Mark R. Bachman – Executive Vice-president and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you John and good morning everyone. Today I will provide additional detail with respect to the first quarter. Record first quarter net sales were $168.3 million represented 2.1% growth compared to last year and 3.3% growth on a constant currency basis. We realize $7.5 million in volume gains has achieved an $800 thousand benefit from pricing. Partially offside by an estimate $2.9 million a loss sales due the fire and $2 million of unfair of foreign exchange impact driven by a strong US dollar versus the Canadian dollar and the European currencies.
As John mentioned earlier, we experienced success in our transportation related end-markets with strong double digit games in both automotive OEM and aftermarket retail. As expected, sales through home improvement retail has benefit from strong promotional volume in the quarter finishing up double digits. Our distribution business continues to be impacted disproportionally by the fire in the end of the quarter of mid single digits. And our North American sales and service business our oil and gas team drove double digit games. Our food specialist teams increased revenues in the high single digits. Excluding the impact of the fire, our net sales would have grown modestly on a constant currency basis. First quarter growth profit margin was 46.8% or a 13 bases points lower than the last year, driven by a business mix resulting from strong sales gains with home improvement retails as well as both the automotive OEM and aftermarket retailers. Next I want to share a few toss with respect to sourcing and the recent decline and pricing of selected inputs to the raw materials we purchased.
Historically, approximately 45% of our sourcing spent is related to petrochemicals. We purchase numerous raw materials that each have unique supply and demand characteristics that influence price. For instance, acetone and high density polyethylene has not experienced the same decline and have been increasing until very recently. To the next, raw materials repurchased. It’s still too early to quantify to what extent we might benefit from recent trends. We expect it may positive but may take at least a couple of quarters for us to realize in our PNL. Our selling,distribution and immense rate of expanses increased nominally as benefits were more legal, professional fees were offset by investments in the organic growth initiatives with we articulated last quarter.
I think it’s important to note that in the second quarter we expect SG&A expense as they percent off sales to be 200 to 300 basis points sequentially higher driven by seasonality, accelerated investments in organic growth and the utilization of outside resources to analyze our supply chains strategy for the full year. We expect SG&A expense to be 41% to 43% of net sales. This was the first full quarter under our new credit facility which featured lower interest rates. As a result I am pleased to report that increased expense by roughly $500 thousand compared to last year. The effect of [inaudible]] was 36.5% compared to 36% last year. For the full year we anticipate that our effective tax rate will range between 36% and 38%. During the quarter we generate $13.4 million to adjust ebitda compared to $14.1 million last year.
The adjustments are pretty straightforward this quarter. We estimate inventory stock-outs, related to the fire primarily our nash and distribution businesses lowered revenues by $2.9 million and ebitdaby $1.3 million. Last year’s adjustments included $800 thousand in California legal expenses and $600 thousand in acquisition and integration costs. Reported, diluted, earning per share for the first quarter or even at last year with fourteen cents. Adjusted, diluted earnings per share were 17 cents. Also even with last year. For the benefit of those investors who want to understand the amortization impact a preview of acquisitions on a cash basis excluding amortization expense for 9 cents per share, adjusted, deluded, cash EPS plus 26 cents.
