Welcome to the presentation of Addnode Group's first quarter 2020. Let's start the presentation by moving to slide two. Me speaking is Johan Andersson, CEO of Addnode Group, and later you will also be joined by Lotta Jarleryd, our CFO, and together we will present our Q1 report for 2020. Very much welcome. Let's move to slide three in the presentation. This is an audio cast that we will present the result for Q1, and you will be able to mail questions and there will be a Q&A session later in the presentation where we will pick up your questions and we will address them in the later part of the presentation. Please mail them to lottajarleryd.addnodegroup.com. Let's move to slide four.
Before we get into the presentation of the Q1 result, I would like to give a short introduction to Addnode Group, especially for you who are new to the organization and the company. Addnode Group, we acquire, operate, and develop cutting-edge enterprises that digitalize society. We'll introduce that a little bit further if we move to next slide five. We have a strategy that we have essentially been following for the last 10 years. We provide digital solutions to several different customers and different sectors. We create growth over time by acquiring new companies and actively supporting our subsidiaries to drive organic profit growth. We acquire mainly complementary businesses. We are looking for value-based leadership, and we try to do our acquisitions at attractive valuations. Then organic growth is mainly handled in the divisions, and we believe in a decentralized responsibility and a 4D structure.
We give strategic support to our companies, and we look for synergistic collaboration where possible. That has made it possible for us to have a compound annual growth rate of about 15% the last 15 years and above our group target rate of 10%. We have a target for our EBITDA margin of 10%, and we almost made that in 2019. That means that we have been able to double our business every fifth year the last couple years ago. That's sort of our aim. That made it possible for us to be the Europe's leading provider of software and services for design and engineering activities, market leader for digital BIM collaboration solutions, a leading provider of facility management software, and a market leader for document and case handling solutions for the public sector in Sweden.
If we move to slide six. Our operating structure is three divisions. We provide software and digital solutions. 2019, we had a net sales of SEK 3.4 billion and, as I mentioned before, approximately 10% of EBITDA profit margin. The three divisions are Design, PLM, and Process. In Design, we have three companies, Symetri and Excitech, who are world leader within design and BIM software and a partner to Autodesk. Tribia, providing BIM collaboration solutions, and Service Works Group that provides facility management software. In PLM, we also provide designs, simulation, product data management and PLM for lifecycle management solutions, and we are a partner to Dassault. That's the company, the brand is Technia. Process Management is our third division, mainly providing software and digital solutions to the public sector in Sweden, and we do that in 10 different companies. If we move to slide seven.
Addnode Group, we are an international group. Our operations are in 19 different countries. We are predominantly active in Northern Europe, but we have an international offering. Moving on to slide eight. What we would like to cover today is a short introduction and summary to Q1 2020, elaborate on the group performance in Q1, then go further into our three divisions, also provide some insights on our financial position and also give some insights and provide you some more details about how we are handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving to slide nine. Q1 was a very strong start to a challenging year. Addnode Group has never before had a single quarter where we have had higher net sales or EBITDA. The growth rate was quite fantastic, and Lotta will tell a little bit more about that on the next slide.
Before that, we can see that we had a small effect on COVID-19 in the first quarter, but we will see that it will have an effect going forward and we'll discuss a little bit more on that. We have taken measures to handle that, and we will elaborate on that as well. Before we do that, let's move to slide 10 and I will hand over to Lotta who will elaborate on the group performance.
Sure. Thank you, Johan. I would like to start with giving some comments to the P&L for the first quarter. Net sales increased to SEK 1,234 million. That was a total growth of 44%. 10% was organic growth, currency-adjusted growth was 9%. The growth is mainly driven by the strong growth in Design Management. Based on the Q1 numbers, we now have a rolling 12-month net revenue of SEK 3,810 million. EBITDA for the period was SEK 108 million. That was an increase by 32% from last year. That gave us an EBITDA margin of 8.8% compared to 9.6% last year. Design Management and Process Management showed both a good growth and a good earnings improvement during the quarter, while Product Lifecycle Management was hurt by challenging market conditions and too high costs in relation to the lower rate of growth.
That gives us earnings per share of SEK 1.71 compared to SEK 0.45 previous year. I turn to page 11. As I said before, the revenue growth was 44%, and out of that, recurring revenue constitute the largest part, and we had an increase of 62% in the quarter from SEK 545 to SEK 882. Recurring revenue accounted for 71% during the quarter, and that could be compared to 64% previous year. We have a seven percentage units increase compared to last year. This high proportion of recurring revenue gives us a stability in a very uncertain time that we have now. I turn to page 12 and give the word back to Johan.
Thank you, Lotta. Going a bit deeper down into Design Management. It was a very strong quarter, posted a near doubling of net sales, 95% during the first quarter, and the net sales to SEK 722 million. Organic growth was strong, 24%. Adjusted for currency effects, organic growth was 23%. What added also to the growth was the acquisition of Excitech that we did in January in this quarter. I will give you some more insights on that later. In total, it was a very strong quarter. EBITDA almost doubled and was SEK 76 million compared to SEK 43 million last year. The demand for the Autodesk offering in the company Symetri with our own complementary products and services as well was very strong, both in the U.K. market and the Nordic market, especially in the AEC segment.
Exsitec, that I mentioned, that was acquired in January, has also added to that. The offering on proprietary software surrounding BIM and collaboration portals was stable, and the share of our recurring revenue in this division increased further from 81% to 86%, predominantly driven by the acquisition of Exsitec and also the good growth in Symetri. We soon was able to secure several new agreements with customers such as Atos, Trans Consulting, Seclix, University of Greenwich, Heathrow Airport, and some regions in Sweden with regards to the facility management offerings.
In total, a very strong quarter for the division, and in this division, we have not yet seen any effects of the Corona in this quarter, but we can see that there will be effects going forward as there are, especially in the oil and gas sector and also from the part that is doing business with the discrete manufacturing part as well. We are expecting that we will be affected in Q2 going forward on this. We also have some business that we are expecting to be stable, and I think it's important going forward to see who is the customer's customers, because there are customers here in the public sector as well. With that, I would like to move forward to the next slide 13.
I explained earlier on, a big part of our strategy is to do value-added acquisitions of complementary offering. The acquisition of Excitech meant that we were able to do any furthermore business with regards to our Autodesk offering. We have a very strong offering in the Nordic countries with the company Symetri. We have since 2013 been building in the U.K. as well, and now we were able to acquire Excitech, meaning that we will be the leader in both the Nordic countries and in the U.K. market. There are synergies as well on both the services side, and we will be able to get a bigger sales channel for our own proprietary software that are in combination with the Autodesk products.
So far that started out well, and then we all know that we will have the effects of lockdown and the COVID-19, but looking to Q1 and the start of it has been very good. We also did an acquisition of a small company called UNIsite. It's more of a technology acquisition, meaning that we are adding to our BIM portfolio, and this is a product we were able to both get the information from the construction site into the digital systems that we are providing, but also the other way around, providing the information on-site from our system. It's a technology offering that adds to our portfolio. That's just an example of the type of acquisitions that we're doing. With that, I would like to move on to slide 14, give you some insight on the PLM division. Net sales increased with 4%.
The organic growth was negative, and adjusted for currency effect, it was 3% negative. We had a decrease of EBITDA to SEK 10 million compared to SEK 19 million. We have been hit by the recession in Germany and cutbacks in the automotive manufacturing industries that has reduced the customers' willingness to invest. We said that we could only see some small implications of the corona in the first quarter, and here in this division is where we have seen those small effects. As you all know, here we have an impact from the automotive industry in both England and Germany. That has sort of been manifested as well going forward with the corona. We have still some good growth in the Nordic countries and Benelux, where our demand for consulting services and simulation solutions are still stable.
We are working with adapting the organization, and we will continue to do that as part of our mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were able to land some new customers as well, from doing with B. Braun, EDAG, doing services to Arla Foods as well, Koenigsegg Automotive, Husqvarna, Lethe Group, Staderay, and Vanderlande Industries. We're still doing business, but it's a much tougher market. If we move to the next slide 15, I just will give you an introduction to that. In these type of days, it's very clear that if you're able to work distributed and on a digital way, then you can sort of reach your customers as well. Next week, Technia is hosting a fully virtual customer event with presentations, live session, and speaker reaching out.
This is the major PLM event this quarter because I think it will be the only one in the world at this session because everything else has been canceled, and we are doing it virtually instead. If you are able to join, please go to Technia's website, and I think you're able to get an insight of that. It will be opened by the Dassault Systèmes Chairman and Vice President, Mr. Bernard Charlès, who will give an introduction to that. It will be a good session, and it will be a good example of how we are able to reach our customers in these times. Strongly recommend that. Moving to slide 16. The division Process Management had a very strong Q1, was able to land an organic growth of 2% and a growth of 6%, and we also increased the margins from 14.9% to 16.9%.
Our digital solution for case management for authorities and state agencies in Sweden had a very good quarter. We were also having a good situation with our system for elder care activities, and here we're also working with pharmacists. This is one of the divisions that we are expecting a fairly stable situation compared to the situation that we have in the world in 2020. We were also able to land some new customer agreements with the Swedish Energy Agency, City of Malmö, the local municipalities, and the majority of the customer base is the Swedish public sector, local authorities, local municipalities, state agencies, working with case management systems, planning system for infrastructure in the local municipalities. A very strong quarter from Process Management. Moving to slide 17.
I just wanted to give you an example how the companies in division Process Management are able to help our customers in these times. One of the customers that they are working with is a company called Dynamic Code who are providing different type of tests. They are using, we are providing them with our iipax-based case management system. Having that as a motor, they have been able to set up new system in a fairly short time to be able to provide COVID-19 tests in its lab. It's just an example of the type of customers that we're able to serve in these times. Moving on to slide 18, I would like to hand it over to our CFO, Lotta Jarleryd.
Thank you, Johan. As a consequence of the uncertainty regarding the pandemic's progression, the board of directors decided to withdraw the previously communicated proposal for dividend of SEK 2.5 per share. Instead propose that no dividend will be paid for 2019. This was communicated on March 30th. Turning to page 19. I would like to give you some highlights on the condensed balance sheet. As you can see from the table, there was an increase of intangible fixed assets during the period and also from the year-end. That is predominantly relating to the purchase price allocation from the acquisitions of Excitech and UNIsite. That, of course, correlates to the increase in short-term liabilities. We have paid one tranche so far. That was financed through our credit facility. We will make the second payment by the end of June.
In terms of accounts receivables, we have not seen any changes in the customer's willingness to pay so far. In terms of cash, you can see that we have a very strong cash position by the end of March, SEK 559 million. That is a considerable increase from year-end. As many of you know already, the first quarter is the best quarter in terms of cash generation, since we have a lot of renewal of maintenance agreements paid during the first quarter. I would also like to mention that the net debt is SEK 175 million by the end of the quarter, and that is thanks to strong cash position, of course. During the quarter, we have also increased our credit facilities by SEK 250 million.
We haven't used any of that yet, which you can see that we have an unutilized credit facility of SEK 510 million by the end of March.
Also, just we probably should mention that Excitech is fully consolidated from January 1st.
That's correct. Turning to page 20. Here you can see the operating cash flow for the quarter, as said before, it was very strong, it was SEK 50 million more than the corresponding quarter previous year. Besides the large share of maintenance contracts being invoiced and paid during the first quarter, we also had a good earnings performance, of course, that contributed to that cash flow. Turning to page 21 and handing over to Johan again.
Yep. Thank you, Lotta. I just want to elaborate a little bit on what actions we are taking and our positions with regards to what is happening with regards to the COVID-19. I would like to say, looking at Lotta just mentioned and discussed our balance sheet, I think we are well-equipped, both operational and financially, to handle this. Of course, we had an initial focus on our employees' health and successfully changed over to homework routines. We are, as I mentioned before, we are active in 19 different countries. Some of them are in lockdowns. Here in Sweden, we are fortunate to be able to sort of move on in a fairly orderly way, but there are countries that are more in a lockdown, and most of our employees are working from home, and I would like to say that is working very well.
We are actively optimizing what we can in-house ourselves, and we are adapting our capacity and cutting costs with a focus to be able to retain our competent employees during a time of weaker demand, meaning that we have a planning, and I think most of it are planning for a Q2 effect and affecting Q3, and we are going for a better Q4. There will be some employees that we will unfortunately have to be given notice, but most of this will be handled through different short-term working programs, furloughs, reduction in working time, salary cuts, fewer consultings, and general cost cutting. The easiest one being traveling. We will see an effect from that in the second quarter and going forward.
I think it is important to understand for you who are new to the Addnode Group, that we are a diversified business, and I believe this is a strength in the times going forward. As I mentioned before, demand, we are expecting it to be relatively stable in the Process Management division, with the overwhelming majority of the customers in the public sector in Sweden, meaning that we don't expect that they will cut the use of the software, so that will be fairly stable going forward. In the Design Management PLM divisions who are more active towards sort of the classic industry sectors, meaning discrete manufacturing, automotive, oil and gas, et cetera, we are expecting new sales to be impacted.
We still have a lot of recurring revenue, and a lot of that has been prepaid in the first quarter, but we're expecting the new sales of the licenses of software and also new sales of services and recurring revenues too, that will have an impact on the business going forward. We are mitigating that with furloughs, and I mentioned with the reduction of work time and salary cuts. Of course, we are actively looking at it, and we will adapt to situation as it moves on forward. I think we are as prepared as we can be for this situation, and we are analyzing it going forward. With that, we are looking at questions, and there are some questions that have been put forward here. Lotta.
The first question is: what was the reason behind the significant increase in recurring revenues?
If I will start with that, the impact of that is, of course, the acquisition of Exsitec that we did in the first quarter. Exsitec has a business model with the majority of the sales and the income going for its recurring revenue. The acquisition of that added to the existing portfolio of recurring revenue that we have. We also had a growth in Symetri, who has a similar offering as Exsitec by itself. We're both an organic growth in Symetri, but the majority of the explanation is that we acquired Exsitec, who has a business model with a lot of recurring revenues.
Question number two, what was behind the very strong margin uptick in Process Management?
Process Management has several different companies, organization. We could see that we were able to have very strong demand with regards to case management systems to the public sector, and that added to that. That was predominantly with our more consulting offering-based, tailor-made solutions there, who had a very strong impact. Also, basically, as Process Management are several different companies, as all those companies are able to deliver a good quarter, the whole division will have a good quarter. It's also an effect of the utilization rates, meaning that they have run a very efficient organization in Q1, and that shows in the number and the uptake in the margins.
Question number three, any seasonal effects in Excitech making it a strong Q1, or is that the underlying growth rate you saw?
It's not that much of a seasonal effect. You have both, like we discussed there. Some good underlying growth, and then we'll have some effects of the three-year deals. For those of you who have been following us, you know that in Q2 last year, we saw an uptake in the business model where we were able to sell more three-year deals. Now we have sort of gone full year, full circle. We still had an effect of that in Q1 as well this year, but we also have a good underlying growth, and those two together was able to generate this very strong organic growth. We don't expect that we can have a 20% organic growth in this organization. It's both an effect of selling a lot of three-year deals, but also good underlying growth.
There's definitely a good underlying growth, but as we have mentioned before, we can't expect that we can have a 20% organic growth going forward. If you put aside the COVID-19 effect, the organic growth in this business, we have been clear on this, that this avenue, it's more up to be expected around 5%. That's a good organic growth. We sort of have a more of a effect of right now we are able to do good business, and we are selling a lot more three-year deals.
Next question, what is the share of recurring revenue in Excitech? Looks like almost 100%.
Not almost 100%. It's I would say less. We haven't given that. It's not more than we are having for the whole division. It's actually a little bit less. Just to give you a number on that.
Next question is, can you comment on how the first three weeks of April have started growth-wise in your three divisions?
The short answer is no, still, to give you an insight, we can see that we have an effect from the corona. As we mentioned, we have been very clear on that. We can see, for example, education. We do a lot of education with regards to the users of our software due to travel restrictions, and also later on, their basic classroom training is not there yet. We can also, the new sales takes a little bit longer. As we mentioned, if we put the division Process aside, and if we look at Design and PLM, we can see the effect there. We were able to see it in the last part of the first quarter, and we can see there's an effect in new sales, as I mentioned, with regards to what we are expecting.
There are no cancellation of the existing contracts, but it's the new sales that we are seeing an effect on.
Next question is, are your recurring revenue in Q1 defined in such a way that they will remain at that level into Q2 as well?
We can't make any promises on that. It has to do with most of them are renewed on a yearly basis. As you can see in our cash flow, the majority of the renewals are being made in Q1, meaning that they are actually paying for it. As you move along, going over the year, there are renewals as well in Q2, in Q3, in Q4. We'll have to wait and see, to be very honest. It depends on how our customers act. If they believe that this will pan out in a couple of months and we have an effect, we can probably expect that they will not cancel the contract. If the customers believe that this will take years, we could probably expect cancellations. It's a little bit of wait and see, but we haven't seen any cancellations so far.
Okay, next question. We have commented a little bit on that before. Is there a significant positive impact from three years licenses in the growth figures for Design Management?
That was a little bit discussed in one of the earlier questions. Yes, there's an effect in Q1 from the three-year deals in Design Management.
Next question. Excitech seems to do a very solid quarter in terms of both sales and margin. What are the reasons behind that? Is there a significant seasonality effect? Is the combined Symetri Excitech offering already paying off?
To answer that question, we can say that Excitech is doing a good quarter, yes. It's not that much of a seasonality effect. We can say that it was a strong momentum from 2019 moving into 2020, in the Q1. Most of their customer base are in the AEC sector, and that continued to good business. With regards to the rest of the Design Management, we can see that they will be affected in Q2 as well going forward. We're expecting that with regards to new sales, but Q1 was very good. There were some three-year deals effect there as well. It's not so much seasonality. They had a good underlying growth, but there are also three-year deal effect as well.
Is the combined Symetri Excitech offering already paying off?
Yeah, the combined. Both Excitech and Symetri team are excited about doing it and working it together. We haven't seen that in the financial figures yet, meaning that we are doing more business together. That is yet to come. Of course, with all this travel restriction, it's not put on hold, but we are not able to do as much as we would like. It's a very well-run business, so they can handle it. The effects of the combined Symetri Excitech is coming.
Next question. Could you give us some rounded numbers regarding the expected impact on non-recurring revenue in design and PLM sales from COVID-19 for Q2 and Q3? Is it 10%, 30%, or even more %?
It's a very good question. I'm not able to answer that. Fundamentally, we are not giving any financial prognosis. Also in the situation where we are right now, it's very tough to answer. It all depends on how our customers are acting with regards and how they are affected going forward. No, I'm not able to answer that question.
That was the last question that we received.
Okay. Thank you all for taking the time to listen to our Q1 presentation. With that, I would like to end this session and thank you. From me and Lotta.
Thank you very much.
Goodbye.