Hello, and welcome to Vaisala Q3 2022 Interim Report conference. My name is Priscilla, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. I'll now hand over to your host to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Here, I'm joined with our chairman of the board, Ville Voipio, our CFO, Kaarina Muurinen, our head of IR, Paula Liimatta, and myself, Kai Öistämö. I'm the president and CEO of Vaisala. We had an excellent performance during the Q3 . Whether we look at orders received or net sales, both grew strongly, and I'm very happy to report also in both business areas. Our order book ended at the record level of EUR 188 million at the end of the quarter, and the operating result increased when we look at year-on-year, i.e, Q3 to Q3. The orders received grew by 25% and net sales by 20% when we compare to the same time previous year.
When we look at more detailed into the orders received, as said, 25%, compared to Q3 2021. If we look at on constant currencies, that corresponds to 17% growth in constant currencies, as said from both business areas. When we look deeper into the segments that we serve, market segments that we serve, in industrial instruments, life sciences, power industry, meteorology, renewable energy would be the market segments that I would mention where the demand was the strongest. The order book, as said, reached new record level again, and the increase compared to the same time last year, 14%.
Same market segments where the growth came from, and then if I take Weather and Environment also, mention that renewable energy, ground transportation, aviation would be the market segments that I would highlight. When we look at net sales, as said, 20% growth in constant currencies that corresponds to 12% growth compared to same time last year. Very strong growth in both business areas, which is worth mentioning. When we look into the different market segments, industrial instruments, life sciences, meteorology, aviation, and renewable energy be the ones which again are worth highlighting. In terms of an operating result, as said, increased when we compare to the same time last year.
This is despite the fact that the gross margin decreased to 50%-54.7% compared to three percentage points higher same time last year. This came due to the negative impact on spot purchases. If you look at the entire spot purchases, that had a 4.2 percentage point negative impact on the gross margin, and this 4.2 percentage points then was partially offset by higher share of more profitable product business pricing and economies of scale generated then by the higher volumes that we experienced. As we have indicated before, we continued to invest and that led to an increase in operating expenses compared to the same time last year.
We continued to invest according to our growth strategy, and the other contributor, as we have mentioned in the previous quarterly calls, was the IT system renewal and that we are investing in during this year. Going into the two business areas that we have, first starting from Industrial Measurements, excellent performance continued as it has been throughout this year. The orders received increased strongly in again, industrial instruments, life sciences and power industry market segments. The order book itself reached all-time high, 60% up from last year, and that corresponds to, in terms of, if we look at in the constant currency side, that will be 21% increase in constant currency.
When we look at Industrial Measurements, net sales side, again, strong net sales growth, 22%, corresponds to 40% in constant currencies. Industrial instruments, life sciences market segments were especially strong, albeit that the growth came from all market segments. Gross margin decreased here as well in Industrial Measurements, 3.5 percentage points decrease in gross margin, and this is related back to the earlier comment into this component spot purchases, which in industrial measurement context had a 6.3 percentage point negative impact. We were able to partially offset by economies of scale higher through the higher volumes and other actions that we took, like pricing actions we took during the year.
The operating result ended up being 14.2%, which is up from 14.2%. EUR 14.6 million, which is up from EUR 14.2 million, corresponding to same time last year corresponding to 25.3 percentage points of net sales during Q3 2022. Moving on to the Weather and Environment business area. As said, excellent quarter there as well. The order book ended up at the all-time high. Orders received increased strongly in meteorology and renewable energy market segments. Order book reached at the end of the quarter nearly EUR 150 million. When we look at the percentage-wise orders received, they grew by 21% compared to the same time last year.
In terms of net sales in Weather and Environment, strong growth in meteorology, aviation, renewable energy market segments. Same kind of a decrease in gross margin as in Industrial Measurements. In Weather and Environment, the decrease was three percentage points and due to the spot market component spot purchases, which had a 2.5 percentage point negative impact on the gross margin when compared to the same time last year. The operating result, EUR 7.5 million or 9.9% of net sales. Moving on to the year-to-date financials. When we look at the year-to-date numbers, the operating profit margin improved year-on-year to 13.4 percentage points net sales.
Net sales grew by 19% and it kind of, when we turn that into constant currencies, that would be the corresponding 13% growth year-over-year. Gross margin close to the previous year, which shows our capability to mitigate the increase in both the inflationary costs on our component costs, as well as the spot purchases, which now when we turn it into a year-to-date number, had a 2.5 percentage point negative impact on gross margin. You know, and then if we turn this into earnings per share, this would correspond to EUR 1 as earnings per share.
Cash flow from operating activities decreased, and then this is really kind of came through mainly through the increased activities in terms of increased net sales. It's a change in the working capital was the biggest contributor to this. Our financial position continues to be strong, and it may be worth noting on the capital expenditure side that when we look at the year-to-date number, as we have indicated before, we have now returned to kind of the normal level as what we call a normal level, i.e., the level before the building project that we experienced during the past few years.
Looking at the market development and business outlook, we updated this, and we see growth in the same segments as before, i.e., high-end measurement, data instruments, life sciences, power industry, liquid measurements, and renewable energy. Aviation continues to recover, and meteorology and ground transportation continue to be stable. On the back of very strong Q3 , we raised our business outlook, October 14. Our new guidance is that we estimate our full year net sales to be in a range between EUR 500 million-EUR 520 million and our operating result for 2022 to be in the range between EUR 62 million-EUR 72 million.
If I just summarize before I open up for questions, we had an excellent, very, very strong Q3 . Very happy to report that it came from both business areas. Orders received, net sales grew. Both grew strongly during the quarter, and the order book ended up at a record high level at EUR 188 million. Very, very happy with our performance during the Q3 , and given the strong order book, gives us a good basis. I'll end up with my prepared remarks here, and I'll now open up the line for any questions you may have. Operator, please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for question. All right. We will first take our first question from [Paul de Thierry from Arke Advisers] . Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. A couple of questions, and I'll take them in turn. You mentioned your gross margin impact at the group level of 4% in the quarter. I'm just looking at how that's run throughout the year. I think it was 1% in the Q1 , 3% in the Q2 , now 4%. Can you give us any further color on whether you expect this sort of pricing pressure to continue at this level? Is it likely then to ease itself away as it become as we go through 2023? That was my first question.
Thank you, Paul, for the question. As I said in my prepared remarks, the pressure actually came from acquiring the components from the spot markets. As we have indicated throughout the year, during this year, there has been a significant shortage of electronic components in the marketplace. It was very much of a conscious decision that we chose to be active on the spot market and acquire the components that we need, which has enabled us to meet the very strong demand, as you can see in terms of our net sales growth both in the Q4 as well as the year to date.
It very much was a business decision, and we are very happy with the business decision. It has yielded exactly as we intended. Maybe continuing the second part of your question in terms of going forward, I would answer this way, that we expect the component shortage situation continue now in the Q4 and into next year. However, it gradually will improve, and especially when we go into next year, the component we expect that the component situation, availability situation will be better when as we go as in as we go into next.
Okay. Thank you for that. On a sort of related issue, you mentioned before that actually you redesigned some of the components, given the shortage and lack of availability. Are you still in an element of redesign, or are you actually reversing some of the redesign of products as the component shortage in certain areas becomes less? What are the pressures on the business at the moment? And are you easily able to produce the same quality and specification of products given the component shortage?
Thanks for the question. First of all, on the quality side, we make no compromises on the quality. We always hold the quality criteria, and we will not do anything which would be of lower quality. That's kind of a hard line that we have. Back to your question in terms of how we manage or have managed and continue to manage the component shortage situation. There are kind of, I would say, three kind of things that we continue to do. One thing is to negotiate with...
First of all, we do have a good visibility into the availability situation we have had and which has helped, and we continue to have that, which allows us also to negotiate with the vendors on the availability of the components, especially in the areas where it's hard to design around or find other solutions. Together with our vendor partners, we have been able to manage part of the shortage in the marketplace. When there is situations where, despite the best efforts, our vendors have not been able to deliver, we have been active on the spot market using our strong balance sheet, securing the components that we need to meet the strong demand, as I said.
Thirdly, in some cases, we have been redesigning some of the products around another component kind of replacing the missing component or the component that is of short supply with something else that is in a better supply. It's always a mix between these three things, and we continue to play with the three things. Okay, that's fantastic. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Paul. We'll now take our next question from Arttu Heikura from Evli. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. It's Arttu Heikura from Evli. Do you hear me?
Yes. Hey, Arttu. Good to hear your voice.
Yeah. Few questions from my side. In the report, you commented that Vaisala have won new customers. Could you elaborate what were the factors behind new winning customers? What I mean is that is it due to your product availability or something else? How big customers are we talking about?
Thank you for the question. I think it's a good question. As our business mix is very broad, there's not a single answer to this. In the sort of measurement side, we have a huge amount of customers and we have acquired multiple of the customers. It's difficult to quantify exactly how much market share because of the segments that we serve are relatively small, and there are no independent market research that one could rely on. But there's a strong evidence from when we look at the customer base, people who we are selling to. We have gotten new customers. We have gotten customers that we have been trying to sell to for some times in some cases.
We know who they had been buying before, so there's clearly kind of a market share and kind of winning these customers from other places. My colleague here is actually saying that maybe I'm answering the wrong question. If you were asking about the Xweather,
There was-
Okay.
Only a mention about new customers.
I'll just continue. I mean, it's some other cases, especially in the Weather and Environment side, some of the bigger there are maybe a little bit of the bigger customers. Also there, we have gained customers that we kind of again, we know exactly who they've been buying from before. And sometimes it is actually winning market share, winning customers that have been served by other customers. In some cases, it's customers where we have not been able to sell or kind of offer kind of a proper offering before. It's kind of when you ask that whether it comes from availability or our offering, I would answer actually both.
It is definitely the fact that we have been able to deliver has helped us. It is on the back of the very strong offering that we have, and that is kind of especially evident obviously in the newer areas where we have not been kind of serving the market so far.
The economy is going into the bad shape, and I'm just wondering if you could comment in your own words that how do you see the market development in the near future, say, 2023? Has there been any signs of customers becoming more cautious?
When I look at Q3 , we did not see any slowdown in the marketplace despite all the, increased inflation and some signs of slowdown in the economy around the world. I would say this way, that we are well situated strategically as a company if we look at our offering, the market segments and our portfolio that what we serve. I'll take you three examples of this. When we talk about renewable energy, I have a hard time seeing the world stopping investments into renewable energy given what the situation around the world is. I would expect that that will continue to grow.
How exactly whether it has some impact on the economy or not, hard to say, but in general, I would expect that continues to grow. Other example, if I take the pharma life sciences side, which is the largest market segment that we serve in the data measurement side. Again, given the increased attention to the especially the biopharma side and the new kind of advances in the pharma environment and the importance given the pandemic continues to go around the world and the new threats that we can read in the papers, hard to imagine that the investment in the pharma industry would start to shrink.
Thirdly, in general, many of our products, especially in the industrial instruments side, will build into better control of the industrial processes resulting in lower energy consumption and lower carbon footprint. Again, given the high energy prices, actually those are good investment.
I see. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Arttu.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. It appears there is no further question at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional closing remarks.
Thank you for everybody for joining. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Paula Liimatta is the right contact, and we are happy to set a call or meet you in person in the future. I wish you all a very good weekend. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining today's call.