Good morning, and welcome to this presentation of Bevy's results for the Q1 2021. My name is Christian Becken, and I am the CEO of PEPI. With me today, as always, I have our CFO, Marie Danielson, We will take you through our financials. If you will then switch to the presentation. Our presentation includes some forward looking statement, so I would like to point your attention to our disclaimer.
Before I go through the highlights for the quarter, I would like to say that we are very pleased with the result this quarter. Our organization continues to deliver strong results and we can also welcome new members to our team from Honeycomb and Isobrok, People, I am sure, will strengthen our company in the future. Now I will briefly take you through some highlights for the quarter before Marie will go into more detail on the numbers. We delivered significant growth compared to the Q1 last year. This is driven by strong markets and positive contribution from our growth initiatives.
Our volumes have increased in all our segments and most regions, the exception being our packaging business in the Netherlands. We experienced strong demand and due to the well performing operations, we have been able to prove to our customers that we can deliver, which further strengthen our relations to them. About half of the growth come from acquired companies, In particular, the BDH which was included in our accounts from 1st August last year. Our new recycling facility in Portugal ramped up production in Q1 and we expect the facility to be fully commercial this quarter. In addition, we have acquired a minority interest in a recycling company, bringing us even closer to our annual recycling target and to our goal of becoming a circular company.
We have launched our plans for new packaging hub, Justyna in Norway. We have as already mentioned acquired the Danish paper packaging company, Honeycom And we have entered into an agreement to acquire Isenbrock, which is the leading provider of EPP components to the automotive industry in Europe. All in all, a very good quarter. Now I will briefly take you through our numbers. For the Q1, net sales are up by 42% compared to the Q1 of 2020, of which half of the growth is organic coming from higher volumes and increased sales price for segment growth.
EBITDA of EUR 16,700,000 up from 14.8% last year, which at that time was the best Q1 in the history of the company. In the Q1, we saw a historically sharp increase in the styrene price and the price was at a historical high level. This positively affected both revenues and profitability for segment growth, while putting pressure on our margins in the downstream segment, where sales price adjustments toward customers lag approximately 1 quarter. The increase in styrene price has been challenging to our industry. But once again, our integrated and diversified business model proves to be an advantage to us.
Yes, it has been challenging quarter due to the shortage of styrene and the shortage of EPS raw material, But now it seems like most quarters are challenging, one way or another. In the Q1 last year, raw material prices were low And then the profitability of our raw segment was under pressure, while the downstream segments had very good margin at that time. Then the pandemic hit us and our diversification across countries and end markets made us resilient. This year, the high raw material prices provided us with an opportunity to increase the external sales from our raw segment and at the same time increased profitability for the segment. As we control the whole value chain, we are able to maintain or increase our deliveries to our customers when players experience shortage in supply and struggle to deliver.
In other words, Our integrated business model enables us to outperform the market. We have a continued focus on growth with a strong financial platform and a good pipeline of M and A opportunities. Our growth comes from ongoing organic initiatives as well as acquisitions, where we primarily look for companies can strengthen our market position, broaden our product offering, enabling geographical expansion or to increase our recycling capacity. I will now give some examples to our growth initiatives. We have several ongoing growth initiatives.
In March, we announced our plans to establish a state of the art packaging hub at Usnea. Here we will not only build Our most modern and efficient fish box facility but it will also be our most sustainable facility handling increasing volumes of reusable boxes, reusable pallets and other products for fish farming industry. We also have a fish box facility under construction at Senja next to Solmai's new processing plant in Uvanur where we expect to start production in the Q3 this year. During the Q1, our new Greenfield facility in Portugal ramped up its production and with a capacity of around 10,000 tonnes, It is an important contributor to reaching our targets. Then at our installation center in Neusepping, We have invested in a modern extrusion technology.
The new technology will improve our production and efficiency, But most importantly, it will enable us to increase the use of recycling material in our production. We have had some delays in new shipping, which caused some extra costs in this quarter, but now we are up and running. Moving on to our acquisition. I was very pleased to finally be able to announce Our agreement to acquire a majority stake of EsoBLOC late April. EsoBLOC is the market leader in Europe for EPP components to the car industry, an industry we have been following closely for many years now.
EPP is short for expanded polypropylene and it is an excellent material for use in cars. In addition to being shock absorbing, they can reduce noise and replace other components to reduce weight. This means that less energy is used, lowering emission from fossil cars and extending the range for electrical cars. We acquired Ezblog to strengthen our position in the market for automotive EPP components, but also we see Growth in use of EPP components in other industries like heating and ventilation and air conditioning, HVAC solutions. We believe Isoblock and DEV is a good strategic match and we see great synergy potential to our own automotive business and the other EPP business we have.
DieseBLOC is the market leader for EPP components to the automotive industry in Europe with a market share of approximately 21%. The company is listed on stock exchange in Poland and has 3 facilities in Poland and 1 in Germany with excellent location to serve its customers. Isabrok has a very experienced management team, which will add competence and knowledge to our existing business. The founder and CEO of the company, Schimmischlaub, will continue to head the company, which will also continue being a separate listed company. In this figure you can see some of the products that Isobrok typically supply to cars.
Bumpers, headrests, Crash pads and so on. Perfectly fitting into our vision to protect people and goods for better every day. Isobrok has a well diversified base of blue chip customers with a well known brands. In addition to this, they recently entered into an agreement to supply Tesla with components to their new facility in Europe. I will just briefly comment on EsoBlocks Financials.
As you all know, The automotive industry was hit hard by the COVID-nineteen last year. Prior to COVID, they showed good growth with a significant jump in the revenues from 2016 to 2017 due to the acquisition of the German based producer of EPP components, Hurlfoam. Pre COVID-nineteen, the financials from the years 1st May, 2018 to 30th April, 2019, They had revenues on €51,000,000 with an EBITDA of €6,000,000 Looking at current situation for the European automotive industry, the production of light vehicles is expected to grow approximately 20% this year compared to last year. In April, we announced a smaller but Still a very strategical important acquisition of the Danish paper packaging company, Honeycom Sellpak, now PIVI Sellpak. Through this acquisition, we strengthened our product offering, but we're also strengthening our business model by being able to offer our customers complementary or alternative materials.
Honeycomb specializes in protective paper packaging with solutions made from fiber, which are both 100% recyclable like our EPS and biodegradable. Finally, we acquired a minority stake at the company Innoplast In the Q1, adding further capacity to our recycling and bring us closer to our target of becoming a circular company. And with that, I leave the word over to you, Marie.
Good morning. Then we Start with looking at the group picture. And as Christian was mentioning, we have one more quarter where we Grow both from our acquisition initiatives and organically. The organic growth is coming from Prices, it's coming from volumes and it's also coming from product mix. If we look at segment raw, They have the possibility to increase basically instantly their sales prices based on the underlying raw material prices.
So in segment raw, there is a mix between price and volumes that drives the top line. While if you look at Packaging and insulation are downstream, and they do not have the same possibility. So basically, the organic growth that you see in Downstream, that is volume driven. EBITDA is up to €16,700,000 That is approximately 13 percentage improvement, and that increase is coming from acquisition and it's coming from segment raw. In our downstream, we have a negative organic EBITDA organic growth, so to say, And that is coming back from that we have had increasing raw material prices and not the possibility in this quarter to increase the sales prices.
As you can see on this picture as well, packaging and components is our biggest segment with approximately 40 percentage of the Revenue. And this segment will continue to grow with the latest acquisition, both then with Honeycomb and Isoblock. Then we can go to next page. Looking at segment raw, we have increasing volumes, we have increasing EBITDA. It's explained by increased production capacity.
It is a strong underlying market. Most of our increased volumes is sold to the external market. So the share of external sales, as you can see, is Increasing. When it comes to the margins, I believe most of you are familiar with that They can be volatile from quarter to quarter. This Q1, we have an EBITDA margin of The 5 percentage, it's an increase from the 4.2%.
That is what we believe we should Being that range, it is impacted then from we have an upcoming raw material trend, good for the segment. We have a strong demand. We have a good running operation, but on the negative end, we do have some higher fixed cost in this quarter. Packaging and component, as with Raw, we have organic growth from volumes in all our regions. The exception is the Netherlands.
It's quite isolated. It's molded product to the construction industry. We do have some construction Sales in that segment, otherwise they are growing as well. We have BDH, the acquisition that we did in August last year. The biggest Part of that acquisition belongs to the packaging segment, and they contributed approximately EUR 18,000,000 to the top line.
We have an EBITDA that has gone from SEK 8.6 up to SEK 10.5. 2,000,000 is coming from BDH, and what that means is that basically the organic growth is rather flat on EBITDA. And again, it's coming back from that we have increasing raw material prices and we cannot adjust sales prices Instantly. And that also then explains the margin that you can see has dropped quite significantly. It's back to you have a flat top line, you have increasing raw material prices.
And in addition, BDH becomes a bigger part of this Segment, and they have a big share of trading activities, and that is lower margins compared to or production operation. So you have a margin dilution also coming from that fact. Looking at insulation, same story. We have Volume growth in all our regions. We are in particular happy about that We have increasing or that the increasing volumes now continues in the Benelux area.
You might recall that we had a Negative trend in 2020. They are now growing again. It's important to us because The Benelux region is approximately 50 percentage, half of this segment's sales. This segment insulation, they are sensitive to volatile raw material prices in particular and in the short perspective. And that is due to that approximately 55% to 60% of their bill of material relates to raw material.
And as a consequence, the EBITDA is Declining in this quarter. So again, you have increasing raw materials, you have a flat top line And then the price adjustments will follow in the coming quarters. By the end of 2020, we closed one of our production facilities in Sweden, in Nortelje. We moved that into Norilskoping to create a central hub for insulation in Sweden. That production is not fully yet up and running.
We have some delays. We expect it to be Fully in production by the end of this quarter, and this has also impacted the result in the quarter for insulation. But to summarize, again, keep in mind, we have volume increases in all our regions. We have Good volume increases in the Netherlands, that is the biggest region in this segment, and the sales prices will be adjusted going forward. If we then look at the consolidated P and L income statement.
Christian mentioned we have net sales that is up approximately 40 percentage, half from organic growth, half from acquisitions. Sticking out is the raw material prices. It's up In euros, it's up in percentage of sales. Same story, flat top line basically, besides in segment raw, but you have increasing raw to prices. Goods for resales is increasing in euros from the 2 point 3 in 2020 up to 18.4.
This is all related to BDH that has these trading activities. We grow with that comes more employees. We are approximately 160 more Full time employees compared to 2020. With that comes increasing labor cost, of course. We also have increasing depreciations.
We have broken them down in The depreciation that is related to operation, those you should measure versus the CapEx that we are spending. Then we have the depreciations that is related to IFRS 16 and then we have the amortization And I would say that is related to our acquisitions. We have Some lower contribution from our joint ventures, it's down from EUR 0.6000000 to EUR 0.3 €1,000,000 in the quarter? This is mainly insulation operation, and they struggle as well, yes, as we do with the increasing raw material prices, But they also have good volumes. This is mainly Germany and France.
Financial items, Rather high in this quarter, but approximately EUR 3,700,000 are coming from a Fair value revaluation of our shares in KMC. We had an opposite situation in Q4. So they had a Swing up in their share price Q4. Now it's back to the more the level we bought the shares for. So if you take that out, we have financial items that is in line with last quarter.
Taxes, if we take out The impact from the revaluation of the shares and also non deductible transaction costs, We have an underlying tax rate that is at 28.5 percentage. Also what I would like to highlight is that we do have a negative profit for the period. But again, it's a Revaluation, non cash, SEK 3.7 billion that impacts our financials. So again, take that out and then it's easier to compared to Q1 last year. If we look at the balance sheet, we can see that our net debt has, as from year end, It's roughly €8,000,000 We have had basically neutral cash flow from our Operation, and that means that it is our CapEx that drives this increase in the increased net debt.
We have cash on hand of approximately 50 SEK 3,000,000. In addition, we have an unused credit facility of SEK 25,000,000. And as you know, we did a private placement earlier in May and brought in an additional NOK 200,000,000. Now most of that will be used for paying the shares in IsoBlock, but approximately NOK 55,000,000 NOK, So additional EUR 5,500,000 then will remain on our balance sheet. We have a leverage That is in line with the last quarter or in year end.
But as you can see, if you compare to where we were A year ago, we have a declining and improved leverage, and that is coming from that our earnings is improving compared to our balance sheet. Working capital short, it's increasing, but again, it's coming from the acquisitions. And I think most of this, I already mentioned, we have a more or less Neutral operating cash flow, it's slightly positive, 300,000, and then we have invested close to 7,000,000 in CapEx, where half of that is coming from our greenfield projects or ongoing investments, And the rest is more related to our normal operation. And Kristian has already been through You can see them on this page as well. Portugal and Nordiskoping, the Swedish investment Or at the end.
So it's in Norway, we will spend the money in the coming quarters. Then we go to a summary and the outlook. This is Something that we would like to highlight because we can now see that we have a rather unique situation on the market. We look at IHS market forecast. And as you are aware of, they present Historical and a forecast cost for raw materials.
What you see to the left is The difference between historical styrene prices and historical EPS prices. And you also see their forecast for the Q2. If we look 5 years back and Up until now, there is a gap. The difference between styrene prices and EPS prices is between €360400 per ton, approximately. And what has happened now in Q1 and in particular, you can see it as the forecast for the Q2 is that we are Well above the normal range, and this we have not seen before.
This is coming from 2 things. It has been a shortage Obviously, that has impacted the availability of EPS raw material And in combination with that there is a strong demand for EPS, the gap or the margin has increased. So what we can see is that IHS, they forecast an EPS Contract price that is approximately 40 percentage higher compared to Q1 this year. And what they forecast is also that the gap, the difference between styrene and EPS prices will Be approximately 25 to 30 percentage above the normal range. And that is what you see in the Top end in this graph.
And what does that mean, Daniel? That means that This will directly impact then the margin for our segment raw in the second quarter. I don't know, Christian, will you take the outlook and summary?
I will, Marit. Thank you. As we are now almost 2 third into the second quarter, We can say that the volumes development remains solid into this quarter. We continue to experience strong demand except for a slowdown for fish boxes in Norway, which is a normal cyclicality in the segment. The raw material prices have continued to increase this quarter.
And as Marie has just explained, prices for the EPS raw material is expected to increase around 40% this quarter. This leads to a gap high above the normal range for us, which directly impacts the profitability for raw positive. On the other side, The continued increase in the cost of raw material are challenging our margins for the Downstream segment for the Q2 as well. In particular, this goes for packaging and component segments, where lower sale of fish boxes and margin dilution from the BDH operation Also, we challenged the margins, but summing up, We are well positioned for further growth. We have a solid operational performance providing a positive cash flow.
We have a proven business model and a proven delivery capacity in challenging times. We experienced a strong underlying demand. We have a robust financial position and we will continue to pursue growth opportunities in line with our strategical priorities. Then I would just like to open for questions, if there are any.
Yes, Christian. If anyone would like to post any questions, you can do it in the Tabbed in the upper right of your screen, we currently have one question for you. How do you experience the development in demand for EPS products and especially in the packaging and component segments? Are customers Substituting towards non EPS solutions that might appear more environmentally friendly for their end users?
On the contrary, we see that the demand is growing for the products and we see that our recycling strategy and our communication around recycling enables us to explain to the customers that the places where we use our products, The products are very sustainable and are always taken care of as recyclable products. But also the figures shows that there is a growing demand in the total picture. And that is basically because of our product strategy where we Already 5 to 10 years ago started of thinking where our product is well used as for example in components where we See a great growth in HVAC industry.
Thanks. And maybe in relation to that, can you also share some thoughts on how BEV will be affected by both taxonomy and also other environmental regulations going How BV is positioned to those changes in the relations and also the taxonomy as I said?
Art and Marie can take over, but it's difficult to Actually comment directly on that, but in just briefly, our insulation business In the taxonomy, we'll, of course, be positive. Over 50% of our business is installation. And obviously, as we were speaking about components making cars lighter, it will also affect positively. But Marie, you can take over and also comment on this a little bit.
No, but I think you're right. It's We need to be careful here, but we have done a study together with 1 of the banks. We have concluded on a high level that we believe that approximately 40 percentage at least will be green revenue From the taxonomy framework. But we will continue to dig into this because this is I think it's bigger than the market currently understand how to interpret the framework that EU just Presented a few weeks back the final draft from and they will of course continue to There will come consensus going forward. But high level analysis that we have done together with 1 of the banks Shows upon 40 percentage of revenue, which is rather high for an industrial company.
But that comes from that the insulation Operation have such good impact on the energy efficiency in our houses. And then the packaging industry, that is That we cannot see as green revenue as the framework is written today.
Thanks a lot. I also have one question regarding the outlook. You noted I noted that you're writing that you're seeing lower volumes of fish boxes. Is that due to The rotation towards more elaborated products in the salmon farming industry or is it due to more Structural and long term reasons?
This is basically our customer structure and where they take out each of the orders at what time. So this is normal cyclicality in the segments where we are or the geographical areas where we are. We see no other not explanation, but we see no other reason for this than the customer structure and the geographical footprint we are at. And it varies across different regions in Norway at different times.
Thanks a lot. I don't think we have any other questions From the audience, so thank you for your contributions.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.