J. Thomas Hill
Chairman Of The Board and Chief Executive Officer at Vulcan Materials
Thank you, Mark, and thank all of you for your interest in Vulcan Materials. Our results demonstrate how our teams have successfully navigated a challenging first half of the year. Unfavorable weather conditions in many key markets impacted our shipments and operating efficiencies. Our second quarter performance reinforces our consistent execution the durable characteristics of our aggregates-led business and the benefits of our continued focus on both enhancing our core and expanding our reach.
Even in the face of lower aggregate shipments, and weather-driven inefficiencies, our teams delivered a seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year improvement in aggregates unit profitability. In our trailing 12 months, average cash gross profit per ton has reached $9.96 per ton, marking consistent progress towards our $11 to $12 target. These achievements exhibit the benefits of our commitment to enhancing our core through our Vulcan way of selling and Vulcan way of operating disciplines. But our strategy is two-pronged, and we are also focused on expanding our reach.
During the second quarter, we closed two strategic bolt-on acquisitions. These acquisitions enhance both our aggregate production and distribution capabilities and our downstream asphalt business in Alabama, Texas, two of our top 10 states. In the quarter, we generated $603 million of adjusted EBITDA and expanded our adjusted EBITDA margin by 170 basis points despite 5% lower area shipments. Shipments in the quarter were negatively impacted by a significant number of rain days in many markets, particularly in May across 70% of our geographies and in select key markets in April and June. The pricing environment remained positive and freight-adjusted average selling prices improved 12% on or $2.29 per ton versus the prior year. Freight adjusted unit cash cost of sales increased 13% or $1.13 per ton.
Most importantly, cash gross profit per ton improved over $1 per ton or 12%. We remain consistently focused on improving unit profitability on every ton we sell to maximize earnings and aeration in any man environment. Let me share with you my thoughts on the current demand backdrop by discussing each end use. Single family starts again recovering in the second half of last year and continue to point growth in 2024, albeit at a slightly lower level than we had initially anticipated. The timing of starts converting to shipments continued affordability issues and persistent elevated interest rates are impacting both the pace of recovery and the likelihood of single-family growth fully offsetting weaker multifamily activity. Looking ahead, the underlying fundamentals of population growth and low inventories in Vulcan markets continue to support long-term growth in residential construction.
In private nonresidential construction, the landscape continues to vary across categories, but is unfolding largely as we anticipated for 2024. Warehouse activity is the biggest headwind with some positive momentum in manufacturing activity in data centers. Light commercial activity is still relatively weak, but over time, we expect it to follow the positive trends in single-family housing and benefit from lower interest rates. On the public side, we continue to expect growth in 2024 as two consecutive years of record growth in contract awards flow into projects and aggregate shipments. The IIJ funding is benefiting both highways and other public infrastructure activity.
Given the demand backdrop just discussed and the weather impacted first half shipments being down 6%, we now expect aggregate shipments to decline between 4% and 7% for the full year. Combined with solid pricing environment and double-digit profitability improvement, we still anticipate same-store adjusted EBITDA growth, margin expansion and attractive free cash flow generation in 2024.
Now I'll turn the call over to Mary Andrews for some additional commentary on our results and revised outlook. Andrew?
