Good morning, everyone. This is Paulo Junqueira, CFO of Positivo Tecnologia, and I am going to conduct the first quarter earnings call. We start on page two with our highlights. We reached a net income of BRL 4.4 million, nearly 200% the results we had last year in the same period. Our net revenue also grew 9% compared to the first quarter of 2019. All of our main channels grew on sales. Good PCs sales volume, both on notebooks and on desktops. We have presented growth in all segments. In retail, we grew 14%, mostly due to online sales.
On public institutions, we grew 41.3%, and on corporate, we grew 8.4% in volume. During the second half of March, a good portion of the Brazilian retailers had their stores closed due to the COVID, and what we have experienced is a boom in online sales of computer. We strongly believe that we have a new baseline for PCs market in Brazil. Due to the COVID-19, home office and homeschooling movements generated demand for IT and communication devices, and that comprises both our notebooks, our tablets, and also a growth and an acceleration of the penetration of the e-commerce channel.
Some stores have performed sales of computers in larger numbers with the stores closed than they had with their physical stores open due to the booming of the e-commerce channel. On servers, also one of our growth avenues, the business unit grew 73%, reaching nearly BRL 35 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2020. Also, another growth avenue for Positivo Tecnologia, it is our educational technology business. This unit has posted nearly BRL 10 million revenue, with a nearly 60% growth comparing to the first quarter of 2019.
Our net debt was reduced to BRL 184 million, and our net debt EBITDA ratio reached 1.6x multiple. With the demand, we have anticipated our new VAIO launch. We took advantage of the moment of the demands of the home office and homeschooling, and we anticipated the launch of VAIO FP14 and FP15, which are products of great performance and which serve both entertainment and work. Hi Technologies, one of our invested companies, made a new investment round, and we follow up through our FIP.
Moving to the next slide, where we highlight the actions that we have taken with the COVID. Our major concern was the safe and healthy of our workers. So we had all possible workers to work remotely from their homes. For those who need to keep going to work, we completely changed the environment. We did it early in the pandemics. So we increased our security measures to offer a healthy and controlled environment. Currently, we have nearly 90% of our administrative workers working on home office.
We also joined the government measures in order to adjust the expense and preserve most of the jobs. We did not dismiss anyone. The measures from the government, which is the Medida Provisória 936, allowed the company to reduce working times and working wages, and also to suspend temporarily some working contracts, and the government would take care of paying part of the wages. So with this, we were able to maintain the jobs.
We did not promote reductions in the lower income, and also, we maintained the partnership with our suppliers that are smaller companies so that they can get out of this crisis together with us. We gave a great support to society also with computers, and also with the production of the fan control plates that Magnamed will deliver to the Ministry of Health, which will occupy 6,500 hospital beds in Brazil. Moving to the next slide, the COVID-19 effects on the market. We first felt a short period of shortage of imported products.
That happened on early stages when China was on complete lockdown, February mostly. Now everything is back to normal in terms of supply. We saw a very strong pull from the online channel, mainly at the tip of our retail partners, in some cases representing more than 50% of the revenue of these companies. E-commerce in Brazil grew 14% between the first half of March and the post-COVID period, and grew 48% in relation to the same period of 2019.
IT, and mostly communication products, was one of the main product categories that contributed to this movement, showing how technology helps in this very difficult time, where people need to reinvent their way of working and maintaining their relationship with family and friends. The period also showed that the average sales ticket tends to drop a little, showing a greater demand for lower priced products, which is where we have the largest share and performs very well with our very well-positioned products targeting the entry-level.
Moving to the next slide five. PC market. Computer market grew in Brazil in the first quarter, both in retail, government, and corporate. The growth in the first quarter was up 16% compared to the first quarter of 2019. Positivo has dropped a little bit of participation in the entry-level, but we continue to dominate this market. The drop was mainly due to the entrance of new players. We also anticipated, moving to the next slide, as mentioned, the new VAIO line. So it's being very well accepted by both the retail market and the corporate market.
T he products are very good. Moving to the next slide. On the first quarter on the cell phone market, the market itself dropped 4%. Most of the Brazilians already have their mobiles. It did not happen the same as happened in notebooks, but continues to grow in the cumulative last 12 months. Positivo registered a 2.9% market share. Moving to the slide eight, as I mentioned, our growth avenues. Our service business continues to perform very well. It grew 73% comparing to the first quarter of 2019 and reached nearly BRL 35 million.
Also, it's important to mention that our service business have several contracts that are traded in dollars, which helps this business unit to suffer less with the exchange rate. On location, Positivo- as- a- Service, during the last half of March, there was a high demand for short-term location of computers leasing. So it's going very well with our products having great acceptance and the demand for expansion and renovation of company parks growing with the home office. On the growth avenues, also, IoT and educational technology.
IoT is performing very well. Our smart home line business is growing. We are having very good channels and very good partners, making very strong on the online sales. One of the good partners is Amazon, for example. With the situation we are living now, people are spending more time indoors and they start wanting to improve their comfort situation, and our product has very good solutions for that. For instance, the smart lamps and all of our smart home line. On educational technology, it is performing very well.
It also grew strongly comparing to the first quarter of 2019, grew 63% revenues, with educational portal solutions and support for distance education being very well evaluated by schools. Moving to the next slide. We have our invested company, Hi Technologies. They have launched the quick test for COVID-19. They have performed very well and made large sales to government. They made early, before the COVID-19, a round of investments. We followed up with our investment fund of participation. We have now 28.1% of the company. They have increased their distribution in pharmacies, and it is one of our good investments.
Moving to the financial highlights on page 12. We can see clearly a volume growth comparing to the first quarter of 2019 on all of our distribution channels. On retail, it grew 14%, on public institutions it grew 41%, and on corporate it grew 8.4%. On the smartphones and feature phones, following the smartphone and feature phone markets, we have experienced a reduction of 15.9% in smartphones and 31.7% in feature phones. Moving to the next slide. Our net revenue grew 9% in the first quarter. A strong sale in public institutions grew double the revenue of last year, the first quarter last year.
Corporate also grew. The server market also performed very well. The net revenue was of BRL 30 million, a growth of 76%, as I said. The sales margin had impacts of the appreciation of the dollar during the period. It was a steep and constant appreciation throughout the first quarter, as demonstrated in the chart to the left of the sales margin. We grew 28%, the currency over BRL 1 of appreciation. In the last couple of days, it has been decreasing, and it is now around BRL 4.90.
On slide 14, the product mix also showed a greater share of our new business, of our growth avenues in the consolidated net revenue, driven mainly by servers, which appears on the yellow part of the chart, growing from 5% participation to 8.2%. Also educational technology, which is comprised within the others and more than double its participation. Also, the average prices decreased 14% in notebooks and desktops, mainly due to the mix of products sold and an increase in cell phones due to the larger participation of smartphones in the sales comparing to feature phones.
Moving to slide 15. The gross margin was of 17.3%, mainly due to the increase in the dollar on raw materials. Selling expenses decreased 1 percentage point over net revenue, mainly due to the lower expenses with technical assistance and guarantee. G&A registered BRL 28 million, an increase of 20%, reflecting inflation on personnel and a slight increase on depreciation. Moving to the last slide. The quarter presented a profit of BRL 4.4 million, mainly due to gains from exchange variation in the period.
The company presented the effects of the increase in liquidity with the follow-on operation that we priced on January 30th, presenting a reduction in the debt multiple from 1.9%- 1.6%, in addition to an increase of BRL 334 million in the net working capital, which demonstrate, in additional to the increase of capital, an increase in account receivable balances due to the readjustment of terms at the request of our major retail customers and a large billing to a public institution at the end of the quarter. That was the presentation so far. Let me see if we have any questions.
There is one question here from Fernanda Teixeira. "Does the rise in the dollar benefit our gross sales? How does each sector, cell phone, servers, et c, react?" Well, the exchange rate variation, the first thing important to address this question is that we use hedge to protect our margins. So whenever you see a reduction in the margin, you see a market to market in our financial revenues corresponding to the protection.
Servers is the only business in our line that has some of the revenues linked to U.S. dollar. So it's naturally protected. It has its revenues naturally protected against exchange variation. On the government channel, on the public institution channel, we perform the hedge according to the signature of the contract. So we sign a contract, we protect the margin for the whole contract. On the retail side, on the other hand, we have developed alongside throughout the time a hedge policy that allows us to renegotiate with the major retailers.
So we protect more the current month and less the months ahead in our sales. That protection doesn't go with the product line, but goes with the channel. Okay. That was the only question. I thank everyone who participated in this call, and that's all for today. Thanks. Thank you very much.