Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Orthex interim report for the first quarter. My name is Alexander Rosenlew, and I have with me Saara Mäkelä, our CFO, and Hanna Kukkonen, our CMO, and we'll take you through the most important things that happened during the first quarter. In very short, the plan is to give you an introduction and then go into the relevant details. Orthex is a leading household company in the Nordics. We take pride in the fact that we produce close to 90% of the product we sell in our own factories under three strategic brands. SmartStore for storage products, GastroMax for kitchen, and then Orthex for the rest. We're spreading out through Europe.
We have our own sales organizations in the U.K., France, and Germany, and also a growing warehouse operation on the border between Germany and France. That's in very short, who we are today. We're about 300 employees in the company. When we look at the product offering, the easiest thing here to mention is that our mission is to make everyday life easier for the consumer. All the products are designed to help with something. They all have a clear function, and they are all meant to last long. No single-use products. Hopefully, they are all so well-designed, so you wouldn't throw them away even if they don't break. Design can always also be a sustainability thing because you can keep the products for years and years.
Forerunner in sustainability is our ambition. We're working hard on that as well. Of course, new products is part of the important plan of doing good business. Storage, clearly the strongest category at the moment, the biggest with 67% of sales. Kitchen, a bit smaller, and home & yard, plant care, 5% and 7% of sales. That's it. Let's jump into what happened during the 1st quarter, so January to March. Very briefly, one could say that market conditions are still quite tough, and during those conditions, the sales declined slightly on the top line as a total. If you take a currency neutral stance, actually sales were slightly up.
Of course, we are happy that our strategy works in terms of sales development and there the European markets where we have built consistently our presence with own people shows results and shows strong growth during the first quarter. Of course, one thing that influences that is the fact that now we are actually able to physically meet our potential customers and show our great products to them, so no problems in actually being very active on the market. In the Nordics, I think we all know that the consumers are under pressure. We have higher cost for the consumers.
Interest rates are high and many other things that actually influences the inflation are basically slowing down what the consumer is doing, and especially in Nordics we can see that. That has an impact on our Nordic sales development. Cost inflation, as said, still high. Energy cost is still high compared to a long-term view. Transport is still quite high, maybe not at peak levels, but this influence our results. The Swedish and Norwegian crown are both weak, and that has affected our profitability. I would say adopting to still quite challenging market conditions during Q1, and especially challenging in the Nordics where we have a strong market position has been the theme of Q1.
Of course, raw material has a significant role in our profitability. Raw material prices are still on high levels, but they are not anymore on the peak levels we saw some quarters ago. Active work to adopt and to actually trim everything we do to adopt to the ever-changing conditions and the rising cost has been what we have been very occupied with during Q1. If we jump into the numbers, net sales decreased by half a percentage, but in constant currency, net sales or sales were up 2.5%. The invoiced sales decreased by 1.3%, we did about EUR 21.2 million in sales when it was EUR 21.5 million last year.
Really happy to actually see the good development outside of the Nordics with a growth of up to 37%. That's of course according to our growth strategy. On the EBITA, the Adjusted EBITA was EUR 2.4 million compared to EUR 1.8 last year, and an improvement in percentage as well to 11.7%. The net debt is now at EUR 2.4 million, so a slight decline from last quarter and quite in line with our long-term targets. Cash flow positive from operating activities. Not much to comment there other than perhaps that we've been able to reduce the inventories a little bit in the company.
If we look by geography in more detail, the Nordics, you can see that the conditions have been tough. We haven't lost any distribution. We haven't lost any listings. Still, as said, the consumers and the customers are careful at the moment. That influences the sales development there. In Europe, I think there for us it's more of new customers, new distribution into existing customers and so on, and there our market share is of course much smaller where it's possible to actually make growth with good products and good activities and an active approach to building business. That has been during Q1 successful.
The rest of the world, of course, the comparison is small and rather flat on that one. If you look at the categories, I think it clearly depicts the situation on the market, whereas storage is the spearhead when we sell to markets outside of Europe, outside of the Nordics. Which means that when that area actually develops nicely, it means that the storage category usually is the one that's growing well. There we can see a good uplift in storage category sales. Regarding kitchen, the Nordic markets are the biggest sort of market for kitchen products at the moment. Of course, we're trying to grow that as well outside of the Nordics.
When the Nordic has tough times, it means usually that kitchen is in a way more affected than the storage category. Just a small comment on the two smaller categories. They are declining, and a bit of that could be put to the weather and also a bit of that could be put to actually customers having inventory from last season of flower pots and so on. It's been a bit cold and it's been a bit full in the inventories of our customers. Small numbers still there. This is a nice picture to show you.
We finally got the opportunity to be present at fairs throughout Europe and we had a quite big exposure at the Ambiente Fair, which is the biggest fair for us in terms of meeting customers from all over the world. A good attendance there is one of the many highlights during Q1 when it comes to the commercial side of business. Very happy to be able actually to be there and to meet customers in person and also the fact that corona is not disturbing us anymore when it comes to new customer acquisition. In terms of strategy, nothing strange, nothing changed in a sense on the big lines. It's working well.
Our ambition is to become the number one brand in storage in Europe and then, of course strengthen our position locally in the Nordics and become even a stronger company in this area of the, of our business. The strategy is, I would say, fairly simple. We need to continue to make great products. We need to continue with innovation. We need to continue to show the way in sustainability. With that, we believe that and solid action, we believe that the Nordics can still grow. We believe that the second box here, which is actually the growth throughout Europe through new customers and existing customer is actually, one of the biggest opportunities we have.
We are happy to actually report the growth in Q1, which is visible that our efforts are actually turning into to business. The third box is about e-com selling through both omnichannels, so customers that have both physical stores and then the e-com channel, and then the pure e-com players like Amazon and so on. We've been dedicating efforts to that one and also working hard to look as good in the virtual store as in the physical stores. Clearly an area of growth which is interesting to us. Then we have the final opportunity of market consolidation which is also on the table.
During tough conditions I think it's important to focus on your own house and make it really efficient and working well. Of course at the same time keeping the eyes open for potential M&A candidates. That in short on strategy. I'll now give the word to Hanna Kukkonen, our CMO, who will tell you more about sustainability.
Thank you, Alexander. A short update on sustainability during the first quarter. We want to be the forerunner in sustainability in our industry.
In a nutshell, how we do it is that we produce long-lasting, high-quality products that can be used for years and years, and then recycled after the use. We produce our products in our own factories in Finland and Sweden locally and safely, and then we increase steadily the usage of renewable and recycled materials. We have set a very goal to work towards carbon neutrality in our production by 2030. If we look at the Q1 and the start of the year, what happened, we published our sustainability report for 2022, some of the most significant milestones from the report are is that the Science Based Targets approved our near-term science-based emission reduction targets. We updated our sustainability strategy, and we also created the roadmap towards the carbon neutrality.
Our emissions, Scope 1, 2, and 3, decreased by 23% during 2022. What was especially good was that the relative carbon footprint, so the emissions per produced kilo, also went down significantly from 2.5 to 2.2. We're also very happy that the result of our employee survey improved from 14.4 to 14.6. During the Q1, our Lohja factory ISCC PLUS certificate was renewed, and this means that we can continue to sell more and more products with renewable raw materials by applying the mass balance approach. Mass balance approach means that the renewable raw material is mixed to the raw material in the raw material production. A few words about our roadmap towards the carbon neutrality.
Our emissions, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are already quite small. For example, the Scope 2 emissions are already zero, thanks to the renewable energy that we use. We really now concentrate on the Scope 3 to reduce our emissions. The emissions from the Scope 3 mainly come from our raw materials. Concentrating on changing to more sustainable raw materials is the key in this roadmap. We have different means to do it. We further adopt the mass balance approach. We develop together with our partners the plastic recycling technology, and then we concentrate on innovations and new sources of raw materials. A lot of work ahead of us, but a clear strategy and a goal to work to. I give the word back to Saara, I think.
Thank you. Thank you, Hanna. Our reported net sales decreased slightly by 0.5%, but in constant currency sales growth was 2.5%. In the area rest of the Europe, both new and existing customers were growing very strongly, and sales increased by more than 37%. Growth in Europe was mainly driven by storage category and expansion of the product offering in our customers. In the Nordics, sales declined, the customer uncertainty continued. Inflation and weak currencies increased the uncertainty within the customers and consumers and in Sweden and Norway, some big customers continued limiting their purchasing volumes. Our EBITA development was positive, Adjusted EBITA grew from last year's EUR 1.8 million to EUR 2.4 million.
Price increasing effect is well visible in the figures, and due to lower sales volumes, we have also had very tight cost control. Also, the cost phasing through during the year, I mean, it's not exactly the same as last year. The biggest single reason affecting the profitability is the raw material prices. On the other hand, a weak Swedish crown and Norwegian crown are affecting the profitability negatively. Next we have the raw material price index slide. Price indexes have decreased from the highest peak levels, and now they've been couple of quarters on a stable level. Despite the decline, price indexes are still above the long-term average levels.
Currently there are no availability issues, so availability is good, and it actually seems that demand is rather weak currently, and suppliers might be limiting their production levels. Uncertainty regarding the price levels continues also continued during the quarter and continues also in the future. Next, the investments. EUR 500,000, they were on the same level as last year, and most of the investments were related to product novelties and some capacity increases as well. Net debt was EUR 24.1 million, leverage 2.4, so slight decline in leverage and now just below the target level. The very tough quarter two last year is still affecting the rolling EBITDA figure and leverage. The long-term financial targets, they are the same as before.
In Nordics, we are currently below target levels in sales, but in strategic markets outside Nordics growth exceeded targets. Also, profitability has increased and leverage is within the target range. Latest dividend decided was percentage-wise quite high. I mean, we are communicating that it's more than 50% of the result. Now it was 90%, but in absolute value, it's EUR 0.11 per share. The first part was distributed in April, and the next payout is planned for October. I'll let Alexander to summarize the quarter.
Thanks, Saara. Just a short summary here to highlight the three main points. Profitability clearly improved. Sales growth in Europe was strong and according to strategy. In the Nordics, we've been facing quite a lot of consumer uncertainty and also customer uncertainty in the sense that they don't maybe wanna buy as much when the consumer behavior is uncertain. That's what we were living within in Q1. At this stage, I hope you have used the chat because we are more than happy to answer some of your questions. That we will do together with Saara and Hanna. Hanna, if you can help with facilitating the questions.
Yes
I t would be great.
Yes. There are a few questions in the chat. First about the Nordic market. Do you have any visibility into when certain Nordic retailers will return to normal purchasing matters? Overall, what is happening in the Nordic market?
It's, it's a tough question. I mean, we can see many of the consumer goods companies that publish their results are also suffering from weak demand in the Nordics. I think especially in the countries where loans and living loans like for housing are high, the interests are higher. I think Sweden is a lot hit by this fact. The consumer actually has quite a little or less money to buy, to buy things. Hopefully, that will change one day. It's a, it's a hard guess for me personally to give you a clear view on where the world economy and the Nordic economy is going and at what pace.
Clearly, we hope that buying will be back to more normal levels. One thing that actually influenced a lot the consumer was the nervousness with the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. That's of course a bit old news, still, I think so many strange things happened and are happening at the moment on the market. Hard to say and give a clear answer there.
Continuing on the Nordics. There was just a question about the situation of the distributor stocks. Do you have a visibility on the situation of our distributor stocks in the Nordics?
We get the sell-out numbers, I mean, how much we sell out of the stores from a lot of our customers and we can of course see that and then compare to how much we sell into the to the stores or the customers. In that sense, it's quite straightforward I think because things are still moving out of the stores and our product are moving. They are not so expensive compared to other goods that the consumer buy, and they are functional products. However, I think many of the customers are careful to sit with a lot of stock. I think the fairly sort of tough conditions a year- ago and with the seasons last I think last spring, a lot of our customers bought a lot of stuff.
Maybe with all the changes in the economy, those things were still in the warehouse when this spring started. We are hoping for nice weather, so also the flower pots and freezer boxes will start flying out of the shelves.
Thank you. Moving on to the other markets. What is the main growth driver in the rest of Europe currently? Growing with existing customers, getting new customers or expanding the product offering?
That's a great summary of where the main growth comes from, I think in all three parts. What we need to do here is to actually increase the good cooperation with many of the customers we have managed to start cooperation with, increase the number of stores where we are present in those existing customers. At the same time, an event like Ambiente in Frankfurt is the place to show and to be seen what we can actually provide to any customer who's interested, and we are happy to have new ones on board as well.
Good. About the price increases. Do you believe you can maintain your increased prices or have you seen retailers demanding lower prices?
Our pricing strategy is a long-term price strategy. We don't move in extremely fast, let's say, big sort of ups and downs. Our ambition is to be on a long-term, on the right level. I think there we are gradually getting to a level which is again sustainable. I don't think we have taken up our prices too much compared to the situation we have today. Of course, we follow the situation closely and hopefully this, let's say, raw material pricing at least could be at a stable level.
We know that the cost inflation is high in many other places. Hopefully we can keep the price levels so we don't need to increase that much anymore this year.
Thank you. About, profitability. Short question: What is the main reason for good profitability?
Maybe I can take this one. I mean, the single biggest thing affecting is the raw material price, which is on a lower level than last year. There are other factors like price increases and tight cost control as well. The single biggest one is raw material price.
Thank you. Then we take a couple more questions about M&As. Are you aware of any of your competitors being active in terms of M&A recently?
That's a good question. I can't really comment on that one, actually. I don't have a clear view of what is actually available information on the market at the moment.
Yes. I think we have asked almost all of the questions. Just let me flip through. I think we have answered almost all of the questions now, so. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Hanna. That's it for Q1 and we will of course be back with the next quarter later on. Have a continued nice day.
Thank you.
Thank you.