Good morning, and welcome to our Q1 interim report. Together with me, I have here in our Helsinki office also our CEO, Susanne Ehnbåge, and our new CFO, Annelie Forsberg. Q1 is typically negative for both divisions due to the seasonal variations, and despite a very difficult COVID restrictions in the beginning of this quarter, we delivered a strong result for this Q1 2022. If we look at the group revenue, it was almost EUR 200 million and was up by 27% in comparable currencies. Our operating result increased clearly for both divisions. When we look at our rolling 12 months revenue increased with almost 21%, and our adjusted rolling 12 months results improved by EUR 92 million. If we look at Lindex revenue was up by 36% and was EUR 134 million.
We had a growth in digital sales 8.2%, but also it's clear that the customers are coming back to brick-and-mortar stores, and at Lindex, almost 48% increase in brick-and-mortar. Operating cost increased slightly due to the increased sales, and the operating results improved by EUR 18.5 million, reaching EUR 5.5 million. In Stockmann Division, the revenue increased by 9.2%, reaching EUR 62.2 million. The sales in brick-and-mortar stores grew by almost 22%. As part of our operational efficiency program, our operating cost also decreased by EUR 0.6 million. Operating results improved by 18.5 million and reached EUR 6.3 million. I would like to highlight our strong cash position, which improved also from the previous year, reaching almost EUR 131 million.
Now if we look closer to Stockmann Division, the revenue, as I said, increased by 9.2%, and the strong sales growth is coming in the brick-and-mortar stores, and this is due to visitor traffic increasing. It's clear also that during the first quarter, our fashion market share grew in Finland with a good development in all fashion areas. As we told previous meeting also, we launched or improved our MyStockmann upgrade in February, and now we have the integrated link to the Stockmann numbers. We have a great start also for the Crazy Days campaign, which basically fell into the April month with 18%. This is a year of 160-year special editions, and this is a year of celebrations. Limited editions like Minna Parikka and Oiva Toikka glass design are great examples of great results.
As a part of our operating model renewal, the new merchant unit heads are now in place, and every department store, every channel, has a clear responsible person for our profit and loss. Also, our new initiative with textile recycling pilot with Helsinki, the environmental services increased, and we generated already 10,000 kilos material for this. Because of the Ukrainian situation, the charity donations both in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were completed in Q1. This resulted the results of EUR 62.2 million, which is 9.2% increase, and as I said, brick-and-mortar increased by 22%. It is also clear that as customers are more now with visiting the stores, the average purchase has increased. Our sales online was 12.2%, and there we have a clear increase versus 2019 with an index of 169.
Gross margin increased, and this is again better full price sales and full price products and there you see a clear improvement. Operating cost, because of our efficient cost program, decreased by EUR 0.6 million. We reached an operating result of EUR 6.3 million, or if we look to adjusted operating result, it was EUR -7.3 million versus previous year, EUR -12.1 million. If we look Stockmann Division rolling 12 months results, reaching EUR -5 million compared to previous 12 months, which was almost EUR 50 million, so this is a great improvement in Stockmann Division. If we look now Stockmann Division way forward, the strategy journey proceeds systematically. In 2019, we started this customer-centric journey. Of course, 2020 and 2021 restructuring and COVID challenged our way of implementing our strategic initiatives.
We've been implementing and focused on the journey, and now 2022 marks a new phase for Stockmann Division with a full focus on value creation, sustainable growth, and improving our profitability. Spring fashion assortment overview arrived according to the plan, and minor effects from the global supply chain challenges. We can clearly see that our April sales are now reaching already over 2019 levels. If we look in terms of e-com, we have over 300 index versus 2019. Our focus areas now moving forward is to become the curator of lifestyle, the number one source of inspiration. We want to build a seamless omni-channel experience with better services, faster last mile deliveries as some of the examples. The customer-centric roadmap for more personalized and tailored services is one of those where we want to really differentiate from the market.
The systematic sustainability work will continue, and we want to improve our CO2 footprint. As we have communicated, we are participating in the Science Based Targets initiatives. MyStockmann loyalty program, the launch, as I said, has been very successful. As there is a clear link now to our web store, we have increased the sales by 163 indexes. The visitor indexes are already from MyStockmann directly to web store 261, and we have doubled the unique users at stockmann.com. We will launch also MyStockmann and a new web store in the Baltics in the coming weeks and months. Our focus is now also to get the Baltic customers to be part of our MyStockmann program and being part of stockmann.com.
This is a celebration year, so this is our 160-year celebration, and we will continue with our limited edition offerings. We will have more exclusive products and customer events throughout this year. Also, we have a cooperation with John Nurminen Foundation to save the Baltic Sea as part of our 160-year celebrations. Now, I would like to hand over to Susanne.
Thank you, Jari. It's nice to be here, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will present Lindex performance for the Q1 of 2022, and it has started really well. The revenue was EUR 134 million and increased by 36%. If you compare it to pre-pandemic levels, that is 2019, it has increased by 18.7%. It's also nice to see that the customers are back in our stores, and the brick-and-mortar increased by 47.6% and is almost in line with pre-pandemic levels. Despite seeing that customers then are returning to stores, we continue to increase our digital sales, which was up by 8.2%. If you compare this to 2019, we have increased the sales with 660%.
The share of the digital sales was 23.6%, and if we look at this quarter, we have increased our sales in all sales channels and also in all business areas. The business area that has increased the most is womenswear, where we have a sales increase of 52%. I think this is a sign that we can see that more and more people are getting back to work and having a more normal behavior. Just to add also regarding the brick-and-mortar in stores, we can see also that we have less restrictions in this quarter, even though we had some restrictions in the beginning. If you compare these figures to previous year, we had a lot of closed stores due to the pandemic.
Looking also at the Q1 , we increased our market share in all of our main markets. The gross margin decreased slightly. It was down by 0.3%, and this is due to a currency effect towards the U.S. dollar. The operating costs increased by EUR 1.5 million to EUR 61.8 million, and this is due to increased sales. It's also due to that we have been able to have all stores open this quarter and that we are investing in growth. The operating result improved by EUR 18.5 million to EUR 5.5 million, and the adjusted operating result is the same.
If we look at last year's figure, you can see that this is a bit better, and that is due to that we did a settlement last year regarding two UK stores, which impacted the result with approximately EUR 5.5 million. Rolling 12, the result, and this is the adjusted result, it has improved by 128% to EUR 93 million. Just to get a glance on how we have started in April, we have increased our revenue so far this month. It's up by 34% versus previous year and up by 20% versus 2019. If we continue to the highlights, just as Jari Latvanen said, we are really happy to have a positive result in the Q1 .
That has not happened in a long, long time in the Lindex history. Also, it's nice to see that the brick-and-mortar are back on track. If we look at March, we are above pre-pandemic levels. We can also see that 98% of our stores are profitable if we look at the rolling twelve months result. Then during this quarter, we also informed that we are entering the FemTech industry, and this we see as a very attractive growth market, and this contains two parts. First, we have the Female Engineering, and here we will launch our first products during the summer, which will be period-proof underwear. But later on we will also have products within the maternity and the menopause.
The other part is Spacerpad, and here we have a majority stake in the start-up company and its patent-pending innovation in menstrual protection, and these products will be focusing on the developing countries. We have during the quarter also had a brand-building underwear campaign, which is Your Invisible Support. This shows how we at Lindex support the women through life, and that our fantastic products are always there for her as an invisible support. We also during this quarter did an extensive survey in the Nordic countries where we found out that women in the Nordic countries can find her bra size at Lindex to 93% of the cases. Of course, this is a great number, but we want to improve it.
If we continue regarding the sustainability and our progress here, during the first month, we announced that we have a new member in the management team, and we have appointed Anna-Karin Dahlberg as our Director of Sustainability. Also, we released our sustainability report for 2021 that describes our progress within this area, and we have tough targets. We have said that we, by 2023, that we should be climate neutral within our own business. If we look at the entire value chain, we have said that we want to decrease our climate impact by 50% until 2030, where we have the base year of 2017, and so far we have decreased our climate impact by 22%.
We have also decided to scale up our Lindex secondhand to all kids wear garments. We have the Women in Cotton program, and this is an initiative that we have been working with 350 female cotton farmers in rural India, and here we have educated them how to produce organic cotton. Later on, we have been able to buy this cotton to produce 1 million GOTS-certified baby pajamas. This is, of course, an important step for us to move forward and have a fully transparent cotton supply chain. We are now also a member, a full member of the Ethical Trading Initiative, which is a world-leading alliance ensuring workers' rights.
We have during the Q1 , just as Stockmann has done, made donations to UNHCR's important work, where we want to help people affected by the war in Ukraine. Far we have donated SEK 1 million from Lindex, and together with our customers, we have done a round-up campaign in our stores, and this have then delivered SEK 5.5 million. Added to that, we have also done local initiatives. If we continue to Lindex way forward. During the last couple of years, we have developed our Lindex business, moving away from a wide offering in few channels or even maybe one channel to a more distinct offering in many channels.
We will continue on this path and build upon Lindex as our main brand, but we also see the possibility to build upon those strengths that we have at Lindex to also add new business opportunities. This is why we see now Female Engineering, we have Space pad and Closely, and these are built upon our strength within lingerie. We have ambitious long-term targets where we want to achieve significant growth with high profitability at the same time as we shall reduce our climate impact. Therefore, we will invest and focus within especially logistics, digitalization. We will also enter new markets and continue to develop new business and growth opportunities at the same time as we will also invest in sustainability.
During the Q1 , we carried out our Lindex global employee survey, and here we got a score of 66 in the Net Promoter Score. This is then top 5% in the consumer industry, and I see this result as a direct link between the high engagement that we can see among Lindex employees and the nice result that we have presented during the last couple of quarters. It all comes down to the people that we have at Lindex and how we do things together, and this is also what will drive our future success. By that, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Annelie.
Great. Thank you, Susanne. Good morning, everyone. My name is Annelie Forsberg, and I'm the new CFO for the Stockmann Group. I'm new in this role, but I'm not new in the company since I have been the CFO for the Lindex division since 2018, and I've also been a part of the Stockmann Group management team since summer 2020. Like said, I'm new in this role, but I'm familiar with the company. The restructuring program proceeds according to plan. Now all the department store's properties are sold, and we have new long-term leaseback agreements in place. Tallinn was sold in December 2021. Riga was sold in January 2022 and also affecting the Q1 numbers now. The Helsinki real estate was sold in April 2022.
In April, it meant that all secured and unsecured restructuring debt has been paid. Now we have no interest-bearing debt remained excluding the IFRS 16 leases that we have, and also that we have a five-year bullet bond of EUR 66 million that we will have until 2025. There are still disputed cases with approximately EUR 95 million, and these are disputed due to the termination of long-term leases that Stockmann did in the beginning of the structuring. The landlords now mean that all the outstanding amounts for the lease periods must be paid while the administrator of the restructuring program means it's justified to pay 18 months, and that's also the amount that Stockmann has made provisions for, EUR 16.3 million. Most of these claims will be settled by arbitration proceedings.
Important to say here that it must be solved before the restructuring process can end. If we look into the financial performance of quarter one, just like Susanne and Jari has mentioned, we have a good revenue increase. It's 27.1%, where Lindex is 36% of that, Stockmann Group is Stockmann division is 9%. In average, 27%. If you compare it to 2019, it's a decrease with 5.4%. As said before, that was before the pandemic, and also that in quarter one 2019, we had Crazy Days there, which now in 2022 is in Q2, the main part. The gross margin has increased due to Stockmann division, while Lindex division slightly has decreased due to currency effect.
The operating costs are higher due to that we now have all stores open again, and also that we have a higher sales, of course. The operating result ends up at EUR 9.8 million compared to last year's -EUR 27.6 million. If we adjust for the capital gain of selling the Riga real estate and also some restructuring costs, then we actually have an adjusted operating result of -EUR 3.7 million compared to last year's -EUR 21.1 million. Compared to Q1 2021, that's an improvement with EUR 17.4 million. Also compared to 2019 before the pandemic, it's an improvement with EUR 14 million. To look at the trend, we have also added the rolling twelve figures to see the development.
Here we can see that from quarter one, we have increased the revenue with 20.8%. Compared to 2019, there's a decrease of 2.2%, but like I said before, that was before the pandemic, so it's strong revenue anyway now. The adjusted operating result then, which is excluding selling the Tallinn and Riga real estates and also restructuring costs, here we see a significant improvement. Now we have an adjusted operating result for rolling twelve of EUR 85.6 million compared to EUR -6.7 million one year ago. That means an improvement with EUR 92.3 million. As seen here in the graph, it's a double result from Q4 2019. This slide also shows the divisions development during the years. The darker staples here is Lindex.
As seen, Lindex has doubled the result during these years. The Stockmann Division is light green here. As we see here, it was big challenges during the pandemic. From then, we can see how the result really has increased in a good way. It's almost on plus now. Since the real estates now are sold, the interest-bearing net debt has been repaid. This illustrative interest-bearing net debt chart shows that after selling the real estate of Helsinki, it's actually that we have a cash plus position. That's positive. Also looking into this graph and the net result during the latest quarters, we can see that we have a positive net result during the latest quarters.
In Q4 , 2020, there was an impairment test of the goodwill of Lindex, and a write-down was done with EUR 250 million, and of course, that affected the equity. Since Q2, 2021, it's been a positive net result affecting the equity in a good way. This also mean, looking into the equity ratio, that it has been improved during the latest quarters. Here we can see the light gray line excluding IFRS, and then our equity ratio is 53.6%. That is due to the equity improvement and also repaying the interest-bearing debts. The black line here is including IFRS. Here we can see that now the equity ratio is on par what it was before the write-down of the goodwill of Lindex.
We have also done a chart to show how the lease liability will look like after selling the real estate of Helsinki. Then we will have a lease liability of EUR 568.8 million, whereof Helsinki City Center will be EUR 192.5 million of that, so a quite big part. The other Stockmann premises will be EUR 96.5 million, and the Lindex stores will be EUR 274.2 million. The guidance then and outlook for 2022. The guidance is unchanged. Stockmann expects an increase in the group's revenue, and that the adjusted operating result will be clearly positive. Although there is a geopolitical instability in the world with high inflation and challenges in the supply chain, as well as logistics, and also that we have the challenges of COVID-19 restrictions, and this requires that both divisions must be adaptive and flexible to meet the future.
With that, we open up for question and answers. Jari and Susanne, please.
Yes, the first question will be: What are the current synergies between Stockmann Retail and Lindex, or are there any?
It's good though.
Yes. The first question will be, What are the current synergies between Stockmann Retail and Lindex, or are there any?
Of course, as a group, over 80% of our turnover is fashion. When we look fashion, both divisions are looking fashion from many different angles. As Lindex is sourcing, over 98% of all the garments from their own sourcing, with our own sourcing channels, Stockmann is benefiting with the private labels. Stockmann private labels are coming also through the Lindex channels. There we have a very close cooperation.
Yes. Jenni Honkanen asking, mentioning that the department stores increase and a positive development, the average purchase has increased. How much is the average purchase at the moment per customer?
It varies by channel and by store, and we need to be very careful how do we look. For example, if I take a concrete example, Jumbo, you don't come and visit, you come and do the shopping. The way we do shop in different department stores varies, versus Helsinki City Center, where you have a constant flow of visitors, you might be buying something. But it's clear that now after COVID restrictions, and we clearly see, for example, in Crazy Days that when we did last year, Crazy Days only on crazydays.com, and now as people came back to brick-and-mortar, we are also selling more normal price products during this campaign, so the average basket size is increasing.
As I said in my presentation, it's clear now after the restrictions, which we also see in Lindex, that fashion is moving much faster than during the restriction times. People are coming back to work. You want to look in your wardrobes, and also all kinds of festivities. We are dressing up again.
Yes. Raul Iwa asking: Hi, what level of cost inflation pressure are you seeing currently, and how are you able to mitigate those?
Well, we are starting to see inflation in many areas. It's depending on which market we look upon, of course. When we look in how to mitigate the inflation, of course, we must always adjust prices for compensating the inflation in the best possible way. Of course, this is also sensitive, so we must do that with smartness.
If I add here, again, the categories have differences. If we look at food departments in Riga and Tallinn, of course, we are adjusting to prices every day. Depending on the category, depending when it was purchased and so on, we're reflecting with prices, price increases constantly.
Those were the questions so far. Let's wait a while to see if any more questions are coming.
If no more questions, then we say thank you for listening us, and we wish you here in Finland Happy Vappu. And of course, we welcome you to come and shop in every channel, in every store we have, wherever you are. Have a nice weekend. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.