Good morning everyone, and welcome to Europris' first quarter presentation for 2023. Warm welcome to everybody that are actually present here in the room this morning. I know it's a very busy day with a lot of presentations, also welcome to the web audience. With me today, I have Stina Byre, who will present the financial details afterwards. At the end of the presentation, Trine Engløkken, our IR officer, will manage the Q&A sessions. We will start with questions from the room, of course, you at the web are also welcome to type in questions as we speak, and we will handle all those questions towards the end of the presentation. Let's get into it. Well, not yet.
I think we have a small technical issue, and we will try to fix this remote so we can actually switch the slides. Self-fix. You have to turn it on. Yeah, that's that's fixable. Okay, Europris is the number one discount variety retailer in Norway. We have a very strong brand and a loyal and growing customer base. It's no doubt it's a tougher market out there, and we face this this year, but with our low prices, the powerful marketing, and the very impressive campaign engine, we managed to deliver a very solid first quarter. Europris continued the profitable growth journey in the first quarter. Total sales ended at NOK 1.9 billion, up by 12.7%. Excluding the acquisition of Strikkemekka, the growth was 9.6%.
There are some positive effects to the sales in the first quarter. An early Easter, that is positive for a seasonal business like Europris. As a low-price retailer, we also saw hoarding of goods towards the end of January when the consumers were facing or at least expecting increased prices in the market from first of February. The gross margin ended at 43.5%. That is a reduction of 0.8% from last year. Of course, we also see, like everybody else, higher input costs, and we also see an increased price competition. Especially on seasonal items before Easter, we saw quite tough campaigning in the market to attract traffic to stores.
OPEX to sales ratio ended at 27.4%, and all this resulted in an EBITDA that increased by 12.2% to NOK 311 million. Net profit ended at NOK 71 million, which is a reduction from last year, and that is caused by the effect on the interest rates, rate swaps we have. We booked a profit of NOK 30 million in the same quarter of last year and a loss of NOK 5 million this year. A difference of NOK 35 million between the quarters. We have secured 60% of our long-term loans at very attractive interest rates. Towards the end of the quarter, we acquired the remaining 33% of Lekekassen, and I will come back to that shortly.
Still we have a solid financial position with cash and liquidity reserves of close to NOK 1.1 billion. I think we have delivered a strong sales performance in the first quarter, looking at the market figures that are available at the moment, the market has also been quite strong. 1 more sales day this quarter compared to last year. It's also an early Easter. Looking at the market figures, we only have figures from the shopping centers, which had a growth of 5.8% in the first quarter compared to Europris's growth of 8.5%. The figures are, you know, year-over-year are becoming more and more comparable.
Still there were some COVID effects in the beginning of the first quarter last year, which I believe that had a more negative impact on the shopping centers than on Europris. I think it's a strong performance to continue to beat the market and take market shares. Coming back to the acquisition of the remaining 33% of Lekekassen, the founder and CEO of Lekekassen, Andreas Skalleberg, has decided to resign from his position as CEO and take up an advisory role in the company. We knew that this day was coming. I have to admit, it happened a little bit faster and sooner than we expected.
We have prepared for this, and in December 2021, Severin Baugstø Hanssen was appointed CEO of the company with the intention that he should step up and take the CEO role when Andreas decided to resign. Now that day has come, and I'm really happy that Severin has accepted the challenge, and all the other core managers of the Lekekassen team will remain in their positions. It's a good spirit in the company. I spent a full day last Friday with the management in Grimstad, and we're looking forward, and we're also looking forward to have Andreas with us at least until the end of 2024 in an advisory role. It's a good spirit, and we are looking forward to work with Lekekassen in the times ahead. Stina, let's look at the financials.
Thank you, Espen. I will repeat some of the things you have now been told. Group sales ended at NOK 1.9 billion. This is an increase of 12.7%. If we exclude structural growth from the acquisition of Strikkemekka, the sales growth was 9.6%. The Europris chain had a like-for-like growth of 6.7%. An earlier Easter had a positive timing impact, which will of course then have the correspondingly negative timing impact in the second quarter. As Espen said, normally in Norwegian grocery, there are two price adjustments a year, February 1 and July 1. Ahead of the expected price increase in February, the media attention was very intense, and this led to hoarding, affecting sales numbers positively in the latter part of January.
In the current retail environment, to stay relevant, we have focused particularly on consumables in our marketing leaflet, and this has positively affected footfall to stores and sales. Total e-commerce sales were NOK 165 million. Excluding structural growth from Strikkemekka, this represents a sales increase of 11%, and total e-commerce sales constituted 8.5% of group sales. Lekekassen had sales growth from a strong quarter in both Sweden and Denmark, while Norway fell behind last year. The Strikkemekka group also had sales growth due to the development in the yarn business. Gross margin was 43.5%, down by 0.8 percentage points. As you recall, normally prices are adjusted in February, but this was not the case this year, meaning that higher input cost was not offset by corresponding price increases, putting pressure on the margin.
There are two other effects I would like to mention, and I will start with the one that is easiest to explain, and that is unrealized effects from currency hedging, where there was a gain of NOK 5 million this year compared to a loss of NOK 5 million last year. The other one is a bit more technical, but I will give it a go. First, I would like to emphasize that it must not be considered as one-off effects. It is a matter of timing. What happens is that when we sell a product, a calculated gross margin is booked, and this may deviate from the actual gross margin, meaning that a calculation difference arises.
Normally, in the previous years, we have booked these calculation differences at the time of inventory counting, which has been in the third and fourth quarters. As from the first quarter this year, we will book these calculation differences when they arise, meaning that we will have a more accurate gross margin throughout the year. In the first quarter this year, NOK 15 million was booked due to this. Last year, the gross margin in the first half was a bit too low, and in the second half, a bit too high. OPEX was NOK 529 million, an increase of 9.7%. If we exclude structural OPEX growth from Strikkemekka, the OPEX increased by 5.5%.
The OPEX to sales ratio declined by 0.7 percentage points to 27.4%. EBITDA was NOK 311 million, up by 12.2%, and the EBITDA margin was roughly on a par with last year at 16.1%. The first quarter is normally a weak quarter when it comes to cash due to seasonality, and the net change in cash was negative with NOK 495 million, compared to negative with NOK 576 million last year. I would like to remind you that last year was negatively impacted by earlier shipping of goods.
The remaining 33% of Lekekassen was acquired for NOK 212 million. I would just like to inform you that we have made a calculation change when it comes to financial debt and net debt, where also current lease liabilities are included, and we have restated last year's figures so that they are comparable. Net debt was NOK 4.1 billion, up from NOK 3.5 billion last year. If we exclude lease liabilities, net debt was NOK 1.4 billion compared to NOK 1.1 billion last year. The group has a solid financial position with cash and liquidity reserves of close to NOK 1.1 billion. Thank you. Back to Espen.
Thank you, Stina. On our capital markets updates in December last year, we presented our strategy plan, and the medicine for Europris in the future is actually more of the same as we've done in the past, but always a little bit better. The strategy is all about strengthening the price and cost position. It's about improving customer experience, drive customer growth, and act responsibly. Act responsibly is the new addition we made to the strategy plan, and that includes a more focused approach to sustainability, and I think that we last year made great progress in our work, where also our application to join the Science Based Targets was approved. When we look at strategy for Europris, the concept is all about low prices, campaigns, and seasons.
That is what we do to drive sales and also get customers into the stores. In the first quarter this year, campaign activity has been extremely important, and it's a vital part of the concept, and using campaigns to attract the customers, giving them what they come to the stores for is extremely important for Europris. We are totally devoted to, you know, fulfilling the customers' needs. If they come for a product to us that are on campaign, they should get the campaign product every day of the week. While campaigns are important to drive the overall traffic, also the seasonal concept has been important in the first quarter. Easter, it's a very intense, short season, but it's an important season to drive traffic to Europris.
We had a successful Easter campaign, but it was also driven by good footfall, good weather, and so on to our stores. One thing that we have worked on and talked a lot about lately is the category upgrades we are doing, and we are continuously working on to improve the shop-in-shop solutions we have in the stores. This quarter it was about updating the cleaning category. We have modernized the shop-in-shop and the store layout, and we have also introduced new sales-promoting items. It's still too early to evaluate the full impact of the changes we made, but these results so far are promising.
When we look at driving footfall, we have talked a lot about the customer club over the last couple of years, with a little bit more than 1.3 million members in the customer club. Getting the members in, that is, you know, it sounds hard, but that is actually quite easy compared to using all the data we get in a good way to be relevant and actually increase the shopping frequency of the customers. We are trying. We're working hard on this. We have worked a lot on social media in the quarter, doing more local activities, and doing local social media promotions from the stores.
We are doing targeted campaigns to our customer club members to increase frequency, and we are trying to address the customers with changed shopping behaviors. When we see that the customers are changing their behavior, we are trying to address them in a new way to get them back into the loop. Of course, we are also doing small tests, scale testing of personalized product recommendations. It's all about, you know, being more relevant for the consumers. We have a lot of data, and we are starting to using it and starting to be smarter in the way we approach the customers. On the physical store space, we are continuing to build new stores, and we opened up another city concept store here at Grensen in Oslo in the quarter.
That brings the total portfolio of city stores to 4. Now we are out of the COVID-19 comparable years, so we will start now to have a good benchmark and see how these stores actually perform and evaluate if it's room for more city stores in the years to come. We also opened up another store in Froland in Agder County in the quarter. We have 9 stores in the pipeline for the rest of the year and the years to come. Three of the stores are subject to planning permissions. At the capital market updates in December, we also talked about an IT upgrade, which might seem a little bit boring, but it's an extremely important addition to the strategic projects of Europris.
We are actually rebuilding and building a totally new IT platform for the company. I'm really happy to say that we have now delivered and successfully gone live with the ERP project in the quarter. It was delivered on time and actually below budget, and we had no disturbances to operations. It's a 2-year project. I'm really proud of the project team we have had working on this for 2 years and actually deliver an IT project, you know, fully working and without any issues for the operations. That went live in February. In parallel to this, we have worked with upgrading the data warehouse. We have a new platform, and we are still adding new components to this, but it's all working and going live with all solutions pretty soon.
We have some other large projects also ongoing, and that is the point-of-sale system. We started almost a year ago by selecting a new supplier for the point-of-sale system. We have developed solution together with them, and we are ready to go live with the first test within a couple of weeks, and we expect the rollout to be completed in all stores by mid-2024. Then, when all the this is complete, we will do the accounting system. It's a big project, but we have a good team, teams in place and very good project managers, and everything is running according to plan and according to budget at the moment. What about the outlook?
Honestly, I think Europris is well-positioned in the current markets. The consumers have a high need for good deals and affordable campaigns. We saw that in mid, or towards the end of January when hoarding started because of consumers expecting price increases, they came to Europris. Being top of mind for the consumers when it comes to price is a very good position to be in when you have a tougher market. We talked about the sales growth for the first quarter, but of course we had an early Easter, and that affects the sales. When we look at this chain sales growth per 25 April, that eliminates the Easter effect, and we had the growth of 4.1%, which I still believe is a strong number.
We have planned for another summer with low appetite for investment purchases. Only 7% of chain sales in the 1st quarter, no, came from. No, in the 2nd quarter, 2023, 2022 it should be, came from products with price points above NOK 1,000. I think, you know, in historic view, I think we will see lower sales of high-ticket items, but compared to last year, I think we will be more or less the same this year. You have to focus on what you can sell as additional products, and to make the summer good for those who are staying at home. I think the high attention to price, as I said, in media and among consumers is very positive for a concept like Europris.
We've proven that we have good prices, and we have strong campaigns, and I think that, continued attention to everyday consumables and affordable products will benefit Europris in the times ahead. With that, I think we will open up for questions.
Okay, thank you. Petter, ABG. I have 3 questions. First of all, another set of strong numbers, so congratulations on that. Is it possible to give some flavor on the like-for-like number, 6.7%? How much is price there?
The majority of that is price, but we also see an increase in the number of customers. We see, but we see overall the basket has increased, that is due to price, but the number of articles per customer is slightly down. Price is the dominant factor of the like-for-like.
Then to Stina, I mean, you talked about this NOK 15 million on the gross margin. I understand it's probably hard to estimate that effect on the coming quarters, but in a historical context, is that NOK 15 million high or is it low versus, let's say, a normal quarter?
If we look to 2022, we had historic high numbers, and that's because prices have increased in a way that it's a long time since you see those types of increases in input costs. Normally these effects have not been that high. When inflation occurs, then these calculation differences will also normally be a bit higher. I think we will have overall for the year a lower number than last year, but still higher numbers than in kind of a normal inflationary environment.
Perfect. Then the final question that goes on the OpEx and the wage inflation, what should we expect that, in the coming quarters? Will you have a full effect of the higher salaries from Q2, or will that be a second half, let's say, cost increase?
You have the effect from April. That's when we make the adjustments, we follow collective agreements, for all our stores and at the warehouse. We also adjust those with individual salary adjustments, with effect from that date. It has not been finalized yet what these numbers are, but we will make an estimate and accrue for that.
Perfect. Thank you.
I read the questions from the web, and the first questions comes from Ole Martin Westgaard. What was the consumable share in Q1 compared to Q1 2022?
It was not much difference. We have a higher share of consumables in the first quarter compared to other quarters. It was slightly higher than the first quarter last year, but not significantly.
How do you see the competition from groceries, and how do you see the impact from the Swedish border trade?
I think, as I said, the competition is getting harder, I think what we have seen in the first quarter is that the grocery chains are, you know, up for a fight. they, that's, you know, the move from KIWI by not increasing prices on February first, started the price war that continued throughout the quarter, and I expect also to continue somewhat into the second quarter. at one point, those companies also need to adjust the prices in order to cover the price increases they've seen. I think it has become, you know, tougher in this market. that is of course fun for a company like Europris, where we have very good prices and also good campaigns. it's challenging to...
We also need to increase some prices, and that you have to maneuver the right way in such markets. You talked about the Swedish border. Of course, we are seeing that border trade is picking up. I think you've seen from the at least from the press, that it has not reached the numbers that it was previously. That is of course impacted by high inflation in Sweden as well and of course by the weaker Norwegian kroner. It's many aspects impacting the border trade. We have seen, you know, overall, after the pandemic, we have seen a weaker development in the stores closest to the Swedish border compared to the rest of the chain. They had, you know, a similar opposite effect during the pandemic.
The last question from Ole Martin, how is the store in Grensen performing? What is the latest thinking on the city store concept and the rollout plan?
The Grensen store has been open for four weeks. It's a little bit early to evaluate. Normally, we say in our piece we need the full year to see how, you know, this store work with the seasons. We had a great opening day, I can say that. After that, I think it takes some time before the consumers actually detect the stores and find it. We've seen extremely good traffic in the store, but still we are working to get the basket up. That is exactly the same development we saw when we opened up at Gunerius some years ago. We had good traffic but low basket, and it takes time to build that basket up in such a location.
The rollout plan is basically that now we should evaluate these four stores, but we are working on looking for more locations. We have been struggling to find locations at attractive rents in the, in the good locations we want.
Next questions comes from Joachim Harms. There is one question to Espen and one to Stina. Espen, would you mind providing some color around the reasoning of the Lekekassen CEO early departure?
I think you have to ask Andreas about that. He's giving an interview to the local newspaper today, basically, I think Andreas said, you know, it has, you know, become a great company, grown a lot. It's new, you know, resources coming in with Espen Eldal, he want to do something else. You know, not be the manager, but being more the advisor and work with more strategic issues for the company. The, the shift in his role, it's not dramatic. It's a good spirit there, and I'm looking forward to continue working with Andreas, but in a different role.
To Stina, is there any particular reason why you decided to change the reporting of 2 important financial statement items, gross margin and the debt?
Yeah, if I start with the debt, currently liabilities is part of the balance sheet, and when we evaluated our key figures, we realized that we should include also this, so we updated to include both current and also, which was already there, the non-current part of the leasing liabilities. When it comes to the gross margin, it has been difficult to accurately calculate these effects, but we have worked hard on this and have improved our models. It is more accurate to book it when these differences arise, and we have therefore decided to do that. In the past, these differences have not been that big, but we saw last year that they were rather big.
So it's better to take this ongoing than to wait, especially when we more accurately can determine the number.
Thank you. There's no more questions.
Okay. I wish everybody a good day, and thank you for watching the Q-