Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Aker BioMarine's first quarter, 2026, where me, Matts Johansen, the CEO, and CFO Katrine Klaveness will take you through the highlights and the financials of the quarter. This time we will not host a Q&A at the end. If you have any questions, you can reach out to IR with Chris or to Katrine after the call. Q1 2026 is yet another very strong quarter for Aker BioMarine. For the group, we delivered very strong momentum in Human Health Ingredients. In total, for the group, we delivered $57.3 million in revenue, up 13% year-over-year, with an EBITDA of NOK 12.5 million, up 34% year-over-year.
As mentioned, it is the Human Health Ingredients and an EBITDA of NOK 14.9 million, up 27% year-over-year. The main driver of growth in Human Health Ingredients is the core krill oil sales, which are continuing very strong growth momentum with 26%. We have merged that into it. As a result, we delivered $28.1 million of revenue, down 2% year-over-year, driven by Epion, which we'll get back to a little bit later, and an adjusted EBITDA of $1.8 million for the quarter. Emerging Businesses is no longer a separate segment.
Epion is, as mentioned, included in Consumer Health Products segments and the others in corporate. We have also in the quarter refined our Human Health Ingredients process. As mentioned, all-time high revenues, $57.3 million up 13%, with a very strong EBITDA main contributor to that growth. Human Health Ingredients, as you can see on the graph to the right, we have quite low revenue from other products. That is our QHP, the by-product from our Houston factory. That is due to having shut down in the factory in the beginning of the year and producing less QHP in the quarter.
For a full year, that's a take and pay contract with our Aker QRILL Company partner on the supply side, so that will normalize over time. The important metric to follow here is the krill oil sales. As you can see, record sales, 26% growth year-over-year, building on the very strong growth we also saw in Q4. Well ahead on the CAGR that we have seen the last couple of years for our company. This is also the 13th consecutive quarter with growth for Human Health Ingredients. It's mainly driven by volumes across all regions from U.S., Europe, South America, and Asia.
Coming from volume there, but it's also a favorable product mix where we sell a bigger portion of capsules compared to bulk oil, which also drives positive revenue. The gross margins in percentage is down because when we sell capsules, the gross margin percentage is a little bit lower because of the cost of capsulation. If you look at the absolute contribution per kilo oil, we have higher contribution from caps, that's a good underlying development for the business. We have good control on our SG&A costs, as a result, we have a good expansion in our EBITDA margin, now at 47%, for the quarter, delivering those $14.9 million of EBITDA, up 27%.
Key driver for the quarter and also coming into the year is the launch we had at the end of last year at Costco, and that product is continuing to perform very well on the shelf and providing a good halo effect also generally in the American market. Moving over to Consumer Health. As mentioned, we have now merged Epion and our Kori product in here. That is the reason why we have negative growth of 2%. For our old Consumer Health Products, the private label business, we have 3% growth for the year and an EBITDA growth of 5% in that business. We have a one-off negative effect on revenues for our Kori or Epion business in the quarter as we have changed the approach to Amazon.
We used to work with directly with a fulfillment partnership with Amazon. Now we have a new setup with a company called Pattern, which is an AI automated marketing optimization platform for Amazon that are now also covering the marketing costs for us. It's part of the deal. Which means when we are selling to them, we are selling at a lower price, but at the same time, we have no marketing costs related to Amazon. That's a one-off effect. As the quarter you make that change, where you get lower revenue, and then from the next quarter, that will normalize. On the consumer sales for Epion and Kori, it's continuing stable and slight positive development.
That is the reason why Epion is down and also impacting the overall growth for Consumer Health Products. EBITDA development healthy. As mentioned from the core, private label Consumer Health Products business, its EBITDA is up 5%, and the reason why it is now 14% in total is because the profitability of Kori is improving, getting very close to that target of break even for the Kori product. Giving the word over to Katrine to take us through the financials.
Good morning. I will take you through the financial figures for the first quarter. Very happy to present another solid quarter marking a good start to the year, with group revenues up 13% and Superba sales up 25%. I will start with a few comments to the P&L. As mentioned, Q1 showed 13% sales growth on group level, with revenue ending at $57.3 million, up from $50.8 million same quarter last year. COGS are relatively lower due to higher sales of Superba in the product mix, hence gross margin is at 45% in the quarter, up from 43.6% Q1 2025. SG&A is lower in the quarter compared to last year. On an underlying basis before non-recurrent projects and transitional service income, it is more or less flat despite higher sales.
There have been cost initiatives across all segments, and Epion in particular has reduced costs significantly after integrating operations with Lang. We have also, as Matts alluded to, from this quarter combined the two segments for reporting purposes so that Epion is part of the Consumer Health Products segment. Net financial item mainly includes bond interest and remaining unamortized bond fees. Please note that Q1 2025 was low, as the average 25 was NOK 4 million per quarter. This leads to a net financial result of negatively NOK 2.7 million, slightly improved from a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA was at NOK 12.5 million, up from NOK 9.4 million Q1 last year. Total adjustments of NOK 3.2 million relates to HHI transaction preparations, severance packages from the restructuring program, and amortization of a customer contract.
SG&A in the corporate segment is at $6.8 million, down from Q1 last year. On an underlying basis after adjustments, it's relatively flat. Q1 2025 had transition service revenue of $0.7 million from the QRILL Company, improving the EBITDA slightly, despite higher internal eliminations last year. Most of the adjustments to the EBITDA are booked in this segment as they relate to corporate projects such as the HHI transaction preparations and the restructuring program. The restructuring program is near completion, with a second wave of role transfer being implemented now in the first half of 2026. Severance packages will impact adjustments throughout the year. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA reflects underlying SG&A level for the group going forward. Working capital is up with $15 million after a larger Nutra payment to the QRILL Company, reducing payables.
Marginal change in inventory and receivables from year end. Investments in the quarter was at NOK 3 million. This mainly relates to maintenance work in our manufacturing plant in Houston and development projects related to Algae and Lysoveta. There is an ongoing feasibility study to review long-term capacity alternatives for the plants. We are expecting some investments related to pre-engineering of this project in 2026, so total investments will be somewhat above the 2025 level. We saw negative cash flow from operations of NOK 10.8 million in the quarter due to reduction in working capital from the before mentioned Nutra payment. Cash flow from investing relates to investment in maintenance in the Houston manufacturing plant of NOK 3 million. Cash flow from financing is positive with NOK 17 million as a result of the refinancing, partly offset by paying down on the overdraft.
Cash for the quarter ends at NOK 19.8 million, with total available liquidity at NOK 33 million. The company has completed a refinancing to increase its financial flexibility into a potential HHI transaction. The NOK 1.6 billion bond has been redeemed at a call price of NOK 102.12, and a new bank term loan of NOK 175 million has been placed. The new structure carries two covenants: a liquidity covenant of minimum available liquidity end of each quarter at NOK 5 million, and a leverage covenant on net debt over adjusted EBITDA of 5.5x . The company is compliant with both covenants in the quarter. Reported leverage for the quarter was 3.6 x.
Net debt is up NOK 19 million last quarter due to project cost related to the HHI transaction preparations, Nutra payments in the quarter, and the cost of refinancing. I'll end up with the balance sheet before I hand the word back to Matts. Property, plant and equipment includes production-related equipment in Houston. Intangible includes investments in Algae, Lysoveta, and the capacity increase project. Equity accounted investments include AION and Kupos. Inventory is up as a result of higher Superba production in Houston over the last 12 months. Derivative asset, the cross-currency swap, is settled as part of the bond redemption done end of Q1. Cash ended at NOK 19.8 million . Part of the new bank loan has been used to pay down on the working capital facility.
Interest-paying debt includes the new bank loan of $175 million, with the denominated $150 million bond being fully redeemed on March 30th. Equity at the end of the quarter was $141.4 million, implying an equity ratio of 37%. That ends the final financial section, and Matts will conclude the presentation.
Thank you, Katrine. We'll conclude now with the outlook. As you have seen, a strong performance on Human Health Ingredients, with the Kori K rill business growing 26% in the first quarter, following up also a very strong Q4 where we grew 28%. We expect that segment to continue good growth and getting those improved profits from the operational leverage that we have seen in our EBITDA numbers also historically, where the growth comes at higher marginal margin than the base. On Consumer Health Products, we expect that to be back into modest growth now, including the Epion and core business and for the Kori private label business, we saw that also now in the first quarter.
On the Understory Protein side, we also would like to give an update that we have an advanced discussion now with one party. Too early to conclude, but looking like we might get the solution for that in not too distant future. Also, as announced earlier, we have mandated Jefferies and Houlihan Lokey as investment banks to support our alternatives to reset transaction during 2026. That work is continuing now also coming into Q2. With that, we end today's presentation. As mentioned in the beginning, we will not have a live Q&A session, but just encourage you to reach out to us after this call if you have any questions to us. Thank you, and see you next quarter.