Yes. Very good morning everyone, and welcome to Medistim's second quarter and first half 2022 results presentation. My name is Kari Krogstad. I'm the CEO at the company, and together with CFO Thomas Jakobsen, we're going to take you through the quarterly and first half results. We will go through the highlights, and then Thomas will take us through the financial statements, and we will get back to commenting on the business segments update and implementing the strategy. Highlights for the second quarter. As we can see, our revenues ends this quarter at NOK 117.5 million, and this means that we are delivering another all-time high for quarterly sales. We're very pleased about that. This is actually the sixth quarter in a row above 100 million NOK in sales revenues.
We are particularly happy with seeing that our efforts in the strategic target areas of converting the flow market to an imaging and flow market is really paying off. We're seeing a great development here with 65.4% growth in sales in the imaging portfolio this quarter. At the same time, flow sales are at the same level as last year. We're also seeing that our efforts in vascular is paying off. Good growth there with 44.5% this quarter. At the same time, cardiac sales is also up at 12.4%. Very good sales performance. Still we see a more moderate total sales revenue growth, and this is due to the comparables that we are looking at from the second quarter, 2021.
You will probably remember that we had NOK 5.3 million extraordinary revenue from the COVID-related Paycheck Protection Program from the U.S. government. This was of course boosting both the revenues and the EBIT in the second quarter last year. Currency- neutral, we see that we have a little bit of help from currency here. Currency- neutral total growth was 4.4%. If you're looking at sales only, that's 9.7%. The most important indicator of our performance is really the currency- neutral growth of our own product portfolios, which is at a solid 13.4%. We're seeing that the USA continues to be really a key driving market for us, with 28% growth this quarter.
Asia is also coming back strongly after a weaker first quarter this year. Europe is down 4% and rest of the world is down 13.2%. Nothing dramatic here, it's more normal variation in how our distributors are placing orders. Third-party had a very good start in the first quarter, a little bit down this quarter. Looking at our EBIT, it is down compared to the same quarter last year for the reasons I mentioned. I want to highlight that this is really the second- highest EBIT result we've ever delivered, and the margin is at a solid 31.8%. Also mentioning that in May, we paid out a dividend of NOK 3.75 per share.
With this quarterly result, that takes us to the first half, and we're delivering then NOK 233.6 million in sales revenues, and this gives the best first half ever for revenue. Sales revenue in isolation grows 12.8%. We are excluding this PPP grant that I mentioned previously. Also for the first half, imaging shows really great performance. Both first and second quarter has been really solid. Imaging sales up 50%. At the same time, flow is up 2.8%. The same for vascular. Vascular is, has been strong both in first and second quarter, and so far this year, up 42.2%. At the same time, cardiac is also up 10.3%. Very solid.
As we can see, when we're including the PPP grant from last year, the total revenue growth is at 10%. Currency neutral, again, we have a little bit of help from the currency here. Currency -neutral total growth was 7.3%. Looking at currency- neutral growth for our own products only, that is growing at 11.2%, which we are very happy with. USA continues to drive the growth at 29.4% year- to- date. Europe slightly up. Rest of the world up 7.7%. Asia so far this year, down 10.9%. Despite the solid result from the second quarter, we had a slowdown in the first quarter due to some regulatory approvals that we are waiting for.
Now we have found some interim solutions for that problem, so we were able to ship in the second quarter, and we will be able to ship also for the third and fourth quarter. Third-party products, very good start in the first quarter, a bit down in the second quarter. Year -to- date, we are up at 5.2% growth. The first half, EBIT margin then ends at 30.3%, and I mentioned the dividends. With this, that's the highlights for this quarter and the first half, and I give the word to Thomas.
Thank you, Kari. I will go through the financial statements in more detail and, as usual, Kari will go through the sales figures in more detail, split per geography and per product. I will not spend time on that, but go straight to the expenses in the P&L. I would say in general, for Medistim, like everyone else these days, costs and expenses are increasing in this, a little bit uncertain world at the moment. This is also partly explaining our increased cost of goods sold. I also have to mention that the product split is affecting our cost of goods sold since we are having a very good quarter with sales of imaging.
Imaging portion of sales of our products increases from around 25% last year to this year's around 35%. We have a slightly lower margin on the imaging products. Those two factors are explaining the increased cost of goods sold going from 21.7% to just under 24%. When it comes to salary and social expenses, we have like invested in our organization. We have increased resources, especially within our development department, but we've also increased our resources within sales, within administration, and also within production. With these increased resources, our salary increases with around NOK 3 million for this quarter.
When it comes to other operating expenses, again, we experience in general higher expense level on a general basis. We also need to mention that in this quarter, we're more or less back to normal when it comes to activities related to travel and exhibition participation. Second quarter last year was still very much affected by COVID and travel and exhibition participation was very low. In addition to that, I would like to mention that we had some increased expenses related to auditing, both financial audits, but also within regulatory activities. With exhibition and travel expenses up just over NOK 2 million, we also had audit expenses that are up with more than NOK 1 million. Those are the main cost drivers for the quarter.
This leaves us with an EBITDA at NOK 43.1 million for the quarter, versus NOK 48.3 million. De preciation being at the same level as last year. We end our operating EBIT or operating result or EBIT at NOK 37.4 million. Again, I mention, as Kari, this $4.3 million U.S. grant. If we look at EBIT from operations, we are more or less at the same level as last year. Net financial income is NOK 3.4 million, and this is related to foreign currency. The Norwegian krone has been weakened against especially U.S. dollars, but also towards euros. What we see here is realized and unrealized gains and related to currency.
Our pre-tax profits end at NOK 40.7 million and profit after tax ends at NOK 33.1 million, versus NOK 34.2 million last year. When we then go to the first half, again, when it comes to the expenses and the explanation for the expenses, when it comes to cost of goods sold, salaries, and other operating expenses, the explanation are the same as for the quarter, only larger numbers, so I don't go through that in detail. What I would like to mention is the currency effect. Yes, we have help on the top line, as Kari mentioned, from currency around NOK 6 million for the first half, but we also have increased expenses because of the same reason with around NOK 3 million because of the weakened Norwegian krone.
Our EBITDA ends at NOK 82.4 million versus NOK 83.2 million. We are pretty close to last year's EBITDA. Depreciation again being at the same level, and our EBIT ends at NOK 70.8 million, versus NOK 71.7 million last year. Net finance, again, very positive, because of the currency that I've mentioned before. The pretax profit for the first half ends at NOK 73.6 million, up from NOK 70.7 million last year. Profit after tax ends at NOK 56.8 million versus NOK 56 million last year. What I again like to mention is the US grant of $5.3 million; it was also tax-free.
To compare profits from operation, you need to deduct the NOK 5.3 million, also profit after tax, when we look at the last year. If we then go to the balance sheet, we have an increase in intangible assets. That means that we've activated our increased resources related to product development. Our cash position is strong. Even after dividend of NOK 68.4 million, we have a cash position by the end of the second quarter at NOK 104 million. We also experienced that inventory level is slightly up from the beginning of the year. We did receive a larger batch of scanners by the end of second quarter, which increased inventory levels.
Having said that, we still have challenge in actually fulfilling our own policy with 12 months inventory level on certain critical components. This is very closely monitored on a daily basis and weekly meetings to make sure that we are on top of the situation. Our equity and debt side of the balance sheet shows that, you know, we have a very strong balance sheet with almost 80% equity. Interest-bearing debt is non-existent. The long-term debt that we see here is related to two things. One is lease obligations, and the other thing is related to service contracts and deferred revenue.
With that, I leave the word further on to Kari for the business segment update. Thank you.
Okay, let's start looking at how the sales of imaging probes and systems in number of units have developed. Here we start with the imaging systems in units sold as capital. We can see that we have sold 27 units this quarter compared to the 21 in the same quarter last year. That gives us a growth of 28.6%. Also, when it comes to the imaging probes, we have good development, 55 units sold this quarter compared to 35, so 57% growth. This is also of course indicating that our systems are really being used out there, which is very important for us as routine use is what we are striving for.
When it comes to the flow probes and the systems, they're in units, starting with the systems, we have seen 40 units sold this quarter compared to the 29 previous quarter. Solid growth of 37.9%. As we've stated many times since we've seen consistently over several quarters a very strong development in the imaging portfolio, we say that our strategy is really to sell as much as we can of the combined solution. This is of course our unique value proposition out there in the market. There's nobody else offering this combined solution. We would be happy with a more moderate development for the flow systems. Having said that, flow is of course also great because it can be updated in the field to a full-fledged imaging system.
Good development. When we're adding these two, the total sale of system, both the flow units and the flow and imaging units sold as capital, we see increase of 34% this quarter. Important point here, this is securing future sales of consumable flow and imaging probes. When it comes to the flow probes, sales in units this quarter, we can see a decline here of 15%. There is nothing dramatic in this decline. It is related to quarterly variations in how we're selling to our distributors. Sometimes the distributors are filling up their inventories, and sometimes they are leveling out a bit. We are expecting to see further growth in the next quarters. Let's look at the revenue performance by region.
Starting with Europe, we can see a decline here in Norwegian currency of 5.7% for the quarter, slight growth year to date. We then have to just keep in mind that in Europe we have two things going on. We have the sales of our own products, and we have sales of third-party products. This quarter, the sales of our own products decreased with 5.9%, 4% currency neutral, and third-party also decreased with 5.5%. That's explaining the total Europe in number. In the USA, we see a solid growth in Norwegian currency, 22% for the quarter, 30% for the first half.
This is very much corresponding to both, well, currency- neutral sales being even stronger, but it's also corresponding well to the sales in procedures and the development we are seeing in the USA. In Asia, 15% growth this quarter. This is very strong. It's a recovery from the slow first quarter that I mentioned. We have found an interim solution that we can live with until we get the regulatory approval in China for the new components for the MiraQ. This should work well. Rest of the world continues to be a smaller territory for us, and we see quite significant quarterly variations here. No particular comments.
If we look at the revenue performance by product category, starting with the procedures that we're selling in the United States, good growth in Norwegian currency, 21.3% for the quarter, 23% year to date. We are seeing strong procedure sales both for the quarter and first half. Total number of procedures increased 26% in the quarter and 25% in the first half. When it comes to flow probes, a bit down for the quarter and also having a slight decline year to date. This is for the most part explained by normal variation in the sales towards distributors, and this quarter specifically to Asia. They are balancing their inventories. Flow systems, 46%, very, very strong growth here in NOK for the quarter, 10% year to date.
We saw that the number of units sold was really, really strong this quarter. Also the year to date numbers of units have an increase of 7.3%. So the discrepancy here between the results in Norwegian currency and the units is really explained by a very high sales this quarter through our direct sales channels. Imaging systems, also very strong, 55.7% growth in NOK for the quarter, 44% for the year to date. Here again, we're seeing a discrepancy which is explained by this number of units being sold through our direct sales channels and the US in particular. Third party, strong start in the Q1, 5% decline this quarter, and 5% increase for the first half.
Yeah, we're continuing to just follow how our sales growth is developing since the COVID-19 pandemic started. We are continuing to see very good development here. We saw the gradually decreasing impact in the first quarters since it really hit in the second quarter 2020. We had a strong recovery from the second quarter 2021, and now we're seeing really development towards normalcy. I'm still commenting that, you know, everything is not completely back to normal. There are still some restrictions out there, and nobody knows really how these new virus variants, et cetera, can influence. For the most part, we believe that we are back to a more normal situation.
When it comes to the global supply chains and the world economy, though, things are certainly not normal. Both the continued COVID situation and ongoing Russian Ukrainian war create increased uncertainty in global supply chains and the world economy at large. We're not only actively monitoring these situations, we are also managing it in particular, particularly with regard to sourcing and also stocking up of components that Thomas was explaining previously. I'm not going to say so much about the strategy today, but just reminding us that USA is a key target market for us, representing 1/3 of the total market for Medistim's opportunity. This quarter, as already mentioned, it has been really strong. Currency- neutral sales growing at 28% for the quarter, 29% first half.
We see that the number of procedures is developing very, very nicely. Flow procedures growing 20% for the quarter, 21% for first half, but even stronger for imaging, and we like to see that. Up 55%, 55.6% in the first quarter and 48.6% for the first half. We continue to see strong capital sales of systems, and 13 units were sold this second quarter, compared to eight in the same quarter last year. That means that year to date, we've sold 27 units in the States as capital, versus 17 last year. When it comes to new customers, the numbers are a bit lower than the same period last year, but still we keep winning new customers.
Six this quarter and 19 in total for the first half. With that, thank you very much for listening, and we'll meet again for the next quarterly presentation. Thank you.