Warmly welcome to Orthex Q1 Interim report. My name is Alexander Rosenlew. I'm the CEO of the company, and with me, I have Saara Mäkelä, CFO, and Hanna Kukkonen, CMSO. And we will take you through the Q1 report of Orthex. So we'll start with a short introduction of who we are. So we are focusing on houseware in the Nordic region and Europe. Nordic is our origin and home market. Nowadays, we want to build Europe into the new home market, so to speak. We have our own factories, where we produce about 90% of our products that we sell, factories in Sweden and Finland.
And then we have sales offices in quite many of the big European markets already, so in Germany, France, U.K., and the Netherlands, and then, of course, locally in the Nordic countries as well. We operate as a branded company, branded goods company with SmartStore, GastroMax, and Orthex being our strategic brands. And quality is always high on our agenda. Our mission is to make everyday life easier, meaning all the products are designed to solve a need in the home, that can be solved with a beautiful, responsibly produced product from us. The storage solutions are the biggest part of the business for us under the brand SmartStore, about 68% of sales. And then kitchen, mostly utensils, food storage, and so on, are about 20% of sales.
And then we have actually combined two smaller categories into a new combined category, which we call home and garden, which then has both flower pots, flower care, and so on, and then the ordinary products for the home. This combination feels quite natural as it's usually both the same buyers and the same families that actually buy these products. Everything is built around long-lasting, high-quality products that you don't have to throw away, that lasts for tens of years, and they can all be recycled at the end of life. We work hard on bringing new, interesting products to the market, and we also take sustainability extremely seriously.
All the decisions we make, we always ask ourselves, "And what impact does this have on sustainability?" So it's deeply rooted in our strategy. Then going into the Q1 situation, I think we had a strong start to the year, both profitability and... Both profitability and... Now something has happened with the slides here. Let me keep it on the right place. Q1 2024, so strong start to the year. The net sales grew nicely by 7.5%. The market conditions are not that easy, actually, and getting a growth in under these conditions is quite something that you need to invest in to actually get to that growth.
There's been a lot of activities going on, both in-store campaigns, fairs, and we're also strengthening the sales organization. So I think very much in line with our expectations, we managed to actually get the healthy growth for Q1. Then if we look at that in constant currencies, the growth was as high as 8.3, and here, of course, this... the weak Swedish crown is the major reason why constant currency growth is a bit higher. Invoiced sales grew by 8.1%, and on the EBITA line, we made EUR 2.8 million compared to EUR 2.4 million last year, and that's a margin of 12.6% for the quarter. And net cash flows from activities were EUR 4.1 million.
Moving to the next slide, more in detail here, we can see the Nordics growing from EUR 16.2 million to EUR 17.5 million in sales. One could say that the demand in the Nordics normalized slightly. At the same time, we've been really active on helping our partners, our customers, meaning the retail stores, retail channels, to sell out our product, not only sell in, but sell out. For us, the... for us, the, let's say the business is not ready by selling in. It has to go through the store and to the consumer who is happy with the product.
So we focus on the bit to actually get the things moving out of the store, and that was very successful in the Nordic compared to the quite low consumer sentiment. Rest of Europe continued a nice growth at 9.9%, and there, clearly, we have strengthened the sales organization. We have been able to actually find a few new interesting customers where we are testing the especially SmartStore product line and some other positive things going on. So even there, where the sentiment is not either that good when we come to the shopper or consumer consumer sentiment, we managed quite a nice growth. Then of course, storage, the storage category, the biggest category for us is driving business.
And when we speak about sales outside of the Nordics, so far it has been mostly storage products. So it's only natural that when we grow, it's usually seen in the storage category. So we're quite happy with the strong growth in that category. On kitchen, which is more of a Nordics, still more of a Nordics product group with more sales in the Nordics, you can see that the good development in the Nordic countries for us also shows in the kitchen category, where we see some growth. Then on the home and garden category, we are fairly stable. There's a slight decline, but the rounding is at 2.6 for both last year's quarter and this year's quarter. The...
I would say this has to do with the fact that still retailers are a bit careful with taking in inventories for the season, and that's why it is a bit of a, let's say, waiting game. Let's hope that Q2 will be warmer and nicer. Spring was late as well, so that could explain part of the flatline there. Looking at our strategy, which is working well, the situation is that we have three major building blocks in the strategy. One is to keep winning in the Nordics, and the second one is to accelerate the international growth both through customer collaborations, but also through gaining new customers.
Then we are putting weight on accelerating the growth through different online retail channels, both omnichannel and pure e-com players. Then we have as a fourth, let's say, building block of growth potential market consolidation. With these actions, we are striving to become the number one storage brand in Europe and also to strengthen our leading position as a houseware company in the Nordics. The foundation to be able to do this is of course good products, new products, launching interesting stuff, being active in the stores. Have a very clear strategy on the category, knowing what to do, when to do, when to recommend what kind of assortment to our partners, and when to do campaigns, when to launch new products.
And also in the center of the strategy is sustainability that Hanna will tell you a little bit more about. So if we go into that part, Hanna, please.
Yes. Thank you, Alexander. So, some sustainability news during the first quarter. So we published our annual and sustainability report in March, and I hope that you all had a chance to read it. And then we received several different recognitions during March. So our new SmartStore Collect biowaste bin was awarded with the winner prize at the German Design Awards, and you can see the biowaste bin in the picture. We were also ranked sixth in sixth place in the Nordic Business Diversity Index, and we were sixth among the Nasdaq Helsinki small-cap companies. In addition to that, so we reported to the global climate reporting CDP and reached the highest leadership level with a top score, A-.
We also audited our Lohja factory for the ISCC Plus certificate and got that renewed during January, and that helps us in increasing the use of sustainable raw materials. So that's in short the sustainability news. Then we have continued investing in new products. So during the first quarter, we have launched amongst others. Or we have concentrated on the tableware, so we have relaunched our tableware range with the new colors, and this time it's natural colors, where we use residues of the coffee bean production, and that's the picture on the left. And then some other news, the biowaste bin, some new nice round food storage keepers, and then we have relaunched with the new design, our classical traditional spoons that has been on the market for years.
Now they are even better than before, and we continue on investing to these novelties all the time. So then next, financials with Saara.
Thank you, Hanna. We had a very solid and positive start for the year. Our net sales increased by 7.5%, and it was EUR 22 million. Currencies, especially Swedish krona, had again effect on our sales, and without currency effect, sales growth was 8.3%. We have kept our commercial activity on a high level, and this, despite market situation, which was still a bit challenging, we've been able to continue on the growth path. Our adjusted EBITA increased by 12.6%, and it was EUR 2.8 million. We had a positive cross-margin development, 3... almost 4 percentage points, despite the fact that we had some negative effect in gross margin from electricity prices. And we also had a higher manning at our factories and warehouses.
Last year, we were actively reducing the manning both at warehouses and at factories due to the fact that we saw from the estimates that sales was not developing last year so positively. This year, we have had a higher activity, and we have also done a lot of testing and product development at the factories. Our fixed costs were also high during the quarter mainly due to the marketing and sales activities. We had Ambiente Fair, a lot of store activities. We were also visible in the media, did a lot of activities to boost the sales. And our admin costs were high as well. There, we had a very low comparison base last year, so in 2023, during quarter one, admin costs were exceptionally low.
This year we have done also activities in admin side, so we've been finalizing our M3 cloud project related projects, and then we have moved all our servers to cloud, and these are also visible in admin costs. Then the raw material curve, it starts to look a lot nicer and more stable. So fluctuation is on a normal level. There's still tension in the Middle East, and attacks at the Red Sea might cause issues to raw material import, and that might affect the price indexes. On the other hand, demand continues to be on a rather low level, and that has been keeping the polymer prices on a stable level. Our investments were high on during the quarter, EUR 1 million, so high compared to last year's EUR 500,000.
There's actually some movement in investments from year 2023, so we were finalizing novelty products, which were started already last year. The net debt level was 1.3 compared to adjusted EBITDA. That has been going nicely down and is below the target levels. And we are now having a nicely room on the balance sheet for M&As when the time is right. Then our long-term financial targets, there are no change in the targets since the last time. In sales, total level, we are above the targeted level. Outside Nordics, slightly below. Our customers outside Europe were declining, and in strategic European markets, we were almost in 10% target. Profitability, adjusted EBITDA was 12.6%.
Target has been kept on the same, even if there's still some activities to be done to reach that level. Leverage was 1.3, as has mentioned before, and the payout ratio regarding dividends was 54.1% compared to last year's result, and EUR 0.21 per share. We have just distributed EUR 0.11 already now in April, and next distribution will be in October. I will then hand over back to Alexander.
Thanks, Saara. I get the pleasure of just summarizing and reminding you as well that there's a chat in this presentation where you can ask questions that we will answer at the end. Happy to answer them. In summary, we had a good start of the year, and I think most of all, we've been building the base for growth through strengthening the organization and also making responsibilities clear in the functions. And we've been upgrading the ERP systems to the cloud, and we've been building for future growth. So quite a nice quarter, actually, to be presenting at this stage, given the quite still low consumer confidence in the market.
So with this, I hope there are some questions in the chat. Maybe, Hanna, you could help us with that?
Yes, there are some questions. So, let's start with the political strikes we had in Finland. So what kind of an impact did the political strikes in Finland have on Orthex?
I can take that one. No direct implications on the business. We were lucky in the sense that we got the raw material we needed, but it was a close call. I think if it would have continued for a while, we would have had at least one factory standing still. Then finding transportation for our goods to be shipped was harder because a lot of the shipments that usually would go by the harbors or by sea were placed on wheels, where we have our products. So in that sense, it was not a nice situation, and we didn't know what was coming, but at the same time, we weren't that hurt.
Yes, thanks. Then moving on to there are several questions about cost here, so we'll start with cost and administration. So regarding operational management changes, is your administration now in place? And could we expect similar admin expense run rate going forward?
I can take that question. So as I mentioned during my presentation, the admin costs last year were actually quite low. So now we are back on a more normal level. So, I mean, we are not expecting them to increase in same percentages throughout the year. And there's been also a lot of activities. We will, of course, continue to do to make sure that the cybersecurity is on a good level, and most of the tools and systems are moved to cloud. So there might be some costs also in the future, but nothing similar is expected on the long term.
Thanks, Saara. And I guess the next one goes to you as well. It's about electricity prices. So has the fluctuations in the energy prices affected your profitability?
I can take that, that one as well. So during the first quarter, it has actually affected our prices. So we fix our prices usually from 50 to 80, even up to 85%. And last year, we were enjoying nicely fixed price quite some time, and this year the fluctuation has gone through a bit more than last year. And maybe one thing, I mean, during this year, we won't be getting an electricity support what we got last year from Swedish government. It was up to 800,000 EUR last year. So it's good to remember that that's not gonna come again during 2024.
Exactly. Yes. Good. Then about the change in the reporting, so, about the home and garden. So is home and garden reporting change just technical, or do you see some, for example, sales synergies when combining home and yard and plant care into one category?
That's a good question. I think there are synergies already there, and it's a technical combination because the categories are fairly small, for us as businesses, even though we still feel they are important. It's usually the same buyers, and it's the same stores and channels, except for the garden centers, but there's no clear sort of reason to keep these separate. It's same consumer, same buyers.
Exactly. Good.
Mm.
Then, about the Q1 sales, did you have a lot of campaign sales during the Q1? And was the turnover affected more by campaigns or than the investments on the point of sales implementations?
That's a good question. I think we had the right amount of campaigns for the quarter, given that shoppers are sitting on their money, and when you go into the store, if you don't look good there, and if you don't trigger the buying behavior, you will not have sales. So we did quite actively campaigns, and it's part of the sales, of course, and it's very hard to say where we would have landed without them. But clearly, this is the right time to partner up with the retailers and together make sure that the business still grows and goes well.
Yes. Thanks, Alexander. That was all for this time, so thanks for the very good questions.
Thank you very much. Then I think it's time to wish all of you who have been online a nice start of the summer, and see you after the summer in August for the next quarter report. So thank you.