Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Kitron's presentation of the first nine months 2015 and the Q3 results. I'm Peter Nilsson, the CEO, and with me today is Cathrin Nylander, our CFO. Our third quarter was a strong quarter with over 30% growth in sectors other than offshore marine. Very strong underlying growth. Total growth for the quarter came in at the 11.4%. Our profitability continued to improve. We had 5.6% EBIT margin compared to 1.8% of last year. We signed off on a number of defense orders really strengthening and securing our future position. Our operational cash flow continued to improve.
Overall, our revenue is up 22.4% compared to last year at NOK 467 million. Our order backlog came in very, very strong with a 13.5% growth compared to last year at NOK 916 million. Especially taking into regard the significant decline of oil and gas that we have in the backlog. Strong growth in other market sectors forward-looking. Overall double-digit growth in the first nine months of the year. Our revenue coming in at almost NOK 1,428, 11.9% growth. Our profit is NOK 69.1, which gives us a profit margin of 4.8% for the first nine months compared to 1.2% for last year.
For the year-to-date numbers on cash flow, we have a significant improvement taking us to NOK 169 million of favorable cash flow. A couple of the orders that we've announced in the quarter. We signed a long-term agreement with Northrop Grumman with electronic modules for the F-35 Lightning II Avionics. The agreement is good through June of 2036, so a 20-year agreement and with rights to future extensions. The manufacturing of those products will take place at our site in Arendal, Norway. We also received orders from Kongsberg Aerospace and Defence for military communications equipments. Most of those, that production is slated to take place during next year at a value of about NOK 56 million.
We also renewed and signed a new contract with one of our major customers within the medical equipment side, securing our positions for the next two years with that product and that production. Again, taking place at our site in the Arendal facility. Finally, we signed an agreement with Rheinmetall AG, a German defense manufacturer, where production will take place at multiple Kitron facilities. We value the contract at about NOK 100 million over a three-year period, starting in the fourth quarter of this year.
Okay, thank you, Peter. I'll talk a bit about the financial statements after the first three quarters and the quarter for 2015. As Peter mentioned, we had a quite strong growth of 22.4% in the quarter. We ended at NOK 468 million, which is an increase of NOK 86 million compared to last year. It's defense aerospace, energy telecoms, and medical growth offsets decline in offshore marine. As you can see, offshore marine is down 60% and NOK 25 million compared to last year. Medical equipment is up 27.2% and over NOK 26 million. Defense aerospace, 71.4% up and around NOK 55 million over last year. Energy telecoms is up 51.7% and around 25% up from last year.
Industry has also a minor growth of 3.5% and NOK 4 million increase. Of the growth of 22.4%, 14.4% is underlying growth and 8% is growth due to translation differences. A strong quarter for us. When we look at the growth for the first three quarters so far this year, we have ended up at NOK 1,427 million. It is a growth of 11.9%. 5.5% of that is translation differences and 6.4% is the cumulative underlying growth compared to last year. Also here you see the decline in offshore marine, which is down 48% compared to last year and NOK 93 million actually.
Medical is rather stable when you look at the three quarters in total and 4.2% growth. Defense aerospace is up 58% approximately. Energy telecoms, 19.5%, and industry, 14.8%. If we look into the total growth of NOK 152 million and take away the decline in offshore marine of NOK 93, we have a growth in the other ones over NOK 245 million. We see quite strong growth in the other sectors. When we look at the different countries or sites, we see growth in all sectors, of course, which we have spoken about before. For the first three quarters. If we start with Norway compared to last year, ended up at NOK 632 million after three quarters.
We're looking into the fact that offshore marine decline is primarily in Norway, which is a reduction of 14%, which they have compensated by growing in the defense sector. The growth in the quarter for Norway is 2% but quite strong growth in other sectors in Norway thus. Sweden ended up with a growth of 9.8% for three quarters and NOK 343 million. The growth in the quarter for Sweden is 38.7%. A very strong quarter for Sweden. Lithuania, growth of 10.6%, ended up at NOK 343 million and a growth of 9.2% in the quarter, more and more even growth in Lithuania.
The others, China and U.S. has a growth of 77.1% so far this year and a growth in the quarter at 58.4% and ending at NOK 297 for the first three quarters. strong development there. We're proud to say that we have the 6th consecutive quarter of improved profitability with a result of NOK 26.3 million for the third quarter, which is normally a weak quarter for us, and also an EBIT margin of 5.6%, which is also quite good for Kitron and a clear improvement from the other quarters as well. also an improvement both in nominal value and percentage as we can see.
It's partly due to the fact that we have stable sales on sales by quarter but also that our service sales both from development and engineering has been grown rapidly and gives a strong contribution. Proud of that. When we look into the contributions from each of the countries, we see Norway now for the three quarters has a result of NOK 25.4 million compared to a loss of NOK 13.4 last year and now at an average margin accumulatively of NOK 4 million, 4%. The result for Norway in the third quarter is NOK 6 million compared to a loss of NOK five and a half million last year in the same period. The cost reductions, they continue to yield results for Norway.
Sweden, so far a result of NOK 19.8 million compared to NOK 7.2 million last year and now a result margin of 5.8%. Sweden had a very strong quarter result. They have a result of NOK 8.9 million compared to a result of NOK one and a half last year in the same period. We have seen significantly improved margin due to product mix as well as revenue growth in Sweden. Lithuania ended up at NOK 16 million for the three quarters and a reduction from NOK 21 million last year and an EBIT margin of 4.7%. The result in the quarter is NOK 4.3 million compared to NOK 6.8 million last year.
It is a reduction due to the higher indirect cost on the investments that we made so far and the fact that there is a high pressure on margin there.
In line with our projections.
It's what we expect. On the other side now, China and the U.S. we have a result of NOK 25 million for the first three quarters this year compared to a result of NOK 2.6 last year in the same time. The result for the quarter is NOK 10.5 and compared to NOK 1.9 last year and the result margin is 8.4% for the first three quarters. They continue to contribute positively. Cash flow. Also cash flow is showing a good improvement. The Q3 cash flow is NOK 32.7 compared to NOK 9.7 last year. The year-to-date cash flow is NOK 116 million compared to a negative NOK 17.6 for the same period last year. Basically it's the improved profitability that drives the positive cash flow which you can see in the working capital.
We see a downwards trend, however it's still too high and it's still an increase from last year. The cash conversion cycle compared to last year is 105 compared to 115 last year. What we can say also on the positive side that is the ratios compared to revenue when it comes to working capital is improving. We see some effects here but it's taking longer time than we expect but the cash flow is good so far. Thank you. Over to you Peter.
Let's close with some market development remarks. Our order backlog, as we see it as measured as our four-month outlook on forecast and whatever we have as firm orders, has seen an increase from NOK 807 million of September last year to NOK 916 million this year. That's a 13.5% growth on our backlog. When we look into the backlog you can see what's growing. The third quarter last year we had strong growth on defense. We received a lot of orders into the starting into the fourth quarter last year. We weren't expecting to see very strong growth on our backlog but we have an increase of 8% on defense.
Medical which has been stable, when we're looking at the trailing quarters on output we have a growth on the backlog of 20% which is reassuring for us. Industry, very strong growth on the order backlog, 44%. Typically industry customers tend to be short lead time customers and not heavily into forecasting. Seeing a 44% increase on our backlog means either we're doing something differently with our customers or the market is behaving a little bit differently and we're seeing some growth. That's positive sign for us with the 44% growth on industry. Telecom up 42%.
Well, we saw it in Q3, specifically into the revenue of Sweden, where we had much higher output than expected, contributing to one of the best quarters there in a long time. Also a very nice profit from our Swedish entity. The telecom sector is driven by demand in North America and rollout from one of our major customers in the U.S. offshore marine continuing to decline with the oil and gas service sector in our future outlook and backlog. It's NOK 41 million in total is what we see. It's down from NOK 86 last year.
We saw that the year-to-date sales in oil and gas, I believe was 6% or 7% as our sort of total market share, and the third quarter number was 3%. We're continuing to see that decline. You know, soon enough, it'll taper off the decline here. As long as we remain stable in continuing the growth here in the other segments, we should see a nice increase of the backlog. The outlook for the rest of the year and 2015. Well, we'll continue saying what we've said all along this year. We expect growth and clear improvement in profitability.
I think we've shown that in the first nine months, and our expectations for the fourth quarter are no different. Our growth this year has been driven by the demand increase in the defense sector for the U.S. and Norwegian markets. We've had some strong successes in energy telecoms, specifically now into the third quarter. Our industry segment has been growing nicely, specifically in out of our Eastern European facilities. The oil and gas business affects our offshore marine segment with the reduction of the service market in Norway. With that said, thank you for listening to our webcast, and we'll talk to you again.