Good morning everybody, and welcome to our first interim report presentation of the year 2026. If you have any questions, you can send them to chat or via email to investors@verkkokauppa.com, and questions will be then answered at the end of the presentation. As usual, also available for questions, CFO Jesper Blomster and Head of Investor Relations, Elisa Forsman. I will start my presentation with operating environment, then we will jump into the report published this morning, key financials and strategy execution, then outlook for the rest of the year and key takeaways and questions if there are any. Let me start with the operating environment. We actually saw a shift in the Finnish market.
Consumer confidence started to decline clearly, and also consumers' confidence in their own economy started to decline significantly during the quarter, being on a low level at the end of the quarter on March time. We saw some high electricity prices probably impacting that, and also the war in Ukraine impacting consumers' confidence clearly in the Finnish market. Also, banks somewhat revisited and revised their expectancy towards this year according to the GDP growth in the Finnish market. In this kind of operating environment, it is typical to see that price aggressiveness is increased. The consumer is more tilted towards campaign products. We also saw a historic high share of campaign price sales in our line of business. Despite these shifts and tough environment, we have performed strongly, continued to growth, and outperformed the market and gained market share. That's the first highlight of the report.
Revenue grew by almost 7%, broadly across categories and channels. The main driver for the growth was, again, e-commerce operations growing by over 15%, accompanied with a strong B2B segment growing almost by 10%. We see clearly that the fast delivery capabilities in the Finnish market for consumers and also for B2B clients is the winning recipe. 1-hour delivery is growing as much as 100%. Besides being successful in the home market, our international growth story continues, sales outside of the Finnish market growing by 60%. If you look closer then at the margin, first of all, it's good to mention that previous year levels were historically high.
Somewhat of an outlier on absolute levels due to the reason that we were ramping up the inventories and we were able to have really good commercial one-off terms to certain stock lots, which we were able to also partly sell out throughout the period previous year. This year it was not the same case. We saw that in this kind of operating environment, typically price pressure is increased. Our competitors also added pricing, and as said earlier, the consumer tilted extremely towards campaign products, which are typically also of a lower margin. On top of that, the sales of consumer finance negatively impacting the margin levels this year. If you take all these things in consideration, the absolute level of 17.3% is actually a pretty solid figure. The profitability drivers, obviously a positive one coming out of the revenue development.
On the other hand, due to the gross margin % not being on the same level as previous year, the gross profit slightly decreased the previous year. Cost efficiency was on a good level. Personnel costs are going slightly down. On the other hand, other operating expenses slightly up. We invested more in marketing. Previous year levels were the bare minimum, so this year we have been investing slightly more in marketing, in growth initiatives, international growth, and also warehouse operations and higher inventories and volumes bring some additional costs with it. Ended up in EUR 2.5 million comparable operating EBIT, not on the same level as previous year, but I think that this is a decent outcome in this operating environment. Some words about the inventory. It is higher than previous year levels.
Previous year levels, we were coming from a really low level, which we then started to ramp up. This year, there has been strong indication at the end of last year and also the beginning of this year that the component price increases will be impacting a lot of categories. We took the active decision to start ramping up these categories to have slightly a buffer and we made some good commercial terms. We believe that this inventory is then something that has a positive impact on our margin going forward, Q2 , Q3 , as the prices are expected to increase for others who then start ramping the inventories up. Also good to mention that most of the season categories already in our warehouses. The financial position of the company continued strongly.
Cash flow at this point of year is historically always on a negative side, also due to the reason that we are ramping up the inventories in those price-pressured categories due to the components. Strong financial position or cash position, almost EUR 30 million on the bank account. Really good net debt ratio, equity ratio going almost at 25% levels, clear improvement in the last quarters in a row. Low level of investments as most of the development and architecture work is done internally as well as the business model is really investment light. Despite certain shifts in the demand and operating environment, we are determined continuing executing our strategy as follows. We are winning market share in the Finnish market by accelerating the online shift throughout fast delivery capabilities. Really good showcase again, almost growing 100% our 1-hour deliveries.
At the end of the quarter, this is the cumulative amount of over 300,000 deliveries, 1-hour deliveries that we have been fulfilling to the consumers. It's not just coming from the same customer amount. The customer base is expanding. People are trying this out, and we believe this is a sustainable way to gain permanent market share in the Finnish market. At the end of the quarter, all fast delivery services amounted to almost 30% of total online sales. Online sales is almost 73% of all company's revenue. This has become a big part of our business. Besides gaining market share and being the winner in the Finnish market, the home market, the international growth story is nicely continuing.
Again, stating strong figures growing by 60%, especially in the Swedish market, we have been really good, growing by 100%, so we are focusing on the Nordics, certain central European markets with picked partners we believe are the winners, and we can gain continued growth with our international business. What do we expect from this year? Although there was a shift in consumer behavior and demand, we believe that this is something that is temporary. We do believe that this year will still be a year where the discretionary shopping will start to improve. If inflation and interest rates will or would stay stable, it is expected that the purchasing power keeps on continuing to improve, and that has positive impact on consumption and especially on discretionary shopping. We do see that the market intensity and price intensity has increased. We are ready for that.
We have been building our operations in a way that we can operate, although the margins are tighter, and we have good commercial operations. We strongly believe that we have the winning formula in the Finnish market. We have been showcasing quarter -after- quarter that we can grow despite the market changes, despite soft demand, gain market share. On top of that, we have a good plan on gaining international growth on top of that. Therefore, no need to revisit our guidance. We do expect revenue development to be a positive one, and we believe that the comparable operating result will improve from previous year levels. If I sum up the Q1 , we saw a shift in the operating environment. We were quick to act according to those changes.
We continued to gain growth, gain market share in most of our category segments and in several markets as well, continued to operate cost-efficient, and make sure that we have a decent operating margin despite these kind of changes. On top of that, we are executing our strategy as follows. This is all. As I see, there are no questions at this point, so I say thank you all for joining in, and have a great day.