Hi, everyone. My name is Mikko Laine. I'm CFO in Kreate, and I'm happy to walk you through our half-year report from beginning of the year. As stated on the slide, we had a strong growth, 29% during the first half of the year, and also we have been able to keep our order backlog on high level. In the picture, you can see situation in our project on railway between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna, where we are working in a project which is about EUR 20 million in size, combining our railway, bridge, and road construction units people. First, briefly, the key numbers.
Our order backlog amounted to EUR 265 million, where we have about EUR 60 million growth compared to the last year, approximately on the same level as at the end of first quartile. Revenue amounted to EUR 152 million, where we had growth almost 30%. Profitability, EBITDA, during the first half, we are about EUR half a million behind last year, but second half was better than last year's second half on absolute terms, and EBITA, EUR 2.2 million accumulated from the beginning of the year. Free cash flow, on the same level as last year after two first quartiles, but the second quartile was already very strong. I will come back to this also later in presentation.
Market outlook, as you can see, the arrows, there is a lot of yellow, which means that there is no change compared to the 3 years... 3 months back when we last time presented the results. The red color that you can see in railway construction, that is mainly related on timing issues. There are big projects we were expecting to be execution later on this year and on calculation and tendering happening already early part of this year. Those have been postponed due to several reasons, partly because of the cost situation, funding, partly because of the planning of the projects, and so on. We still see that the railway construction business, if we look a bit further than this year, looks very promising.
Outlook for this year has weakened as there is not those big projects on calculation at this point of year. Otherwise, you could say that the slowdown in housing market and especially the house construction business, which is declining heavily at the moment, that is affecting our foundation and engineering construction business, where the arrow is pointing down on structural engineering part. That is affecting us very mildly because the specialization that Kreate has selected in their operations is kind of an supporting us, and then we are not that linked on basic housing construction market.
In Sweden, market continues to be very lucrative and there is a lot for specialized operations as Kreate is there, related to rock engineering and concrete construction. Share of Kreate's revenue during the first half of the year is mainly from structural engineering, much more than earlier. This is mainly related to the big bridge and special engineering construction projects that are ongoing and generating revenue this year. Even though the outlook for construction and also for infra for this year is a bit downbeat because of the inflation, housing market is very weak at the moment.
Inflation is postponing project or the price of capital is kind of an causing recalculation and thinking ahead a bit further, the projects that have been on drawing table. If we look a bit further, the future, we can see that the especially infrastructure market in Finland, which has been quite stable, we see there growth opportunities. First of all, the new government, coalition government, in their program, which is released, there is approximately EUR 3 billion on transportation and rail work network and other infra-related investments. On top of that, Finland has opportunity to apply for CEF project funding.
This is EU funding, where member countries can apply funding for certain projects which are also related to infrastructure, and half of the funding can be applied from EU at maximum. That is also something that we hope that the new program that the government has released will be executed and also these opportunities are applied. Green transition investments, there are some which are released. They haven't yet started. There are several reasons for that. You need environmental permits and et cetera, also the funding issues. We see that there is so much in pipeline that if we give some time, we will see also some progress on that side, which is opportunity for infra companies like Kreate.
In Finland, there are a lot of industrial investments ongoing where we see potential for Kreate. So all in all, an operator like Kreate in this business, we see that a bit of a gloom is 2023, but the opportunities for 2024 and further in future, there is potential to grow and make it in a profitable way. Some highlights for the last quarter: We won a EUR 30 million project in Oulu, which is related to the transport infrastructure, linking to the industrial investments in that area. There are several bridges, railways, et cetera, in the same project. Also, if we highlight there, we merged Kreate Rata Oy to Kreate Oy, so we have now one company operating in Finnish markets.
This makes it easier and clear for our customers, and also improves our efficiency in our operations. In circular economy business, we received a certificate related to our crushed concrete. This is a important topic also if we think the green transition and circular economy in general. Significant project that was already in our main slide, where I started. There are a lot of different specialities from Kreate units working in the same project, and electric railway contract is one highlight of the specialisation that we started last year, and this is, you could say, one of the first major contracts on that area.
In the second quarter, we won several projects, as the order backlog remained stable. This is kind of an highlighting our technically demanding projects focus that we have selected, and that carries us in this challenging market. This is also the way we want it to be in coming quarters and coming years. Coming to our personnel, here I want to highlight the Lost Time Injury Frequency, which is exceptionally low in Kreate, 2.3 accidents per million working hours. During the first half, we hadn't had any accidents which has caused absence from work to our own personnel. This is in this industry, a very good figure and illustrates the commitment and professionalism that we have in our working environment and also people working in Kreate. This is something we are very proud of. Order backlog EUR 265 million, as you can see, same level as in Q1. Tendering picked up nicely during the Q2, and this is also reflecting the numbers. From the EUR 265 million, the Swedish business amounted approximately EUR 11 million, which is approximately same level as we had three months ago. Revenue January, June 29%, and last quartile, almost the same, 28%.
As you can see, the growth has continued from last year, and this is very kind of a good figure in this market environment, where many of the companies are struggling in construction industry in general. Structural engineering, about 80% related to these big projects we have ongoing on this business function. Private sector's share has increased from last year significantly. This is related to a couple of big logistics and other industrial investments where we have had big projects, Kemi project, to name one, and also this Kesko Onninen project, second, which are significant for us and also reflecting in this pie that private sector has increased that heavily. EBITDA, if we look the first half, we are disappointed on the level where we are at the moment. Profitability is not there as it should be. On the other hand, second quartile was already higher than last year. In relation to our revenue, we are a bit behind last year, second quartile was already more looking better than the first quartile, which was a disappointment this year. Reflecting our numbers, we can see that the inflation is still high. The cost of construction has remained on a high level.
We haven't seen a decline of prices during the first half of year, which also affects our profitability, and especially linked to the old projects where we don't have any indexation or other measures to kind of keep the profitability and price level reflected to our own costs. Summary of key figures. Revenue, order backlog, profitability, I more or less walked through already. If I pick some of the topics from the lower part of the table, you can see that the free cash flow from operating activities was EUR 1.7 million positive. This is clearly better than last year, and also if I look few years back, this is something which we haven't seen in a while.
Second quarter is typical starts where a lot of projects begin and tie capital. Our efforts, which we have started already last year, are now carrying results, and this is very promising, thinking the market and development of companies in construction business. We have generated positive cash flow. This is something we are proud of. Net debt on same level as Q1. I will come back to this on the following pages. Cash flow, I already walked through, positive second quarter cash flow. This is linked to on working capital management and efforts we have there, and also that the investments were back to normal level.
You could say that the peak that we had in our investments in first quartile, that is over, and now we are back on normal level. The peak was related to new projects and investments related to those, so nothing special there anymore. As I said, normal seasonal variation was rather small. The net working capital is EUR 6.9 million, but we see that if we look how the net working capital is combining the receivables and what kind of receivables, and on the other hand, payables and what kind of payables, we see our cash flow development really good also for the third and fourth quartile from the working capital point of view. Efforts are carrying results on that area.
Interest-bearing debt, about EUR 39 million. As you can see from the graph, approximately same level as Q1. Here we can illustrate that the jump that we had in our net debt was related mainly on acquisition in Sweden and also some increase in our net working capital. Still the liquidity position and indebtedness that we had in company is well managed, and we don't see any issues there at the moment. This is the structure of our loan portfolio on the left-hand side and right-hand side. Even though the repayment schedule shows that we have about EUR 15 million repayments for this year, only about EUR 1.5 million is long-term debts.
Other are short-term instruments that we use for liquidity management. In relation to this, we had almost EUR 10 million in cash at the end of Q2, this is well in balance, and our liquidity position is really good. There is no major issues on that area. If we look further on years 2024, 2025, the repayment schedule is not aggressive, if you put it that way. There is room for growth and room for kind of an executing our strategy according to plans. Outlook for this year, we updated our outlook in the beginning of July, a couple of weeks ago, and we increased the revenue estimate, and we decreased a bit our EBITA estimate from the previous outlook.
The outlook is that the revenue will be between EUR 300 million and EUR 325 million, and EBITA between EUR 7 million and EUR 8.5 million. There, the upper limit is approximately on the same level as last year we had EBITA. In revenue, we are estimated 10% or a bit above growth for this year. For justification, to open that a bit, we have had almost 30% growth during the first half of the year. Our order backlog is approximately on the same level as we started the year. Calculating from there, we are quite sure already now that we will reach the higher than last year revenue, which kind of an triggered the updating of our outlook.
At the same time, the challenges that we have on the cost side related to inflation, related to relatively expensive salary position that we have in construction market, which was kind of an agreed during the first half of the year, and also the kind of a postponement of certain railway projects that we had calculated, all those together are affecting our profitability.
As you can kind of, see from the figures, the dip that we had in our profitability in the first quartile, and then calculating further, we see that the major impacts we have seen, but we cannot kind of, carry over from the Q1 numbers, which were lower than expected when we started the year. That was all from my side. Thanks for following the presentation, and see you again after the third quartile in October.