Welcome everyone. It's David Rönnberg here, CEO, and with me I have Robert Berglund, CFO, presenting today's Q1 report. Let's start off, Robert, in changing the slides for me. You can see here on the map that we have been growing quite rapidly and adding more stores, locations, vet clinics, and spas the last year and quarter. You can see here that you have the number of stores in Finland has been expanding and in Baltics with Pet City and the latest acquisitions that was done in Portugal with ZU.
We have been expanding in Sweden and Norway, quite a lot the last 12 months. Norway, I would say the shining star in the quarter, both from a growth perspective, but also from a profitability perspective. Currently we are operating 513 locations, whereas 59 is vet clinics and 177 spas. If we continue, and look at the highlights that we have in the quarter, you can see that sales was increasing with 15.6%, which is higher than last year. We ended up at EUR 138.5 million. Like-for-like was at a very good level, 3.9%, also stronger than last year.
Own and exclusive brands came down a bit, but that's because we are adding now the Baltics and Portugal, which has a lower % share of sales of own and exclusive brands. On the other geographical areas, we are on par or a bit higher. Operating cash flow EUR 10.6 million lower than last year, but the seasonality effect and net working capital impacts on that one, so it swings over the year. From an online like-for-like sales growth, it was quite slow, and that's related to the platform changes that we're doing. In our pure play verticals, VetZoo, we did it first. Second out is Peten in Finland. The third change that we will do is in our omni banners, and that will be done a bit further on.
During a period in those, these platform changes, we see slower sales, and then it comes back. From a gross margin perspective, we are super happy coming in at 44%, and that relates to a lot of long-term work that we've done with the own and exclusive, our own production facility that is producing more our own brands, less campaigning or campaign pressure, and also selling more our high gross margin products. Gross margin came in at a very good level, and that also then relates to the adjusted EBITDA, EUR 14.2 million versus last year, EUR 12.7 million, a very good level.
We can also say that the result has still been a bit burden of investment from the long-term perspective, which relates to platform, our logistics, and into SymphonyAI, which is an AI tool relating to our stores. That will give impacts from a positive perspective going forward. We had bigger investments during Q4 than Q1, so it's coming down. Overall, great performance on the top line, gross margin, and profitability. When we look at the at the sales perspective, we see that 15.6% is a very strong number, high growth, also then including Baltics and Portugal.
As I said earlier, you can see that we point out here, and Robert will go a bit through more in detail later on regarding Norway, that has been performing extremely well. When you look at the last twelve months, net sales EUR 528 million, and now actually Finland and Sweden in a % share of sales is at the same level, where Finland has been higher until now, but now they are meeting up at the same level. New market is now starting to be a bigger part of the pie, as you see, about 12%. Happy to see that we are adding the new markets and that is growing well.
Regarding the gross margin, as I was speaking about earlier, we are very happy with the 44%, even though we're seeing that the own and exclusive brands has been coming down. As I said, it's mainly related to the new markets coming in. Of course, in the strategy that we're having, our goal is to increase the own and exclusive brands shares in the new markets, but it takes a bit of a time, but that's part of the strategy. We have seen that the gross margin, if we look the last 12 months backwards from a trend perspective has been performing really well. We are quite comfortable that this will continue. If you look at the adjusted EBITDA increased by 11.8% to EUR 14.2 million, as I said earlier.
A good trend or a change in the trend that now happened in this quarter. We've had the last couple of quarters has been quite slow in Q2 and Q3, and during Q4, we had a very, very good performance versus last year. Now it continued at over 10% growth, which is a good level. We hope that the investments that we've done and also with the strategies that we're having, that this will then continue going forward. With that, I hand over to Robert that can go through the segments, starting off with Finland.
Yes. Hello, everyone. Starting with Finland. In Finland, sales increased by 3% now to EUR 48.9. That was mainly driven by the like-for-like sales growth of 3.5%. Which is actually a quite good performance in this kind of a more mature market. Our adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 11 million from EUR 10.7 the last year's same quarter. The percentage as percentage of sales, it was mainly on the same level, now 22.5% compared to 22.7% last year, same quarter. This has been driven by the increasing gross margin, as you're seeing, driven by what David says. Impacted with by increased costs relating to the growth initiatives that we have ongoing.
During the quarter, we actually opened one new store own or the directly operated store. No bigger changes in the store network. Moving on to Sweden. Here net sales actually increased by EUR 8.7 million. Like-for-like was 1.3%. Out of this EUR 8.7 million, we also had a positive FX impact of EUR 1.9 million due to the SEK rate. Sales now ended up at EUR 48.7 million compared to EUR 44.8 million last year. Also adjusted EBITDA increased by EUR 1 million to EUR 8.3 million and at the same time also the margin from 16.3% to 17.1%.
Also here driven by the, by the kind of a good performance or good development we are seeing in gross margin, and also here then slightly offset by the kind of a growth initiatives that we have ongoing. Regarding this network, we opened 3 new stores and actually one location was acquired, so four new stores during the quarter. Coming to Norway, we actually had a sales, fantastic sales increase of 25.5% now up to EUR 24 million. Really strong growth. Really to a quite large extent now driven by a 12.6% like-for-like growth, which is actually very, very, very strong in these markets. Some positive impact from FX, but only EUR 0.8 million.
A really strong momentum continue actually and even got a bit stronger now in Norway. We are actually very happy with development. Also this development then turn into a clear increase in adjusted EBITDA, landed now at EUR 5.1 million or 21.4% of net sales compared to EUR 3.3 million or 17.5% last year. A very strong kind of development, a very strong start in Norway of the year. During the quarter, we also had some changes. In the network, we opened two own stores, but we also acquired actually three locations through acquisition of Petco Retail AS. All in all, seven, five more stores.
Last, the new markets now amounting to a sales of EUR 17 million, consisting of Portugal and Baltics, both still in the integration phase. The integration of ZU in Portugal has started and are developing a plan and the Baltics integration is now reached the last phase and is starting to be ready. There we can then put full focus on the development of the network and drive both sales growth and profitability. Also good to know that now comparing to the earlier quarters and earlier years, ZU was acquired in December last year, so only now included for part of 2025. Q4 2025 and then in Q1 2026.
The new markets contributed with an Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 0.9 million compared to EUR 0.5 million last year and with the same percent EBITDA margin. Of course, here much focus is now on the integration in order to get that done as soon as possible. In Pet City, we also had, we closed actually two stores, and in ZU we opened three stores. Some changes in the network at the same time. Moving on to the financial position. Operating cash flow, as David said, amounted to EUR 10.6 million compared to EUR 18.7 last year, so lower. Mainly driven by changes in net working capital.
There are swings between the quarters that are relating to timing and all timing of both the kind of cycle net working capital, but also timing or really short-term kind of a timing of when invoices are paid or when stock is actually entering our warehouses. Gearing ended up at 132.7% compared to 112.9% at the end of last year. Net debt now EUR 219.1 million, consisting of a kind of interest-bearing loan and commercial paper, so EUR 135.9 million and lease liability of EUR 98.7. Net debt to LTM Adjusted EBITDA landed at 3.4 times.
End of the quarter, we had a cash equivalent balance of EUR 15.9 million, more or less the same as the end of the year, which is quite efficient for our business and investments amounted to EUR 7.1 million. A pretty good also capital situation. Cash flow and capital structure situation. Now I hand over to David for summary.
As we've gone through a good performance, especially on the top line growth, gross margin and the profitability, both from a top line growth and like-for-like performing really well. Norway standing out, which is performing extremely well, and we are also opening more stores and acquiring more stores in Norway. Some of the markets where we will continue to push even harder will be Norway, Sweden, of course Baltics when time is right, when we're integrating it fully and then Portugal where we're seeing good growth opportunities with acquisitions and store openings. Ahead of us we see a lot of store openings, greenfield and some acquisitions. It also shows that we have a lot more to do in the markets that we are operating in, but we are also reviewing new markets to enter.
Strong financial position and we are gaining a lot of market share in our home markets, which is good and it shows that the concept is really working. The next steps for us is to enter new geographical areas and continue growing. With that, I will hand over to questions.
Yeah, please raise your hand if you have questions to David or Robert. Okay. No questions this time, but thanks for listening in and see you next time. Bye