Hi, and welcome to AddLife. We are today presenting our third quarter report. My name is Kristina Willgård, and I am the CEO of AddLife.
My name is Martin Almgren, and I am CFO here at AddLife.
I will now talk about the highlights in this third quarter. The third quarter is normally our weakest quarter during this year. This year, 2020, it's actually exceptional. We report really strong sales, and most of that is related to COVID-19. The strong sales growth comes into the two business areas, Labtech and Medtech. We report even stronger EBITA of close to SEK 200 million in the quarter, and the margin ends up on 16.1%, which is actually double margin compared to last year. In this quarter as well as during the period, we report a very strong cash flow, and of course, that is great for the future, where we can do continuously investment both in our existing companies, but also through acquisitions. After the summer, the activity in our acquisition pipeline accelerated a lot. We restarted a lot of discussions that we had ongoing.
We closed two deals in the quarter, and on 1st of October, three new deals. These five adds approximately SEK 375 million in net sales yearly. We have had such good financial figures during the year, and we also now see more about the consequences out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the board has decided that we should pay an extra dividend during the autumn. We will have an EGM on November 19th to decide upon a dividend again for AddLife. COVID-19 is something that really is a major impact of our lives, and we are very proud at AddLife that we can help the healthcare services throughout the world with products and solution that really helps people's lives. During the quarter, the intensive COVID-19 testing has started in most of the markets, so our diagnostics companies have sold a large volume of COVID-19 tests from many certified suppliers.
We also sold large volume of medical disposables, medical supplies, and among others, personal protective equipment, mostly to Swedish and Norwegian hospitals. During the quarter, it was less patients on the ICU departments in the hospitals, which actually meant that other diagnostics tests were less than in the second quarter. It also meant that it was possible for the hospitals to do some stockpiling of, among others, personal protective equipment. Therefore, we see that these sales of personal protective equipment will be less in the coming quarters. Elective surgery has also restarted, but they are not up to normal speed, and I think all of us read about the queues that we have in most countries throughout Europe. Of course, we think there's a potential setback during the autumn because we also read about the infection increases in most countries right now.
We have had delays in installation in elderly homes of welfare technology and other aids for elderly people. That is, of course, due to infection measurements that was in all elderly cares, most in the Nordic countries. Our employees are doing a fantastic job working with digital ways of meeting customers, trying to do new deals because we have still difficulties to have physical meetings, to do service, and to install products at a customer's site. I would say approximately 50% of our employees are still working from home. Coming back to the net sales. Net sales in the quarter ended SEK 1 billion 241 million. It was very strong. Totally 55% growth, of which 48% were organic. There is a very short-term focus in the market due to the pandemic, of course. We see that long-term product discussions are still a little bit pending.
Year to date, we have sales of approximately SEK 3.5 billion. It's a strong growth, 42%, of which 33% is organic. We have now summarized what implications we get from the sales of COVID-19 related products for the first nine months during this year. It summarizes to approximately SEK 800 million in sales. We have also seen during 2020, there are fewer procurements. Most customers prolong existing contracts. There is a difference in the way that we are doing tendering business still in the market. Looking at the result. The EBITA result in the quarter was, as I said, SEK 199 million. That's an EBITA growth of 209%, which is actually fantastic. The margin improved strongly to more than 16%, which is closely to double of the margin we had last year in the same quarter.
We have a strong organic marginal improvement, and that is, of course, due to the high sales volumes that we have in our existing companies. Of course, we have less costs in most companies because we cannot travel, we cannot do as much marketing as we normally do. Costs are a little bit lower than normal in most companies. Year to date, we summarize SEK 486 million in EBITA, which is a growth of 139%, and the EBITA margin ends up to 13.7%. The rolling EBITA margin is actually 13% as well.
Hello, my name is Peter Simonsbacka, and I'm the Business Area Manager for Labtech. Labtech had a record quarter in Q3. Organic growth 49%, strong sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We also intensive testing for COVID-19 and also high demand into research. Sales in the quarter was around SEK 27 million. That was an increase of 63% compared to previous year. EBITA was SEK 131 million, and that was an increase of plus 219% compared to previous year. The margin was 18.1%, and that was 9.3% last year. As I mentioned before, the diagnostic part was really driven by the COVID-19 testing. We saw intensive testing, and we also saw, too, that we were more or less covering all our markets with tests for the COVID-19.
We are running PCR tests. Probably you heard about different kind of testing, the PCR testing is for the analysis and checking that the person is infected by the virus. There are also other tests, like the antibody test, that is to see if a person has been infected before. If we look into the Q2, we had very strong sales of blood gas analysis due to the intensive care units. That was more normalized in the quarter due to the fact that there wasn't that many persons in the ICUs. Looking at the research market, we saw that in Q2 there was lockdowns in many countries for research and academic research. It's more opened up now in Q3, it's getting back more to normal. We can see increased fundings in the virus research, both from the public and the private research grants.
We have strong sales, both of instruments and reagents. We saw lower demand into veterinary and food, also lower demand into the advanced instrumentation. This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry goes for the genetic scissor CRISPR-Cas9. The two persons behind that discovery is Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. Emmanuelle Charpentier actually has a connection to the Umeå University in Sweden, so that's quite nice. I'm happy to say also the other research companies are distributing products that actually is going into that kind of research, like reagents and also enzyme for CRISPR-Cas9.
Hi, my name is Ove Sandin. I'm the Business Area Manager for Medtech. I will present the Medtech fantastic results during Q3. We had a fantastic performance with an organic growth of 47%. The net sales were SEK 514 million, which is 45% up versus last year. The EBITA was SEK 72 million, which is 177% up. The EBITA margin went up from 7.3% last year to 14%, an impressive results. We have delivered large quantities of PPE, personal protective equipment, to the hospitals, equipment that creates a safe environment with respect to the COVID-19. The demand has been huge, and we have succeeded in securing supply and quality of these products. Now the stocks have been filled, and we know that the demand will go down. Business not related to COVID-19 has been down in our markets.
Patients have been hesitant to visit hospitals, and resources have allocated to the COVID-19 treatments. Elective surgery has been down in all our markets. At the end of the quarter, we saw an increased sales of products for normal medical care and for elective surgery. Our home care companies had positive sales growth, but we have seen delays in our projects. However, at the end of the quarter, we could deliver bathroom-related assistive devices in Sweden, which is a good sign. We have also hoped that in the coming quarter to begin fulfill several of the municipal contracts in Norway we received earlier regarding welfare technology. Overall, we had a very positive quarter, which we are very proud of. We have also done five acquisitions added to the Medtech during the quarter, three within hospital and two within home care.
Now a few words about financials, we start with AddLife's long-term financial goals. We have profitability, which should be more than 45%. In the third quarter, we ended at 81%, which is the highest amount we have reached since the listing in 2016. The reason behind the increase in profitability is due to the strong sales that we have had in the third quarter. Going to the next profit growth, which should be more than 50%. We reached 113% at the end of September, which of course, comes from the strong EBITA result that we have had. Looking at the average since we were listed, we have generated 39% yearly growth, which is well above the 15 that we have. Going to the acquisitions in the third quarter or in 2020, we have announced five acquisitions. We started with EuroClone in Italy in the first quarter.
We made an acquisition in Australia. We bought a company called TechniPro PulmoMed. The company has net sales of SEK 13 million and five employees. The company has the same agency as we have had in the Nordics. The name of the agency is PARI. We have had that agency for many years in the Nordics. In the third quarter, we also announced that we have signed an agreement to acquire SIAD Healthcare, a company in Italy working in the segment advanced surgery. SIAD has net sales of SEK 85 million and 17 employees. The acquisitions need to be approved by the Italian government before we can close the deal. We hope to be able to close it during the fourth quarter. On October 1st, we announced that we did an acquisition in Denmark.
We bought a company named Ropox, who is producing needs-adapted kitchen and bathroom solutions. The company has sales of SEK 95 million and 73 employees, and the company will belong to the business area Medtech. On the 1st of October, we also announced the acquisition of the group DACH Medical in Austria. The group consists of three companies with sales in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, and have sales of SEK 145 million and 23 employees. The company sells products within the segment specialized or advanced surgery and will belong to business area Medtech. Finally, on the 1st of October, we announced the third acquisition of Zafe Care Systems, a company within the welfare technology in Sweden. The company has net sales of SEK 34 million and 21 employees and will belong to business area Medtech. Looking at the income statement, and we're looking at the quarter.
The net sales amounted to a little bit more than 1.2 billion, which is an increase of 55% compared to last year. The gross margin ended up at 34.6%, which is in the same level as last year. The gross margin has strengthened in the third quarter compared to the quarter before. The reason for the increased gross margin is that we have a change in product mix. In the third quarter, we have less instrument sales and more of the sales of reagents. The EBITA amounted to SEK 199 million compared to SEK 65 million last year, which is an increase of 206%. The EBITA margin amounted to 16.0%. In the third quarter, we have succeeded to get the profit for the period to SEK 127 million, which is an increase of 369% compared to the same period last year.
We see the same trend on the accumulated figures. Looking at the balance sheet, there are only minor changes in the quarter, it's mainly the net debt that has decreased during the quarter. This is due to the strong cash flow that we have had. The financial net liabilities amounted to SEK 814 million, the net debt to equity ratio ended at 0.5. Equity ratio ended at 49%. We continue to have a strong balance sheet for future growth. We continue with the cash flow for the third quarter. We have a really strong operative cash flow in the third quarter, amounted to SEK 183 million. This is mainly due to the increased profit that we have had in the quarter.
Net investments is in the same level as last year. Other financial activities is a decrease of loans that we have been able to do in the quarter. Looking at the accumulated figures, we also have a strong cash flow from operative activities amounted to SEK 391 million compared to SEK 225 million. Investments are in the same level as last year. We have been able to repay loans of SEK 279 million in 2020. A few words about key financial indicators. The number of employees amounted to 988 people in the end of the third quarter. Our EPS ended at 3.12, which is an increase with 244% compared to 31st of December 2019.
Thank you for listening for our presentation today, and if you have any question, just contact either me or Martin.