Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Following a very strong quarter, first quarter, I'm actually very pleased to present yet another very strong quarter. We've sales up with 42%, mainly driven by strong growth in Europe. With + 26% organic growth, I mean, we are pretty proud to say that we outperformed the probiotics market during this quarter. In terms of EBIT, thanks to close cost monitoring, we can here as well present strong figures with an increase of 46%. To end up this executive summary, it's worth mentioning a strong operating cash flow at SEK 87 million. Next page, please. Looking at key events, I just would like to have your attention on the press release we found on 17th of May, informing you that we will operate directly in Canada as from January 2023.
That will give us a full coverage of North America. We will, from the U.S., handle the Canadian country with two people based in Canada that will work as sales organization. I mean, organization. We will leverage our marketing organization from the U.S. to cover the Canadian market. During the quarter, we had nine launches, and here as well, I would like mainly to attract your attention on the launch of BioGaia Pharax in China. Why do I think it's interesting is that, first of all, Pharax is our first probiotics in upper respiratory infection. On top of that, Pharax is dedicated to children. As we have a leading position within pediatrics, we have a lot of hope behind this new launch.
I mean, we're basically launched now, and that has been published in July, Pharax in the U.S., and you can think about a more global rollout in the coming months. Secondly, I would like to attract your attention on South Korea, where we are launching Prodentis KIDS. Here as well, for the same reason, we are very strong in pediatrics, and we've launched Prodentis KIDS in the U.S. last year with a great success. We are very optimistic about this new launch in South Korea. Next page, please. Looking at our sales per segment, both pediatrics and adults are growing pretty fast, 44% for pediatrics, and 33% for adults.
That's mainly thanks to the sales of Protectis drops in EMEA and Americas for the pediatrics and of Protectis tablets in EMEA and Americas for adults. That generates a year-to-date increase by 41% for pediatrics and 44% for adults. Next page, please. Per geographic market, as I stated in my introduction, we can clearly see the comeback of Europe. EMEA is up by 86% for Q2, and year to date 71%. I mean, EMEA has always been, I mean, our historical background for BioGaia. We've been pretty badly hurt last year because of COVID restriction in Italy, in Spain, and we were convinced that when the COVID restriction will be released, we should go back to normal, and that it is what is happening, so both in Q1 and in Q2.
We see that there is no stock effect. It is really driven by demand. I mean, in Italy, which has always been one of our key markets, here we enjoy a three-figure increase. We are very happy to be back on track. It's not only Italy. As I mentioned, Spain is strong, France is very strong. I mean, Turkey even, I mean, very complicated economic situation there, we're doing very strongly. We are very satisfied with the results in Europe. If we look at APAC, here as well, very steady all the time, double-digit growth. 60% for the quarter, 13% year-to-date. We were a bit worried with China, with all the cities closing down because of COVID restrictions.
As we speak, there is still 31 cities closed down in China that represent about 17% of the Chinese population. Our distributor has really been very clever to handle logistics, and we've been able, I mean, to sell, not as much perhaps as we would have loved to, but at least better than last year. We have pretty good figures in China. The clear winner in Asia are all the omnichannel champions, so namely, Indonesia, Vietnam. I mean, these markets are really booming, and it's very satisfactory. In Japan, though, COVID restrictions are still pretty strict, and that has an impact on our sales via the dental clinics. Having said that, we've really focused on our own e-commerce solution.
There we see a lot of increase. We even open a hotline, I would say, for elderly linked with our website. This older consumer can give a call if they don't feel at ease by ordering online to get information about the product. That we've seen as well a very positive success. At the end of the day, we've been able to compensate partly the loss of the sales in the dental clinic. Moving to Americas. Here a 21% increase for the quarter, 26% increase year to date. That's the biggest part of the increase is driven by the U.S. and Canada. Regarding Latin America, we've been very happy with the launch of our product in Argentina.
We were not expecting so much success, so there was a very positive reaction from the market, and I think we have found a very good distributor. Brazil could have been better during the quarter, but that's mainly order phasing. A lot of positive results in Colombia, in Peru, in Chile. As a whole, Americas is increasing fast. If we focus a bit more on our latest acquisition, Everidis, very strong figures as such, but a slight decrease if we look at local currency in the domestic market, and that's mainly due to only one client there that has been performing not as good as last year. Apart from that, I mean, Amazon is flying with a lot of launching. Walmart is doing very well.
We are very impressed by the quality of the work that our new acquired subsidiary is doing in the field, being both at all congresses and meeting healthcare professionals and being super good on digital marketing campaigns with new effort on TikTok, which is new for us. A lot of TikTok campaigns during this quarter. Next page, please. Gross margin per segment, we're still about 70%, both for the quarter and for the year to date, I mean. A slight decrease of Adult Health gross margin for the quarter, mainly due to product mix. We've been really launching in a lot of countries, Gastrus, which has a slightly less margin than our star Protectis.
That being said, that Gastrus is one of our best two-strength product. We are really a strong believer in that product, so we invest for the future. If you look at year to date, we maintain the margin for the Adult Health. Next page, please. I will pass over to Alexander, who is going to take you through our financials. Thank you, Alex.
Thank you, Isabelle. We can move on to the slide called Q2 Financials. Just to summarize, like Isabelle said, we had revenues of SEK 288 million, which was an increase of 42%. EBIT at SEK 101 million, which is a growth of 46% and a margin of 35%. Earnings per share were SEK 0.78 versus SEK 0.54 one year ago, and operating cash flow at SEK 87 million versus SEK 56 million one year ago. Move on to the next slide called Q2 Sales Bridge.
We can see that our sales increased from SEK 203 million to SEK 288 million, of which 26%, as mentioned by Isabelle, was organic growth, 7% was acquisition related from the acquisition of the U.S. distributor, and 90% were currency effects, leading to a total growth of 42%. Which is basically the same for year to date also in terms of growth and currency effects. We move on to the next slide called Group OpEx. I will just briefly go through the operating expenses. Our total operating expenses increased with 28%. The main explanation for the increase in OpEx is the acquisition of Everidis or Nutraceutics. If you exclude that acquisition, OpEx was only growing with 1%, so basically flat excluding the acquisition.
If we look at then the costs, different costs, starting with the sales costs. As mentioned, the acquisition of Everidis is the main explanation of the increase in sales costs. Of course, with the strong U.S. dollar versus the Swedish krona, I mean, the cost is even higher for Everidis, so to speak. If you exclude that, it's quite a marginal increase in cost, and that increase in cost is mainly then due to increased activity levels, as we have increased our sales, in mainly Europe, etc . If you look at our admin costs, they are flat during the quarter. Nothing worth mentioning, just some minor effects there, but basically flat.
R&D costs, excluding MetaboGen and BioGaia Pharma, increased slightly, due to some phasing of clinical studies. We have a negative cost of -SEK 14 million in other costs, which is then due to positive currency effects. We move on to the next slide called Group Profit and Loss. This is again maybe repetition, but just to summarize then, sales increased with 42%, OpE 28%, and EBIT increased with 46%. We have a margin of 35% both on an unadjusted basis and on adjusted basis. Move on to the next slide called Cash Flow. We had a very strong cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital of SEK 74 million versus SEK 57 million the same period last year.
We had positive changes in working capital of SEK 13 million versus - SEK 2 million last year. All in all, leading to a cash flow from operating activities of SEK 87 million versus SEK 56 million one year ago, which is then an increase in cash flow of 57%. Cash flow, total cash flow then for the period was - SEK 225 million versus - SEK 16 million one year ago. The main reason for that is the large dividends that we paid in the previous quarter of SEK 301 million. Cash at the end of the period is healthy at SEK 1.356 billion. Move on to next slide, the balance sheet. I will not go into detail. It's just for reference.
Basically, you can see we have a total assets of a bit north of SEK 2 billion. With that, I hand over to Isabelle for concluding remarks.
Thanks, Alex. As a conclusion, I would like to repeat the fact that I think we have a very strong quarter with 42% growth, which is mainly driven by the lifting of COVID restriction. SEK 288 million in turnover is the strongest quarter ever in BioGaia's history. It's always nice to break our own records. We do believe that the reason behind this success is the implementation of our omnichannel retailing strategy and the building of our global premium brand, BioGaia, always supported by science. EMEA is recovering with a strong 86% that we can see in Italy, France, Spain, Eastern Europe, you name it. Americas is performing well. We are very happy with the acquisition of Everidis. The integration went very smoothly.
The only thing, as I mentioned, is Brazil due to phasing of orders. The whole continent Americas is performing very strongly. APAC is continuing its growth. We have a new distributor in South Korea doing very well, super digital. China, despite still some COVID restriction, did pretty well. As a final conclusion, I will say that we remain very confident for the future of BioGaia. Obviously, we cannot ignore what is happening around us. I mean, between the war and still some COVID restriction here and there, and perhaps a new wave of COVID, you never know. We have to remain cautious, and inflation might have an impact as well on purchase power from consumer.
Having said that, every time you do a survey to ask consumer what your main focus today is all, I mean, health is always coming first. Therefore, we do think that they will continue to focus on, I mean, investing on their own health to support the demand of our product. With a strong brand such as BioGaia, supported by fantastic science and a distribution network, internal or external, we do believe we are well geared to seize opportunity coming for the future. Thank you so much for your attention, and now we are happy to take questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up before pressing the star key. If at any time your question hasn't been addressed and you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. We have a first question from the line of Mattias Häggblom, Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I have a few. I'll take them one by one. With regards to the gross margin, it's now been below at least my expectation now for two consecutive quarters, mainly driven by Adult Health, and you state in the report campaigns and product mix, including the Gastrus launch as reason for this. Prior to the pandemic, Adult Health operated at 70% gross margin. It's now been at 63%, I think. Should we expect this to improve going forward as volumes of Gastrus improves, or is this now a more permanent change for Adult Health?
Yeah. Good morning, Mattias, and I wrote your comments already, so I was prepared with this question. First of all, you know, Adult, we don't have the same volume as for the pediatrics products. For our gross margin is not at the same level of the pediatrics because volume are lower. That's a fact, and we are working on it. Adult is increasing, but we are not at the same level as pediatrics, so that explain the differences between the two. Then in some case, when we launch a product, we accept to have a lower margin because the idea is we need to recruit new consumer and sometimes we have some price positioning we have to take into consideration. But that's worth the investment.
Here as well, that's a bit the price to innovate. You have to launch at perhaps a slightly lower margin. For this quarter, indeed, we are at 63% versus last year, which was at 70%. There was an exception kind of last year at this quarter. The quarter two last year was at 70%. If you look at MAT, we are pretty stable. If we look at year-to-date, we are pretty stable. I'm not too worried. There will be a slight difference for a while between pediatrics and adult. If you look at Osfortis here as well, it's a very expensive product to produce. We have a very big quantity of bacteria as such, so that's affecting the cost of goods.
We are here as well all the time working on improving, I mean, the product by perhaps reducing the quantity of bacteria. To do so, we have to do new clinical trial to see that with a lower number of bacteria, we will reach the same results. Everything takes a bit of time. Protectis is our star, but we know that bacteria are forever. We've been already optimizing a lot for the other products. They are a bit younger, so there we see some possibility of improvement. That's something we keep in mind. That's something we are taking into consideration. I will not be too worried.
Good. Secondly, both Chr. Hansen and Probi have spoken recently about the weakening U.S. retail probiotic market based both on retail data stats plus customer input ahead of the second half of this year. How do you think about the second half in the U.S. based on what you hear and what the data tells you?
I read both Chr. Hansen and Probi's report. Having said that, I have called with the U.S. I was in the U.S. in June when I met both Nestlé and Everidis to really see if they see a problem coming from the domestic market. To be honest, I'm not worried either. If we look at both Everidis and Gerber, the domestic demand is strong both online and offline. We have a slight decrease as I mentioned during the call for the Q2. But it actually mainly due to one client that we sell to from the U.S.
This customer is as well selling overseas from the U.S., and basically that was that part of that business that was decreasing, but not the American part. It's difficult. I mean, I don't want to get into, like, what the U.S. market is going to be in the six coming months, but we don't see on our product a decrease of demand coming from consumer.
That's clear. Then last question from me, mainly for transparency, is you state the comparison for the acquired U.S. distributor, Everidis, was tough in Q2 on the back of strong campaigns in Q2 a year ago.
Mm-hmm.
Sales was down 6% in the quarter in local currency. Can you help us understand what was the growth for the comparable quarter a year ago and how does comparisons look for Everidis in the second half of the year?
I mean, we had a lot of campaign on Amazon last year. If you compare really strictly quarter to quarter, we have a slight decrease of 6%. On the long term, I mean, for Q3 and Q4, we have a lot of campaign ongoing. We have the launch of Pharax coming. We have a couple of other launches that I cannot disclose as we speak coming. I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm very confident in the professionalism of our distributing company in the U.S. and with the current listing we have, plus the new coming, I think we're really strong, very strong at the end of the year in the U.S.
That's all from me. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Mattias.
Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Paul Steinitz with ARC Advisory Group. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations on a good set of results. I've just got three very brief questions.
Could you just talk briefly about your future M&A pipeline, what that might look like? The second part is really inflation related. Are you seeing any increase in, say, the cost of clinical trials? You mentioned you're gonna carry out more clinical trials and in terms of cost inflation in other areas of your business, could you please just give a little more detail on that? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Paul. To answer your first question on M&A pipelines, obviously I cannot say what we are doing, totally. What I can say is that we're so happy with the integration of Everidis and that we might look at doing that in other parts of the world. We have a clear blueprint about which market could be suitable for BioGaia. There are certain number of KPIs which are very important to secure the integration of new markets in the BioGaia network. If you see something that's probably it, we're going forward integration. To answer your first question. To answer your second question about inflation, one, on clinical trials, I mean, here we don't see a lot of increase.
We mainly do our clinical trials with investigators, and they stand for the cost. We rarely run the clinical trial by ourselves. Here the inflation impact is not really significant. What is more significant though is the increase in raw material. We've been really super careful, very early, to buy the amount of oil we need to do the drops because that's where the main impact could be. We feel pretty secure for 2022. We have to really. That's where basically we have to put our attention on. In order to address the increase of raw material, we've passed a cost increase to our distributor globally for ongoing implementation so that we don't have any margin problem coming.
That's understood. Thank you very much for answering my questions.
Yep.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session, and that brings to the end of our conference as well. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.
Thank you.