Rexel SA

PAR:RXL

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q1

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And before we start, allow me to wish you and everybody not to be hurt by this COVID-19 virus, and I wish very good health. Welcome to the presentation of this first quarter 2020 sales. And for today, for presentation and question and answers, I am with Laurent Delabarre, our group CFO. No need to tell you that it's a quite exceptional and very unprecedented circumstances. And I will start this call explaining how we are adapting to this environment, how do we implement all the measures to both protect our employee and customers as well as to continue operating. And how all of this is impacting our first quarter performance. Laurent will then detail our sales performance, the cost measures and -- that we have taken and obviously, all the other aspects, of which the focus on liquidity. And then I will conclude with a look at the immediate priorities and actions. On the slide about -- after, you can see that, first of all, in the first days before the quarter full vision, when on mid-March we were facing this COVID-19, then the health and safety of our 26,000 employees became a major, very high, central priority. Within a few days, we quickly implemented sanitary measures. And even where the confinement and other measures were not decided by the local governments, we choose -- there is a bit of -- here. Sorry, there was a little bit of pollution on the line. Immediately, we choose to operate sanitary and hold, for example, distancing in our branches, in our DCs, in the contact with the customers. We, immediately, around the world implemented social distancing and further management and immediately, we took actions everywhere in the centers. And within a couple of days, we have asked thousands of people to work from home. We have asked people to reorganize the shift in the DC not to cross each other, not to come together to each other. And the same in the branches, never to touch a customer, never a customer touching us, because we wanted, totally, as much as we could, it's never 100% sure, but the best sanitary way of operating. And in doing so, it was quite important because it has been applied across the world, across the board and we created a crisis committee where all the best practices were available to everyone. And within a week, it was done. And the U.S., where -- when they saw this in Europe, our U.S. operation, they capitalized on this. They anticipated everything that we are coming to Europe. And including there within 10 days, our total operations, plus the very strong IT infrastructure capabilities that we had just built before -- in the 2 years before, and using all the digital interfaces that we had already put in place, then we could make 1/3 of group employee working from home, all the calls being taken from home, all the sales force calling the customer and managing teams from home and having very fundamental elements in the digital transformation very key to the customer, Track and Trace of where is my parcel, self-check-out, drive-in services, the lockers. And more of the things that we just had developed as the future model has proven to be a fundamental way of doing business, continuing what the business or what the business could be and respecting sanitary measures. I am very proud of this reactivity that we were able to change everything and no disruption and the company was doing extremely well. And I would like to express, by the way, all my thanks and gratitude to all our teams for this remarkably reactivity and adaptability. And therefore, thanks to them, Rexel has managed to keep running in the face of a real crisis situation. On the page after, what does it mean? When -- within a week, everything which was the normal way of doing business, so to speak, everywhere around the world, customer mix changed more than we ever thought it could happen. The channel mix changed. How much traffic went through the web, through EDI, through the counter, through the telephone and change of habits. The country mix changed. Everything on this [ first day ], we were facing something very different. And even within a country, the regional mix was absolutely nuts especially in the U.S. but not just, also in Canada and also in Europe, in the countries, the regional mix is quite very contrasted. Product availability, there were some shortage anticipated with the coronavirus crisis in China before that would impact the supply, some have materialized, some not because of the lower demand, but it was also an instability element. And on the demand side, the product mix was not what where we used to sell. A big runner of the week before, something that we sell by thousands every week at a sudden became 10 piece in terms of sales. And others, where it was only limited numbers of rather low demand became a runner, a runner as a proportion to the rest. Human resource mix. Who was able to work from home? Who we had no need for immediately? Who we had to ask to be like a reserve shift? If something will happen in the DC, another partial team still at home would come in and take over, why if there would have been somebody with a virus, we'd have to retrench and the entire team with it and go on confinement for 2 weeks and kind of adjustment that we had to do. And guess what? This is not just a change. All that I'm describing, and you see on this slide, is changing every single week. The mix is changing every week by how the virus spread, how the government decide on measures, which industry stop, which industry restart, which customer base wants to go back to work, the one stays on confinement, how transportation does affect all of this. Meaning this is weekly adjustments to a permanently changing and not by 1%, 2%, 3%. It's changing by 20%, 50%, it's big blocks back-and-forth and coming every day like this. And we are developed -- and we have developed, and I'm very proud that we have been able to serve every single customer for what the demand was for the specialty products he wanted, for -- in a very healthy way and in a change also in the way we were obviously serving by the contacts mode. On the page after, in a nutshell, there were changes which were quite strong. I mean, on one hand, something which became more obvious than ever before, electrical distribution became an essential activity in many parts of the country to support the hospitals, obviously, but to support the datacom industry, to support a lot of food and beverage industry, that we need to supply, to support the cooling systems of everywhere everybody is going to shop and get the fresh food, to supply so many places where we had to provide products to and through new kind of customer compared to the conventional installers we had. Because a lot of maintenance, people, emergency maintenance, a lot of critical activities, elevators moving up and down and for which some of their own systems were no longer available as it could have been and so on and so on and so on. Therefore, we have put in place business continuity plans in all the countries. And we, as you could see, number of branch open, only 100, 110. Yesterday, 95 were closed, the rest is open under -- as -- with normal conditions, less and less. And twice as many with, let's say, readjusted way as pickup points to a minimum. The nice thing is the next statistic is that we, as you can see here, within 3 weeks, just take France, we gained 1,888 new accounts, almost 1,900 within a week on the web compared to roughly 100 per week in normal times. And this is proving that -- and I'm pretty sure that a portion of the market is moving to a new way of transacting. And obviously, the Europe digital sales crossed the 30%. And you remember, a year ago, I would have told you 25%. And in these numbers, you have a drop in EDI because large plants, large manufacturing site in EDI, because they stopped EDI, was short term being reduced. Therefore, the pure web has probably grown by something close to 10 points in a couple of weeks compared to the previous year. And sales by phone. Sales by phone, obviously, exploded. Just to have an indication that phone traffic exploded, but the sales also, because some of it went to the web, some of it went to the phone, but everything else virtually stopped. And therefore, we have a very heavily now infrastructure being able to cope with this, and we have a lot of traffic on the web increasing every day as well. On the next slide, what was also very important, it was, first, as I described before, make sure business continuity. It works, we serve, we are there, we are open, we continue to be and we will continue to do so everywhere. On the other side, the demand is low. The mix is not exactly the same. And we had to face something that really, we didn't know how long it would last. And therefore, we adjusted our cost, our OpEx and primarily in 2 categories. The salary and benefits, we have adjusted. And as you can see from these numbers, it's not a typo. 27% for sales down, 27% for salary and benefits down in April. And a lot of local management had to take serious actions, courageous management decisions, but it's something which we have adjusted. We have been using, obviously, all the support that the different governments made available to us. And on top and above, we had to take our own decision, even if it was not done with support of the local governments or administrations. And in doing so, something we never did in the past, we -- I think we have shown our ability to be really fast-adjusting to the level of sales. That Salary & Benefits is only a piece of the equation. We also suspended CapEx. We also suspended any process of commitment of certain developments that we have put on hold. We have obviously managed all the rest that are not carrying benefits or [ back ], revisiting transportation costs, revisiting the lease cost, revisiting and renegotiating each of these elements systematically, one-by-one. And we continue to do so, not knowing how long it will last. The virus is still going around. Even if there is a deconfinement in certain places, it could come back in 3, 4, 5 months, therefore, we are being now fully adjusted in order to be on the cost base adjusted to the sales level and margin level. And obviously, on the page after, you can see how it went and fast. It's nothing new to you, but this is really our world, how from beginning of March week 10, where we had a very good start in the quarter, the same-day sales were plus 6.3%. March, week 11, it's close to 0, first lockdown in Italy, Spain. The week after, minus 12 and a lot of countries in Europe is in the lockdown. And then week 13, the U.S. entered into the shutting down locally before more generically state lockdown, states each being different. Therefore, you see this minus 27.8% in our sales. And then a little bit bumpy, 1 week to minus 25%, another minus 30%. The [ Easter and ] days playing here a little bit of a role. Therefore, roughly, it's minus 27%, minus 28%. And this came very fast, and therefore, we adjusted at the same speed. On the page after, Europe was stronger, and this impact was faster, stronger spreading around, especially in the south than in the north. There are 3 countries which remain with a different no-lockdown approach. Poland is one, or limited. The -- Sweden is one. And obviously, there were different -- it's a different philosophy and strategy. And we got a little bit less impact. And now we see the first countries like -- And I say, 3 countries, I forgot the third, we saw Germany, there was partial lockdown, but Germany was relatively resisting extremely well, and we have -- we were happy with the way we have adjusted and we have been doing the business in this contrasted environment by regions, but the north being less affected than the south. And this is true for the rest of Europe. And therefore, the numbers are contrasted. And in North America, uneven shutdown measured in the States. I remember 5 weeks ago, still being in the States, and we were supposed to have a meeting in Seattle and Portland with all the guys. And which we decided not to. I stopped in Dallas, in our headquarter, and we were running by video and -- which was the beginning. And obviously, states in the Northeast was heavily impacted but California also shut down similar to Europe. And now there are other side effect to all of this, including the Gulf, which is not just the virus, which is also the oil and gas industry shutdown. But everywhere, we have an impact and -- but it came at different moment. Asia Pac on the page after. Asia Pac, we follow carefully. One of the fundamental question, is the curve of Asia Pac representative of our curve that we could see in Europe? We have our doubts because people behave differently. The virus was managed differently. Lockdowns mean really something severe. And when they reopen, then there is a certain restart. On the other hand, what do we see? Our OEM business where we focused on, it's doing great now. It's positive territory. There is a little bit of a catch-up, but there's also an internal demand quite strong because the Chinese companies have also learned that either the virus or something in the supply chain on one hand, they need to be equipped. Therefore, they go for -- and these people are in lockdown, they try to be less sensitive to people presence, therefore, they go immediately, after all of this, they go for robotics, automation, OEMs and this is where we end. And therefore, we see a nice pickup short-term after the crisis. This is to give you, in a nutshell, the sense of what we have done, how we have managed safety, protect the people and protect the relationship to the customers and to the suppliers in a healthy mode and protect the company, adjusting the cost, stopping the CapEx and adjusting to the level of demand. I will pass to Laurent on the slide after, so that he can comment more details with you, the Q1 '20 sales review and the 19 -- COVID-19 environment priorities, and I come back after. Laurent, if you could take over?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you very much, Patrick, and good morning to all of you. I will start on Slide 12 with probably a bit obsolete information and very far away on our Q1 sales, which was EUR 3.2 billion, and we are down 3.3% on a same-day basis and minus 2.7% on a reported basis. Organic same-day sales growth was impacted by a negative copper impact of minus 0.4%, with copper price down 6% in euro terms and 9% in U.S. terms. Sales were also impacted by a scope effect, as you know, as Gexpro Service was deconsolidated as from February 23. And as a reminder, Gexpro Services had annual sales of around USD 260 million, with a slightly higher profitability than the U.S. And its deconsolidation has reduced our indebtedness ratio by 10 basis points. In the quarter, we benefit from a positive foreign exchange impact of plus 0.9%, mainly due to the USD. And we now anticipate the full year '20 currency impact to be circa minus 0.3%, assuming spot rates remain unchanged. If we looked at our performance by region, sales in Europe were down by 1.5%. In North America, they were down by 4.8%. And in Asia Pac, they were down by 8.3%, notably reflecting the strong shutdown in China in February. Moving to Slide 13. We take a closer look at our sales performance, breaking it down through February and March, and also looking at more recent trends. As you see on the slide, Rexel has gotten off to a very solid start of the year, with sales up 0.9% through February or up 2% restating for China, which was strongly impact by COVID-19 in February. March and April were a different story and notably the second half of March, as lockdown measures spread. In week 13, started on March 31, the same-day sales were down 27.8%. And in the first 15 days of April, with most of Europe and the U.S. in lockdown, sales were down by 27.7%. By region, Europe was down 37% in the first 15 days of April, while North America showed better resilience, down 21.5%. Asia Pac was down 0.4%, notably to a recent bounce back in China and a very good resilience in Australia. At this stage, we have no visibility on the duration and extent of the crisis, but we are taking all necessary measures to adapt it, as I will detail on the next slide. Once organized for business continuity in order to achieve as much sales as possible in the context of country confinement measures, we first said -- we have the first set of action, as shown on Slide 14, related to OpEx, which represent EUR 2.7 billion in full year '19. We are actively looking at reducing every cost category and every line. Let me share with you the breakdown of our OpEx by nature. Flexible costs account for circa 53%, including in that Salary & Benefits for a large majority, that becomes flexible in this unprecedent time, thanks to the various government temporary unemployment measures available, but also to some cut and very strong [ decrease ], as you can imagine, on travel and professional costs. Variable costs represent circa 25% and notably include sales commission, delivery expense and terms. Lastly, fixed costs represent 18% of total and include mostly Building & Occupancies, of which leases classified under depreciation in IFRS 16, as well as IT & Network communication costs that are essential to run the company. In order to adjust OpEx to this unprecedent drop in sales, we have taken several drastic actions, including reducing by 27% Salary & Benefits in April through, first, the use of temporary unemployment measure all around Europe; second, the use of flexibility in North America, including wage reductions, temporary loss, or absence no-pay policies. We have also deferred wages increase, for instance, in China and curtailed travel and entertainment costs. Let me add that our CEO and Board members will cut their compensation by 20% as from April. Lastly, we are also acting, even on fixed costs, for instance, renegotiating leases and rent, where possible. On Slide 15, we take a closer look at our key priority, cash generation. As Patrick said, we are tracking cash on a daily basis. We are doing this through a bottom-up modeling over the next 3 months, with country providing us on a weekly basis a rolling estimate from top line to bottom line evolution and trade working capital broken down between inventory, receivable and payable. Country management teams are monitoring receivables closely and are managing payable tightly. We should also benefit from deferrals on social tax in most countries, and CapEx will be lower as well as we put most projects on hold. I would add that we don't expect significant restructuring costs from the OpEx measure I described before. As mentioned earlier, we are also proposing to our shareholders to suspend the payment of the 2019 dividend, which would represent a cash saving of EUR 145 million and further protect liquidity. Concerning our debt covenants, I remind you that our covenant on our senior credit agreement is calculated twice a year, in June and December. At December 2019, our debt-to-EBITDA ratio, post the disposal of Gexpro Services, stood at 2.37x. The covenant set a limit at 3.5x with Swiss spikes authorized, one between 3.75 and 3.9, and 2x between 3.5 and 3.75x. Let me conclude on Slide 16 with our liquidity picture, which shows that we have no short-term issues. As of March 31, we have EUR 1.13 billion of liquidity, including the available cash and the EUR 3 million in undrawn facility on our senior credit agreement. In addition, and if needed, we have a EUR 200 million overdraft facility with our pool of banks, and also have access to EUR 500 million in addition liquidity that could be set up with core banks without requesting any waivers. The chart shows that we have no short-term maturity on our banks, with no significant repayment before 2024, following the 2017 and March 2019 refinancings. As shown, half of our financing is supported by receivable securitization. We have different programs in 8 countries with term and conditions through 2020 and 2022. As you know, for every program, we have to reload the securitization conduits every month with the new receivables. With a lower level of activity, this source of short-term financing will be reduced, but we have sufficient liquidity available to cover for that. With this, let me hand over to Patrick for his concluding remarks.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Thank you, Laurent. The one thing that -- the takeaways of this for the time being, there is one thing we are absolutely sure of, which is on Page 18, that it was so right to have invested in this digital transformation. And the first level was to get the data layers, this data structure, so that we could immediately understand what was going on day-by-day everywhere, in a global and local way, by using power BI, customer behaviors through the CRM and so on. And even more today, we continue to try to get, for example, the daily pulse, how is the market moving by product category, by segment, detecting if there is something that would -- is it 1 day, is it 3 days? Is it something to be able to catch up with everything that is happening on the way down as much as on the way up. And the more these data layers is being structured and now, it's a vast majority of country who is already structuring in such a way, it is obvious that we will continue to roll out systematically everywhere. Based on this, the transactional web and EDI platform and the function, whether it's an e-mail through EDI, digital customer invoicing, Track and Trace and more that we have in a standardized way so that everybody, every country in Europe, which is -- has done this data structure, using this transactional standard tool can really get to a much faster digital adoption that the conditions are just making it happen faster than ever before. And it's, for us, just a question of rollout, it's not a question of development, it's not a question of infrastructure, it's not a question of what to be done. It was a question of adoption, and adoption by, obviously, our people, but adoption by our customers. And customers now, when they are forced to, they adopt much faster. This may create a point of no return, by the way, in this industry which, to me, is great. And then obviously, all the predictive work that we have put. In full fairness, they are more valid than ever before. And I'm so glad that this is really -- it exists. It can be rolled out. There's major developments being now firmed up. And I'm extremely happy for that because next, the NBO, for example, Next Best Offer, what is the right assortment for new categories of customers, the -- which customer is likely to churn? How much will be due to his own financial risk, for example? We may probably detect in advance some people who, without waiting for them to have difficulty, would start to buy less or different, kind of a different pattern and kind of things. All of these modules, from data structure through transactions, through predictive face new usage, put it this way, but confirm that it was the right thing to do. And by the way, the infrastructure supporting is really strong because we got peaks in demand, peaks in people going to the web to find a fit available, not available. If it's open, not open. Under which condition can I get it? Transacting like this. Calling the phone, but the phone going to the web and to the EDI. All of this -- all our infrastructure has resisted perfectly, and I'm thankful to the IT people. Update on our 2020 priorities and actions for the rest on the Page 19. I will not surprise you in telling you that first, preserve the health and safety of our employees and the customer and the relationship between the 2. No good health, no good business, therefore we protect as much as we can, both customers and employees. Ensure business and process continuity. If we need to lock down something, we sanitize, we clean and we create a condition for continuity week after, 2 weeks after, a day after, but this is never something that we stop definitely. Obviously, we will focus on liquidity as key performance indicator. If there is one thing which is really -- it was an element of our evolution, it becomes an element of running, running a company at different levels, as liquidity become a focus throughout such a phase because cash is king. And protect the company, focus on OpEx, we did. People know what it means. And we will focus on OpEx when it will restart, but because it could go down again. The bumpy vision that we may share one day required this OpEx up and downs flexibility and cash management. The rollout of all our digital capabilities systematically, because it's just now a way of life. It's obvious that we have suspended, and you know this already, our guidance, on March 25. We suspended the guidance for 2020. And there is no way today that I could tell you what the rest of the year would be because I don't know and nobody knows. And the Board of Directors has decided not to propose, have decided for the AGM, not to propose a payment of the dividend in respect of the '19 dividend, at the next general assembly, which is now postponed to June 25. And with all of this, I think we can open the session for the question. And I think the communication is working. We are all in remote locations and not together as usual. Therefore, there might be slight delays between your question and the answer.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from the line of Lucie Carrier from Morgan Stanley.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

First of all, a big thank you on all of the disclosure you are providing today around current trading and so on. I mean, we haven't seen that at many other companies, and this is extremely helpful. I have 3 questions, I will go one at a time. The first one, both of you have been at the company for a long time, and I was hoping you could give us maybe a couple of more -- a bit more colors, maybe a couple of examples on how you manage cash generation and collection in a downturn environment as you were already, of course, in the company in 2009. And also, why do you think, maybe you can contextualize, why you think that your current cash balance of about EUR 1.1 billion is sufficient to kind of -- to -- in this turmoil. So that's the first question on how you manage inventory and why EUR 1.1 billion is enough from your standpoint here.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

The management of inventory and the cash collection are 2 elements to the same question. Management of inventory first. It's very different from the previous recession, because we were in a rather quite booming mode last year, the year before, organic sales, organic growth, remember EUR 1 billion growth over the last 3 years, and we were gaining market share, and we were just accelerated. Obviously, when you do this, and -- do you hear me? Somebody is saying my mic would be out? No, I think it's okay.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

It's okay.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

We can hear you.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Okay. And obviously, we got a lot of inventories just proportionally to our sales growth, and we continued to do because we had a good start at the beginning of the year. It stopped overnight. It stopped overnight. Lucie, I would tell you one thing, I never saw that in my life, minus 70% the next day. And you look at your inventory, you say, "Jesus, I have far too many now. What can I do?" And then the next day, people asking for products for which you have low inventory. Not needed to replenish immediately, but no inventory. And in that moment, we face a new situation, which probably will become more like the previous one, but in the coming months, even more on the longer term. Never forget, the Morgan -- the previous crisis, the big shock was in August, that the economy went down, gradually speaking, the trend over the 12 months after, and we were rolling our inventory down, but it was not going from booming to minus 70%, neither minus 30% around the world, and was minus 5%, and another minus 5%, and a minus 8%. Our business, it was like 12 months of an erosion, 12 months to adapt, 12 months of not replenishing in time and 12 months of collecting the money from the supply -- from the customers, less every day, but not a big drop, okay? Now this time, obviously, we say -- I put a few words, I will be frank with you. Good to lose the minimum on the item that we sell is twofold for 1 replenished. And it will -- and sometimes it's 3x sold for 1 replenished. And sometime, it's 5x sold for 1 replenish. Because depending on how the demand and the pickup will come to get the inventory down is really making sure, and we are adjusting by week. And all our tools are -- will be very operational here. All our tools couldn't face this. All of our tools of yesterday, our replenishment tools calculated on long series and so on. Here, we have to provide within a few days, within a few weeks the adjustments to everyday sale. And we are doing it. And yes, inventory have to go down because they are too high today for what we need, they will go down. That's one piece of the equation. The other piece is to collect the cash, collect the cash from everybody. We need it, meaning cash from money that we are collecting gradually over time, like always, whether it's formal rebates to be collected or whether it's from suppliers. Some were coming from customers that were owing us some money for this or that. I mean that is done within a week or 2. This money is due to us. We own it, get it. Cash in, and I made this cash-in program on everything. Plus now comes a second phase, which will last probably to the end of this year. Every day, every week, make sure that every customer, we don't get an overdue. If there is an overdue, for which reason, is it a day, is it 2 days? Everything which is a sign of fragility and non-liquidity. And here, we changed our total policy. Here, we decided that to tell all our customers, "The problem is not between you and us. We are on the same side of the table. We have to find the liquidity so that you can pay me because I need to pay my suppliers." In the previous crisis, I was running the business in a country. And I remember customers coming and saying, "Could you extend my payment term?" They come with the same question today. But the people who have seen the movie once, they know if you extend, the bill is only too high at the end. A few times it can work, most of the time, it's only a higher bill. Because at the end, the first to ask are already in difficult times. And therefore, we try to help them finding their own solutions, but we don't give up on the payment terms. And we don't give up on making sure we are being paid. There will be accidents. And there will be a few accidents. I cannot imagine that a world like this will not create a small or big accident. But the first to ask is normally paid. And the ones very prudent is getting out in a safe mode. Just to give you an operational dimension to it. I don't want -- I don't know Laurent would like to add something to that.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Maybe on the receivable, just to say that, as you pointed out, we want to stay very close to our customer on one side to help them to continue their business. And on the other side, for example, what we did in France, we issued to them all the kind of government aid they can use. Because for the smallest, they have not the access or the ability to get easily the list of all the aid in terms of the follow-up of charges, in terms of renegotiation. So we issue, very quickly, a small kit helped by consultant in order for them also to manage their liquidity. So that's the kind of agile things we have done. And of course, when we talk liquidity, we talk also EBITDA. And this is the action we have taken, especially on salary and benefits, to make sure we can adjust very quickly.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

My second question, I guess, is around the OpEx reduction, what you're putting in place. It seems to me it is much faster than what we had seen in 2009. And obviously, the situation has deteriorated much faster. When you think about the sensitivity of your earnings, and I don't mean to ask any specific numbers here, but do you think that proportionally, versus whichever decline that might come out this year in terms of the business, do you think your bottom line would be more resilient than what it was in 2009?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

The one thing I know, we have acted much faster, very radically. We were helped by all the measures provided by the governments, probably more than in 2008, 2009. But the total management was really acting fast. Now there were a couple of dates where, yes, we were like 20 hours on SMB, SMB, SMB, 20 hours per day from Asia to the other end of the U.S. But we have a good collective. In the last years, we have built a good collective common sense of what to do, how to act, and just by making phone calls, just by making sessions, just by making -- coming back the next day. And within a couple of days, yes, we have reacted much ever faster. And there was one thing which I heard that the financial market was telling me all the time, you are not a flexible company, you are not reactive fast. Well, I think we are showing you we are much more flexible and we are much more reactive to anything that I would have imagined. But yes, we do. And if now to the question of the resilience of the bottom line, there are 2 piece in this. This is how much the market will come back and could go down again. I am now the second phase, which is some markets are coming back. How to protect the EBITA when it goes up again? Protect the EBITA when it goes down, this is cutting the cost and all these elements that we have done. Some will last longer. Some, there would be an impatience by some people, by some managers, by some situation, "I need, I need to go back." And then no, we will be very prudent in how to reallocate resources and costly resources only if the up is not bumpy, that the week after it was down the other way around. No, we will adjust. We have a formula. That's something I've shared with all my managers already. That's something we will follow every week because, yes, the EBITA is something to be made more solid, resilient for whatever the market can give us in volume.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

And you ask -- we were very fast in the confinement period, and we see that the deconfinement will be even more difficult and the adaptation to cost -- to the quality of the top line, as told to you by Patrick, will be very key. But this, we have today that our most profitable country, that's the one that expands the biggest shutdown, so the question is a pattern of the recovery. What kind of letter would it be, a V, a U, a W, a L? I don't know what. So that's why it's very difficult to compare to '09 where it was gradual from Q4 '08 to every quarter in '09. At that time, there was a lot of restructuring. There was more than EUR 150 million restructuring that have been implemented. As you know, we already discussed it. We shut down more than 230 branches, mostly in the U.S. And we said and Patrick said it clear now that we will not close any branches, especially in the U.S. We will adjust at least, but not our footprint. So these ingredients are very different. But we -- and what is important is to be proactive, try to be agile. And we believe that all the tools through digital and the KPI we can get on a weekly basis are helping us to monitor the country with all the community of CEOs and CFOs.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

And there is one thing that I would like to add. We will not get the salaries and benefits or other elements, transportation and so on. We will not let it go up by the top line. I will let it go up by the gross margin, because I don't know what the prices will be in the coming environment, in the coming months. Therefore, I will let it only happen as a proportion of the gross margin generated. A new way of managing. That's the only way in distribution. You make so much, you can spend so much, not the other way around, not the top line only.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

Very clear. And then maybe my last question, just more on the current trends in the business, if I may. Which verticals are currently most impacted in your French, U.K. and North American business? And out of this vertical, whether this is residential, nonresi, industrial and so on, any disproportional impact on profitability we should think of? Or not necessarily?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

The one thing which has stopped very fast everywhere is all the projects, the big sites, whether it's the high rise or whether it's in Las Vegas or whether it's in Paris, whether -- I mean, all the projects, they stopped overnight. Therefore, the volume drop is mainly due to this. And on top and above in the industry, the automotive industry, who -- it was already cut from them before, and they were already on a lower level of activity, and they stopped their factories. And whether it was in Germany, in France, and wherever there were factory, they stopped. And right now, we have in the U.S., the oil and gas industry totally stopped. And therefore, when the big construction site and the major industry stopped, yet the pharma continuing. Food and beverage, doing fine. We have to reallocate to the most, but there is nothing to offset. Therefore, it changes so fast that in the same way, have I the difficulty to tell you really how it will look like. What I can tell you is, if the German automotive industry start to rebuild cars, it will take a lot of subindustries to already come along with. And by the way, independently from this, in Germany, we were able, for example, to regain on the commercial side, more and even some -- even if I decided not to be a strategic player in the commercial building and the residential building because we were there. We never stopped because of the continuity. We had, by far, not a bad performance, but it's a local situation. And -- but it will be contrasted, I will -- there is not a single week where the mix is the same. I have difficulty to give you a clear answer, Lucie, because really, it's not a vertical for long. Oil and gas, yes, as a vertical is impacted. The car industry was impacted. All the OEMs, building machines, machine tools, robots was heavily impacted. But they were impacted partially by the China virus, not providing the parts for them to assemble and then by local situation where they couldn't bring the manpower to build them. And maybe now, they will be impacted by a lower demand globally speaking. And it's also something we watch carefully. How much will restart because they would tell us, what would be the driver of the growth and what would be low in demand, because we are getting prepared for lower demand.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Andre Kukhnin from Crédit Suisse.

[Andre Kukhnin, Mechanical Engineering Capital Goods Analyst]

In terms of the mix, can I ask about the product mix that you mentioned at the beginning of your presentation where you talked about some winners becoming losers and some of the smaller kind of [indiscernible] becoming runners? Could you give more color and detail on what kind of product categories they are that are losing and winning? And what are the margin implications from that?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Well, I can tell you that, for example, when we look at the mix, everything which was related to maintenance, meaning engines, drives, motors and that meet in certain place to be rolling 24 hours per day, the maintenance of this has increased. Everything which is drives and trial, process controls automation of these elements too, as the industrial demand became -- for technical products became overproportional to a panel builder installation demand for power cut or power management systems. And when you have anomaly, for example, these industrial drives and so on, which has a certain percentage in our business, the percentage tripled or 4x higher and whereby the rest stopped. And we saw also people who never asked for, because they were just electricians doing normal maintenance work and -- but for certain customer. And at a sudden, they were doing other job site, other plants, other sites, and they needed different products. What we saw is that the correlation between 2 worlds: the world of water and electricity, the world of heating and cooling and electricity, the world of air management system and electricity, whether it's to push, to extract, to rotate, to whatever, it's always the need for electricity and the electrical demand in such subaggregation -- subaggregated products versus such applications became overproportional to a pure normal installation of panel builders or even the cable. The cable in the building, cables irrelevant from the copper price. Cable was totally no longer by far, by far in the normal proportion. But within the cables, you have the one which are absolutely fundamental to provide more needs, which is a certain type of. It's not the one to connect to the electrical providers. It's not the one to make -- that is not the one to provide to data centers. They want to maintain data centers with electrical staff and cooling systems, certain size, certain type of cables.

[Andre Kukhnin, Mechanical Engineering Capital Goods Analyst]

That's very useful color. And margin implications from that, are there any for you?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

There is obviously in the mix of countries, some. There is obviously one. It's more the fact that the highest-margin country were brutally the most impacted by the stock they created a margin mix. There is no major impact from the product mix, so to speak.

[Andre Kukhnin, Mechanical Engineering Capital Goods Analyst]

And one quick question I had was on logistics costs. Are you passing this through to the customers? Or do we need to worry about that?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Well, what we found in this exercise that we were not passing enough to the customers. And allow me to say that, I should not laugh, but it's always a surprise that you think you do and you don't do it systematically. Therefore, we have first cut the cost down by not doing all the same exactly. So now there is not enough volume for having certain transportation tool systematically every day. Therefore, we do every 2 days to replenish the branch locally without hurting the customer service. That's one element. And the second one, we had specific tools that were normally specifically charged to the customer. It was no longer the case. It would be -- or it is now systematically done.

[Andre Kukhnin, Mechanical Engineering Capital Goods Analyst]

And lastly, in this experience in the last, literally, few weeks and those numbers that you gave for developments across regions. Do you see yourselves performing in line with the market with the end demand? Or is there evidence of you taking share because of being quicker, being more digital?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

It's hard to say because some people have closed then we gained shares. But when they reopen, how would -- will be the behavior of the customer? And at the same time, I think everybody will have to be prudent on the ability of customers -- the ability to pay. Customers will have to manage their own liquidity over the next 18 months. And this -- there is a first wave of adjustments and there is a second wave. And if I would have to gain market share at the cost of having issues with customer not paying well, I would not do this. Therefore, the longer terms, I think, I hope, because all these efforts should have a payback sometime down the road in terms of market share gains, but the quality of the customer base will be key in the next 18 months. If you allow me to say, I expect bankruptcies. I expect contraction. I expect less of our existing customer in 12 to 18 months from now.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Martin Wilkie from Citi.

[Martin Wilkie, Director]

It's Martin from Citi. Just a question on your cost base. You've given a nice summary of flexible and variable costs and so forth. The first one just to clarify in salary and benefits, when you mentioned that's down 27% in April, does that include the sales commission part of it? Or is that just the benefit of using government schemes for short-term working and things like that? And then just -- that was the first question. And then just more generally, when you think of these variable costs, I mean, are these fully variable with sales? Just how we should think about how the cost base develops as we see the sales decline kick in and accelerate into Q2?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Maybe I will take this one. The 27% is a full year blended reduction, including the sales commission. But a great chunk of it is really all the temporary unemployment measures we have grasped across Europe plus the flexibility in North America.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

The commission is something. In the U.S., people are much -- are highly commissioned, so to speak. For example, the sales -- we didn't put any sales rep in the U.S. in furlough or in unemployment or whatever, no, because they make their living out of their commission. The minimum is really low. And therefore, we kept them all. And we'll say now let's go in order to catch the most you can. And this is -- commission are going down. Obviously, there is less and less margin, because they are commission on margin. And -- but yes, there is less, they gain less. If they can make it, we'll let them make it because it's -- our own results are depending upon that. Commissions in Europe are far lower. And therefore, only based on commission, we would never by far, by far, by far, never would have reached anything of these adjustments. I cannot tell you more on Q2, because I will tell you, Q2, it's like 3 months. And 3 months, it's like -- it's 13 weeks. It will be 13 mix of everything. And when I look at myself, yesterday, we were at our Board. If I could have told our Board what would be Q2, I would have done it. We have hypothesis. But it will be 13 weeks of a mix of different countries, different customer, different configurations. And within mix, within a week, we have difficulty to identify if the week after would be of the same or not and how. It's really -- I was talking not too long ago to somebody, a General from an Army, and he say, it is like the fog for the army and he is so right. This is the fog of the Army.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Martin, you had another question on the delivery?

[Martin Wilkie, Director]

Well, it's more -- so yes, the second question was more around how we see those costs coming back. I mean I'm guessing it's commission related then simply as sales pick up. But then, you mentioned things like deferral of wage increases. So presumably then, as hopefully, the world improves in a few months, does that mean that these costs come back at a quicker pace? And also just to check, in government schemes around the world are -- in all those cases, does that cost go to those governments for a period? Or does it ever come back to you with a lag? Do you ever have to pay the government back in any of these countries?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

No. We have many situations differently. And then I can give you a little bit more color. There are countries -- and France just took yesterday that measure where you could individualize the partial unemployment scheme, meaning we can call back 1% without calling back the equivalent category. And so that is to facilitate people to go back to work and avoid the staircase in the OpEx. They decided to have this. It's new. It's yesterday. It's first time. And obviously, I was waiting for. By the way, we used every channel we could as an employer to contribute to this, and I'm happy to have it because we don't have a staircase effect. In certain countries like Germany, if you are not below 30%, you cannot call for partial unemployment, Kurzarbeit. And obviously, we have to use other mechanism. We also have to remember that we were short of people, and we were using camps over time and other things. Therefore -- and it was costly. Therefore, if we have to bring back, there could be a little bit of a staircase approach here and there, but not everywhere, which is a good thing. And the second thing is some people will never come back. They were like temps from interim management systems. As long as we are not at the right level, they will not come back. To even give you more color because the question is very valid, to the difference of the past, the people that will come back and the cost, let's fix cost, it's only a proportion of additional increase in gross margin generated over a period of time, stable enough so that I can say now this level is reached. It's not by 1 day, it's not by 2 days. If during half of the month, I see an improvement in gross margin generation, a portion, only a portion of it would allow an increase in SMB or resource to come back from the different places where they are today. Not everybody would be happy. Not everybody will be satisfied. We may have some internal difficulty to choose. We may have maybe a very slow, long process for some people to come back, but it's all dependent upon if there is enough market and enough margin. It's something we never did. It's something we decided to do. It's something Laurent and his team, myself and the CEOs we manage daily.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

And so the part on unemployment, we never have to give back the money, and there are very strict rules for which you apply for it. But when the government is saying, "Okay, you can do it", you get the subsidies. Then of course, when we are coming back when you stop the measure, as said by Patrick.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Martin, for example, in the U.S., I took measure for 133 days because I expect certain people that could last that long. If we need, they will come back earlier. But for some of the systems on furlough, we have applied for 183 days in certain states.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Andreas Willi from JPMorgan.

[Andreas P. Willi, Head of the European Capital Goods]

I have a question to follow up on these government measures -- government support measures. In terms of your ability to combine receiving government money while also doing -- continue to do or accelerate doing some of the normal restructuring, how does that influence basically your decision whether to take some of these measures up? And what are some of the strings attached if you go for some of these schemes in terms of your ability to cut costs more structurally? Also given your earlier comments about that, obviously, we're going to have some more lasting impact on business activity beyond the shutdowns. That's my first question.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

We -- it is obvious that we need to count on ourselves first, and we need to act for ourselves first. But it came so rapidly that you take all these support whether partial unemployment subsidies -- not subsidies, partial unemployment. It's more on SMB that we use them, okay? You may do a little bit of tax deferral here and there, but it's only a deferral we have to pay at the end. And it's more the cash profile. On the structural cost, it's obvious that should the market not come back to what it was before, the transformation of the company on top and above going digital, the structural changes in the mix of profile that we need, mix of the amount of people by job descriptions or by job profile will change. And it's obvious that it is changing today. If your question is, do we have structural changes at the end of the turn up? Yes. The other one that the market is imposing on us to be a long-lasting company, just a digital trend, that's just telephone, and it can go also to certain model concept. Would a branch remain what it was? Not. Would a branch be more? I don't know. In the middle of a city, probably a locker situation and the manning will be different? Yes. And this kind of changes, I cannot tell you how much, how fast that will be, but it's there. We saw that a bit before. And by the way, you remember, you saw it in Paris with certain developments we made around the digital and the lockers and the approach, but this is just accelerating incredibly. And for example, I can tell you that in June, what we announced in October, we will make life, which is a personalized digital home page. And in doing so, everybody will interface in his own for what it is. And it means there will be less people looking for specifics from them outside of the web. And in doing so, yes, we accelerate certain changes. At the end of the day, I cannot -- because I don't know exactly, at the end of the day, the profile of the company in the mix of resources, in the mix by country, in the country -- within the country, and in the global structure of the P&L will be different.

[Andreas P. Willi, Head of the European Capital Goods]

So you don't think that participating in wage support in a country like France will make it harder for you to continue to pursue this transition?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

It happens that France was one of the most, if not the most, efficient country. We already -- we are doing this gradually. We have not asked for anything which is blocking us. There are condition. We know that if you use something, then you cannot do for 1 month or 2 at the end. But it's 1 month or 2 a quarter. If we would ask -- if you remember the old times, where asking for French support, you cannot layoff anybody for 1 year or 2 years. This I would not cross that bridge. I would not. I want to keep the flexibility for the future.

[Andreas P. Willi, Head of the European Capital Goods]

And on cash flow, obviously, you talked earlier about the working capital situation. In 2009, the percentage of sales came down for working capital, not just basically a working capital inflow because of sales fell. Do you think you can reduce the percentage of sales this year? I appreciate that may be difficult to estimate given the volatility of markets, and we don't know where we are by the end of the year. But conceptually, from a working capital level, do you think you can also reduce the percent of sales this year?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

There is 2 time lines. The first one is June based on the speed of the decrease. It is clear that the inflow of cash, you have seen that in H1 '09, will not materialize that way this -- in H1 this year. And this year, because of what we discussed on the inventory, we will probably, as a recurring year, have a negative free cash flow before interest and tax opposite 2009. On a full year basis, depending on the profile of the sales recovery, we will be able to activate more structural changes and get back to a very good inflow. That's the plan we have. But again, it's very dependent on the recovery profile and on the profile on the sales pattern.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

But fundamentally, we will go for it. Yes. The speed is a matter of the market, but the fundamental -- fundamentally, you are right, we will go for it.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Alfred Glaser from ODDO.

[Alfred Glaser, Analyst]

I was wondering on 2 things. The first one is the good numbers that you actually published in Scandinavia and also in Germany even at the beginning of April. Could you give us some more explanations of how you achieved growing sales in these 2 regions? And my second question is on the recovery outlook once the lockdown fades away. What is your current view on how much could sales actually rebound or at which speed, especially if you consider the experience you had in China so far?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Well, Germany and -- well, each country, you mentioned Nordics. I mean Nordics is only Sweden because lockdown in Finland was there. Lockdown in Norway happened. Even if Norway lockdown didn't materialize too heavily, but it's a small market. It's Sweden and Germany. Germany, it's -- you remember that we had major restructuration in Germany. We concentrated on fewer branches. We got the inventory regrouped on a few places, and we increased our service level to the max. And because we really became flexible in Germany, we could serve what was needed by the people where we were in the cities where we are, in the regions where we are. And except a few branches, which really suffered from heavy industry impacting down like Braunschweig where it's due to Volkswagen, and if Volkswagen is not doing fine, then the rest is down. But -- and when it restarted [ pretty fast ]. Globally speaking, this is just the proof of validity of what we have done in the restructuring of the year before. At the time where others were trying to see where to cut and shave and kind of, we are already in, and we are getting even leaner in terms of OpEx. And we have good teams, good management. They were eager feet. And for them, the painful part [indiscernible] was the year before. Therefore, they captured the market that they could. And they, obviously here, they probably gained local market shares. That I'm sure of. I'm sure because they really became highly efficient, and it's a good news for the future. And then the pragmatism of the German way of doing, I had also because certain regions with low coronavirus, things were maintained open as much as they could. The north especially, but also certain places. We are that close to the border of the Swiss border and the Austrian border. This is where the virus hit the most. But even in Munich, for example, we got good numbers, and because we gained market share locally. In Sweden, it is probably the fact that things have been delayed very long before any decision made to go for confinement. And plus a little bit of natural social distancing. In the northern part of Europe, people live less together and compared to where in Italy, in Spain or in France, things have been exploding fast and creating the weight. To the -- this is the only explanation I could give you. I don't have better fact. We watch carefully. And that is also -- the fact that in Germany, the industry and commercial building or the technical building where we focused on, but where we remained open, if people needed the rest of the products, we could make them available. Therefore, we participated to local construction, residential construction more than we saw it ourselves and better than the previous years.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Maybe I could add on Scandinavia. In Norway, we gained some customer in the utility in a moment where we had quite a [ mild ] winter. So utility had a very good performance. This segment was quite positive and helped us in Scandinavia.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

You would -- I'm sorry, I should have noted the second part of your question.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

The recovery outlook. Recovery outlook.

[Alfred Glaser, Analyst]

Yes. And also based on what you've seen in China, too. What is your current view on possible scenarios?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Maybe on China. Yes, go ahead.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

I cannot ignore the China, but given what we are in China, it's not China. We are in the OEM and a lot of integration and a lot of intelligence, it's almost like an integrator and a distributor. That's what we are. And [ because ] we have restricted our operation there, the mix is beneficial to us. And the customer we serve are the good customers compared, for example, panel builders are down, but we don't serve panel builders. We serve really OEMs. And we are in a segment that came back fast. And therefore, I'm not sure the profile of China would repeat. And I'm more looking at what I say, U-shape to go down, boom, you collapse from the top of the cliff, boom. We see the bottoming up. Where it is today, we have been for those 2 weeks, 3 weeks. And now we start to watch which country and I watch carefully. Austria, deconfinement. Some of the German sales in Germany, deconfinement. Because even if we were good, are we going to be much faster, even better based on this?And to try to see what could happen in major countries like France and the rest, but it's really, I expect, a long staircase. Hopefully, not a [indiscernible] confinement in the next 18 months to come. It's not to be excluded. I'm not a scientist, and I'm reading all the studies made by all kind of top advisers, and some do not exclude bumpy road until 2022. And then I have to make sure the company is at least prepared to take the best of what can be done in such an environment if it comes.It will be very practical short term. The fundamental thing is digital will last. Adjustment is part of our daily life and serving the customers to the best of the service within the cost maintenance, keeping the cost in order to privilege margin and the cost adjusted to our margins.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Pierre Bosset from HSBC.

[Pierre Bosset, Head of French Equity Research]

Just as a follow-up question on the recovery outlook. If we look at last crisis in 2009, one of the disappointment I think the fact that Rexel has lost some market share compared to Sonepar because Sonepar was in a better position to capture the growth. But this time, it's different. You have -- can you -- is it fair to say that your digital offering will put you in much stronger position than the competition? And any change in behavior will help you to gain market share? If you can comment a little bit on that.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

It is true that the strategy is different. It is true that, for example, closing 200 and more branches in the U.S. is not on my agenda today. Even in up and down environment, there are other ways to adjust cost than leaving the floor to others to get the network. It doesn't mean the network cannot be improve [indiscernible] square footage reduction, different service level. And the barriers, for example, the health constraints will probably accelerate this transformation. But I will not leave the floor to anybody else. The cost adjustments, it's part of the -- it's the riverside to this choice. I have to be flexible on the OpEx on many other stuff on the transformation, and I need to be faster on anything that fits the customer [indiscernible] to the easiest of how they want to be served. Now the customer, the real question, which we will investigate even more today, and we are watching carefully, is how much customers, the new one coming to this web and how much they would be a basket. Are they -- stay like this? And then it did definitely -- Rexel will no longer be -- should no longer be seen as a brick-and-mortar player but a real hybrid digital, not like a pure player, because we have the network to create, call it, collect and create the services. But the network become a service network to serve the customer trading digitally and/or by telephone. It's likely to be something of that kind. So far, it was digitalized physical brick-and-mortar. Now it's becoming a digital interface company with the network to do service to the various 27 different segments of customers that we do serve. It's a big change that we are there. And I'm so glad that we have done the investments before, but the last years.

[Pierre Bosset, Head of French Equity Research]

Okay. And if I may ask 1 or 2 follow-up question. Is it fair to say that in terms of digital offering, you are well ahead of the Sonepar and obviously, largely ahead of any smaller competitor? And secondly, do you have any color on what happened to Amazon in your business during those containment periods? Do they have a surge in the activity? Or do you have any color on that?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

I would not comment on Amazon, I don't know. Probably a little bit later, we will see more. We will have the time to look into what they have done or not. I don't think this has been a major change. We would have seen it. But I don't want to comment not being fact-based, okay? Allow me that. Joker, I cannot. On the others, I know one thing, it's different. In the U.S., the small guys, if you have less than 500 employees, you have all support by the U.S. government. Meaning, the very small guys are just not moving. They continue, because they are fully -- I mean, government is paying for their -- if you are below 500 employees. For the above, it's much more critical. For the above, it's really tough, and it depends on the regions, and there will be probably different regional medium-sized distributor who will not be able to make it. That I would not be surprised, and there would be a consolidation. Whether it's at the end of this year or early next year, definitely, it's on the agenda. Now to take conventional, and back to everything -- to the question people say, would you benefit from. How will you know for anything which is not partially or a candidate for good digitalization? Again, it's not just market share for the sake of. If I would have to restructure, and at the end of the day, to get work. A little bit of market share locally without having spend the money, the digital and too much in the buying of probably a half-broken business. Therefore, the sorting out in all of this will be -- will not change the criteria, but we have to watch carefully. There would be many more to watch than in the last 2 or 3 years, and the values will not be the same, definitely not. In Europe, the consolidation, I don't think we changed a lot. This is probably our chance that the pure players will not gain as much as they thought they could, because we really demonstrated the digital capabilities and the service capability. Marketplaces today that we are testing, you can place an order on a marketplace. But they give you delivery without reliable dates and the 10-line order in 5 steps by different people who are not operating and without managing their transportation.A lot of people have tried, and some of them came to us because they knew we could be next day, you have it in front of the door, and you can go to your job site. And especially when people cannot travel so much, so we -- because they have constraints. They don't want to lose time not having the goods. And the pure marketplace today suffer the inefficiencies of their logistics both -- and their own supply, because they rely on third parties, and not all third parties are efficient.

[Pierre Bosset, Head of French Equity Research]

Okay. And maybe, sorry, very last question. You mentioned the U.S., there is a merger currently taking place between WESCO and Anixter. Do you have any view on that? And do you think that because of the current circumstances, there will be maybe some opportunities for M&A from those new net group from this new merge group?

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Well, we observed, it was already financially quite heavy at the time when it was done. I prefer to be in my shoes than being the boss of the new entity. That's the only thing I would tell you. Because really, yes, we look at this, but nothing would be immediate. But some -- well, it might not be an easy situation for them, but that's all. And by the way, they are supplied. WESCO is a major, major distributor of certain suppliers who are now suffering in the U.S. more than we do, the lack of products because Mexico cannot produce. The U.S. today has not seen everything. The fact that U.S. suppliers are producing a lot in Mexico, it really depend on the shutdown of factories in Mexico due to the virus, and they have far less measures to protect high-density plants and manufacturing sites. Everybody is sitting next to each other. It's more like in the 50s, 60s configurations. And it starts to be visible at major U.S. suppliers that they are lacking products that are supposed to come from there. And there is a shortage coming on certain banner. We are lucky to have 4 banners regrouped in regions. So that if need be, we serve with a different supplier, who is disrupted from another one. But I know that some of my competitors are suffering, not just of the low demand, but they will suffer even more when it picks up, if the Mexico shortages, that's confirmed. The turmoil in the U.S. market is not finished.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Andrea Scatozza from Goldman Sachs.

[Andrea Scatozza, Research Analyst]

I have actually two. The first one is on the securitization of receivables. How big will the reduction be in the second quarter? What is your ideal target given the sales growth? And my second one is on rebates. Can you please help us understand the dynamic of rebates with the current volume drop and how it does compare versus 2009?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

I will take the first one, maybe on the securitization. Of course, it depends on the quality of the top line month after month, because we are expecting the receivable at the end of the month. But if we look at trading that we have currently, and assuming, we don't know, I think it could improve with the deconfinement process. But if you stay around minus EUR 30 million for all Q2, what you are losing in receivable is a bit less than EUR 400 million. That's why we said that we are quite comfortable on the liquidity part. On one side, you lose the top line drop. On the other side, you are a bit helped, because we have a slight delay in customer payments that we try to offset, but we have a bit -- you can sell longer those receivables to the conduit. So that is helping us to some extent.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

On the rebate, they are the pure volume-related rebate, which we obviously compute automatically with the demand. Now they are not calculated every day. It's collective throughout the year. We are unable to simulate what would be the rest of the year. Therefore, for the time we take prudence without making 100% cap. At the same time, there are other elements in the rebate, the marketing rebate scheme, the market share gain sometimes, every supplier has with us a different scheme, which they have the same with our competitors, so that the best you are. If you are one of the best in each of this criteria, you could maintain some of the rebates or most of the rebates depend. Therefore, it's the conditional -- the pure conditional volume related will also be adjusted by the relative performance compared to others. We take a prudent stance on it. But I cannot imagine -- you can easily imagine most of these good questions, which require a view on Q2. It's already difficult. Balance of the year, I don't want to make bets today.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no other questions coming through, so I'll hand the conference back to you.

[Patrick Berard, CEO, CEO of Europe & Director]

Well, before we close this, I would like first to thank you. I would like to wish you to stay in good health also for you and your relatives. And I would like to continue to tell you which Rexel has now a digital, more digital company and very flexible company, which adjust fast to any situation. If I achieve one target with this company, my personal target, it is one of the most valuable that I wanted to get done. Thank you. And we will talk to you again with a better view on Q2, because it will be behind us at the next time. Okay? Bye-bye. Thank you.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Bye-bye. Thank you.