Everybody, welcome to KONE's Q1 results webcast. With us today in Espoo, Finland, we have our CEO, Henrik Ehrnrooth. Unfortunately, our CFO, Eriikka Söderström , is ill today and she couldn't join, but she sends her regards. Instead, we have Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller, Roberto Molteni with us today. My name is Katri Saarenheimo, and I'm from Investor Relations. As usual, we will first start with a short review of our Q1 results and highlights on the markets and in our development. After this, we will have plenty of time again for Q&A and discussion. Let's have a look at our Q1 results first. Henrik, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Katri, welcome also on my behalf. I'm first of all pleased to say that we have, again, good news. What I think is particularly important is that, as you know, our overall environment was more challenging in the first quarter than it was in the previous year. Despite this, we continued our good development. This speaks a lot about the strength of our competitiveness and how we are continuously developing. We had a good start to the year. Our orders received exceeded EUR 2 billion for the first time in KONE's history. These were at an all-time high. Growth was 18.7% compared to last year or 5.5% in comparable currencies. Also, our order book reached an all-time high of EUR 8.5 billion which is 38% growth over the prior year or 15.6% in comparable currencies.
Sales was close to EUR 1.7 billion and sales growth accelerated if you compare it to end of last year and was now 17.3% or 7.1% in comparable currencies. We can, of course, see from all of these numbers that translation exchange rates are having a significant impact on our reported result. What is also good is that our profitable growth continued. Operating income was EUR 212 million, a growth of 18% from last year. Our EBIT margin stayed at the good first quarter level of last year at 12.5%. Overall, good development. Our cash flow was now at the level of EBIT, so that was a lower level than the very high level that we had last year. Here, difference is that last year we had a very strong improvement in our working capital, whereas working capital this time around was more or less stable.
It was still solid at the level of operating income. Earnings per share was EUR 0.29 compared to EUR 0.28 last year. Our earnings per share did not grow as much as operating income because our financial items were burdened again by the revaluation of option liabilities related to acquisitions. As these are non-euros, the euro value of them increased, and that caused the revaluation expense for us. That was what burdened earnings per share. Otherwise, good development there as well. We can see again that we had good development. Of course, again, want to thank all of KONE's employees for their good efforts and for their commitment. I think this, together with our good culture and strong culture, are really the key bases behind our continuous good development.
Let me go, as normal, a little more in detail, first into our numbers in more detail. I'll look at our market development. I'll do it in a slightly different way than previously. I'll explain why. We'll go through our market share for 2014, how we have developed, and finally, our outlook. If you look at first orders received. Good growth in orders received. As I mentioned, exceeded EUR 2 billion for the first time in KONE's history, growth of 18.7% or 5.5% in comparable currencies. We grew both in new equipment and in modernization. In new equipment, we had a good development in our volume business, and we grew our volume business on a very broad basis in all geographic areas. I'm actually quite pleased about development there. Major projects, on the other hand, now declined in the quarter.
As you know, there can be bigger seasonal variations in major projects. We had a very high comparison level last year, now at a slightly lower level in this quarter. We also had good growth in our modernization orders received. They grew at a good level in all geographic areas. Also good development there. Our best growth in orders received was in North America, where we continued to have very strong growth. I must say I'm very pleased about our continuous good development at the moment in North America. We also had growth in both Europe, Middle East and Africa, and in North America. Europe, Middle East and Africa, particularly good development on a broad basis in the volume business. Asia-Pacific key growth drivers were Australia and China. In China, we continued to strongly outperform the market.
The market in the quarter was more or less stable Whereas our growth was more than 5%. We've continued to outperform the market at a pretty good margin. That's good. If you look at pricing overall in markets, we can see that price competition is tight in many markets. Despite this, we have been able to keep overall our margins of our orders received stable at the prior good level. We have also talked a lot about price competition in China. We could see that this increased again somewhat. Despite the fact that we have been able to outperform the market overall in pricing development, we could also see that our prices have come down slightly. Again, I would not say that this is anything dramatic because at the same time, we have had actually a very good development in our product costs.
This way, we have been able to compensate a good part of this price competition. As a result of that, overall margins of our orders received has stayed at a previous good level. If you go to sales. Here, sales, as I mentioned, if you look at comparable currencies, sales growth now accelerated from last year and was 7.1%. We had good growth in both our new equipment business as well as our maintenance business. New equipment business continued to grow at a good rate, close to 11%, and our maintenance business grew at over 6%, a good rate for the maintenance business. A good continued performance there. Now seasonally, our modernization business declined somewhat. As you can see from the heading, we had growth in all geographic regions. Fastest growth continuously in Asia-Pacific, where growth was close to 11%.
I'm pleased that we were able to now accelerate our growth in North America. We can see that we are delivering upon the strong order books that we have, and growth now in North America was 7.9% in comparable currencies in Q1. Europe, Middle East, and Africa, we also grew at 3.6%. Again, I would say a broad-based good development overall. If we next go to our operating income, our EBIT. Here, most important point is that we continued our profitable growth. Our EBIT grew by 18% and was EUR 212 million. Margin was at last year's level of 12.5%. If we look at the drivers behind our EBIT improvement, we can first of all see that translation exchange rate naturally have had quite a significant impact. There's a little bit over EUR 20 million impact of FX on the result.
As you can see, beyond that also, we had good improvement in our businesses, both in our new equipment business as well as our maintenance business. Geographically, we had the best performance from improvement perspective was in North America. We continue to have areas that burden the development of our operating income because we continue to increase our investments in areas that support future growth. These include process development, IT, research and development, and still footprint in many of the key growth markets. When we look forward, given the technological change we're seeing overall happening around us, we will continue to increase our investments in both process development and in R&D. Overall, I would say that good profitable growth, again, in Q1.
If you look at our business mix, here we can see that the trends we have seen during the past years continued and share of new equipment increased. The new equipment was now 51% of sales compared to 48% in the first quarter of last year. Three percentage points increase in share of new equipment. Maintenance was at 38%. The shift in mix was both due to underlying faster growth in new equipment, but also due to exchange rates. Naturally, more non-EUR sales in new equipment than in maintenance. Same trend as we've seen before in a sales by market. Share of Asia Pacific increased, was now 41% compared to 38% last year. Yes, we had faster growth in Asia Pacific than overall, but also of course, exchange rates impacted slightly this mix.
We can now see that Europe, Middle East, and Africa and Asia Pacific in the first quarter were similar sizes. We're also pleased that share of North America increased from 15% to 17% as we were able to improve our growth in that region. This is a summary about our performance. As I mentioned, I will go through the development of our end markets in a slightly different way than before. I will do it business by business so that we can better see how we have performed relative to the markets overall. If I look at our development in the new equipment business I mentioned earlier is that we had a good growth, and we had good growth on a broad basis in our volume new equipment business. That is, of course, important.
That is our basic bread-and-butter business. That drives business forward and, of course, creates good service opportunities in the future. That happened in all geographic regions, good growth in that business. The second thing that China, we continue to outperform the market and grew clearly faster than market again in Q1. This, of course, good for the healthy development of our business and providing future good service opportunities. If we look at the development of the new equipment markets in total. First of all, if we start with Europe, markets now declined slightly in Central and North Europe and remained weak in South Europe.
When we look at Europe, I would say that even though markets remained weak in South Europe, development was perhaps slightly better, but I would underline the word slightly that we saw end of last year, as particularly in France and Italy, the rate of decline decreased, and recovery of markets in Spain continued. Also, in some Central North European markets, we could see a slightly better development, but I would underline the word slightly. In Middle Eastern market stayed at previous good level as we had expected. The key growth market globally continues to be North America. That market continues to grow at a good rate in the first quarter, and we expect that good development to continue. Asia-Pacific. Overall, markets rather stable. If I first address the other markets apart from China, can say that Australia continues good development.
We now saw some growth in India. It is not strong yet, but at least we can see India market is developing in the right direction. If you go to China, of course, an important market. Let me pause here and spend a little bit more time on China. First of all, in the first quarter, the market was stable, quite as we had expected. As I mentioned, we continued our good outperformance by growing over 5%. Pricing in the market remained challenging and intensified even somewhat. I wouldn't say that this is anything dramatic given the good development at least we have had in product costs. Naturally here also, good raw material prices are helping this. When we look at the market a bit closer, we can see, first of all, that good development continued in the tier 1 cities.
Here we see fundamentally good development, good transaction volumes for apartments, reasonably low inventory rates. There overall business continued developing well. When we look at lower-tier cities, here is where we see significant differences. When we talked about a slight increase in the uncertainty, this is what we mean, particularly in lower-tier cities with higher inventories. There we can see some hesitation amongst our developer customers to progress with projects given the higher inventory levels. I would say even in lower-tier cities, there continues to be many good markets, a lot of good opportunities. Varies a lot. The best segments continue to be infrastructure as a result of stimulus and commercial. When we look at standard residential, that now declined slightly. Affordable housing was stable at last year's level. What do we think when we go forward from here?
First of all, our base case for this year is that the market will stay approximately at previous year's level. If the stimulus that has been announced recently and actually over the past months related to the property market, if we start to see a bigger impact of that, then we can start to see a growth towards the end of the year. When we talk about the higher uncertainty, it's particularly when we look at the lower tier cities with the weaker situation. If we start to see here better transaction volumes amongst apartments, we believe that would also improve the confidence amongst our developer customers. I think it's important to put this in perspective. Market continues to be very big. We have a good competitiveness in the market. We have continued to outperform, so we continue to see a lot of opportunities.
Yes, competition is very tough. We, of course, determine that we can continue to develop, if you look over long term, better than the markets overall. I think we have all the possibilities to do that. That's about new equipment and a little bit more in detail about China. If you go to the maintenance business. First of all, maintenance sales grew in all geographic areas. We had good development here and clearly fastest growth in Asia-Pacific. Our sales in maintenance in China continue to grow at a very good rate. Very pleased about the performance and I think good performance overall globally. If you look at the markets, Europe and North America, we can see very similar trends to what we've seen in the past.
Markets where we have had better new equipment deliveries over the past years, of course, a stronger maintenance market. South Europe, for example, clearly continues to be very tough and very competitive. We expect similar situation going forward, but overall growth in the market. A good thing naturally is that the Asia-Pacific markets continue to develop very positively as a result of high new equipment deliveries in the markets overall over the past years feeding into the business and the market. We see good growth there, and that's of course, a big part of our strategy is to capture a big part of that exciting growth in the maintenance market in Asia-Pacific.
Finally, if you look at our modernization business, I would say the highlights here was the good growth we had in orders received both in North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa. Also we had a good development in sales in North America. Now seasonally, it declined in Europe, Middle East and Africa. When we look at the markets, I think what we see, as we all know, there is a very significant modernization need in both Europe and in North America. We can see that the markets where we have a stronger economy, that modernization markets are developing well, North America, for example. We can also see that in European markets where economy is improving, we can see quite an immediate impact also on the modernization market overall. I think Spain is a good example here.
Spanish economy, as we know, is slightly recovering. We can see a clear impact in the modernization market in Spain at the moment. I think this again shows to us that when we have a better economic environment, there is very good modernization opportunities and clearly a lot we can do to improve that as well. Markets grew well in North America, slightly in Central and North Europe, but in South Europe, they remained weak overall. That's about our businesses and our markets. As we usually do in connection with Q1, we go through our view of the market for the full year of 2014, including our market share. When we look at the total elevator and escalator market in 2014, our estimate is that it was about 815,000 units, up from 750,000 units the year before. It's a growth of about 8.5%.
In the same period, KONE grew at about 12.5%. Key growth drivers for the market overall were naturally China and North America, but we also had growth in some Europe, Middle East and Africa markets, particularly Middle East and some of the Asia-Pacific markets. The key growth drivers were clearly China and North America. If you look at KONE's market share last year, it was last year 19%, up from a little bit less than 18.5% in the previous year. Continued good improvement in our market share. Drivers of our market share increase was China, also where our market share reached about 19% last year, close to a one percentage point increase, a little bit less, but a good market share increase there. I would say a very good increase in our market share in North America. Europe was more stable.
I would say again, we succeeded in growing our share in the key growth markets of the world. That has been our strategy for a long time. I would say continued good development and improvement in our overall market share. If you look at the maintenance base globally, total units of elevators and escalators in service, that was now end of last year, a bit over 12.5 million units, up from about 12 million units the year before. Of course, here as expected, biggest change is the share of China was now 26% compared to 23%. Europe, Middle East and Africa was still 45%.
I think what is important when one looks at this chart of the breakdown of the global maintenance base is that we have to remember that the Europe, Middle East and Africa share 45%, about five and a half million elevators and escalators. Most of those are in Europe. It's clear that the European urban population is much smaller than the Chinese urban population. In Europe, people still live a lot mixed between high rise and single family homes. We can see that over the coming years, it's clear that the Chinese market will and should become much bigger than the European market if you look at urban residents and how people live in that market. Not only China, it's of course rest of Asia-Pacific as much of a growth story.
That's of course one of the important growth markets that we are also going after. I would say we have had a continuously good development there. This is our view of what happened in the market last year and of our market share. Let me a little bit address how our development programs have continued. As you know, we launched our new development programs a bit over a year ago. We've been executing on them for a year, and I'm pleased to say that they're delivering results. I will today address the second one, where we say a winning team of true professionals, where one of our key objectives is to help every KONE employee to perform at their best. In supporting that, we continuously see that we are improving our performance management and training of our people.
One of the ways we measure this is that we have an annual employee survey. We did that again in Q1. I must say, I'm actually quite proud of the fact that out of KONE's 47,000 employees, 93% answered this survey. It shows that it matters, it's meaningful, and people believe it has an impact. I think always most important that the survey is meaningful, but I think with a response rate like this, it is meaningful. Secondly, our results improved on a broad basis. We can see that we are making KONE all the time a better place to work. We still have work to be done here, but we're progressing. I think these are really essential parts. Our culture, our development, are really essential behind our good development and I think will enable continued good development of the company.
That is a highlight of what's happening and some results from our development programs. Finally, market outlook. Starting with new equipment market. Asia Pacific expected to grow slightly in 2015. As I mentioned, China, we expected the base case. The market is approximately stable at the good level of 2014 or if stimulus starts to have an impact, we could start seeing slight growth towards the end of the year. Europe, Middle East, and Africa, rather stable. With Central and North Europe, we expect stable or slight growth and South Europe expect to remain weaker. As I mentioned here, perhaps slight improvement compared to end of last year. Middle Eastern market, very much according to expectations, stable at previous years' good level. Key growth market is North America. That continues to grow.
Maintenance markets expect to see very much the same development as we have seen in the prior years. It's a good development in Asia Pacific. Overall growth in both Europe and North America, but clear variation in those markets. Modernization overall, expect that still to be rather stable in Europe, but continue to grow in North America and Asia Pacific, and total market as a result of this stable or slight growth, of course, Europe is a very significant part of the modernization market, therefore stable or slight growth overall. We can see that compared to previous year and exactly in line with what we said in full year results, overall market is somewhat more challenging this year than it was last year. I think this is very much as we had expected earlier already and communicated earlier.
Finally, our business outlook which I would say essentially is unchanged. It's a little bit specified. Our sales growth is unchanged at between 6% and 9% in comparable exchange rates. Our EBIT, we have slightly specified. We expect the EBIT to be in a range of EUR 1,140 million to EUR 1,230 million. Here we now assume that translation exchange rates stay at the average level of the first quarter of 2015. Previously, we were talking about the average level of January for translation exchange rates, and the range was EUR 1,130 million to EUR 1,230 million. As you know, some currencies, not all, I think it's important to mention not all, but some currencies have continued to strengthen compared to EUR, particularly USD, but that's only part of our sales.
Some have been quite stable, there's still a slightly better, more positive impact from translation exchange rates compared to what we expected beginning of the year. We were talking about a EUR 75 million to EUR 100 million range of positive impact. We're saying that's probably approximately EUR 100 million positive impact to our EBIT. I would take that very much as an approximate number and that's why we still have a slightly wider range than we have had, for example, last year in our EBIT to also give room for some volatility in currencies. I would say our message overall is that operating income, I would say de facto pretty much the same as it was beginning of the year and that we continue to expect a good development overall in 2015.
I think this is what I had and before we go to Q&A I think Katri has a quick message for you.
Sure. Thank you, Henrik. Just before we go to the Q&A part, a short reminder about our upcoming Capital Markets Day, which we will be holding in Shanghai, China this year on September 25. The day will consist of presentations by management in Shanghai, and also there will be an opportunity to see our production facilities in Kunshan, close to Shanghai. We will be sending more information soon regarding the details of the day and also the registration details. Now let's go to the Q&A and let's start from questions here in Espoo.
Hello. Elina Riutta from EVLI Bank. United Technologies commented yesterday on what they are seeing for Otis in Europe. They said that they see broad-based strength in new equipment in Europe and also that on the back of that they expected or expect that service pricing is going to improve towards the end of this year. How do you relate that to how you see the market?
Were they commenting on market overall or their performance?
Well, I'm assuming that it's their performance that they are commenting on.
Of course then one has to also see what the comparison point is. I would say that Europe, as I said, we have slightly better, but we don't see broad-based growth. We see good development in Germany and the U.K., for example, and improvement in Spain. I would say if we look at our performance, what I mentioned earlier, what I'm actually very pleased with is that we had broad-based good performance in our volume business. Just now, major projects tend to be more seasonal. We now, in this quarter, happen to have a little bit less of those. I would say good broad-based performance also for us in the volume business. Still, I would say markets continue to be challenging. There's no question about that.
What about the service pricing part? Do you share the view that there would be improvement on that side?
I don't think we are seeing that yet. I think particularly the southern parts of Europe continues to be in the markets where we have had a prolonged weakness in new equipment. We see very strong competition, in fact. I don't think we've seen any changes to those trends.
One more question. On Southeast Asia, you say that orders declined significantly in Southeast Asia. What's happening there?
This is simply we had in first quarter, particularly in Southeast Asia last year, a number of very significant major projects. Now we have slightly lower major project activity. Nothing more than that.
Thank you.
Pekka Spolander from Pohjola Bank. I'd like to ask about this price situation in China. You said that you see that the prices are somewhat easing. Could you give us some scale what you see there? Is it a question about couple of percentage points down, or what kind of trend there is at the moment?
I would say depending on segment and different parts of the market and so forth. I would say market price is probably, let's say, 2%-5% or something like that, a little bit depending on. Nothing dramatic, but a clear continued pressure. Of course, on a big market that has an impact.
If you mentioned this 2%-5%, that's where you have also seen in your own pricing.
As I said, that we believe that we have performed slightly better than the market overall.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We are now ready to take the questions from those present on the phone line. Please, operator.
Thank you. I have five people waiting, and if anyone else wishes to ask a question, they need to press star one. One moment. Your first question comes from the line of Jonathan Hanks of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, Jonathan.
Thanks for taking my question. On the China orders, obviously flat for the market by volumes and 5% for yourselves. I'm just wondering, how do we think about translating that into a value figure? Is there any significant change in mix given the different growth of different tier cities in China? Or really should the value move approximately with the volumes axing out the pricing impact?
Okay. Yes, you're right that in China, in volume, we're a little bit over 5%. It was somewhat lower in monetary value, a few percentage points lower, not a big difference. I think there it's both mix and pricing that is impacting. We can see that given the competition market, that some customers are perhaps taking a little bit lower platforms. Again, for us, that's not such a big impact given the good competitiveness we have on a broad basis in China.
Okay, thank you. Then one more, if I may. On the guidance, I know you've talked about this at some length, but to really clarify the change in the guidance, is that purely driven by FX or is there any other moving part? Clearly, it looks like the bottom end of the range has moved up EUR 10 million, the top end has stayed where it is. I'm just wondering if there's anything at all, anything else that's moving or going on behind the scenes.
Yeah, thanks for that. I think as I mentioned that the reason we took EUR 10 million may seem a small number, it's just a signal that de facto, we will say that if you take out the changes in currencies, that it's effectively more or less the same that we had beginning of the year. Nothing really else going on there.
Okay, thanks very much, Henrik.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Andre Kukhnin of Credit Suisse.
Hi, yes, it's Andre from Credit Suisse. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll just go one at a time. Firstly, coming back to your comments on backlog operating profit margins being on par with the past year. That implies that if we see any operational gearing, that would be from growth and service. I guess should we expect operational gearing from growth and service, or are there pricing dynamics there that are also working the wrong way?
I would say that when we grow up service business again, like we did in the first quarter, it has been profitable growth. If you look at our overall business, we still expect this year that the new equipment business grows faster than the service business overall. From that you can say, if you think from a mix perspective, probably a slight headwind there. Also, as we mentioned in connection with the first quarter result is when we look at our new equipment business, we now start to have more larger project deliveries which have a slightly lower margin. Still at a good level, but slightly lower margins. Those are perhaps mix wise slight headwinds, but not significant.
Got it. Thank you. Just thinking about the cash flow dynamics and what you said about working capital no longer being outright positive, but rather being a stable factor in cash flows. Is this how we should think about it for the rest of the year and going forward? Or should we factor in any normalization of abnormally strong cash contributions from working capital before reversing in the future?
First of all, remember, we come from a year last year where we had exceptionally strong cash flow and a very strong improvement in our working capital as a result of improvement, particularly in the ratio of our advanced payments compared to inventories.
Yeah.
It's clear if you have a lower growth environment that that ratio will not improve as much. I think also one of the important impacts, not the only one, but one of the impacts also for the cash flow in the first quarter is that, if you saw in Q4, our payables, if you look at comparable currencies, increased, and now they decreased. That ate some cash flows. You can say that we were able to get some of the 2015 cash flow already in 2014, and that's why, if you remember our cash flow in Q4, what we said that we were at an exceptionally high level. It perhaps a little bit ate from Q1 cash flow there.
I would say that's one of the impacts. I think we still have an objective is to continue to have a good cash flow, and I don't see a change to that.
Sure. Got it. I appreciate the factors of Q1 year-on-year and sequential comparison. It was just whether we should normalize to 100% cash conversion or given that we've been running at well over above 100% in the last couple of years, should we be normalizing to sub 100% going forward? If you could comment on that.
We don't guide cash flow specifically. I would say that if you look at our working capital is now was about EUR 880 million negative, and that's improved from about zero in 2009. Of course, a very strong improvement and of course a strong growth has contributed to that. I think much of it has been the difference between our advanced payments and our inventories. We can still improve that, but I think the rate of improvement we have had, we're probably not going to have as high of a rate of improvement as we have had so far.
Great. Just a very last question, on footprint in China, you continuing to expand and could you update us on the latest number of selling and service points that you have? That, I think it was 500 last time you mentioned.
First of all, back to cash flow. I mentioned only one part of cash flow. I think we still have many cash flow items where we have good improvement potential, no reason why we wouldn't have very good cash flow going forward as well.
Sure.
In China, I would say that we are particularly expanding our service footprint in China. We continue to expand. It's clear that when the market is now more stable rather than growth is, of course, we are also looking at our expansion and our cost base more carefully there. We still see that we need to expand the number of service locations that we have in that market.
What's the current number of locations in China?
It continues to increase. I would say when you have more service locations, it's smaller locations. In that sense, I think last time we talked was over 500. It has continued to increase from there. I think exact number is not that relevant other than that we've continued to increase our service locations throughout China.
Got it. Thanks very much, Henrik. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Rick [ Madi] of Barclays.
Oh, hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I actually have two. One on the pricing pressure in China. Firstly, on that one, can you just tell us the pricing pressure by segment? Also I'm keen to hear your thoughts on why we're seeing those pricing pressure. I think in the past you've mentioned that some players are taking advantage of raw material prices. I'm just keen to see if you see something else now. Finally, who is driving those pricing pressures? Is it the local players? Is it the Japanese or is it coming from all players including the Western ones?
We have talked about pricing pressure for a while. We have had quite a favorable raw material situation for a while, and that has actually meant that product costs have gone down for many players, and a lot of players have priced that out to customers. I think price pressure for most players have been beyond that as well. It's when you have a slow growth market, I think there are a lot of players who have very strong growth ambitions to be able to capture the interesting service opportunity that is coming in China and seeing that that is the biggest market in the world and you want to be big there. These are just strong growth ambitions.
Again, I see that if we can continue developing our competitiveness the way we have been doing in China, there's no reason to believe that we can't have continuously good development there. Who is driving it? I wouldn't pinpoint anyone. I think usually when you get price competition in a big market, there's usually broad-based and many different players. I wouldn't pinpoint any specific one.
Okay. Thank you. On the productivity improvements, in China specifically, given that we've had so much improvement so far, do you see scope for more going forward?
There's always scope for quality, productivity, and cost improvements.
That's clear. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Line? I apologize for the delay. Your next question comes from Flueckiger of Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Martin Flueckiger from Kepler. All my questions have already been answered. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Phil Wilson of Redburn. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one, please, just on the Chinese maintenance, can you comment on what the actual growth rate number was in the quarter, compared to the 25% you saw in 2014? I know you said good growth, but a number there would be helpful. Thanks.
It was at the 2014 levels. It was a bit over 25%, continuous good growth there.
Did you see a bit of an acceleration then in the maintenance growth versus 2014 levels or the end of 2014?
You have to remember that the bigger your base is, that to keep up the same growth rate, you need to have increasingly more units that you convert into the base. You can say from absolute perspective, yes, we've seen an acceleration.
Okay. How do you think the market's growing in terms of Chinese maintenance?
It's growing at a good rate. Last year, probably maintenance base increased from something like 2.6 million to somewhere between 3.1-3.2, if you think about new units that came into the market.
Okay. Thank you. Just looking beyond 2015 for China, in the past you've said that you see a favorable development in the Chinese market. Has anything over the past few months led you to sort of change your view on that?
No. We continue to see a longer-term favorable development, and I think it's exactly as we have been talked about for a long period of time, that if we have a growth trend, and sometimes we have an above growth trend. We probably this year have a below growth trend. I think last year was probably above growth. We're going to continue to see fluctuations like this. That's why we continue to develop our business. We continue to see opportunities there and believe in a long-term favorable development of the market and increasingly a more interesting growth opportunity in maintenance.
Okay, thanks.
Modernization, yes, because that I think is coming also in the coming years.
Sure. Just on Europe, actually, can you comment where European new equipment EBIT margins are versus historic levels or peak level? We see some signs of a slight improvement in European new equipment demand from your commentary and from peers. I'm just trying to scale the opportunity here.
I would say that European new equipment markets have been challenging over the past years. There's no question about that. We're seeing a slightly better improvement. I would not say it's a huge improvement yet. We had a good development on a broad base, particularly in the volume business beginning of this year. I think that's the business where we can have attractive business. We don't comment on margins by different market in our business.
Is it fair to say that European margin in new equipment is currently below the historic level you want it to be at?
It is not at its peak level, no.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Tomi Railo of SEB. Please go ahead.
Hello. Couple of questions. Is it possible to specify the currency impact in the first quarter EBIT?
As I mentioned, it was a bit over EUR 20 million.
A bit over EUR 20 million. Okay. Thank you. Secondly, on the financial items, how much was the sort of option liability acquisition-related cost?
EUR 20 million, about. Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from Austin Earl of Marshall Wace. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I just had a couple of questions, I guess, both sort of clarification. One is on the working capital. If I understand what you're saying is, after a very good 2014, you're maybe having a little bit of payback and that there hasn't been any change in payment terms?
No significant change in payment terms. We can see perhaps in China market, little bit more competition on payment terms. Overall, we have been able to collect good money there and the collection is continuing. Yes, we can see with tight situation with developers, there are some more competition. Again, that's slight. Overall, I would say the situation is quite healthy.
When you say, in what way is that prepayments or what is it that is changing a bit?
In a new equipment business, we have both have down payment on the order. Then you have milestone payments throughout the project. At least for us, down payments are unchanged. Then, there can be some competition in how the milestone payments are scheduled. Again, I wouldn't make a big point off of this.
Okay. My second and final question was just on the currency. I understand that the main impact is translation, I guess, from renminbi or dollars into euros. Is there any transaction impact? If so, is that positive or negative?
I would say quite limited transaction impact. Clearly, we deliver some more major projects from Finland, which of course in EUR is a little bit of positive there. First, remember the service business, all local currency and virtual local currency and local costs, so no impact there. Most of our supply is in the same currency as we deliver. Actually, from a transaction perspective, some slight benefit but not significant one.
Great. Understood. Thank you very much.
Still to that question, I think most of our competitors have pretty similar currency breakdowns. I think from competitiveness perspective, we are pretty much in the same boat, I think.
Your next question comes from the line of Max Lewis of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. My very first point was just regarding where specifically, you think Chinese stimulus could be relevant, in kind of which markets or in which regions specifically, that could be helpful. My second question was a little bit more around your supply base and I suppose if you felt that there was any more potential to look at perhaps outsourcing more of the components you supply to firms like Wittur, who've historically proven to be quite an important part of your supply chain, or there's any further potential for growth through, I suppose the ongoing supplier relationships.
First of all, on stimulus. There are different types of stimulus we've seen over the past, I would say six months, actually a bit more. First ones we saw that releasing of real estate restrictions in many of the second-tier cities. That was the first thing. We've seen also, relaxation in mortgage down payment requirements and as well as property taxes on transactions. All of these are to help transaction volumes in the real estate, particular residential real estate market. That's to help those. You have had more broad-based stimulus, interest rate cuts and of course, the latest big cut in the required reserve ratio for banks, which of course will provide a lot more liquidity to the market. It's both been liquidity to the overall market as well as targeted towards real estate. I think both of these are important.
Our developer customers, our customers need financing. A broad-based liquidity market helps them and of course, for their confidence. It's of course important that apartment transactions will develop positively. The second one was on supplier base. I think we continue to have opportunities to work with our suppliers. They have had some raw material benefits, many of them. Of course, we're looking at manufacturing methods for them. We look at designs and things like that. That is an ongoing process. What I mentioned is that we have had a good progress this year in this field, and of course, we continue to have good opportunities. We have already very significant part outsourced. We have strong partners. We all the time look at in all the things that what should we do ourselves? What should we outsource?
We may bring some things even back to ourselves if we see that that's beneficial and vice versa. This is an ongoing process and nothing that is fixed in stone. I think we have many good partners that we work with.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Antti Suttelin of Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. It seems to me that the factor holding back KONE's EBIT margin improvement is the fast employee growth. That's the same thing that we saw happening in 2014. I understand that it may be a wise thing to do long term. My question only is, for how long are you planning to continue to spend excessively in order to build platforms? Is it only 2014 and 2015, or will it continue in 2016 and 2017? How do you see upon that?
Increased number of employees may reflect the higher work in progress and because of our big order book. We have not recognized revenue for much of that, but work in progress and number of projects we work are increasing. Of course, we need more labor for that. I think we have had increase in our employees in a weaker environment. Of course, we need to look at that much more carefully than before.
Okay. The, can I say, platform footprint, R&D spend that you referred earlier, is that something you continue to do short term or midterm or even long term?
Expenditure on process development, R&D, and technology platforms. I think that is, of course, long-term, and I think trend-wise increasing. I think footprint, that's very much dependent on the market growth opportunity that we see.
Yeah.
That can vary more.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Tom Skogman of SHB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. If I remember right, I think you said after Q4 that earnings growth and sales growth likely will be a bit slower in the beginning of the year than for the full year of 2015. When I look at your 18% EBIT growth now, if you plug that into the full year, you come to the upper end of the guidance range. I wonder if anything has changed here, and I'm also a bit puzzled that you have not raised the upper end of the guidance range just based on the FX help. Is there something that is still negative that you would like to highlight, on the back of these two things?
First of all, you're right that we said, and it was related to sales growth, and of course, when we talk about sales growth, we talk about it in comparable currencies. We said that we expected to have a slightly slower start to the year in terms of sales growth. Actually, our sales growth in the first quarter was somewhat better than we expected. Particularly better progress in Asia Pacific as well as in North America. We had a slightly better sales growth. That, of course, helped earnings growth as well. You have to look at the EBIT. There, of course, is partly foreign exchange and partly underlying growth as well. When it comes to our guidance, as I mentioned earlier, the message we have is that it's unchanged from the beginning of the year.
The reason we took up just EUR 10 million from bottom end is to reflect the slight difference in translation exchange rates.
You didn't want to do the same change to the upper end of the guidance range, apparently. There must be something still that is an increased uncertainty or something that should be reflected in it at all.
It all depends, Tom, how many decimals we want to show, but I think we are pretty accurate as we show it already, and I think our message is pretty clear.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Your last question comes from the line of Michael Hagmann of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Henrik, I would like to come back to the cash flow development or rather the net working capital development. I understand that you're saying we had a pretty good cash flow in 2014, and particularly the second half looked pretty good. This said, we're looking at a swing from a positive contribution of EUR 125 million from net working capital to a deterioration or cash absorption of EUR 24 million. That's EUR 150 million. Even if you look then at the fact that last year we had a good net working capital contribution of EUR 225 million over EUR 180 million in 2013 and 2012, I just think it's a really big swing. It would be really nice if you could explain a little bit more what the dynamics were in terms of advances in inventory build, as you can't see that on an underlying basis because of the currency impact.
Also what you expect in terms of net working capital change for the full year. Thank you.
First of all, we don't guide our cash flow. I think only thing I can say that, of course, our objective, I think we can continue to drive good cash flow. I would say, first of all, you mentioned we had pretty good cash flow second half of last year. I would say we had extremely good cash flow second half of last year, and we're proud of that. It shows that the fundamentals of our business are in good shape. Therefore, I wouldn't make a big point out of having one quarter. We have had, I would say, consistently over the past years, very good cash flow continuously. Now we had a quarter where the difference between the advanced payments and inventories did not expand, if you look at comparable currencies, like it's been doing in the past. It's been bringing us more positive.
Now we didn't have as positive contribution. We had impact from our payables. There are many different things that impacted our cash flow. If we look at it then regionally, I think most of our regions continue to do well. It was more in certain areas that there was a change. Again, I think that objective and target is to continue to have good cash generation. We have to remember that our cash conversion was from EBIT 100%. I don't think that that's a weak number. I think it's still a solid number. Yes, it was much lower than the very high number we had last year. As you know, cash flow can fluctuate quite a lot from quarter to quarter.
I think the way we look at this is on a longer-term basis that we continue to have a good development here.
Is it fair to assume that if you look at that balance between advances and inventories, that there's not going to be a positive contribution coming out of a change here going forward?
I think that will all depend on what kind of growth we can drive through our orders received. We have a business model in both new equipment and services where we have negative working capital. If you have good growth and strong growth as we have had in the past years, you can expand it. I think it will depend on our order growth relative to our delivery growth. That will be the driver of how we will continue to develop going forward.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Andre Kukhnin of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
From me. You announced a couple of acquisitions in Europe in last few months. Is this a beginning of a firmer trend? Is there a more willingness to sell as pipeline better, kind of should we expect more? Just on the same theme, given the market dynamics, in China, do you see scope for acquisitions there?
I think our appetite for acquisitions continues to be there, has been there for a long time. Sometimes there's bigger pipelines, sometimes lower. We've closed a few transactions early in this year. Again, none of them really the big ones. I can say our appetite and activity level is high. Still, we would hope that there would be more to sell. I think if you see a more challenging market in China, I suspect we're going to start to see more consolidation happening there as well, both in the new equipment side as well as in the service side.
Would KONE be open to be the consolidator in this market?
I think we would have to look at it quite carefully. Of course, depending on the target, clearly more interesting on the service side, of course you need to make sure that you get the service base that you can hold on to and so forth. New equipment, of course, it needs to be something that is complementary to us. I think we are quite pleased with our setup with two brands. Because it's always very important to have a clear purpose of what each of the brand does, and if one could find that purpose, maybe we could expand there as well. I must say that that's something we would have to think about carefully.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time.
Okay. Thank you very much. We're ready to conclude this call. Thank you for your active participation, and we wish you a very good rest of the day.
Thank you