Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Second Quarter and First Half twenty nineteen Conference Call for Multi Consult. My name is Mirza Koristovic, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. Today's conference call will be held by the CEO, Greta Bergli and the CFO, Hans Joergen Wiebsta. Today's session can be accessed on our webpage under the IR section. The presentation will last for approximately twenty five minutes, and we will open up for questions after the presentation.
So with that, I leave the word to Mrs. Berglree.
Thank you, Mirta. I am pleased to give you some of the highlights from the second quarter and first half, and then our CFO will take you through more of the details. Looking at the second quarter, we came in as a negative result of EUR 15,900,000.0 and the year to date EBIT is EUR 76,500,000.0. There are some significant effects that impact the quarter's results And it's therefore important for us to explain that the underlying profitability has improved both in the second quarter and the year to date. The significant impact is the result of a calendar effect of Easter holiday in the second quarter of estimated EUR 65,000,000.
And we also had settled a legal dispute with the Norwegian parliament that has affected the results for this quarter with roughly EUR20 million. Our backlog remains strong and our order intake is good with what we consider normal fluctuations in the order intake. We also see a market that we regard as good and stable. Having said that, we are still on a journey to improve our profitability level. We are not satisfied with the result that we deliver, and the ongoing work with our strategy, is on track.
We will also invite you to market Capital Market Day on the November 7, where we would give you some of the details on how we have worked with our strategy and what we see as a way forward. Last quarter, I explained a bit on how I have approached my new position as CEO in the company. In this quarter, we have worked and given priority to getting control of our project portfolio and project execution. And as Hans Jurgen will show you later, we see a significant improvement in this area. We have also managed to stabilize our cost level, and this is a work that we will intensify in the coming quarters.
After this, our continuous work on realizing our strategy is given priority. And the areas that we are working on at the moment is mapping our OpEx and the potential within this, and we're also looking at the potential in within the organization. We continue our work on improving and giving high priority to project management and project execution. And as I said initially, on the Capital Market Day, we will go into further detail on this. Looking at sales.
The order intake for the quarter is CHF $9.00 2,000,000. For us, this is a balanced sale across all the business areas and with a normal variation between periods. There is also a very solid tender pipeline across most business areas. Looking at the sales, the significant larger areas of building and properties and transportation, I explained last time that you need to look at the balance between these two business areas as we are experiencing that the larger transportation projects require a considerable amount of, people who normally work in the building and properties areas to now being transferred to transportation. Within the other business areas, we see a very small variation.
The five largest intakes were one big nursing home and four larger projects within transportation. Going to the backlog. Our order backlog remains strong at 7,200,000,000.0. There's a slight decrease from last quarter, but we came from a record high backlog. So this is still a very good backlog for the future quarters.
I would like to remind you also that the way we record our backlog, we do not include potentials call offs from frame agreements. And there are at to date, we have three larger frame agreements that we know will give volume into 2019 and also 2020. Our organization, we are growing and we are now 2,964 employees. And the whole of this growth is organic growth, in line with our strategy. We also win prizes and, Durland School was awarded the Educational Building of the Year.
And this is a school where Multi Consult and Link, were the design team together. We are also popular within the with the students. We had more than a hun 1,800 applications, and we have had 96 students spread around our offices in Norway during the summer. We also continue putting our efforts in supporting our people in their development. And we've had three p two PhDs awarded this quarter, where Rainer Tan, who got his PhD on calculation and design of large scale concrete structures, and also Arvik, who was awarded her PhD on the research on the ice phenomenon of riches.
And with this, I give the word to Hans Jurgen to take you through the figures.
Thank you, Grete. I will go through the second quarter results as well as the first half results for Multi Consult for this year 2019. First, the second quarter had a revenue reduction of 2.4% compared with the equivalent quarter in 2018 to €866,700,000 The revenue was heavily impacted by the calendar effect that was mentioned by Greta. And if we are adjusting the underlying looking at the underlying revenue growth organic, it's at 7.2% compared with the second quarter twenty eighteen, which is at a pretty satisfactory level. The EBIT was negative with EUR 15,900,000.0, equivalent to a margin of 1,800,000.0 minus.
Again, the calendar effect is significant for us in this quarter of 64,800,000.0. And then we have the parliament's legal settlement of 20.2. And then in comparison with the second quarter of twenty eighteen, we also have to adjust for the IFRS effect of 5.4, the other way around. And putting those figures together, on the figure to the right, we do see that the underlying profitability for Multi Consult is better in the second quarter twenty nineteen than in the same quarter twenty eighteen. So that's going in the right direction.
The operating expenses is in line with the growth in manning level, up 5.9%. And also, we're quite pleased with the project execution by way of a reduction in that to 0.6% if we take out the legal settlement situation with the parliament. Including that, it's 2.9%, so that's the gross figure. We're also pleased to see that our net interest bearing debt has been reduced a little bit from the first quarter of this year. Then going over to the first half, which is in many ways more interesting because it levels out the calendar effect between the first and the second quarter.
And then we can see that the operating revenues is up 3.7% to 1,000,000,000. Point And adjusting for a small calendar effect and one other adjustment relating to the parliament, we're seeing that the underlying growth, organic growth is 5.7%, which is again at a good level. The EBIT is €76,500,000 for the first half year, equivalent to a 4.2% margin. But again, we would like to mention the particular situation with the legal settlement of 20.2%, a small calendar effect of 14.6%, IFRS effect, and also a severance agreement mentioned in the first quarter of ten million Putting all those figures together, we can see that the underlying profitability is improving from the first half twenty eighteen, so we're quite happy with that. And the very simple way to look at that is to take the €76,000,000 add the legal settlement of 20,200,000.0 and then adding the severance agreement of €10,000,000 and then we actually end up with about EUR 107,000,000 of underlying EBIT, which is equivalent to a run rate approximately of 5.5% in terms of margin in the first half.
The OpEx, a bit the same picture as the second quarter, 5.1% up, in line with the increase in activity level and also for the first half year. Adjusting for the parliament one off, the write downs is 0.7%, which is lower than it has been historically. Looking at this kind of more of a historic context, we see that the growth since third quarter twenty seventeen has been good for the group. There has been a steady growth also in this quarter. And also looking at the EBIT, we're seeing that there is a significant improvement in the 2019 combined, which is the relevant thing to compare with, compared with the third and fourth quarter twenty eighteen, which were very, very challenging for Multiconsult in terms of EBIT.
The billing ratio is up from the first quarter to 71.3%, but down compared with the same quarter last year. But it is at a historically acceptable level, but it is something we will continue to focus on. We're also seeing that the number of employees has increased by 3.8% from the same quarter last year. But it's also interesting to note and and and important to note that the number of employees from in the first quarter to the end of second quarter is stable, which then takes me over to the next level, which is the bridge between the EBIT. And I will not spend a lot of time on that, but it's interesting to see how the various elements of including the calendar effect, the underlying growth, the write downs of P26, which is the parliament, is impacting it and also certain adjustments both to the billing rate and billing ratio.
And then we end up with an EBIT of 76,500,000.0. I will then go through the areas in a little bit more detail, starting with the largest contributor and the largest area we have, which is the Greater Oslo area. We're seeing a flattish growth in revenues to $803,700,000 and an EBIT of $30,200,000 which is down from the first half twenty eighteen. However, this is the area where the parliament settlement has a big impact in the second quarter. So looking at the box, what's within the box, one can see that the EBIT margin adjusting for those factors is 56.7%, equivalent to a margin of 6.8%, which is a marked improvement from the level of last year, and we're quite happy with that.
We're seeing that this area is improving. The main reason for the flattish development in operating revenues is that within the renewable energy part of this area, we have seen a reduction in activity level in this first half year. Then moving over to the Oslo region, Oslo sorry, Norway, we're seeing a good development there, 5% revenue increase. Also a good improvement in margin to €55,400,000 and adjusted margin of 7.7%. So it's a good improvement.
We're seeing a somewhat lower billing ratio, which has to do with certain areas within this region where we've seen some lower billing ratios, but overall an acceptable level, but something which we hope to see higher as we move forward. Moving over to the smallest area for us, which is international, which is largely Sweden, Poland, and UK. We're seeing that the operating revenues is increasing nicely, 11.4% to €118,300,000 And we're seeing that the EBIT is also at a satisfactory level at 9.6% underlying EBIT margin, somewhat down from the first half twenty eighteen but still at a good level. And with all of the units performing well, Ontario in Sweden and Poland are doing well as well as U. K.
Has picked up in the second half or in the second quarter. So a quite reasonable development for international. Link is continuing its good performance with a growth in revenues of 7% to €293,600,000 And looking at the adjusted EBIT, 25,000,000, which is equivalent to 8.5%, which is a solid increase from the first half twenty eighteen. And then a quick look at the business areas, the revenues from the business areas. We're seeing that the buildings and properties as well as transportation are the main contributors to that to our total revenue.
And as Greta mentioned, there is a close link between the two business areas. And in total, we're growing nicely in that despite a somewhat reduction in the building and properties. We're seeing a very solid growth in the transportation segment. Water environment, same, also a very nice growth. Renewable energy has a somewhat reduction in in between from from last year.
And industry, citizen society, and oil and gas are all doing better in terms of of revenues compared with the same period 2019 sorry, '18. Cash flow in the period is quite robust, where we have improved we had, in the first quarter, a quite strong and negative working capital buildup. And during the second quarter, has improved. But still, we are we have had a working capital buildup compared with the beginning of sorry, the end of twenty eighteen. But we're seeing that is improving, and level of working capital at the moment is at a normal level compared with historic levels, whereas at the end of last year, it was at a historic very low level.
Working capital management has very high focus, but the development during the second quarter has been positive, which has resulted in our net interest bearing debt being reduced from 186,600,000.0 to 167,900,000.0 from the first to the second quarter twenty nineteen. And we're coming out of the quarter and also the first half year in a very solid financial position with a solid balance sheet and also strong access to capital to support our growth and our business through financing facilities or bank facilities. And with that, I leave the word again back to Greta.
Thank you. Looking forward, we still see an overall market outlook that shows growth across most of our business areas. However, the spring of the report from the Consulting Engineering Association shows a moderate optimism, but with some uncertainty. I would like to remind you that we're coming out of a record high market that has been very strong in Norway over years. But there are some geopolitical, signs, and there are also some some changes happening within transportation in Norway that has resulted in us being a bit less optimistic, but still seeing a good market that is growing.
There is a continuous strong competition on large projects. But as a company, we are very prepared to also enter into the new market. And with the combination of professional capability and a very strong order backlog, We have a good foundation to be able to choose which projects we want to go for in the coming quarters. We are continuing our work on prioritizing to make sure we increase the underlying profitability. And there are two areas that are still giving very high priority, looking at cost level and project execution.
And with this, I would just like to invite you all to our Capital Market Day on the November 7, which will be followed after our presentation of the third quarter on the same date. Thank you.
Thank you, Greta and Hans Jurgen. We will now go into the Q and A session. It will be possible to submit questions through the web and also on the call. So operator, please take us through the instructions for the Q and A session.
Thank