Carey Dorman
Analyst · Loop Capital Markets
Thanks, Ben. Good morning, everyone. Continuing on Slide 3 where Ben just talked to some of the highlights. You can see a summary of our first quarter financial results.
Organic sales grew 1% year-over-year and constant currency adjusted EBITDA grew 17%. These strong incremental margins reflect a substantial mix benefit from recovery in higher-margin semiconductor and Circuitry Business in Asia as well as lower raw material costs in industrial surface treatment and favorable mix in the overall I&S segment.
In Q1 2023, the high-end smartphone supply chain and the memory disk markets experienced significantly reduced demand with inventory destocking that continued through much of that year. As we lap this period, we have seen memory disk recovery and growth in smartphone units supporting circuitry solutions.
Net sales in our Industrial and Specialty segment declined organically 3% at high levels of offshore energy activity and improving North America printer demand in graphics were offset by declines in our industrial surface treatment business.
This quarter, total company net sales and adjusted EBITDA were both negatively impacted by strengthening U.S. dollar by roughly 2% and 4%, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved almost 300 basis points year-over-year in constant currency terms. The margin trend accelerated this quarter, improving sequentially 120 basis points from Q4 2023. Excluding the impact of the $79 million of pass-through metal sales and Assembly Solutions, our adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 26% in the first quarter.
On Slide 4, we share additional detail on the drivers of organic net sales growth in our 2 segments. In Electronics, categories that saw significant destocking from last year, grew in the first quarter of 2024, a positive sign for more broad-based recovery as the year progresses. We saw consistent softness in our industrial-oriented businesses, particularly in the Americas and Europe, that impacted growth in both Industrial Solutions and our Assembly Business in electronics.
In Assembly, soft industrial demand in Western markets drove a 2% decline in organic net sales. The circuit board assembly business has more exposure to industrial applications with certain capabilities focused on high reliability alloys required for demanding automotive electronics use cases. While year-over-year volumes in China and Asia were broadly were positive in the quarter, volumes declined in Americas and Europe.
Circuitry Solutions sales improved 8% organically, with growth primarily coming from a recovery in our memory disk business. Inventories of our customers' finished products declined in 2023, and this market has picked up again in 2024 on the back of resumed investment in data storage for cloud computing enterprise servers.
Our disk drives still represent the most affordable mechanism for data storage per bit and the near-term growth outlook is favorable. The first quarter showed other signs of market stabilization with overall smartphone units estimated to have grown at 8%. However, not all handset OEM supply chain experienced growth in the first quarter of 2024 with the bulk of the improvement occurring in China-based manufacturers.
While we do skew towards the non-Chinese device makers, we have content across most smartphone models. Our customer base is broad, and our growth generates a correlate to overall industry units rather than any particular manufacturer over time. Customers globally are expecting an improved second half.
Semiconductor Solutions led growth for the segment with organic net sales up 11%. We saw significant increases in wafer level packaging sales in Asia for both semi fabs and OSAT. We expect a continuation of this demand growth related to advanced packaging that supports memory, server and AI chip markets. Power Electronics products also continued to grow in the first quarter, as we successfully expand our Argomax sintered silver technology to a broader customer base of electric vehicle manufacturers.
Moving to Industrial & Specialty. Organic net sales declined 3% year-over-year. Roughly half of the 6% decline in the Industrial Solutions vertical was driven by reductions in surcharges for commodity metals like palladium. While these price swings impact headline sales, the higher mix of value-add, high-margin recurring chemistry revenue benefits margins.
Demand from automotive customers was sluggish, in line with global auto production in the first quarter. European construction and industrial end markets remain [indiscernible], with customers continuing to operate at reduced volumes. As we move through 2024, we expect a negative impact of commodity surcharge pricing to ease and new customer wins to benefit sales volume, particularly in the second half of the year.
Graphic Solutions sales increased organically by 5%, reflecting improved demand primarily with flexible packaging customers in North America. Encouragingly, adjusted EBITDA margin in this business also showed a meaningful expansion of almost 300 basis points year-on-year.
Energy Solutions remains a bright spot in the I&S portfolio with sales growth of 14% organically in the quarter as production and drilling activity remained strong. We expect this growth for energy business to continue this year.
Slide 5 addresses cash flow and the balance sheet. We generated $39 million of free cash flow in Q1. The first quarter of the year has a typical uses of cash relative to annualized targets, including annual incentive payments and a semiannual bond payment. We invested $28 million into working capital, which primarily reflects the seasonal inventory build. CapEx in the quarter was $19 million, which is above the $50 million to $60 million annual run rate we expect for the year and reflects the late timing of certain growth projects and integration initiatives that were originally planned for the end of 2023.
Now turning to the balance sheet. Our net leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was 3.3x, inside of our long-range target ceiling of 3.5x and once again demonstrating our ability to quickly delever with cash flow generation and earnings growth. Our capital structure remains fully fixed rate for the remainder of the year. We have no debt maturities until 2028. Through cross-currency swap, the effective interest rate on our term loan is fixed at 3.2% as of March 31, and our liquidity position remains strong.
With that, I will turn the call back to Ben.