the end of January, and we are consolidating a loan numbers for the month in February. So you are seeing currently only 2 months of Alo included. And in these 2 months, they have generated roughly EUR 31 million in sales or EUR 30.8 million in sales. And the split is -- well, it's predominantly Europe, and to some extent, North America. But the majority is certainly in Europe and hardly anything in Asia.

S
Sarth J. Patel
Analyst

I'm sorry, to repeat my question. I meant, what were the Alo revenues in the quarter of 2019 and the split through the year, to understand the seasonality of the business?

C
Christian Terlinde
CFO & Member of the Executive Board

Sorry, I mean, since -- I can't give them to you from top of my head because they were not included in our numbers. So that is -- but you can reach out to Romy, and she will get it to you.

S
Sarth J. Patel
Analyst

Okay. And just one final question from my side. It's on the working capital. Can you confirm that you'll see a working capital inflow in the second quarter with your lower activity levels? And then secondly, as we go into the third quarter and the fourth quarter, are you probably seeing an inflow for the end of the year as well? These 2 points.

C
Christian Terlinde
CFO & Member of the Executive Board

Yes. Talking about working capital, what we're currently seeing is really the typical development that you would always see in a downturn, and that's also what we're expecting for the months to come. So right now, we have not seen any bankruptcies from any customers. So basically, we are continuing to collect on our receivables. And we have a typical payment term somewhere between 30 to -- depending on the customer, 60 or 90 days. And so this is what we're seeing right now. So we are currently still collecting the receivables from sales that were made beginning of the year, and that's been quite successful. There has not been many delays or anything. Again, no bankruptcies so far. However, what will happen is going -- and this will continue for a couple more months, I would believe. What will happen going into the summer month and especially the fall month is if there is an uptick in activity levels, that's when you will see some more significant impact on our cash when you -- when we have to increase our inventories just to keep the production going. And on the other hand, the payables -- the receivables from those sales will come in much later. So this is the typical development of cash flow that you can expect. I mean the good thing, and that's quite good for us right now is that in Q2, we see the strong uptake again in Asia. So right now, we have the effect of the uptake in Asia right now. And on the other hand, we see the decline in Europe and North America. So hopefully, by the time that the summer comes, and hopefully, we can see a higher activity level also in Europe and in North America. We have positive effects coming out of China. So this is our expectation. So nothing unusual so far, and we're happy to report that we're able to collect all our receivables. And I think in general, we are focusing heavily on securing cash and maintaining our liquidity.

S
Sarth J. Patel
Analyst

Okay. Just one final question from my side. Will you be phasing your CapEx expenditures towards the second half of the year or towards the fourth quarter?

C
Christian Terlinde
CFO & Member of the Executive Board

That's absolutely the point that I was trying to make. We're scrutinizing every, every single euro and dollar of the mini that we're spending. And we are trying to postpone capital expenditures, obviously, not at the expense of our future. So if there's maintenance CapEx needed, these will happen. We are not delaying needed maintenance CapEx, but if there's -- if there are CapEx -- for instance, extension CapEx right now, these are being delayed. And we try to do it the smart way.

Operator

We will now take our next question. Please state your name before posing your question.

F
Frederik Bitter
Analyst

Gentlemen, it's Frederik Bitter, Hauck & Aufhuser. I would like to ask a bit around the extra cost we see Q1, just to get a bit of an understanding there, what kind of impact that had on your operating results. And I read in the 8-K the additional client costs and also costs related to additional suppliers. That is one thing. In Europe, we had actual logistics costs, which is mentioned in the report. In North America, supply chain disruption costs and also costs relating to Alo plant relocation. Could you split that out a bit for me, especially for us, we get an understanding of really underlying profitability in Q1?

C
Christian Terlinde
CFO & Member of the Executive Board

Well, I'll do the best I can, Frederik. So obviously, this is not 100% clear cut. So what we are seeing is certainly the supply chain interruptions. I remember talking to our Head of Logistics, and they were desperately trying to get some -- not necessarily JOST parts, but obviously, we have other suppliers in China that as well impacted by the crisis. But even when they were opening up, it was difficult to secure means of transportation. So ship transportation was limited and the ports in India closed. The ports in China were obviously closed, so this is -- it's very, very difficult to give you some good number there. What is what also happened is, for instance, in the U.S. when we could secure parts out of China and also didn't find a decent supplier in the U.S. immediately. What we did, we produced parts ourselves. And obviously, we didn't go to China because we just wanted to go to China. It was -- the price was much lower coming out of China. So we had significant higher prices doing some parts by ourselves. And this is basically the picture throughout the world. I mean rough estimate for me just for Q1 would be the additional costs are definitely above EUR 1 million. That's my gut feeling, but I cannot break it down -- I cannot break it out very, very detailed. And the Alo plant relocation, they -- that was also some additional cost, but those have been adjusted. And it's a good thing that you're asking because we didn't point it out. None of these adjustments that you are seeing are due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we consciously did not make any adjusted means for the pandemic. So all you're seeing is what I've just been speaking about and nothing on top.

Operator

We currently have no more questions. Mr. Durr, I'd like to turn the call back to you for any additional comments or closing remarks.

J
Joachim Dürr

Okay. Yes. Thanks a lot for your interest. As I stated earlier, I think you see an organization that's very well prepared to manage the rollercoaster that we have been seeing and will be seeing. The fact that we had a positive Q1 result even in Asia, where we had an almost 50% drop in the market and 30-something percent in our revenues, I think proves the flexibility that we have. And you can be assured that all our local teams are working continuously to adjust our organization to that flexibility while maintaining the focus on employee -- safety of our people and a very close contact to our customer and deliver performance to our customers. So Q2 will certainly be impacted by the pandemic. We've already seen April with low volumes. But again, then in Q2, also the cost reduction that we use and adjust -- the flexibility adjustment that we can use with short-term work and so on, they will kick in. So with that, I would like to point out that you see us well prepared for the remainder of a rollercoaster year. Stay tuned. Thank you very much for your interest. And to all of you, stay healthy for you and for your families. Thanks for your interest. Bye-bye.