Okay, good morning all, and a warm welcome to ABG Sundal Collier's Q1 result presentation. Before we kick off, I would like, as always, to introduce my co-presenter, Peter Straume, our CEO and Managing Partner for our Norwegian operations. I'd also like to mention that you may ask questions during or after the presentation using the team's Q and A function in the top right-hand corner. With that, let me start with some reflections on the quarter and the environment we operate in. I'm rather pleased that we were able to deliver what was a rather difficult market in Q1. Revenues close to NOK 500 million.
This is, in a historical context, a strong set of numbers for the first quarters, with revenues some 60%-100% above our historical range prior to the extraordinary strong first quarter of last year. The market will always provide head or tailwinds, and it's very easy to focus on those external circumstances we cannot influence. Our focus should be, and very much is, how we perform in relation to the market and the conditions in the market and how we continue to deliver higher lows and higher highs over the cycles. Let me provide also some more color on the quarter from our perspective.
We entered the first quarter with a record strong pipeline and executed several transactions during the first half of the quarter in a rather rapid pace until we sadly again witnessed armed aggression in Europe. The Russian war against Ukraine has first and foremost obviously resulted in human suffering beyond comprehension. It has also obviously impacted our markets and the financial market through increased volatility and uncertainty, causing a sharp slowdown in the market for especially primary capital raisings. Several planned transactions were put on hold as a consequence, obviously impacting our revenues in March. Towards the very end of the quarter, we however noticed how markets started to cautiously reopen again, especially within DCM. During the quarter, we also saw a shift towards more M&A transactions when equity capital markets were put on hold.
Us being able to deliver regardless of what the conditions the market provides us with, shifting focus towards the client's needs and making transactions happen, not necessarily in the form we expected entering into the products, is a proof of our ability to adapt swiftly and to enable businesses and capital to grow and perform regardless of market conditions. I think this shows that we have, as a firm, transformed from a highly specialized transaction advisor and brokerage firm into a full service investment bank with a much broader and diverse revenue base. With that, please flip to the next slide, please. Looking into the numbers in more detail, we've already touched upon the revenue side of things. Close to NOK 500 million, to be more specifically, NOK 487 million in the quarter.
For those of you that has followed us for some time, you might recall that Q1 is a seasonally rather slow and weak quarter, not only from a revenue perspective, but obviously, also given our fixed cost base from a margin perspective. Usually Q1 margins tends to be below the full year average, and from that perspective, I think the 27% operating margin is a strong achievement and a testimony of our dedication to always deliver strong profitability. As you would expect, with a business model such as ours, with operational leverage, our earnings per share were down from NOK 39 to 17 in the quarter. Next slide, please. Yeah, markets.
We've already touched upon a few headlines in the markets, and the headlines were not as supportive as we've experienced over the last 18-24 months prior to Q1 this year. Inflation fears, Ukraine war, rising interest rates, volatility sharply increasing. I think it's fair to say, in fact, that markets haven't been helpful at all. Having said that, we witnessed once again some stabilization in the markets towards the end of Q1 and early phases of Q2, with volatility coming back to the low 20s. We'll provide some more reflections on what we think might happen in the future, with the obvious disclaimer we don't have the crystal ball, but at least we have insights into what's happening right here and now.
Before we do that, I'll leave the word over to Peter Straume, who will talk more about our markets and, our performance in investment banking. Please, Peter.
Thanks, Jonas. Moving to page five, just to have a look at the Nordic region and the various products there. There's been a significant slowdown in the capital markets as we see in the last four quarters. Active volume is down by 24%, mainly driven by reduced IPO activity in the Nordics. Also, the debt capital market is down by 40% after closing in the second half of the first quarter. The Nordic M&A market is less affected, and M&A has been an alternative to potential capital raises for many companies, as you can see. If you flip to page six, we see that the corporate financing activity for ABG was affected by reduced activity in the second half of the quarter.
Still, a good selection of corporate financing took place across many sectors and products. The large IPO of Vår Energi , private placement in SATS and the high yield bond in Ahlsell AB , to mention a few. If you look at page seven, we see that ABG experienced solid activity in M&A across several sectors, both in Norway and Sweden. In particular, the TMT sector was strong in the quarter, including the landmark acquisition of Ice Group by Lyse, sale of Papirfly to Verdane and Sikri's acquisition of Metria. In the real estate sector, SBB's cash offer to shareholders of Amasten was important, and the sale of NVBS to Ratos in the service sector as well. We continue to see strong M&A interest going forward across many sectors. By that, I'll leave the word over to you again, Jonas.
Thank you, Peter. Let's continue with our brokerage and research operations. That has continued to deliver solid revenues, I think staying more or less flat versus what was a very strong last year in spite of falling asset values providing some headwinds by nature in the quarter. We are relentlessly focused on providing the best advice and best execution to our clients, and it's therefore very pleasing to see we have improved our ranking amongst our clients in both Kantar in Norway and Prospera in Sweden in research and brokerage. From that point of view, we are gaining ground versus peers in both our home markets, so to speak, which is as important, I think, as the absolute performance.
This strong performance would not have been possible without our hardworking and highly rated research team that are contributing to our improved standing among clients, also when it comes to standing among our investment banking clients. Let's continue with the next slide, please. Looking at costs and our cost base, starting off with our compensation costs, those are down as expected, given our revenue and profitability driven compensation model. While total costs are down by 23%, we have also witnessed some cost increase in our fixed cost base elsewhere due to a number of factors.
To mention a few, normalized travel activity, higher costs related to higher headcount, but also, as I guess for the society as a whole, some general cost inflation. We always take great pride in impacting and having an influence on what we can have an influence on. We are always looking into what we can do in order to keep our organization as slim as possible. We are relentlessly focused on doing that on a daily basis. Having said that, we are not cautious or less dedicated when it comes to our growth ambitions longer term. The main driver for growth is having headcount and the right team in place.
We have, as you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, continued to increase headcount in line with our strategic ambition to grow our product offering to our client base. We will cautiously continue to do just that going forward. Next slide please. Yeah. With that, let me summarize what we think is the key takeaways here today. Q1 numbers are solid in a historical context. I think, for me, we have demonstrated we have reached a new level clearly above our historical ranges, save for the extraordinary strong Q1 last year. We have continued to build and strengthen our position by carefully growing our organization, enabling us to enhance our product offering, as alluded to on the last slide. We will continue doing that.
We have broadened our revenue base significantly with revenues from more products, more sectors, more geographies than ever. We have as such built a more stable business compared to where ABG was, let's say five or 10 years ago. I think we can demonstrate we've been able to keep and gain a high share of completed transactions during Q1. We have seen some ECM, equity capital markets activity shifting towards M&A instead, where we are in a very strong position to take advantage of that shift.
We have seen at the start of Q2 decent activity, some activity picking up, some transactions going through again, but in all honesty, limited visibility, not least as witnessed by the setback of the last few days, and I think it's too early to conclude we are sort of out of the woods when it comes to the uncertainty in the market. What we are focused on as always is to continue to build a stronger and more stable business from the new higher level we have reached. Our main focus, once again, is to deliver higher lows and higher highs. With that, I'd like to open up the floor for any questions.
We have received one question so far and it reads, "You say that you will continue to grow the organization. Can you elaborate a bit on where you want to grow geographically and what functions?
Sure. We are sticking with our strategic plan to grow, especially within investment banking. We've also added quite a lot of especially young talent within our research department as of late, but going forward, our main focus is to continue to build on our strengths within investment banking, both in Norway, but mainly in Sweden, I would say.
Next question. Do you have a year-end headcount target?
No, we don't have any sort of. We have a headcount target, but not a specific date. Headcount target is 350 based on an analysis where we can deliver high quality advice to our clients in line with our ambitions when it comes to market shares. We don't wanna talk exact timing. We are agile and humble for any market conditions changing, and it might present opportunities that might make us move faster towards the target. We don't know. Year-end I'm not in a position to give an exact number, but 350 is the target over time.
There are no further questions.
Okay. Crystal clear. If there should be any further questions later on during the day, do not hesitate to contact either Peter or yours truly directly. Petter could organize any follow-up calls or what you would, how you would like to organize it's up to you. We are available. Thank you so much.