Welcome everyone to this first quarter of Nimbus Group. We are really proud to present this quarter, and with me is Jan-Erik Lindström and Rasmus Alvemyr. Please, Jan-Erik, go ahead.
Okay. Hi, everyone. We start immediately. Some highlights from the first quarter. We are on page three, I should say, from the first quarter 2021. We had a sales increase by 31.5% compared to last year, same quarter. The EBITDA amounted to a positive SEK 5.2 million. The order book continued to grow and reached SEK 854 million. That is actually plus 21% for the quarter. I think it's worth to mention also from that respect that if we look one year back, when the pandemic hit us, we actually lost more or less half of our order book at that stage. Since then, we have changed the way we measure this order book, meaning that if orders should show up in our order book today, the dealer has to have paid his prepayment.
That is the trigger till it actually becomes an order, and that's important to bring with you. The sales increased to a larger extent to our own dealers, more or less doubled during the quarter. We still face some capacity restrictions in the supply chain. We handle it, but it is tricky, you can say, for the moment, and it has been like that since, you can say, October, November last year. We also see that we have some indication of price increases in the raw material side. Nothing that we cannot handle, but it's a fact that we see it slowly increasing. On the positive side, we have contracted new dealers in the U.S., and exactly as we have said before, it's important for us that we do that in balance with our capacity.
Now we feel confident that we can start again to add dealers in a slow speed, but still, we can continue that journey. During the quarter, we also have two interesting launches. It's both Nimbus. It's the C8, the sister boat to the success story, you can say, the T8. On this year, we have had T8. We are up on 260, roughly, boats in order stock and delivered. Also the T9 Twin, it should say there, it says T8. Sorry for that, it's a mistake. The T9 Twin for the North American market. Also, you can say a fun thing, that in May, we actually released also the Bella ZERO, the 100% electric boat, and you actually see it on the picture on the right-hand there. We flip the page. Quick reminder, why invest in Nimbus?
This is more or less than what we said during the IPO process. We have a strong underlying market with several fundamental drivers. I will come back to these drivers. We have our true House of Brands with a strong and distinctive brand portfolio and already here for the dealer. We want to be an important part of the dealer's business. We have an attractive position in the value chain with the opportunity to further improve the dealership offering, but also to develop aftermarket services. We have our asset-light and flexible production platform, and we have that by increasing the outsourced production, but also modular development process. In the boat building process, we have a modular thinking. We have our experienced management team.
I have a good team around me, and we also then see from a geographical point, excellent growth opportunities to densify dealer network and things like that, but also to consolidate in this fragmented industry that we actually work in. If we then flip the page to five. Actually, on the left side, the picture there, you see the launched C8. Since we don't have any good places to launch it, the boat shows is still closed. It's starting to stock up now, but it's still closed, so this is actually on a digital launch that we do the Q1. I'm certain that that will work excellent. We are founded in 1968. We have our long history of international trade, and we have our well-known Scandinavian brands. 2012, we reconstructed by our new owner at that point, R12, and they are still our main owner actually.
2018, we acquired Alukin, and really started the House of Brands journey. 2019, we acquired Bella-Veneet. Veneet is Finnish for boats, it's Bella Boats. 2021, now in February, we actually got listed on the Nasdaq First North. If we flip the page, then I will come back to what I said in the beginning. Today, a true House of Brands, and it's for the dealer's sake. Here is presented our seven brands, and the typical dealer use maybe three to four brands for his business. It's important for us that we can actually present a group. Depending on what boating district he is in, we can do a proper job. In the middle of the page, you have the share of the new boat sales in the group 2020, and it's roughly the same figures that we see today.
There we also, as I had mentioned before, we see that we can do some changes here because we want to see a couple of the other brands grow. Maybe I can mention, for example, that for Flipper, that sells mostly in the Nordic countries. Not that much in Europe, of course, they will fit the European market perfectly. We know that because we have been there so long. That is something for the future. I was talking about the fundamental drivers. If we look at the boat industry, of course, the technical development, it's a huge difference between a newly delivered boat today and what we actually then delivered maybe 20 years ago. We have this aging boat fleet. Again, 45% of the Swedish boat fleet is actually more than 20 years old.
Of course, that has to change by the technical development and other things, of course. If we look at the big picture, the market, the industry itself, we have this increased popularity of staycation. As I used to say, please remember that this staycation trend started before the pandemic. The pandemic has, of course, pushed the development, but it started earlier. Maybe the most important factor, that the overall wealth is increasing. If we compare to year 2000 up to date, it's actually around 2.5 more money to spend for the average people on the market that we work. During 2014-2019, the market growth has been, as an average, 7%. At the same time, our organic growth has been slightly above 20%. We have been used to beating the market down there in the past.
If we switch the page to the next one, I will keep it brief. Today we are growing. As you understand, we are building up our capacity. We are building boats on seven locations today. Four is owned by ourselves and three is outsourced, and it's roughly 350 people involved in the boat building process. We will, of course, have additional people down in the outsourced production places. For us, it's important to have a high variable cost. We work a lot with the time frames. What we are saying is that in six months time. Of course, we set a target for this. We want to be able to actually decrease the capacity, for example, or the overall costs.
We're talking about the six months, we are roughly down on around 75% that we can quite quick then handle. I was talking a little bit about the production. It's not only the product that is modular, it's also important for us that we are building the boat smart in the process. It's a modular process, actually, also. It's also worth mentioning. We work a lot with this to develop our production time. If we flip the page, dealership network with room for improvement. Of course, if you look at the Nordic picture, we have 57 dealers in the Nordics. Not fully covered. We still need to add some dealers in important boating districts. The Nordic countries is a big boating district if you compare to the world, actually. We have only then 25 dealers in the rest of Europe.
As you can see on the picture, it's a lot of interesting boating districts that we still isn't present. That we, of course, have to change. Talk about the North American wave, as we say here, and the latest dealer that we added in North America can be interesting to know that that's in the Gulf area, where we actually going to reach Texas and also the western part of Florida. We are taking steps, as I said, to grow the interesting aftermarket. We have done a lot, but we still a lot to do. That is a possibility for the future. If we flip the page and come back then to the order book. I mentioned in the beginning there that it's important to know then that to be an order in Nimbus Group, you have to do a prepayment.
That is the trigger to actually an order then. You get your production slot. The first quarter then increased 21%. What we noticed is that we have come back in the main markets in Europe. In Europe, they had a lockdown. Actually, we sold less boats in Europe in 2020 than we did 2019. Now we can see that the market is open up again. This is, of course, positive for us. U.S. market remains strong. As mentioned, we have added actually now new dealers again. We have these product launches done by Nimbus C8 and the T9 Twin. Is there anything before I need to, Ras?
It's just maybe, as you said, Jan, to remind about this a bit of a conservative approach that we use today where prepayment has to be made on the order stock, which is different compared to what we have done before. Comparing first quarter 2020, we had, I can mention, the order stock of about SEK 190 million. There is a huge difference today compared with a year ago. We flip to page number 10, we see that we have a strong sales in the quarter. We have an increased net sales in first quarter by 31% compared to last year, ending up in a net sales of SEK 290 million. Our organic growth amounts to plus 35%, the difference in between the net sales is currency related.
We see that we have a higher share of sales through our own dealers, this has been actually doubled compared to last year. Still it is important to have in mind that it is a fairly low level in relation to full year sales because of the seasonality in Sweden, where most of our own dealers are located. On a 12-month basis, we see that the sales has increased by 30.8% compared with the fourth quarter and now amounts to SEK 1.081 billion. If we flip to page number 11, please. We see that also the EBITDA has been improved. EBITDA in the first quarter was SEK 5.2 million compared to SEK -21 million last year. On a 12-month basis, EBITDA was SEK 85 million compared to SEK 58 million by the fourth quarter.
The EBITDA margin on a 12-month basis has increased from 5.7% in the fourth quarter to 7.8% in this first quarter on a rolling 12. I can also mention that the increased margin in the EBITDA mainly comes from this higher sales volume that has been described. If we flip to page number 12, we come to the working capital. What we see here is that we have slightly higher net working capital compared to the fourth quarter. This is because stock levels are higher with more boats in stock, mainly at our own dealers, and also that we have increased our security levels in the production a bit. The stock value has increased by SEK 105 million compared to the fourth quarter.
We have compensated this by increasing the level of prepayments, and this now corresponds to SEK 158 million in first quarter, which represents about 19% of the order stock value of SEK 854 that Jan-Erik described earlier. Due to this, we are pleased to see that the net working capital has not increased very much in relation to the fourth quarter and in comparison with the first quarter 2020 and 2019. This you see on the chart to the left, the levels. Flip page, please. This is to remind you about our financial targets that we have communicated earlier. We say that we should have an organic growth of 10% per year over a business cycle, including acquisitions of dealers, but excluding acquisition of brands. The reason for saying so is that we want to keep the mixing between owned and external dealers on a quite stable level.
We say that we should reach an EBITDA of 10% in the medium term, and that we should have no senior debts excluding real estate related debts. Our target is to pay out 30% of the net earnings, taking into account financial position of the company, cash flow, and growth opportunities. We have also given a guidance for 2021, that we say that we will reach a net sales of in between SEK 1,150 and SEK 1,225. This we have said with having in mind this strong order backlog, that there is a momentum at the market that we saw in the fourth quarter. I hand over to Jan-Erik again.
Yes, if we can flip the page 14. If you look at the 2021 and onwards, what we are working with today then, it is then, of course, to develop our current offering and the organization. We spend a lot of efforts now to actually then both increase our organization, but also to educate and spend some time on that. We also then, of course, want to expand and identify the dealership network in Europe. Again, the production capacity, it's important then for us that we keep the balance there so we can do a proper start with the new dealers. We also then want to improve the aftermarket offering and the presence on the market to make us available via web shops and things like that, and we have done a lot there during the year and especially then last year of course.
That is something that we will continue to work with during this year. Increase the presence in North America, and then drive the value accretive acquisitions and the forward integration. That is important for us. As I said, we are in fragmented business. We will continue to look for possibilities and interesting programs, both in the distribution but maybe also in events. We look at that. I will leave the word to you, Gunilla.
Yes. Looking at the ownership, end of April is fairly unchanged from the IPO. That was just a short glance of our main owners, which we're very proud of. Looking into the next page, our next quarterly report is on August 24, and there will be a new teleconference at that time. Please then, we will open up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. That is zero one to register for a question. We have a question from the line of Erik Paulsson from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello there. First on your supply chain problems with this, obviously not your own problem, but for the whole market. Could you say something about if it has worsened in this quarter, Q1, compared to last quarter? Also, obviously, we have discussed this a lot, but what do you do to parry this, and what is the largest bottleneck for you now? Is it engine still or other parts as well?
Thank you. In a way, you can say it's a tricky question because, as I said, we have had this and seen it since maybe October, November. You can say that the tricky part increased during the wintertime. Today, we are on a more stable level. We have delays in the deliveries, but as we plan our production, we only then actually order the things earlier, meaning that we have a safety stock that we usually don't have. That's the way we handle it. Of course, the chase guys need to chase the suppliers a little bit more than usual to secure that we will get the things in the right time. It's more calm on the supply chain side today than it was for maybe two months ago, definitely. It's not over yet.
We have to monitor it closely and continue to do that for a couple of more months. That's my guess. Again, it's tricky to answer. I cannot say that we are absolutely certain that it would be no problem, but as far as we can see in our planning, we handle it. That is the picture. If you look at specifically what is then the problem, engines is not a problem today. It was, but they have increased their capacity. We, of course, are a very big player, so we get the attention when we are doing the work together with our partners and suppliers. The picture is more wider today. It's small things. For example, we had steering wheels for a couple of weeks ago. Today, you don't know what will happen tomorrow.
It may be something else that we have to spend some time on. It's nothing specific today that we see that it's a bigger problem than anything else.
I hope I answered your question correctly.
Yeah. Maybe also on the raw materials there. What do you see there now in terms of comparisons, for instance, compared to Q4 here?
Yeah. Same picture as the others, that there are delays, but nothing more. What we see then on the raw material side is that we see a price increase. Not a very high one, but it's a steady increase. If you compare on a six-month basis, then the prices definitely have increased. Again, we are fighting that trend because it's hard to see if it's a real price increase or if it's just a mechanism that starts. If you compare it with the toilet papers, for example, when the pandemic started, you can see that a lot of, including us, is maybe having a little too high safety stock at the moment. You don't see through it really.
That shortage for the moment as well.
Yeah. Do you see that you can raise your own prices in your boats by the same amount or more, compared to the raw material increases on the other parts as well?
Also a very good question. That is our target, of course, to do that. We have already done an increase. We did that, I'm looking at you, Rasmus, now. We did it three months ago, something like that?
Yeah. Roughly, yeah.
You can say as an average, we increased our prices 4%. That was what we saw at that point, also with the forecast, for example, the raw materials. For the moment, we feel you can then secure them with this price increase that is relevant price increase that we did. Again, we change our price list, you can say August, and of course, we'll be monitoring these changes, and that will be the next time that we do an evaluation of the market and supply chain.
Finally, on the U.S. market, I'm not sure if you break that down in the actual report, how much of sales that is of your total sales at the moment, but you mentioned there that it increases, et cetera. What's your ambition here for this year for the United States?
It's a good question. We don't split it the way you're asking for now. Since we have this capacity, we're running all our factories on full speed. Of course, the pandemic still affects us with quite high level of sick leave. We are running at full speed, and for the moment, we are a little bit, you can say, careful to add more dealers in North America, because we have the feeling that we need to be more sure that we can provide them with boats. That's important for us. What we said during the IPO process was that, of course, from a quite low level, we want to double our presence for every year now for the next coming years. That is still the target.
All right. Thank you very much.
We measure U.S. as part of other markets, just to remind.
Yeah. Great. Thank you.
We have a question from the line of Gustaf Esterday from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and congratulations to Nimbus on a strong start to the year. I'd just like to follow up on the development in North America. You mentioned you added a new dealer in the Gulf area. Is it reasonable to expect a similar sales development over time for these new dealers? Or are there meaningful regional differences here if we look at the sales development over three to five years?
To begin with, the North American dealer network works slightly different from the European. One big difference is that they actually keep stock. They want to have a stock. That means that we are not really sure then, at least from the beginning, so to say, if they have an end customer. It's also that one dealer can easily then have maybe three, four, five, six different locations that they work from. One dealer could be five locations. This dealer we now add, our expectation from that dealer is that they will buy plus 25 boats. Not as a start, of course, but that is what we think that, okay, this is a plus 25 dealer. If they then expand as they show us then, of course, we can then add to that number, these locations where they actually add.
It's not maybe that it's plus 25 boats on the next location. That could be a 12 boat location, whatever. That is the expectation we have on this dealer. Again, we are selective here. The North American expansion is based on Nimbus for the moment. In the future, we will add a couple of other brands. For now it's Nimbus. That is also important to
All right. Thank you very much. That's helpful. In terms of production availability for 2021, if you're seeing new orders coming in today, will you be able to fill that in pockets in 2021 production, or are new orders primarily directed towards 2022 currently?
It's 2022. Definitely.
Perfect.
From the boatbuilding perspective. Of course, you can have a couple of boats available at the dealership somewhere in the world, but from the boatbuilder perspective, it's definitely 2022.
All right, perfect. A question for Rasmus here, moving on to the working capital movement here, which is you're balancing an increase in inventories and prepayments with a large increase in prepayments, and you mentioned that 19% of order stock value is prepaid. Is it fair to assume that there's a similar ratio of the share of orders that are prepaid, i.e., is the prepayment larger than 20% typically? Have you covered the full order stock with prepayments, or is there still room to improve here?
I would say that the level that we see today is 19%. We still have some improvements to make here, but I think we are on a quite realistic level now. As I said, of course, we can improve a bit further, but I would say our opportunity is maybe about 25% something as a maximum. It's not realistic to go further than that. That's what we think.
Again, in comparison, I don't know if we understood the question right there, but to become a part of the order backlog, then you need to pay your prepayment, everything you have a prepayment on in the order book.
Yes, of course. In the order book, yes. Of course, I was thinking in terms of on orders in general, if you look on a rolling 12-month basis, for instance, backwards looking. That's very helpful. I have no further questions right now. Thank you.
Okay.
There are no further questions registered, so I hand back to the speakers.
There is no further questions on email either. I would like to thank you all for listening in. Jan-Erik, would you like to add the last word or two?
No. Well, I'd like to, but I can say that to begin with, and of course, that we're looking forward to the journey ahead of us, especially then maybe the next quarter. Again, we will present this next report for Q2, the 17th of August, and that we're looking forward to. Thank you for listening.
Sorry, the 24th of August. Very welcome back. Thank you.