Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Alstom conference call presenting its first quarter order and sales for the fiscal year 2015/16. I will now hand over to Patrick Kron, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call on orders and sales for the first quarter of our current fiscal year, 2015/16. I'm talking about the numbers from the 1st of April till the end of June 2015. We published this morning the press release, which gives you figures by geography. If I look at this quarter, we booked a good level of orders in our transport activity with orders at EUR 2 billion. They are obviously below last year's Q1, which at EUR 4.8 billion included EUR 4 billion for our South African Jumbo contract. The main commercial successes this quarter included maintenance of Kazakh locomotives in Azerbaijan, as well as a signaling system in Hong Kong, but a good level of small to mid-size contracts.
Looking at the sales, they are up 8% at EUR 1.6 billion. This represents a growth of 3% organically. That is to be compared to the first quarter 2014/15, which itself was up 16% versus the previous year. This led to a strong book-to-bill once again at 1.2. The sales growth was mainly fueled by deliveries in regional and suburban trains in France, regional trains in Italy and Germany, as well as maintenance of high-speed trains in the U.K. All in all, my view is that the first quarter shows a good start of the year. Just a couple of words on our project with General Electric, which is moving ahead following the shareholders' approval last December. The process is, as you all know now, focused on competition and regulatory authorizations, which are ongoing.
We have obtained unconditional clearance in the majority of jurisdictions, including a number of large countries, notably Brazil, India, South Africa, or China. This is ongoing in the other remaining ones. We keep our strong confidence for a closing in the upcoming months. Concerning the outlook, our medium-term outlook is confirmed. This is more or less what I wanted to tell you in summary, following the publication this morning. I suggest we now switch to the Q&A. I'm now at your disposition to answer any question as well as Jean-Jacques Morin, our CFO.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. Thank you for holding until we have the first question. We have a first question from Fredrik Ståhlkar, UBS. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, good morning, Patrick. It's Fredrik here from UBS. Morning. I just wanted to hear if you could give us a comment on what the tendering activity is like in Europe right now. If you don't mind, if you can walk around the world, if you can just say where you find the most activity at this point globally. Thank you.
Look, I'm not going to go in many details as far as the tendering activity is concerned. We try to comment on orders rather than potential orders. Again, I think the pipeline is okay. There has not been over the quarter any fundamental change compared to what I said previously. We have had a good start of the year in terms of orders. We have a big backlog as we talk. You know I just don't comment on tender activities. We see good dynamism in a number of areas, Southeast Asia being one, Middle East as well, but I won't go in more details, as you may accept, I think.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, may I remind you that if you wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. Thank you for holding.
I either take that as a lack of interest or as the very comprehensive review, very comprehensive presentation I made. If there are no other questions, I would thank you for your attention. I would like to take the opportunity of this conf call to tell you that Delphine, after a number of years with us, will go and look for opportunities outside of our company. Therefore, this is expected to be her last call with you. I want to thank her for what she has done for us in some periods which have not always been extremely easy. I would welcome Selma and Delphine's colleague, Perrine, whose name are mentioned in the press release, who are going to take over and will have the privilege of assisting J.J. and me for the upcoming period.
There will be changing voices, but still a strong support of our shareholders around. Delphine, thank you again, and thank you, all of you, for the attention. Thank you very much, obviously, don't hesitate to ask as many questions as you want to Delphine because she is still there for the coming weeks, don't hesitate. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.