Welcome to the quarter one presentation from Zaptec. We are two persons presenting today. Myself, Anders Thingbø, I'm the CEO of Zaptec.
My name is Kurt Østrem. I am the CFO.
We will spend about 30 minutes going through first the highlights, financial highlights, and then the operational and market update and talk through these highlights, and end with a Q&A session. Let's just jump into it.
Just a moment. A technical problem. Can't change the slide.
The financial highlights for the first quarter, the organic revenue growth was 63%, like we announced earlier. The export share has a significant increase in this quarter. The cash balance is strong with a total liquidity of NOK 241 million . The gross margin is a little bit below the expectation and the ambition of the company. It was 33%, and Kurt will talk you through that in just a minute. The operating expenses as a share of the revenue is 3 percentage points lower in this quarter. The adjusted EBITDA was NOK 5.5 million . For the operational and market update, we can see that the new sales of electric vehicles in Europe continue to be strong. Zaptec Go is a new offering for the single-family home market.
It's launched during this quarter, and we have also secured the production volumes for 2021 and 2022 in a new agreement with our production partner, Westcontrol. During the quarter, we also established new subsidiaries in Germany and the U.K., which are the two biggest countries in Europe with an increasing EV adoption. Going forward, we put up a new guiding with at least 70% organic growth within 2021, with a gross margin of about 40%. Kurt, can you take the key numbers?
Yes. The revenues was NOK 73.1 million in the first quarter, compared to NOK 44.8 million last year. This is with the same product range that we had last year. There is no Zaptec Go in these figures. The export share was doubled to 38% first quarter against 19% last year. The gross margin is 33%. It's down 6% from last year. This is due, as we have announced before, the product mix with the outgoing product, Zaptec Home, who will be replaced with Zaptec Go. This will first happen from April. We have also some Excuse me. Introduction cost related to the subscription of 4G. That will be at free for customer until the fourth quarter this year. The operating expenses was NOK 18.8 million. Related to the share of revenue, this is down 3%.
The adjusted EBITDA was NOK 5.5 million, up from NOK 4.4 million last year, and it's been adjusted for the salary benefit of share option program for almost NOK 10 million. In percent, the EBITDA margin was 7.6%, and we have very strong available liquidity for NOK 241.6 million.
Just to summarize a little bit, the revenues was very positive with a high growth. We are having a gross margin below our ambitions. We have the plans for raising this gross margin during the second quarter so that the second half of this year will be with a higher gross margin.
Yes, we are still targeting for 40% gross margin for the whole 2021.
A little bit update on the EV markets. In our main markets, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, during the quarter, it was a total of 85,000 electric vehicles sold in these markets. If you look at the figure on the right-hand side of this slide, you can see that during the last quarter of 2020, the EV adoption and the EV sales was really up and it's on a new level in the markets where we operate. On the lowest picture, you can see the growth in each of these four markets in the last three quarters. The first quarter of 2019, 2020 and 2021. Norway has, of course, the largest volumes, but the highest growth rates are in Switzerland and Sweden. Going a little bit further down Europe, Germany, we saw that 200,000 electric vehicles were sold in Germany and the U.K. in the first quarter.
It's the same picture on the right-hand side. You can see that it's on a new level. In the end of 2020, the consumers in these countries really started to adopt and buy more electric vehicles, and it will stay on this level and increase for the coming years. One of the reasons is, of course, the falling battery prices and also for the push from the government, but also a lot of new electric vehicle car models being available for consumers. Bloomberg New Energy Finance, they estimate about 500 electric vehicles models in the market by the end of 2022. You will find an electric vehicle suitable for every need going forward. In total, we see that the share of electric vehicles as a percentage of total sales, it was 2.7% in the whole world in 2020.
It will rise to almost 10% in 2025, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. We are positive when it comes to EV adoption, which is the single most important driver for growth and revenues in Zaptec. The export share rose from 19% in Q1 2020 to 38% this quarter. As we mentioned earlier, the largest markets are Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. We have appointed country managers in Germany and the U.K. to manage sales directly to the market. It's the Zaptec Pro that dominates the export sales from Zaptec. Going forward, we will also introduce the new Zaptec Go in these export markets. The Zaptec Pro installation is also up 840 new systems installed during the quarter, 540 in Q1 2020. Installation is not the same as the number of charging stations.
Installation is more like you prepare a parking facility with the infrastructure from Zaptec. It can be from 10- 200 parking bays. Normally 10% of these parking bays will be equipped with a charger, and the rest will be a future possible revenue for the company. It has to be a Zaptec charger to add value to this installation. This is a future kind of secured income for the company going forward. We offer automatic payment services to the Pro consumers. We landed about 117 new contracts during this quarter. We have a total of 850 contracts altogether. The number of active users is 16,500. These services makes it easy to own and operate the Zaptec Pro systems.
You don't have to think about the bill or it will be paid and settled automatically every month so that you can drive your car and do other things in life than worrying about the energy bill from the energy that you use in your car. One exciting and kind of important milestone for Zaptec in the first quarter was to launch the Zaptec Go, which is the smallest, fastest, and most cost-efficient charger delivering 22 kW in the world. We also offer this with a service where you can charge on hours with lower energy prices during the night typically. This is offered to the installer network, which is important for Zaptec distribution, and they have really welcomed this, and it's about to be rolled out in the market.
We have been able to ramp up the production, and last week it was 200 chargers produced every day, and this is an increasing number. We also entered into a distribution agreement with a large international player in the energy sector that will commence sales of this charger in June, and it will be a kind of a market launch the next month. In June we will reveal the name and the progress. Regarding the future income from this product, we see it really as a competitive product in all of Europe. It's suitable for all cars and it's also very nice and neat to look at and to install in your home. We have to build up the distribution channels day by day. We have the installers today. We have some agreements. Also going forward, we will recruit more of these large distribution channels for this product.
Yes. In the Q1, we have a new four-year agreement with Westcontrol. It's our producer partner located at Tau in Rogaland. The production capacity at Westcontrol is sufficient to cover our production volumes for 2021 and also next year. Westcontrol will invest NOK 100 million in the new production facilities, including robotization, new production lines, stock facilities, and fire security enhancements in the factory. Sourcing electronic components to produce and assemble Zaptec chargers has been a challenging task for several months. Together with Westcontrol, we have solved this problem. Our handling of this risk includes buying large volumes and sometimes at a bit higher prices.
These facilities will be raised during the year and will be operating from the end of 2021. It's also an expansion of the production capacity for Zaptec, and it will be important. We are also looking for additional production capacity closer to the European markets, so that we can fulfill demand also for the next 5- 10 years. That we also can diversify the risk with this component situation, which has hit a lot of electronic device producers globally. We will not go through a lot of technology update, but we will cover the most important one, that the Zaptec Go is a workable, tested product that is about to be ramped up production-wise and also sold in large numbers. Regarding the cloud solution, that all chargers are connected to the cloud, we have a new agreement with Basefarm to manage the cloud.
It's really heavy traffic between the chargers and the cloud solution, and it has to be stable. It has to work every day, every minute of the hour. This is a very important task for Zaptec going forward. Yes.
Regarding growth initiatives, of course, as you can see, we both have organic growth that is quite high. The main task for the management and the organization is to increase the organic growth. We really see results from the hard work that we do every day regarding the organic growth, opening new markets, recruiting new customers. EV adoption is rising. We guide on a 70%, at least 70% sales growth for the whole year of 2021. As we mentioned, the gross margin should be around 40%. This should be a profitable growth. 4th of May, we signed a letter to buy NovaVolt, which is an exclusive reseller of Zaptec in Switzerland. This is a profitable, growing company. Switzerland is a very interesting market when it comes to willingness to adopt electric vehicles, and also they are looking for the best solutions for charging.
We team up with them after a due diligence that we will do now the next six weeks. Hopefully we will conclude this transaction, which will create economical value for the shareholders of Zaptec, both with the acquisition when we do the acquisition, but also going forward with a very profitable and growing company. It will also be a platform for growth in the south of Europe, going into Austria and Italy when these markets is ready for Zaptec charging. I think that concludes the structured presentation that we planned. If you have any questions, we would very much like to answer these. If you might have some questions or follow-up comments, please do not hesitate to contact Zaptec afterwards, and we will be happy to answer questions and talk to you.
Thank you all for joining the session, and wish you a nice day.