J. Thomas Hill
Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer at Vulcan Materials
Thank you, Mark. And thanks to everyone for joining the call this morning. As always, we appreciate your interest in Vulcan Materials and I hope that you and your families had a safe and healthy start of the year. Our teams executed well in the first quarter. They remain focused on capitalizing on pricing opportunities and mitigating cost pressures. Their efforts have and will continue to resolve and the expansion of our unit margins.
Our strategic disciplines are helping us to both take advantage of the tailwinds and dampen headwinds in a very dynamic environment. We delivered solid results in the first quarter. We generated $294 million of adjusted EBITDA, a 20% increase over the prior year. Despite accelerating inflation continued volatility in the energy markets and ongoing disruptions in supply chains. This quarter again demonstrates the resiliency of our aggregates business and our team's strong execution of our strategic disciplines.
Over the trailing 12 months, we have delivered 10% adjusted EBITDA growth in spite of $131 million of higher energy related costs. On a trailing 12 months, aggregates cash gross profit per ton has improved for 15 consecutive quarters, absent the impact of selling acquired inventory. In all business segments, the pricing environment is strong due to growing demand and ongoing inflation.
Momentum continued with year-over-year growth in aggregates mix adjusted price increases sequentially for the fifth straight quarter. Our combined commercial and operational execution contributed to higher cash gross profit in both aggregates and total non-aggregate segments. In the downstream businesses, volume, price and material margins improved in both product lines.
Turning now to the segments. Aggregates gross profit improved 9% to $243 million or $4.58 per ton. Demand is healthy across our footprint, and volume improved 14% or 7% on a same-store basis. Shipments were in line with expectations since the prior year's quarter was negatively impacted by the big February freeze. As anticipated, aggregates pricing showed strong momentum in the first quarter, with freight-adjusted pricing increasing 6% over the prior year's first quarter.
Mix-adjusted pricing improved 7%. We expect to see continued strength in pricing throughout the year and are confident about midyear price increases that will be particularly impactful to 2023. As expected, our costs were elevated in the quarter on a year-over-year basis since the inflationary impacts did not begin in earnest until the second quarter last year.
Over the trailing 12 months of continuously rising diesel and other inflationary impacts, our freight adjusted unit cash cost of sales has increased by 5%. In a challenging macro environment, this is a job well done, and I commend our operators for their hard work and for keeping each other safe and for delivering these results.
In the first quarter, cash gross profit was $6.53 per ton, excluding the impacts of selling acquired inventory and higher diesel costs, cash gross profit was $6.90 per ton, a 5% improvement over the prior year. Asphalt cash gross profit of $6 million was in line with the prior year. Pricing actions initiated last year to offset rising liquid asphalt input costs positively impacted the first quarter results. Average selling prices increased 13% versus last year and helped to improve unit materials margins.
The average price of liquid asphalt was over 30% higher than the prior year, a $14 million headwind to our first quarter results. While we expect liquid asphalt prices to continue to rise, we are encouraged by the significant sequential improvement that we've seen in pricing over the last couple of quarters, and we remain focused on improving our gross profit margin in asphalt.
Concrete cash gross profit grew from $12 million to $49 million in the first quarter, driven primarily by the addition of U.S. Concrete. Volume, price and material margins all improved as higher selling prices offset higher material costs, including internally supplied aggregates.
Now, let's shift to the demand environment, which remains positive. Private demand is expected to grow in 2022 across all major categories, both single and multifamily housing and both heavy and more traditional nonresidential. Public demand is improving, and as funding is put in place from the infrastructure investment and Jobs Act, future growth is expected in both highways and other infrastructure.
After double-digit growth in 2021, the residential end use is expected to grow, but at a more modest rate in 2022. Demand remains strong and starts are still positive. However, we are mindful of factors such as supply chain issues, rising interest rates and labor constraints. With the continued demand for additional housing, multifamily demand is accelerating.
Private nonresidential demand has returned to growth in 2022. While demand will continue to be influenced by aggregates intensive warehouse and distribution projects, other private segments like office, manufacturing and industrial are now contributing to the sustainable growth in this end market.
On a trailing 12-month basis, square footage for total nonresidential starts has grown for the last seven months and is now back to pre-COVID levels. Other external leading indicators like ABI and the Dodge Momentum Index, also point to our growth for 2022. On the public side, demand growth is expected in both highways and other infrastructure. The timing of the impact of the infrastructure investment and Jobs Act will depend upon the pace at which states allocate additional funds and a time horizon needed to move from design, to letting, to construction.
As we previously communicated, we anticipate the majority of the impact to be realized in 2023 and beyond. We are well positioned in attractive markets and are poised to benefit greatly from the legislation for years to come. With the solid demand backdrop and positive pricing environment, we remain confident in delivering significant earnings improvement in 2022. We are focused on leveraging our strategic disciplines to control what we can control, and to diminish the impacts of things outside of our control.
I will now turn the call over to Suzanne for further comments. Suzanne?
