Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Systemax Inc.'s First Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Smargiassi of The Plunkett Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chris and welcome to the Systemax's First Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. Today's call will include formal remarks from Barry Litwin, Chief Executive Officer; and Tex Clark, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will not be hosting a live Q&A session at the end of today's call. If you should have any questions on the results, please contact The Plunkett Group or Systemax. Contact details can be found in the press release issued today and at systemax.com. Today's discussion may include certain forward-looking statements. It should be understood that actual results could differ materially from those projected due to a number of factors, including those described under the Forward-Looking Statements caption and under Risk Factors in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The press release is available on the company's website and will be filed with the SEC in a Form 8-K. this call is the property of and is copyrighted by Systemax Inc. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Barry Litwin.

Thanks Mike. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us today. Since our last call, so much has changed as the COVID-19 virus impacts every facet of our personal lives and the economic landscape. During this time, the safety and well-being of our associates, their families, our vendor partners and our customers have been our first priority. To ensure business continuity for our customers, we initiated the first remote workforce strategy of our entire back office in both North America and Asia in mid-March and we did it within 24 hours. Our foundation as an e-commerce centric business is a competitive advantage that help secure a smooth operational transition and positions us to continue to serve customers in the current environment. Our remote workforce is operating efficiently without loss of productivity. Our distribution network has remained operational and the team has settled into a new integrated work-life routine. I'm proud of how our employees and the business responded. As with most essential businesses, we have needed a temporarily close certain distribution centers to ensure the continued safety of our employees and perform cleaning activities. The redundancy built into our distribution network has allowed us to reroute order fulfillment as needed with minimal delays to our customers. Our sourcing and supply chains are working tirelessly to secure high demand products for medical, healthcare and business-critical operations equipment and in turn highlighting our position as a reliable and valuable partner. We are taking customer orders in real time, responding to and solving individual customer needs and constantly updating COVID-19 specific landing pages and emails for our customers are made aware of changing or replenishing stock. As companies consider their reentry plans, we launched our R3; restore, return and rebound initiative on April 20. This customer-focused program is designed to help companies…

Thank you, Barry. I will now address our performance in more detail and would like to note that we had the same number of selling days in the first quarter of 2020 as we did in the year ago period. In the first quarter, revenue declined 2.1% on both a GAAP basis and in average daily sales constant currency basis over Q1 of last year. Revenue was approximately $227.3 million with the US economy 2.5% while Canada grew 6.8% in local currency on an average daily sales basis. As Barry noted we had modest sales growth through early March, but recovered -- we recorded low double-digit revenue declines in the closing weeks of the quarter as businesses nonessential were shut down by government mandates and many essential businesses reduced spending as they navigate the current environment. Revenue declines accelerated through late March and into early April as shelter and place requests and business shutdowns across country, but the rate of decline is stabilized in recent weeks. We currently anticipate these conditions to continue for the second quarter, however as business open up and our supply chain for PPE stabilizes, we expect to be able to offset some of these challenges. In the quarter core product categories generally had negative results as customer's priorities temporarily shifted. These results were partially mitigated by continued strength in categories such as safety, packaging and janitorial and maintenance, but many of our peers we saw order demand for personal protective equipment servicers to record levels getting late in the quarter. Industry-wide scarcity of these items constrained our ability to fulfill many of these orders in the quarter, but our product sourcing teams have been scouring the globe to locate key product offerings for our customers. We've actively sourced local providers and ramped up our private…

And thank you, sir. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.