Welcome to Zaptec and the presentation of the first quarter financial results. My name is Kurt Østrem, and together with Eirik Hærem, we will take you through the financial highlights for the first quarter. Zaptec is building momentum with improved KPIs in the first quarter, with increased revenue and increased EBITDA. The strong order intake continued in the first quarter, and we have a solid backlog and huge visibility for future sales in 2025. In the first quarter, we were also recognized as the largest home charging provider in Europe in 2024. This is something we are really proud of. We have an ongoing ramp-up of new products in large markets. We controlled the OpEx and focused on innovation and sales. We have also further reduced our inventory and improved the liquidity in the first quarter. All in all, the first quarter was a strong quarter for Zaptec.
We will now take you through the figures for the first quarter.
Yes, so I'll take you briefly through the highlights before we dive into more detail later in the presentation. Revenue in Q1 came in at NOK 347 million. This is an increase of 16% compared to Q1 last year. We had a strong order intake of NOK 366 million, further strengthening our backlog of firm orders, which amounted to NOK 507 million at the end of Q1. The gross margin was 39% in Q1 compared to 38% in Q1 last year. We spent NOK 120 million in OpEx, leaving us with NOK 14 million in EBITDA. This is NOK 16 million higher than Q1 last year. So I'll leave it back to you, Kurt, to go a bit more into detail.
The revenue in the first quarter was NOK 347 million. This is an increase of 16% compared to the first quarter last year. NOK 347 million in the first quarter is an all-time high for Zaptec in the first quarter. As you can see, the first quarter is normally the lowest quarter in the year. This gives us a strong outlook for continued growth in 2025 compared to last year. Also, the order intake came up strong in the first quarter with NOK 366 million. This is a 20% increase from the first quarter last year. We have a firm order backlog at the end of the quarter at NOK 507 million. We expect the second quarter to be even stronger when it comes to order intake, as we expect to secure a significant portion of the second half revenue in this quarter.
Okay, so let's look into our gross margin in a bit more detail. The gross margin was impacted by significant currency fluctuations in Q1. The NOK strengthened compared to most European currencies in the quarter, including the euro, the Swiss franc, and the British pound. Zaptec's high export share means that we are exposed to a stronger NOK. It leads to a negative top-line effect in the short term when the NOK strengthens as we sell in the foreign currency. In addition, on the COGS side, there is no similar currency effect. This is based on the inventory of finished goods we hold and also the first in, first out accounting principle. In sum, this leads to a softer gross margin, which is what we saw in the first quarter. As you can see on the graph, it's around one percentage point lower in Q1 compared to Q4.
That said, the outlook for improved gross margin is still solid. This is based on a couple of things. Firstly, we are still to realize the full impact from lower production costs. We have reduced the production cost, but due to inventory and first in, first out accounting principle, the results are yet to materialize in the results. On top of that, Zaptec Go 2 has a significantly higher gross margin compared to the Zaptec Go. When we do ramp up the production of Zaptec Go 2 later in the year, it will increase our gross margin. Also, it's worth noting that in the second quarter so far, the NOK has weakened again. This is following the global trade war initiated by President Trump in early April.
Even though we cannot predict the currency fluctuations in the short term and we're not trying to do so, it looks like this effect is not the same in Q2 as it was in Q1. Okay, let's look into our earnings. As you can see on the graph here, EBITDA increased NOK 16 million from Q1 last year to Q1 this year. We delivered NOK 14 million EBITDA in the quarter, which is around 4% margin. As we now look forward, we have a strong outlook for increasing the EBITDA further. We have a scalable business model, and we have demonstrated that we can grow the top line more than we grow the costs, and we will come back to the costs as well. The outlook for EBITDA is solid.
I also want to point out that if you look at the last 12 months rolling, we now have delivered over NOK 70 million in EBITDA, which again, it demonstrates that we are on the right track to drive EBITDA up.
2024 was a challenging year for the EV industry in Europe, but we have said for a long time that the market will recover during 2025. We are glad to see that already in the first quarter, we see a strong increase in EV sales in Europe, increased by 20% compared to the first quarter last year. It is also good to see that many of our strong core markets have a strong growth in the first quarter, like Denmark and Norway. Also, new important markets for Zaptec, like Germany and the U.K., have strong EV sales in the first quarter. We also see that other strong markets for Zaptec, like Switzerland, with weak EV sales. Despite that, we increased the market share in Switzerland in the first quarter.
The same happened in the Benelux with a really strong increase in revenue for Zaptec, despite weak EV sales in that market. European EV sales is expected to grow approximately 23% per year the next decade, despite the uncertainty we see these days in the world market. In 2024, there were sold about 2.5 million new EVs in Europe. The next 10 years, it's expected that these sales will increase by six times. In 2035, there can be a yearly sales of new EVs for up to 15 million cars each year. This is really good news for Zaptec. Just by following the market, we can increase our revenue by six times in the next 10 years. We are also going into a new market, and we expect to increase our market share in this new market.
Together with the launching of new features and new products in this same period, this is really a positive outlook for Zaptec to increase and have a really high growth in the next 10 years in Europe. To succeed and manage this high growth, we will build on our success in our core markets. We will also ramp up the production and the deliveries of new products. We will expand in major markets. All the time, we will drive improvements to maximize our cash flow. Zaptec was named as Europe's top home charging provider in 2024 by LCP Delta, who is an independent EV market expert. This is something we are really proud of, and it's also a recognition of the hard work all our fantastic employees lay down every day to provide you with the best charging solution.
More than one of 10 chargers delivered last year was a Zaptec charger. This survey was done throughout nine countries in Europe. Even if a strong market for Zaptec, like Denmark and Switzerland, is not a part of this survey, we still have this strong position in Europe. During the first quarter, there were installed more than 55,000 charging stations throughout Europe. This is an increase by 18% compared to the first quarter last year. These rising installation rates reflect continued strong demand in the market. This is important because this secures that the charger we sell and deliver is not ending up as inventory in the distribution channels, but they are actually being installed at the end user. This is laying the foundation for future growth for Zaptec.
We are ramping up the Zaptec Go 2 and the Zaptec Pro with certified MID and Eichrecht for the German market. We have secured significant production capacity for these two new products. As you can see, we have a slow ramping up of these products. This is planned to secure that we deliver the high quality that we want to deliver out in the market. You see that already in April, we have increased the production and increased even more now in May and June. This higher production will have a positive impact on the financial results for the second quarter. I also want to take you through the numbers in the Benelux market for Zaptec. We have launched the Go 2 in the Benelux market. There was delivered some few units at the end of March. This number is mainly the current products.
We see a really strong growth in the Benelux with a 76% increase from the first quarter last year. Now with the upramping of the Go 2, we expect this strong growth to continue in the Benelux market for Zaptec. We are gaining market share in that market. Also in the U.K., we have a strong growth with 54% growth from the first quarter last year. It's still quite low numbers in the U.K., but the most important in the first quarter was that we secured breakthrough contracts with key players in the U.K. This is set for accelerating the deliveries from the second quarter. We expect much higher numbers going forward in 2025 in the U.K. market for Zaptec.
Finally, in Germany, the biggest car market in Europe, finally we have product-market fit products for the German market and start to deliver some few units in the end of March in the first quarter. We managed to increase the sales in Germany by four times from the first quarter last year. Small numbers, but with expanding through new and existing partners in the German market, we expect much higher sales numbers going forward in 2025. Okay, let's look a bit more into our OpEx. We remain committed to drive innovation, sales, and efficiency by having a controlled and sustainable OpEx level. As you can see on the graph, we spent NOK 120 million in Q1 this year, which is a slight increase from Q1 last year.
It's worth noting that five out of these NOK 120 million was related to the one-off cost because we had a reorganization, which led to a headcount reduction. Moving ahead, we remain committed to drive scalability and to have OpEx at a controlled and sustainable level. I want to talk a bit more about our inventory. We delivered an additional reduction in the inventory in Q1 of NOK 36 million compared to the previous quarter. Overall, we have now reduced the inventory with over NOK 150 million since the peak last summer. As illustrated in this graph, we have a plan to normalize the inventory in 2025. We are on track to deliver on that normalization in the second half of the year. Over to liquidity.
We added NOK 9 million in net cash in Q1, bringing our total reserves of available liquidity to NOK 327 million at the end of Q1. We do have a sound financing and liquidity situation to navigate future markets as we see it. The NOK 300 million overdraft facility with favorable terms, which we renegotiated last quarter, will help us in the future to navigate in an uncertain market. To summarize the first quarter, Zaptec KPIs are improving further as we increased the revenue and the EBITDA. We have a strong order intake and a strong backlog and a huge visibility for future sales in 2025. We were named as the largest home charger provider in Europe. We have controlled the OpEx and focused on innovation and sales. We have reduced the inventory and improved our liquidity throughout the first quarter.
The outlook for 2025 is that the EV market's recovery is underway. Zaptec retained a strong position in core markets with momentum building in the Benelux, U.K., and Germany. We are ramping up production and delivering new products targeting major European markets. We continue the outlook for profitable growth. Based on the first quarter report and what we see into the second quarter, we still believe that 2025 will be an all-time high for Zaptec. Thank you for following this presentation, and I'm looking forward to presenting the second quarter results for you in August. Also, I want to thank you all for following our journey.