Rexel SA

PAR:RXL

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Good day [indiscernible] 2021 conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] And I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Laurent Delabarre. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you. Good morning to all of you, and welcome to our first quarter 2021 sales call. I hope you are all safe and well. And I'm together with Ludovic Debailleux this morning, our Head of Investor Relations. Our Q1 brought further confirmation of the relevance of our strategic choice and the adaptability of our teams continued disruptions linked to the pandemic with certain end markets still deeply affected by the sanitary situation, strong price increases and scarcity of some products. We saw further growth in digital in Europe and North America and the recovery continues to gather steam in all geographies. This, combined with growing electrical usage, make us confident in the strength of our business model and our ability to deliver our guidance. I will start by focusing on some key highlights, then take you through our geographical performance. I will then conclude with a affirmation of our guidance and then hand over to you for our Q&A session. Let's start this presentation and moving to Slide 3. Let's look at the key highlights of Rexel Q1 2021 performance. We had a strong start to the year, supported by underlying market growth, our robust business model and the accelerating recovery. We posted same-day sales growth of 8.6%, with growth in our -- in all our geographies and a positive contribution of 2.9% from copper-based cables. I would specifically like to highlight our good performance in China, which grew by more than 60% as it [indiscernible] commerce sooner than other countries from the pandemic and contribute 1.4% to our quarterly growth. The level of activity in Q1 was actually above the pre-Corvid level. Our same-day sales were up 5.4% compared to Q1 2019. This is a remarkable performance, demonstrating our ability to adapt to a very challenging environment and confirming that Rexel's business model emerged, strengthened from the pandemic. We were able to fully capture the recovery, notably, thanks to an intact branch network throughout the crisis and to a strong rise in digital penetration, which accounts for 22.6% of our sales in Q1, up 242 basis points year-on-year. In addition, increased electrical usage and the greater complexity of installed solutions helped offset the low level of spending in some end markets that remained deeply impacted by the pandemic, such as hotels, restaurants, entertainment or the aerospace industry. We also benefited from a favorable pricing environment in Q1 and expect that to accelerate in coming quarters from increasing raw material prices and scarcity of some components and products, notably those that use semiconductors. On Slide 4, we look at the structural factors that explain why our Q1 performance was about pre-COVID levels despite the depreciation in some key sectors. It can be explained by the factors that we largely described at our recent strategic update, namely an increase in electrical usage and the increasing complexity of products and solutions that we sell. A couple of examples, the move from traditional heating system to new HVAC solutions or the rapid growth of electrical vehicle and the need to rapidly deploy charging stations for them. This slide shows that this trend will continue to grow in the coming years, driven by the long-term shift towards green electricity. On Slide 5, you see that we continued to recover in digital penetration in Q1, reaching now 22.6% of our sales. This growth was driven by Europe, where digital sales already represent almost 33% of sales, up 353 basis points and to a lesser extent in North America. This is a very robust performance considering that we are growing on top of unfavorable base sales move quickly to digital in Q1 of last year as the pandemic hit. On Slide 6, we focus specifically on digital adoption in France to illustrate the rapid growth across the group. In Q1, digital sales were up by a very strong 489 basis points to 25% of sales. We saw an improvement both in web sales and in EDI. The conversion rate from search to card improved and is now over 10%, helped by several factors: first, the increase in connected customer, up 24%; second, the improved navigation from better search engine and better personalization of web pages; and third, a higher value of digital basket, 37% higher than the value of an off-line basket. This compares to a difference of 24% in Q1 of last year. Slide 7 illustrates the improving trends we saw in all geographies since the low point in Q2. This shows that the governmental -- the governments in the country where we operate, learned the lesson from the first lockdown and managed to navigate better in the subsequent waves of health measures. Overall sales were up 8.6% in Q1. By geography, you see that Europe continued its recovery after a strong pickup in Q3 and Q4, growing by 10.8% versus Q1 of last year. North America continued to show positive momentum with sales up plus 1.2% in the quarter, but still lags with very diverging trends between region, and I will come back to that later on. And Asia Pacific's recovery was very solid at 23.7% growth in Q1. If you look at a 2-year period to raise the effect of the pandemic, you see that our activity strongly above precrisis levels in all our geographies, except North America, with 13.8% growth in Asia Pac and 9.2% in Europe. This demonstrates how we have reinforced our business model in the crisis to benefit from the growing recovery. On Slide 8, we look at our sales every 10 days since the start of the year. We were growing at a good single-digit pace through mid-March and then saw a strong pickup in growth as we benefited from a favorable base effect, given the sudden drop in sales as of mid-March 2020 when lockdown measures came into effect in several markets. On Slide 9, We wanted to share more with you on pricing and availability of products. In Q1, we started to see some price increases on certain categories of product and notably the commodity ones. As illustrated by the region in the U.S., where price of products such as conduits increased very [Technical Difficulty] We anticipate this pricing contribution to accelerate in coming quarters in other geographies and categories and notably in Europe. Overall, price on noncable products increased by 2.4% for the group in the quarter largely due to North America, with price up 3.6%, while Europe was lagging at only 1.6%. This increase in prices is driven by 2 main factors: an increase in raw material price, notably copper; and capacity of products in certain categories, partly resulting from pandemic-related disruptions. This is mainly the case in categories using semiconductors and electromechanical components impacting supplier delivery delays on some categories, including cable management systems or motion control. This trend could continue in coming months but it highlights the key role distributor place in the value chain, both in maintaining a regular dialogue with suppliers and in helping customers to manage the situation notably through our agnostic offer by proposing multiple different brands. On Slide 10, we focus on the redemption of our M&A strategy in Q1 with 3 bolt-on acquisition we have already communicated on. These acquisitions are fully in line with the strategy presented at our capital strategic update. 2 of them involve acquiring complementary competencies, Fresh Miles and Trace International in France, and one is to grow our presence in key markets, the acquisition of the former WESCO utility business in Canada. While the first 2 are relatively small in size, they offer strong asset potential from scaling up geographically and deploying technology to other connected objects as illustrated by Fresh Miles currently specialized in connecting EV charging stations. The former WESCO acquisition brings us additional competencies in the utility space, resilience with 2/3 of its business through long-term contracts and the opportunity for further rollout in the country. Let's now move to the second part of the presentation relating to a deeper Q1 sales review. On Slide 12, we take a look at our overall first quarter sales performance. Our Q1 sales of EUR 3.3 billion were up 8.6% on a same-day basis or 3.3% on a reported one. Organic same-day sales growth was boosted by the positive copper cable impact of plus 2.9%, showing an acceleration compared to Q4 2020. Sales were also impacted by unfavorable foreign exchange of minus 2.3%, mainly coming from the U.S. dollar depreciation. and scope effect of minus 0.7%. As you remember, Gexpro Services was deconsolidated as of mid-February 2020. And we now anticipate for the full year of '21, a currency impact of circa minus 0.8%, assuming spot rates remain unchanged, and a scope impact of minus 0.1%, reflecting the digital -- the disposal of Gexpro Services and the acquisition of the utility business in Canada in 2021. Next slide, Slide 13 shows the geographical performance of our Q1 sales. I already largely commented on the trend by key regions. So let me take the opportunity on this slide to show that our same-day sales are up 8.6%, an improvement for the third consecutive quarter. And we anticipate the next quarter to be up again significantly, benefiting, as you can see, from a very favorable base effect, as the first wave of restrictions had a significant impact on Q2 2020, down minus 17.7%. Let's now look at each geography in better detail. On Slide 14, you see that overall trends are positive in Europe with France outperforming. U.K. is still lagging mainly as a result of reinforced sanitary restrictions, and Scandinavia facing less favorable comparable base than other European countries. On Slide 15, we look more closely at our performance in Europe. Sales in France posted a solid plus 20.1% growth, driven by a clear increase in digital penetration at 25%, up 489 basis points and by strong double-digit growth in all end markets. More specifically, residential was up almost 25%, notably benefiting from renovation activity. Scandinavia is down 1% with a difficult base effect from lower sanitary restriction in 2020, a buildup in inventory in 2020 by utilities and the very mad weather in winter in Q1 '20, mainly in Finland and in Norway. More specifically, Sweden was down also minus 0.4%, mainly from the nonrenewal of the public contract contributing to a negative 290 basis points. In the Benelux, Belux was up 13.3%, largely benefiting from residential and the recovery of industrial markets. The Netherlands were up plus 7.3% despite the challenging comparable base. In Germany, up plus 13.5%. We saw positive trends both in industry with an acceleration in the last week of March and also in residential. In the U.K., sales were down by 3.7%, improving over the minus 8.2% in Q4 '20 despite worsening sanitary restrictions. This performance was driven by a contract with [indiscernible] and the benefits of the reorganization focusing on digitalization and proximity as illustrated by the good trend in the banner, up 9.4% in the quarter. Over a 2-year period, we saw particularly strong in our most profitable country in Benelux and Austria. On Slide 16, we turn now to North America. As the graph shows, trend has been diverging in the United States and in Canada, with an acceleration in Canada and move into positive territory. U.S. continues to improve in Q1, but still lags in terms of recovery versus other geographies. Given the fast vaccine deployment, we anticipate a catch-up in coming months. By country, sales in the U.S. were down 0.4% in Q1 from minus 7.7% in Q4 '20 helped by positive momentum in our proximity business and pricing contribution, especially on commodities products, offsetting lower demand in projects. In Canada, sales are up 6%, improving over Q4 '20, which was down 8.2% from positive pricing on cable and noncable products as well as better commercial activity offsetting lower demand in industries such as oil and gas or transportation. Finally, and when compared to Q1 2019, we see Canada up 7.5% and the U.S. down minus 6.2%, showing here the potential for recovery in the coming quarters. Slide 17, focused more specifically on the U.S. and show a very uneven recovery passed by region, with sales evolution ranging from roughly minus 15 to plus 14. We can identify 2 blocks of regions. On one hand, 6 regions showing resilience, our biggest Northwest, then Northeast, Mountain Plains, Southeast, California and Florida, driven by good positioning in the proximity business and market share gains in a region where we have invested. Overall, California, Northeast, Southeast moved from laggards to good performers. I am particularly glad to see the Northeast in much better shape after the 2019 reorganization. On the other hand, there is another block of 2 reasons that are still facing more challenging situation, the Midwest and Gulf Central, which continue to be impacted by their exposure to project business and more specifically, heavy industry or oil and gas. On Slide 18, you see our performance now in Asia Pacific. As shown on the graph, growth was particularly strong in China, up 60.1% compared to Q1 last year and up 21% compared to Q1 2 years ago. Australia continues to gradually improve. Slide 19 shows this in greater details. Let's focus on the 2 largest countries, Australia and China. In Australia, sales were up plus 3.5% in Q1 '21, the second consecutive quarter of organic growth with the proximity business in residential and commercial, offsetting the loss of 1 industrial contract, which had a negative impact of minus 2.7%. In China, growth was driven by strong underlying demand from better macro environment, positive pricing and governmental spending in infrastructure and automation. As mentioned previously, we also benefit from a favorable base effect linked to the phasing of the pandemic and to its recovery, both of which started earlier in China. Let me now conclude on Slide 21 with our 2021 outlook. After a strong start in the year, we confirmed the guidance we provided in February at our strategic update. Leveraging on our continuous efforts, we target for 2021 at comparable scope of consolidation and exchange rates and assuming an improvement in the sanitary situation as vaccines become available. Same-day sales growth between 5% and 7% and adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 5%; free cash flow conversion above 60%. Thank you for your attention, and I will now take your questions.

[Operator]

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

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

I have 3 questions, and I will go 1 at a time. The first one, I think I wanted to understand a little bit better the sequential development of your sales. And I was hoping you could maybe explain how it has evolved between the fourth quarter into the first quarter, but mostly also you are talking about accelerating trends And I was wondering if that acceleration that you are expecting is sequential from here or whether this is a year-on-year kind of reference possibly on the back of a lower comp. And I guess that this is tying in to some extent with what you see right now in terms of current trading. That's my first question.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. So we -- when we do the sequence of each month, January was up plus 3.2% and Feb, plus 1.8% and March, plus 20.2%. Of course, there is -- there are the gradual impact of the pandemic, especially the last 2 weeks of March. That's why on our baselining, we are comparing by region to the pre-COVID level of 2019. And this is what we presented where we see that gradually except today in the U.S., we are better than the 2019 level. This is both a price and a volume impact, and I'm sure we will come back to that. And what we are seeing and also the case in April that it is gradually improving month-over-month once we stated the last year base effect.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

Okay. So what you're saying is April is sequentially better than March, even if you adjust for the base effect?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Well, March was better than January and Feb, and April is, yes, globally in line with this recovery trend of March.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

Understood. My second question was around the supply chain constraint that you were mentioning and scarcity of some product. You're mentioning this as an opportunity for the company. And I guess I was curious to know if you could explain us why because the concern maybe is that you have to supply at a higher cost or maybe you would be maybe struggling to supply some components. So is there a secret kind of Rexel stack of products that you're hiding somewhere that helps you to kind of transform this into an opportunity?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. First, we are watching that very closely and for already a couple of months. And already at the end of Q4, we decided in specific geography to build up a bit of inventory. So that's mostly in the U.S. and in the U.K. where we adopt at group level. We increased our inventory by roughly something like 5% on certain category of product to make sure we can execute a contract in the second quarter. Second, as you know, we have strategic relationship with our supplier, and we have a very close communication with them to make sure that we can face our purchase of product. And today, we don't see so much shortage, but more that start to be implemented. And we phased our purchase with them. And what we wanted to say as a distributor, we are selling multiple brands. So each time we are running out of 1 category of product from 1 supplier, we can offer the same product from another one. So that's what is important in our model. And as you know, then, with scarcity inflation also and this distribution model like inflation, we are pushing a lot for already more than 6 months. And this inflation trend that is unseen for probably the last 10 years, and we train our salespeople to be able to pass through inflation to our customers.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

And maybe my last question, if I may, is around the guidance for 2021. You starting the year with an 8.6% same-day sales growth. Obviously, the second quarter is a much easier comp. The third quarter to some expenses also slightly easier comp than the first quarter. But your guidance is 5% to 7%. How should we think about that? Is that because you are still early maybe to make any change? Or you are worried for maybe the later part of the year? Just your comment would be helpful.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean the excel price calculation is easy and you're totally right. So Q1 is a toughest quarter we have. But we are running 26 countries. It's a bit early in the year compared to our distributor. We have limited visibility with no Again, the Q1, as you know, because of seasonality, our winter months is also our smallest quarter. And also keep in mind that today, we are benefiting from a high level of copper at -- which contribute to 2.9% in the top line. If you look at the evolution of copper last year, it increased in the second half of the year. So if we stay at the current level of copper all year long, this impact of 2.9% will be reduced and will be only 2.5% on a full year basis. But on the other side, we are quite pleased with this first quarter. And again, we'll see how the coming months, which are -- March is really a first indication of how the year is running. April is a kind of confirmation. And we'd like to have 3 months of reference to set up a trend. So we'll see how we will continue to progress in the coming months. But yes, today, it's still a bit early. We need also to see our vaccination policy will go on scarcity of product at this stage, nothing that should jeopardize our guidance, but we stay very, very focused. But yes, the main idea is a bit too early.

[Lucie Anne Lise Carrier, Executive Director]

Understood.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

[indiscernible] are positive now.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Martin Wilkie from Citi.

[Martin Wilkie, Managing Director]

It's Martin from Citi. The first question was just to come back to pricing. I think your comment alluded that pricing is going to accelerate as the year progresses. Just to understand, are those announced prices that have effectively already been started. And therefore, we should see the benefit starting in Q2, particularly given that you talk about the copper benefiting fading into the second half, just to understand exactly what you mean in terms of the noncable pricing development throughout the year

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you, Martin, for your question. Yes, As discussed just you see copper will filing, assuming current level of 9,000 [indiscernible] will stay stable, which I don't know how it will evolve in the coming months. Here, we were talking on the right, and we see quite a lot of inflation in all kind of raw material. And when we look at the price increase is something probably we have not seen over the last 10 to 15 years. We have some price increase from our supplier ranging for 4% to 18%, will have 18% and projects that are embarking raw material increase like, for example, conduit in the North America, which has made up of steel. When you look at what is happening on those products, we start to see some inflation coming in, in North America, and you see the impact as described on Slide 9 at plus 3.6% in Q1. Europe is low at 1.6%. But when discussing with our countries, we know that price increase on noncable products will be coming and will be ahead of us and will come gradually in Q4 and after. So this will -- yes, this will help our top line in the coming months.

[Martin Wilkie, Managing Director]

And then just a follow-up question just in terms of demand pattern. I mean it looks like France was particularly strong for you. Given that some of the European countries have seen a sort of slightly worsening position in terms of lockdowns, and I know it varies a lot by country, is there an anticipation that you're setting aside base effects that some of the sequential growth could moderate slightly? Or do you think the construction industry has learned to live with it, the projects can continue even if lockdown restrictions get slightly tougher in certain European countries.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Well, we think that the markets will be well oriented and continue to be so. Probably in what you are probably right to limit to understand that there is a kind of one-off because of confinement where people are not going on vacation or staying working. And when we see some momentum in top line like in Austria or in other countries, probably there is a bit of one-off because people are more -- a bit more active, but that's only a limited part of this recovery. I think there is a more secular trend, more obvious recognition of the importance of the environment and to go through a more electrical usage is, I think, a more structural trends. People also -- what we see is that people save money on the last 12 months. They didn't travel so much and entertain their selves and they spend a lot of time at home, and they feel the need to improve their living conditions. And we see a lot of our very healthy market on small resi and small commercial, where people are upgrading datacom, HVAC, security, a lot of function. So it's a lot of small projects, and those ones are with midsized electrician where the footprint of our branches combined with the quality of our digital web shop is helping us to have a good momentum, and that's especially true in Europe. And this will continue overall.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Andre [indiscernible]

[Unknown Analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, go on.

[Unknown Analyst]

My line is breaking up. Yes, a couple of questions, please. Can I just triple check on March? So there was nothing kind of one-off operational nature in the right in terms of kind of any large projects closing out or anything like that. You see it as a sort of more or less underlying met. Is that the right interpretation?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. No, but there is a base effect that starts to be stronger, starting second half of March, where we were down strongly because of the beginning of the confinement.

[Unknown Analyst]

For sure. I mean, on the base effect, I'm very clear, and you very helpfully disclosed the monthly run rate last year. So I was just thinking more in terms of the month itself, there wasn't like a large project that you closed or particularly large orders that came in that were unusual.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

No, no. Nothing. We have a couple of large projects here and there, but that's part of our business. Nothing specific. But then again, there is -- you cannot extrapolate the last 10 days of March to the full year. I mean there's the beginning of something, a bit strong shutdown last year adaptation. But globally, yes, March is a bit better than Jan and Feb. And this good trend is continuing in April.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great. And then would you be able to estimate your market share gains kind of either on last quarter or last 12-month rolling basis?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Well, the way we calculate it in the Capital Market Day is compared to our supplier, and I don't have the data yet to assets with the same calculation. I've got some reference from federation here and there. So I've gained in some region and just a bit in other some time for a specific reason that, for example, there is a huge competitive environment around cable with the one that could use their inventory purchase at a lower cost to buy market share. So there have been some play where we didn't want to enter, and we have even accepted in some region to not do the sales in order to protect the margin. I mean [indiscernible] quite mechanical, but it's day-to-day country-by-country, region-by-region, to make sure you manage to pass it through and at a good margin -- it is quite good technical knowledge and quite some efforts.

[Unknown Analyst]

Got it. And last question on pricing, are you passing through what the suppliers are putting through? Or are you being able to achieve a -- maybe premium to that to maybe offset logistics inflation as well?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

No, we are passing through -- well, we are passing through the purchasing price, and then we stay with the same gross margin in terms of rates. So it give us at the end a bit of upside in terms of dollars that we get. The logistics cost so far, we probably -- and that's something we are following very closely. But we don't see such an increase in our transportation costs.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Alexander Virgo from Bank of America.

[Alexander Stuart Virgo, Director]

2, if I may. First one, just on inventory levels and restocking, conscious that you called out constraints on a number of different components. But I wondered if you could comment on how you're seeing and managing inventory levels and restocking. And then on the second question, just curious if you could dig a little bit into the exit rates in China and talk a little bit about the different verticals that you're seeing driving that demand

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

So on the inventory side, as you know, as a distributor, our customer, installer and they don't have a huge capacity to restock and the destock. On our side, we have our distribution center. And to my point earlier, we have made some strategic bikes end of last year, beginning of this year. It was mainly in the U.S. and in U.K. and a bit of France also in some category of products where we wanted to make sure we could execute our contract in the second quarter, overall, around 5% of our inventory, I think contrary to last year. And again, the world has completely reversed. We were on top of our inventory to decrease it as much as we can. And this year is just the opposite. inventory has more value than ever. And we think it's important to have the right quality and the right quality of inventory to be able to continue to have this good momentum on the top line. So globally, it is done on specific type of product. We pointed out the one using chips and semiconductors. So that's the kind of things. It is on limited number of country and limited number of product so far, but we are watching that very closely. And we have this very strong and strategic relationship with our supplier to make sure we can anticipate any to avoid any shortage. In China, we have this huge impact of the full COVID that was in Feb rest last year. So that has a quite strong impact. So it will, I would say it will normalize in Q2. And what we will have also in Q2 that we have a big aerospace contract for the last 12 to 18 months that is phasing out in Q1, and I will not have any more this contract in Q2. And with that in Q2, I will have still some growth, but at a lower pace. And as you know, in China, we are only on the industrial side delivering the product on Tier 2 and Tier 3 industrial customer, the product from 4 international supplier, Siemens, and we are the first distributor of Siemens in China. Schneider, Rockwell and ABB.

[Alexander Stuart Virgo, Director]

And just a sort of follow up on that. The base effect I understand so a similar question as early on. The underlying demand, I suppose we can take as being the versus the Q1 2019 levels, which I think is -- you said that it was about 20%. So I'm just trying to understand the sort of differentiation between maybe how much of that 20% is the aerospace piece that we would expect to normalize? Or how much of that impact of that aerospace contract would we expect to normalize?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

It's quite a significant impact. In Q2, I think quite a significant amount with this contract last year. So Q2 could be very close to 0 or even negative. I will present -- yes, I will give you in Q2, the performance with and without this contract so that you can have this underlying trend, but we are serving mostly internal demand. So we are quite -- we have a good underlying momentum even restating this contract.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Alfred Glaser from ODDO.

[Alfred Glaser, Analyst]

I was wondering regarding the sales price on noncable products. Could you give us a bit more information about the outlook you expect for the full year on sales price evolution here? And second, I was wondering about the U.S. which is recovering relatively slowly compared to some other countries. situations are very diverse and diverging by region. Could you give us a bit of a flavor how you see the U.S. evolving in the next few months?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. So first on the noncable to my earlier point, I think it will accelerate. We see that today in North America, we are at 3.9% and Europe is a bit behind. So anticipate Europe [indiscernible] probably to go close to the current U.S. level and U.S. to continue to increase. Again, what I have [indiscernible] today is the price increase from the supplier ranging from 4% to 18%. Then it is a matter of passing that through to the market. But then it will be -- it will gradually come then we have the impact of the product mix. But What we see is even some product groups such as lighting or renewable, which we are structurally deflationary product groups. Those ones are even carrying some inflation between 2% to 5% so far. So it will help. I cannot quantify so much at this stage. Going to the U.S., first, it's important, as you know, to remind the mix where Europe is very much on small resi and commercial, which are the most active segment today. Compared to U.S., where the same segment are also very active, but we are a lesser exposure. You remember that residential is around 10% of our sales in the U.S. And it shows the relevance of opening branches that we did 3 years ago because we are grasping that recovery full blast. But then we have the former Gexpro, which is a more large project, where we have a quite high level of backlog, but the recovery is far slower. And then we have the industry with really booming sectors in some region in datacom, pharma, agro business. But in other regions, especially the Gulf and the Midwest, the 2 are a bit behind. We have some exposure to those markets. In the Gulf, of course, our exposure to oil and gas is obvious. The rigs have been reduced by half over the last 18 months. The barrel is now back to the USD 60, which is close to the 2019 level, so the pre-Covid level. But then it will take time to reopen the rigs and probably it will take another 12 to 18 months. So we have to gradually shift to more ready and commercial activity there, but you cannot do it overnight. In the Midwest, it's our exposure to more heavy industry which also is recovering at a slower pace. And then overall, there are a lot of business segments that are at a very low level, hotel, restaurants undertreatment. And those ones, we will have a catch-up effect when it will reopen any time in the coming months. And that will help the U.S. to recover hopefully, as quick as possible the 2019 level.

[Alfred Glaser, Analyst]

All right. Could you just give us 1 additional figure? How big are the cable sales right now in your total sales?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

It's around 15%

[Alfred Glaser, Analyst]

15%?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have another question coming from the line of Andre Kukhnin from Crédit Suisse.

[Andre Kukhnin, Mechanical Engineering Capital Goods Analyst]

I wanted to ask on acquisitions. You obviously announced a couple of interesting deals during the quarter. And the question I have is whether that's beginning of a flow of deals of how you see it? Or was it more of a just opportunities arose and you close out a couple? So do you have an extensive funnel now? Are you proactively now going out offering to companies doing due diligence?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

We have no file very active, but we are actively looking for some. Again, we have and for example, in the U.S., we have recently made a bid, and we didn't go through because just the multiple was -- and the price was at the end far to high where you had to pay a sharp recovery. So we are cautious. We are looking at a lot of opportunities. Again, industry field, we presented at the Capital Market Day, geographical footprint, plug-and-play acquisition, firstly in the U.S. Then adjacent market, datacom, security and as we did on Trace and Fresh Mile software, but application software are linked to our product and connected products. So again, nothing that should materialize in Q2, but a lot of things are going on. And then you never know it can accelerate or not. I mean for example, the West Coast deal, it came quite late second half, and it was executed in a limited number of months.

[Andre Kukhnin, Mechanical Engineering Capital Goods Analyst]

Great. And the last follow-up I had was on green stimulus, we're obviously hearing quite a lot about it in the press and trade price as well. Are you seeing evidence of projects actually being launched on the back of money coming through from green stimulus funding either in Europe or U.S.?

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Honestly, we don't see it directly in our top line. We see smaller things coming from historical incentive from government in a couple of European countries around energy efficiency. We started with isolation and then go through active energy management. But nothing that material at this stage. I think it should come probably later on in the second half of 2021 and afterwards. But again, we are looking at it very closely, but not so obvious to see where it will materialize directly in the value chain.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Supriya Subramanian from UBS.

[Supriya Subramanian, Equity Research Analyst of Industrials]

And I missed the first part [indiscernible] apologies, which has already been covered. But I just wanted to check -- I had 2 questions. One is on your stock or inventory levels. Are you stocking up in anticipation of higher demand or higher volumes in the coming quarters? And the second is related to the pricing moves, which you reflected of 40 basis points, which benefited the growth. And I appreciate that you don't share margins in the first quarter results, but what potential impact would that have? Is that a full pass-through, so with a neutral impact on margins? Yes, those are my 2 questions.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. So On the inventory, I already commented, it is specific cases in specific country and a group of products. Again, the partnership with our suppliers is also important to manage the flow. And then we have our multi-brand offering, which help us to play on different suppliers and different category of product. So all in all, it was mostly in U.S., France and U.K., and yes, something like 5% of inventory Nothing really material. Again, we are following that very closely any anticipated shortage, any further to make sure we have the right level of inventory so far. But we don't anticipate anything major in term of restocking at this stage, and we don't anticipate anything that should put in danger our guidance so far. But again, we have limited visibility, and we are progressing gradually, but that's what we can see today. Well, on the pricing environment, it's like any pricing effect. You do move more boxes. So the flow-through from the bottom line to the top line should be significant once you make sure you can pass through this inflation. But on the other side, when you don't manage to pass it through, It is very difficult to offset a lack of margin pass-through into the OpEx management. So it has an upside effect but a kind of a massive effect if you don't pass through. So -- and it's not a mechanical effect. It's debt today, touch on the business and agility with the customer base, the more fragmented customer base is the easier it is to pass through inflation, when you go into a contract, it is quotation, it is a request for quotation and [indiscernible] competitive environment is stronger, and then give more [indiscernible] So this is a key focus for our merger. I would say, so far, so good, but it's not a given.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

[Laurent Delabarre, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Okay. If there are not no more question, thank you for being with us this morning and the quality of your question. Our next call will be on July 28, 2021. I will hope to have the opportunity, and I think we will have the opportunity to present to you together with Patrick We already -- we had some first exchange and with gradually ramping up into the business with no pressure on the time to go everywhere, he wants in order to be on track for beginning of September. So thank you, and have a good day, and stay safe. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

Thank you. This does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.