Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Drägerwerk Q1 2026 earnings call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q and A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing Star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Stefan Dräger, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our conference call and our financial results for the first thre e si gnificantly to roughly EUR 18 million, lifting our EBIT margin to 2.4% for the first quarter. As a result of the good earnings performance, our Free Cash Flow rose considerably to more than EUR 44 million. As communicated two weeks ago, we confirm our guide. I will come back to this in our outlook at the end of the presentation. The next week, we are hosting our annual shareholders meeting and will propose a higher dividend to our shareholders. The third consecutive increase for three years. This shows the good progress we have achieved in our developing the business and improving our profitability. With that, I turn over to Gert-Hartwig Lescow for a review of the financials. Gert-Hartwig Lescow, please.
Thank you, Stefan, and welcome everyone. Please turn to page seven for a group overview. As usual, all growth rates are quoted on a currency-adjusted basis. As Stefan Dräger said, we continue to see good demand for our technology for life. Thanks to the medical division and Germany in particular, our order intake rose by more than 3%. Net sales increased by around 7%, driven by both divisions. The slight decline in APAC was clearly overcompensated by the positive development in the other regions, particularly the Americas. Our gross margin climbed by 0.5 percentage points to 46.3%, supported by the improvement in the medical division, which more than offset the slight decline in the safety division. Nominally, functional expenses fell by 0.8% due to the strengthening of the euro.
At constant currency, expenses would have increased by 1.7%. The growth was also influenced by a one-time payment to employees in Germany on their collective agreement in the prior year. If we exclude this base effect, expenses would have increased nominally by some 2.4%, still below the growth rate of net sales. Due to the good top line and the low expenses, our EBIT rose significantly from EUR four million to EUR 17.9 million. Consequently, our EBIT margin increased from 0.1% to 2.4%. Finally, our rolling twelve months EVA improved considerably by roughly EUR 68 million to around EUR 106 million. Let us now take a closer look at the development of the medical division on page eight.
Order intake grew by more than 5% to around EUR 480 million, thanks to a higher demand for nearly all product areas and services. In Germany, orders were significantly up, mainly due to stronger demand for therapy devices and hospital infrastructure systems. The other regions also developed favorably. Looking forward, please keep in mind that there will be substantial base effects in order entry in Q2 since last year in April, we received a major order in the mid double-digit million EUR range from Mexico, which will not repeat. Net sales in the past quarter rose by more than 5% to around EUR 480 million, particularly driven by strong growth in the Americas, which was mainly attributable to higher revenues from anesthesia workstations and services. EMEA and Germany also contributed to growth while APAC recorded slight decline.
Our Gross Margin expanded by around two percentage points to roughly 44% due to a good product mix and higher capacity utilization in production and despite the negative currency effect. Functional expenses rose by around 3%, mainly due to higher personal expenses driven by a higher headcount in the sales region. Our EBIT in the medical division increased significantly from minus EUR 27.7 million to minus EUR 18.5 million, lifting the EBIT margin from minus 6.7% to minus 4.4%. Our rolling 12 months EVA improved significantly too, by roughly EUR 53 million to around minus EUR 14 million. I will now turn to our safety division. We are on page nine. Order intake rose by 1.2% thanks to a high demand for occupational health and safety equipment, Gas Detection, and services.
In Germany, orders increased significantly, which, in addition to the reasons mentioned, was primarily attributable to strong demand for engineered solutions, mainly orders from defense customers. The Americas region also recorded growth while volume in the EMEA and APAC regions declined. Net sales rose significantly by roughly 9%, driven by considerable growth in Germany, EMEA, and the Americas. Net sales in the APAC region were below the prior year level. Our gross margin fell by 1.4 percentage point to around 49%. The main reasons for this were the lower profitability due to the product mix and negative currency effects. Practical expenses were 0.2% below the prior year level, particularly due to lower R&D expenses.
Our EBIT in the safety division increased significantly from around EUR 28 million to around EUR 36 million, lifting margin from roughly 9% to around 11%. Rolling 12 months EVA improved by roughly EUR 50 million to around EUR 120 million. Let's move on to the development of our cash flow and other key figures on to slide 10. In the first three months, we significantly improved the operating cash flow by around EUR six million to roughly EUR 62 million. In addition to the increase in earnings, this was mainly due to effective working capital management, especially better development of trade receivables. Higher operating cash flow as well as lower investment outflow led to an improved Free Cash Flow by around EUR 12 million. Going forward, we expect Free Cash Flow to continue to develop positively.
Looking at our net financial debt, we had significant reduction by around EUR 56 million to around EUR 85 million. The reason for this was the increase in cash and cash equivalents due to the strong Free Cash Flow. As a result, the already healthy ratio of our net financial debt to EBITDA further improved to 0.2. At the beginning of the first quarter, we repaid a maturing note loan in the amount of EUR 50 million with our own liquidity. Our 12-month rolling return on capital employed rose from 11.5 to 15.2%. This was due to the higher EBIT in the past three quarters. At around EUR 745 million, net working capital was around 7% higher than in the prior year.
Our equity ratio as of March 31st stood at around 52%, slightly above the year-end level of 2025. Now, I hand back to Stefan Dräger for our outlook on page 12.
Ladies and gentlemen, Q1 was a strong quarter for Dräger. Our good order development makes us optimistic about the further course of business this year. Regarding the U.S. tariffs and the war against Iran, we continue to expect similar impact from tariffs like in 2025. We do not see any material impact on our business from the war so far. Therefore, we continue to expect net sales growth of 1%-5% and 2%-6% net of currency effects and an EBIT margin of 5%-7.5%. With this, I would like to end the presentation and hand over to the operator to open the floor for your questions, please.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets when asking a question. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. Once again, to ask a question, please press star followed by one. It seems that we have no questions. Back over to you, Mr. Dräger, for any closing remarks.
Well, let's wait just one more second. If there is a question coming, one last chance. Any questions, please ask them either now or join us next week at our annual general meeting for the shareholders.
There are still no questions, gentlemen.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much for joining us today, for your interest in Dräger, and have a pleasant afternoon and get in a good way into next month, into May with the coming weekend. Thank you and bye-bye.
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