Good afternoon, and welcome to our second quarter 2022 webcast. This webcast will focus on our second quarter and first half performance and we will share with you the highlights and management's observations. While narrowing the attention towards the quarter, please bear in mind that AO is not a quarterly-driven company. We aim to win each day, but we always keep in mind that the efforts we make are based on long-term goals. Let us look at some of the highlights of the second quarter. B2B had a strong quarter and came in with 16% growth on top of a strong second quarter of last year. EA accounted for 7% of the growth. The organic growth of 9% came from all B2B product lines and exceeded our expectations. Gross margin was increased by 1.5%, partly fueled by the higher margin in EA sales.
EBT came in at DKK 90.9 million, which is up 15% from last year, ending at 9.1% EBITDA ratio. Our warehouse expansion is almost finalized and soon ready to go live during the third quarter. Uncertainties of supply have caused us to maintain the higher level of inventory during the second quarter. Although the situation still needs to be closely monitored, we expect to gradually be able to destock during the third and fourth quarter. Online business across the globe has decreased more than we expected. The sales index in the second quarter was 84% compared to 67% in the first quarter of this year. We see significant growth compared to the second quarter of 2020 and our ambition for B2C remain high.
On top of inflation in costs, we acknowledge that doing business in today's environment, navigating an increasingly difficult compliance protocols, calls for higher spending on IT security and other vital investments. Despite this, we stay firm in our ambition to be efficient in our cost of doing business as an important part of reaching the 10% EBITDA ratio. The higher number of bankruptcies are seen every day. AO has taken out credit insurance on large customers and we have provisions in place for the risk we see. Our significant warehouse expansion is close to go live. During the past 18 months, AO has invested more than DKK 200 million in establishing a state-of-the-art warehouse of tomorrow, which will enable us to expand our capacity with increased efficiency in picking, stocking of new assortment, including the EA assortment and optimizing packaging, both with respect to ESG and production process.
On top of that, the significant upscale of our outdoor warehouse facilities will enable us to expand activities within water supply and green transition. Now, one of the most vital changes that AO has undergone during the past years is the increased digitalization. Digitalization is a win-win. Today, our customers can do their online purchase in a vast variety of ways, when it is convenient to them and where it is convenient to them. Digitalization provides flexibility, agility, and efficiency to our customers. For AO, digitalization enable us to provide extended service without deploying additional cost. Our second quarter was yet another quarter with increased share of digitalization, growing self-service and important innovations, all to the benefit of service, economy and environment. AO proudly won the Gold Award for the best eCommerce company in 2022 and the prize for being the best omnichannel company.
Now let us go to the financials. Please, Per, the word is yours.
Thank you, Niels. As you will bear in mind, AO had a strong first half of 2021. The combination of partly closed down of do-it-yourself warehouses converting family entertainment costs as travel, et cetera, to in-house investments and the high building activities in general, made the business conditions for AO's B2C and B2B activities very attractive in 2021. We are satisfied to book a second quarter 2022 showing a growth of 11%. Growth came from B2B with a total 16% total growth rate, organically 9% and EA kicking in with 7% growth. B2C sales index picked up from 67% in Q1 to 84% in Q2 and gradually climbing closer to 2021 levels. Increased sales and solid margin development increased EBT by 15% to DKK 90.9 million. Let's turn to the margin development.
We saw a relatively high margin development from 23% to 24.5% in Q2. We are satisfied to welcome the EA family by concluding that the higher margin business in EA already show up on the radar and is lifting the group margins by 0.3 percentage points. The higher margin B2C business was relatively smaller compared to Q2 2021, which reduced margins by 0.2 percentage points. Distribution costs took advantage of the lower B2C share of drops. The reduced distribution cost is not a reflection of lower freight rates, on the contrary, but reflects changed channel mix. Prices increased during the quarter and the one-off effect impacted Q2 by approximately 1 percentage point, amounting to approx DKK 13 million. Margins ended up at 24.5% for the quarter, slightly higher than normal margin level in AO.
Let's leave the margins and turn to the cost of doing business. As you know, we define the cost of doing business as the sum of salaries and external costs as a ratio to revenues. In other terms, this ratio defines the difference between the gross margin and the EBITDA margin. The cost of doing business amounted 15.5%, which was up from 14.6% in Q2 2021. EA brings another cost structure with higher margins and also higher cost of doing business. This result in a ratio increase of 0.7% in Q2 this year. Furthermore, as Niels also said, it's certainly getting more and more complex and expensive to run a company when it comes to admin and compliance, et cetera.
In a partnership with margin focus, the tight management of cost of doing business ratio is an important part of our ambition to reach 10% in EBITDA ratio. We stay committed to maintain a business model where a competitive level of cost of doing business contribute to reaching our earning ambitions. Let's leave the cost of doing business and turn to the segment info, which you will by the way, find at page 17 in the interim reporting. The B2B segment accounted for 88% of revenues and the B2C segment accounted for 12% of revenues. The segment split was 84/16 in Q2 last year. As you will see from the slide, the B2C gross margin of 26% is approximately 2 percentage points higher than B2B, reflecting, of course, that the higher volume customers in B2B in general have a natural lower price point.
The B2B EBITDA ratio of 13.6% increased from 12.4% in Q2 2021. In B2C, we saw a decrease from 8.2% to 6.4%, reflecting lack of scale due to the lower sales. Now let's look at the investments. AO has invested heavily during the past 18 months in order to prepare for the future. The quarter saw high investments, primarily regarding the acquisition of EA Værktøj. This acquisition broadens the assortment significantly and we are looking forward to welcoming new customers as the carpenters, et cetera. Investments of DKK 35 million in the central warehouse in Albertslund and in the logistics center in Horsens almost conclude the significant investment programs of doubling the warehouse capacity. Investments of DKK 16 million has been carried out to upgrade shops and admin. Finally, DKK 9 million has been spent in intangibles, primarily IT software.
Let's move from investments to cash flow and the net interest bank debt. Net debt increased DKK 234 million during the quarter, despite the increased earnings. The increase is mainly due to increased tied-up capital in inventories and accounts receivables. The latter also reflecting that this quarter, a lower part of sales related to the non-credit B2C customers. As you know, this sales channel pay cash. The increased inventories are mainly due to upfront procurement to ensure high service levels to customers during uncertain supply situations. We still have to carefully monitoring supply issues, but we do expect gradually to start destocking to more normal levels during Q3 and Q4. Maintaining a high service level to customers will always have a higher priority than being optimized on the stock level. Rest assured of that.
Investments were high and related mainly to paying EA and the last part of the warehouse investment programs. Just an add-on info. Beginning of July, we have converted DKK 250 million from bank debt to mortgage debt. The conversion took place before the interest increase of 0.5% in July. To the outlook on the guidance, which is unchanged from last quarter. Summing up, the outlook is revenue of DKK 5.2 billion-DKK 5.3 billion, equivalent to 8%-10% growth. EBITDA in the range of DKK 455 million-DKK 485 million, equivalent to an EBITDA ratio of 8.6%-9.2%. An EBT in the range of DKK 345 million-DKK 375 million, equivalent to an EBT ratio of 6.5%-7.2%.
In the bottom of this slide, you will see the assumptions and our comments related to the guidance. This concludes the Q2 presentation and we are ready to take your questions. We received a couple of questions, one being related to provisions for accounts receivable losses. The question is that, as it appears from the interim report we have used a little bit of the provision made early on and if we are able to tell how we make the provisions. Well, it's partly due to the statistics. So every time we book a sale, the accounting standards, they require us to do a certain provision.
Obviously, it's also from an individual evaluation whether we see problems with keeping the payments or with the accounts from customers. We have a question if we could say a little bit about the massive storage expansion in Horsens. What is the expansion to fulfill? Well, it is mainly water supply, but also the green transition. We expect in the future, especially in the long term, big focus in Denmark and at our markets related to both the water supply and green transition. The expansion is 70,000 sq m and basically it more than doubles the outdoor area in Horsens.
We also got a question if we could specify how much of the 9% organic growth that was price and how much volumes. You will get the info for that in our margin bridge. You will see that the price impact was 1%. We don't disclose the split, but you could estimate that most of the 9% organic growth is related to prices. We have a question, what we are expecting in terms of synergies from the acquisition and the new warehouse for 2023.
We don't disclose that for now. Get ready to get that info later this year and in the annual report. We'll disclose it there. We also have a question how the integration of EA is going. It's going as planned. We will have a system integration later this year. It's hard work, as you know, to integrate a company, but everything is going according to plan. We have a question if we can give some flavor around the EBIT margins going forward and into 2023. I think it's too early. I think we will disclose that in our outlook 2023 when this is due.
We have a question, the revenue split between renovation and new build. As you know, we don't disclose the number, but what we normally say to you guys is that you can normally say that renovation or remove is at least 70% and new build is max 30%. We have a question with regards to Ahlsell acquiring Sanistål and how we view this consolidation. I think it's we are quite busy in running our own business, so we would rather not comment on that. We know Sanistål as well as Ahlsell as competent competitors. The mortgage debt is a split.
We have a question, how did you do the mortgage debt? Did you construct the mortgage debt? Is it fixed or floating? A little bit of it is floating, but the majority is a 3 or 5 years fixed. We have a question if we see any slowdown in our business during July and August. As you know, we don't disclose that for now, but rest assured that if we saw something that could change our guidance, you would be the first to know.
Our focus for 2023 and 2024, well, I think the main job for us is to stay agile and being able to adapt to whatever climate that the business environment will offer us in 2023 and 2024. We will elaborate a bit more on that later this year and in the annual report. We have a question that statements have been made from our side earlier that we are looking to expand in Sweden. I think it's right that we have said that we pay attention to opportunities organically and inorganically in Denmark and Sweden and Norway and in B2B and B2C.
We don't have today cases that we are ready to present to you with M&A. We have a question related to the quarter-over-quarter comparisons and you are right with the comments that we have been facing a rather tough competition from earlier quarters when it comes to last year. As you will remember, we had this partly closed down of society in Denmark and we were closed down a little bit harder than surrounding countries for instance Sweden. The result of that was that some of the physical building do-it-yourself markets they were closed down and we had very high B2C activities in beginning of 2021. We had a 27% growth in Q1 last year.
We had 19%, 14%, and 11%, still high double-digit each quarter, but reducing, and that was also what caused us to say that we see our growth for 2022 increasing in second half of 2022 compared to first half of 2022. That is exactly what's lying behind this question also that now the numbers that we are meeting in Q3 and Q4 are still high numbers, growth numbers from 2021 but not that extraordinary as what we saw in beginning of 2021. We have a question if we can elaborate our assumption regarding unchanged building activity, if this is optimistic and how the pipeline of orders look.
Well, this is the guidance of the remaining part of 2022 and based on the numbers that we see that we have seen in Q2, then it is our assumption and our expectations that the activity will be fairly unchanged. We have a question related to our destocking that the activity will remain high during the next quarters. Well, what we see is that. Well, I also touched on that in the presentation. Service levels will always be more important for us than being just in time, precisely optimized in stocking. If one should choose, we would rather overstock and maintain super happy customers than going short on goods.
It is a subject to be closely monitored but we would expect, based on what we see today, that in second half of 2022 we are able to destock a little bit. We have a question related to repurchases of shares or share buybacks. We are aware. Rest assured that we are aware that it's a tool in the box. We will give it some thoughts, your question. As you know, the liquidity of the AO shares is limited or has been limited and we feel that it's a benefit for the share to have high liquidity.
In that respect, share buyback may not be the optimal solution but rest assured that we have taken notice of your question. Then we have a question if we see rising costs from insuring the debtor payments. It's a fixed assurance premium. So up till now, we have not seen increases in insuring prices, but at this area. I guess without being an expert in insurance then you are probably right that on the longer run the premium will reflect the risk that the insurance company is taking.
We also got another question whether the premium is booked as financial items and that's not the case. It's part of the admin. Just trying to read the next question. We have a question related to our maintenance CapEx. I think it's probably around DKK 70 million, if you look at the maintenance CapEx, including cost for IT and digitalization. We have a question about the project addressing our new client sector with EA. You are absolutely right, that this is a big benefit from buying EA, that now we got access to a new and very, very exciting new customer base.
How we are going to address it and then how we are going to bring service to the carpenters and the newer sectors, will be disclosed at a later point of time. Then we got a follow-up question regarding Sweden that was mainly concerning the number of shops over there in Sweden based on an interview or an article with our management in Sweden. Well, we are always looking to expand organically where it makes sense and our management in Sweden, they are doing a good job. So I think it relates to that. If a good opportunity should pop up of expanding, then we would pay attention to that and we fully agree.
We have a question whether we expect B2C revenues for second half to be on par with second half 2021. It's definitely climbing up. Whether it will be slightly lower or slightly higher, I don't know, but it's definitely climbing up and it will be very close to the level last year. I am aware that especially in Sweden, web shops, they see positive growth in 2022. But bear in mind, though, that they had another 2021. The two countries tackled the COVID-19 pandemic problems in different ways. The next question is a little bit the same. When will we see an end of the negative growth in B2C measured year-over-year?
It's probably, as I said, it will be close to last year's level at the end of this year, is our expectation. I think that was the questions that we received and thank you for the very high activity out there. I think that was a record-breaking number of questions. Thank you again and thank you for attending. The next webcast will be when we disclose the Q3 2022 figures, the 28th of October. Thank you, and bye for now.