Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Fiskars Group's call concerning the first quarter of 2020. My name is Kristian Tammela. I'm the Investor Relations Manager here at Fiskars Group. I'm here in Helsinki with Sari Pohjonen, who's our Interim CEO and CFO. As usual, we'll start off with an overview with Sari, then have a Q&A session at the end. You can post your questions already in the chat during the presentation. I will be referring to the presentation that can be found on our website. Please note the disclaimer here, as we'll be making forward-looking statements during the call. With that, I'll hand over to Sari.
Thank you, Kristian. We had an intensive start to the year. In terms of our financial performance, the year got off to a good start. This was up until the pandemic started to impact our operations. In January and February, we performed above the previous year's level, despite the fact that the pandemic already started to impact our business in the Asia-Pacific region. As a result of the pandemic and its implications, we withdrew our guidance in March. The pandemic will have a significant negative impact during the second quarter, and it's currently too early to make a reasoned estimate of the potential impact on the full year performance. We expect to provide a guidance once a more reliable estimate can be made. However, the situation varies by market.
We do monitor it closely, for example, decisions on store openings are made by country, in some cases by region, following the guidance of local authorities and also our own assessment on the situation. We have taken several measures to lessen the negative impacts on our profitability, these are including, for instance, temporary layoffs or furloughs, spending cuts overall, and reviewing the ongoing projects. At the same time, we obviously need to be able to capture growth opportunities and are definitely willing to invest in those. Looking at our renewed segments, on a segment level, net sales increased in Terra and Crea. However, the Vita segment was significantly impacted by the pandemic. Here is a summary of the implications of the pandemic on the Fiskars Group.
All in all, the situation is ongoing, as we all know, it impacted us already during the first quarter and will have a significant impact in the second quarter. Visibility is still low, we are taking determined action to lessen the negative impact of the situation. We will get back to this later in the presentation. After the reporting period, a lot has happened. First of all, at the beginning of April, our new organizational structure became effective. Our report for the first quarter reflects the new structure. On April 21, our CEO, Jaana Tuominen, announced her resignation. At the same time, I was appointed Interim CEO in addition to my role as CFO. The board has initiated the search for a new CEO. In addition to Jaana leaving the company, we have had some other changes to the group leadership team.
Tina Andersson started in her position as the Chief Consumer Officer in March. In April, we appointed James Brouillard to head the Terra business area. He started in his position on April 20. Looking at the comparable net sales here, in the first quarter, our net sales decreased by 4.6%, and the comparable net sales by almost the same amount. There was a slight positive impact in the currency rates, as you can see from the material we have provided. The divestments refer to the Leborgne business, which was divested in beginning of Q2 last year. The decrease in the net sales came from the Vita business, which was impacted by the pandemic. The comparable EBITDA and its margin decreased during the quarter. The decrease came from the Vita and Terra segments. On a positive note, the comparable EBITDA increased in the Crea segment.
The items affecting comparability, which I illustrated in the material, mainly consisted of the restructuring program, which we launched in December 2019. As for the Vita segment, we can say that overall, the quarter was very challenging due to the pandemic. The year started with net sales at the previous year's level in January and February. We were pleased with this as the pandemic impacted the business in the Asia-Pacific region already early in the quarter. It's also good to know that over half of our stores are in the Asia-Pacific area, and many of them had to be temporarily closed. In China, which is one of our focus areas and key priorities, net sales remained unchanged from the previous year's level in the first quarter.
From March, the pandemic started to impact our business significantly in other markets as well. We have had to temporarily close many of our own stores, almost all of which do belong to the Vita business area. In all, one can say that the operating environment was extremely difficult for Vita. It's good to note, though, that net sales continued to grow in the direct e-commerce with double-digit numbers. However, net sales decreased in all other channels due to the situation. Comparable EBITDA decreased for the business area, mainly as a result of the decreased volumes. In the Terra business, the picture varies somewhat by market. In Europe, many of the distributor stores selling our products had to close their operations due to lockdowns in several markets.
On the other hand, in the U.S., DIY stores mostly remained open, which is important for our gardening and watering categories, especially bearing in mind the seasonality of these categories. On the other hand, the outdoor category had some challenges as many sporting goods stores were closed. Overall, the net sales in the Terra business increased. We grew in the watering and gardening categories, both in the Americas as well as in Europe. This was despite the mild winter conditions in the Nordics and Baltics, which had a negative impact on snow tool replenishment sales in the beginning of the year. Outdoor category had challenges with a decrease in government orders. Even though the net sales increased, the comparable EBITDA decreased.
The main reasons for this was our increased marketing spending in Central Europe to support our growth ambitions in the area. Additionally, the product mix was unfavorable year-over-year. Crea had the strongest quarter of the business areas if we look at the growth in percentages and also the result development. Like the other business areas, Crea's performance was negatively impacted by the pandemic, especially in March. However, net sales increased in the Americas, and actually for some of the product groups, we can say that they did benefit from people staying at home due to the pandemic. Crea's products are also sold in some of our own stores in Europe, and the closure of those stores had a negative impact on the overall sales development.
Comparable EBITDA increased for the quarter. That was supported by many factors, the most important ones being increased sales volumes, and on the other hand, favorable product mix. When we take a look at the net sales by geography, we can see that comparable net sales in Europe decreased. The key reason for that was the pandemic, which hit the Vita segment in particular. However, I would like to note that there were some bright spots. For example, Sweden and Germany. Our ambition to grow in Central Europe has started to show results, and despite the challenging marketing situation, this is the case. In the Americas, on the other hand, comparable net sales remained at the previous year's level. This was due to the pandemic as the Vita segment weighed on the performance. The same goes for the Asia- Pacific region in a nutshell.
The pandemic rightfully takes much of the attention at the moment. At the same time, it overshadows a lot of what's going on. During the quarter, we renewed our sustainability commitments. Sustainability has an increasingly high importance in our operating environment. Our opportunity is to increase the business relevancy of sustainability with a more integrated approach going forward. To grasp the opportunity, we embedded sustainability more firmly into our strategic priorities to efficiently drive the change within our business. The commitments shown on this slide are guided by our vision and inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, we have also reviewed our sustainability targets for 2030. These include targets such as 100% of our packaging should be renewable, preferably recycled and further recyclable.
Also, all waste from our operations should be recovered or recycled, and we shouldn't be sending any waste to landfill. We should also have a global concept and capability to take back and either recycle or reuse or resell our products covering all of our main brands. Our sustainability efforts have already shown results. One example of that is that during the quarter, we received an A-minus score from CDP regarding our climate-related performance. We are proud of this as it puts us in the group of best-performing companies in the ranking.
Here you can see some of the marketing highlights for the quarter, mentioning just some of these, the redefinition of the Wedgwood and Royal Doulton brands reached a milestone during the quarter. We have started rolling out the new brand image, and the target is to reposition these brands and at the same time increase their appeal to a wider audience. Additionally, Gerber launched a custom service in the Americas. Customers can build their own customized knives, personalized knives, one could say, from a wide selection of alternatives. This improves the consumer relationships and takes the brand even closer to its customers. Moving on to the figures for the quarter. Looking at the profit and loss statement, our gross profit margin decreased during the quarter.
The key issues there were the key reasons behind there were the decreased sales volumes in Vita, as well as the product mix in the Terra business area. As I already mentioned, the items affecting comparability are mainly related to the restructuring program, which was launched in December 2019. We have currently two programs ongoing. They are both proceeding as expected, and these programs have already started to have a positive impact on our results. However, the benefits are now overshadowed by the challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 situation. Earnings per share decreased during the quarter. That was related, first of all, to the decrease in results, as well as on the increased items affecting comparability during the quarter.
Cash flow decreased from the previous year's level. This was impacted by a decrease in profit, as well as an increase in working capital, which is illustrated in the slide. As for the balance sheet, first of all, the decrease in net sales is reflected in the balance sheet. We have accommodated our production to the decrease of the demand. Demand is generally a key driver for us. The supply chain has not caused any major concerns for us right now. If you take a look at the change in equity, the Wärtsilä share dividend is the main reason for that change compared to the previous year. The dividend was distributed in June 2019. Due to the current situation, we have also increased our cash levels during the quarter by raising new loans.
We still have most of our EUR 400 million commercial paper program unused, as well as the entire EUR 300 million in long-term credit facilities with Nordic banks. In other words, we have a good liquidity position. Looking at the net debt, it did increase somewhat from the previous year's level. It's good to remember that the comparison figures for 2019 already included the change in accounting practices. With this, we are referring to the implementation of the IFRS 16, which increased our net debt starting from Q1 2019. Our equity ratio decreased and net gearing increased from Q1 2019, mainly due to the share dividend, which was distributed during Q2 2019. Those figures are not fully comparable. As for our long-term financial targets, those haven't changed. As already indicated earlier, we have not issued a new financial guidance for 2020 as the visibility remains low.
We expect to issue it once the visibility is improving.
Right. Thank you, Sari. We are now ready for your questions, please type those in the chat window and we will take them in order. Let's start off here with the first one. Sari, could you please provide some color on your sales expectations for the remainder of the year? What kind of sales decline have you seen in April?
Obviously, we are not commenting on any individual months, but as said already earlier during the presentation, we are expecting a significant impact during the second quarter. Overall, for the full year, the visibility still remains low.
All right, for Vita, could you open what part of the 16% comparable net sales development drop was due to store closures, and what was the role of other components here? Have you continued to cut the SKU number in Vita?
Well, if I take the net sales part first, as I did mention earlier, for the Vita business area, we started to see the impact of the pandemic already in the beginning of the quarter, and it became more severe during March as several markets became impacted by it. As for the split between the stores and other operations, that is not something we have been disclosing. In terms of the SKU rationalization or cutting the number of SKUs, that still continues to be one of our priorities for this business area.
All right, thank you. Let's just wait a moment to see if there are any other questions. Right. If not, then thank you for my part. Should you have any further questions, then please be in contact with me, and we'll address those questions. With that, have a great day and stay safe all. Thank you