Hello everyone, my name is Malin Siberg. I'm the CEO of Guideline Geo. Welcome to our Q1 report. I will start as usual, a brief intro to the company, and then focus mainly on the Q1 achievements and highlights and numbers. We will end with a Q&A session. Please type in any question you may have in the chat room, and we will respond to them in the end. This doesn't work. We are your guide to the subsurface. We use non-destructive geophysical methods to see what's below the surface, just below the surface, or down to even 1,000 m below the surface. We have three main applications. We help our customers find and monitor groundwater. For the infrastructure and building construction market, we do ground investigations with our instruments.
For just below the surface, within a couple of meters, we find pipes and cables, utility locating. Our customers are in the private sector, contractors, consultants, and in the public domain, both authorities such as water ministries worldwide and universities. This is who we are. We are a stock-listed company. We are listed on First North Growth Market. We have a long history. We have been in this space since 2023. We are on a profitable growth path. Last year, we had a small dip in our annual sales, but we ended up at SEK 185 million and a positive EBITDA of SEK 21 million. We are made in Sweden. We have our headquarters in Stockholm, and we have our manufacturing in Västerbotten in Malå, and our R&D in the university city of Umeå.
Innovation is in our DNA, and we pride ourselves to have market-leading innovative solutions for the geophysics world. We go to market under two industry-leading brands, ABEM and Malå, the name of our town where we're from. Given our size, we have a really global reach, and the orange dots in the map is where we have our direct sales and our own offices and subsidiaries. I'll talk a little bit more about that in the coming slide. The light green dots are our partner network, our distributors worldwide. As you can see, we cover the world pretty well and are present through our indirect channel in many countries worldwide. Let's move our eyes to Q1. We had a very strong start of this year. Our net sales was up 46%.
We ended at almost SEK 50 million for the quarter, which we consider is a good sales for Q1. We had a strong order intake, + 27% from last year. Our cash flow, our operating cash flow is strong, and we have a solid net cash of SEK 23.9 million. The operating cash flow was plus SEK 10.5 million for the quarter, which we consider as good. If we look at our profitability, EBITDA and EBIT, our EBITDA was SEK +1.8 million, and EBIT was SEK -3.3 million for the quarter. I'll elaborate a little bit more on that, but the one important factor for the profitability was that we were heavily impacted by the strengthened Swedish krona. We're an export company. We are affected by currency fluctuations, and it was very strong this quarter.
We are a true export company, and we think that our global sales make us strong and also somewhat resilient to the U.S. import taxes that's on everybody's minds at the moment. I'll elaborate a bit more on that in the coming slide as well. If we break down net sales and order intake, as you can see quarter by quarter and through regions, you can look at these charts. Net sales on the left column and order intake on the right column. If we look at the market that drives the Q1 numbers, we can see that I'm happy to see that we have pretty strong sales to the infrastructure and building construction sector.
Last year, this period of time, we had very weak infrastructure sales, and we could see at the end of last year that we started to see more and more sales into this customer segment and through our Malå product line. That trend continues also in Q1. Good sales to the infrastructure segment. In Q1, we also saw strong sales into archaeology with our latest GPR solution, Malå Solutions. We've taken the archaeology sector compared to our competition. They turned to us for our 3D solutions. Strong archaeology sales in Q1. The groundwater sector is strong for us, and it continues to be strong also in this quarter. I put mining up here. Mining is not a focus area for us, but in the quarter, we saw a couple of mining customers choosing our solutions for their applications.
One specific one I want to highlight is an Indian university that builds a center of excellence for geophysics for mining, and they chose us and our solutions, different methods for their university. We have customers also in mining. If you look at regions, I'm glad to see that we saw net sales growth in all three regions: in APAC, EMEA, and Americas. If you look at the blue line, the blue bars, we can see that in this quarter, we had an even sales in all three regions. That's pretty. I like to see that because it shows that we're not dependent on one specific country or region. This quarter, of course, it's good to not be overdependent on the Americas. Last year, I've talked to you about that we've had weaker sales in our major countries such as the U.S., China, and the U.K.
We saw some trends in Q4 that they started to take off, and that has also continued in Q1. Good sales in these large countries for us in Q1. If we look at net sales split between our product lines, there are a few things I want to highlight. We continue to rely on our two product lines, ABEM and Malå. They're equally important to us. We invest heavily in both. If you look at the orange bar, the Malå bar, it had a weak first half last year, driven by the weak infrastructure market. We are now seeing that the trend that is coming back also holds for Q1. It's good to see.
We also saw that if I look at specific products that are modern solutions, our 3D solutions that we call array solutions, the MIRA Compact, I've talked about with you before, and the MIRA HDR, they're selling well also in Q1. Our array, our modern solutions, they sell well, which is good to see. ABEM had a solid quarter, the blue bar. As always, I'd say, driven by the water sector, continues to be strong for us. If you look at specific products, the TEM solution, we saw a positive trend here, TEM solution specifically for the water sector. If we look at profitability, EBITDA and EBIT, the top chart showing EBITDA and a positive number and EBIT, a negative number for the quarter.
As you can see, quarter by quarter, we do have a seasonal effect in our industry that we always tend to see lower sales in H1, and that gives us lower profitability because our fixed costs are more or less the same over the year. We did see a good portfolio mix. We continue to see and have a strong product margin. We are at a product margin where we want to be, which is really pleasing to see. The currency effect really hit our profitability this quarter. I have a slide to show you a bit more about that. The graph shows the euro in the red line, US dollar in the black line, and Australian dollars in the light blue line. These are the currencies that we sell in. Our net sales come from any of these three.
Our supply chain is mainly Swedish krona, a few others as well, but we have our supply chain close to Malå, so a lot. We buy a lot in Swedish krona. As you can see in the chart, the last column, there's a strength in krona really shows that it's a big drop in all our three sales currencies. That, of course, affects us. If we look at our EBIT in the quarter, it was affected negatively with SEK -3.6 million for this quarter. This is a big impact of this strength in krona for us. If we look at cash flow and the net cash, we're happy with the cash flow, SEK +10.5 million in the quarter, and the net cash is SEK 23.9 million, if I remember correctly.
These numbers are mainly driven by that we continue to push down our stock levels. I've talked to you before that last year, this time, we started to build our stock levels that was not healthy, and we've since then pushed them down, and it continues down in a very good way, and that helps our cash flow. Another thing that obviously helps our cash flow is that in Q4, we had strong sales by the end of the year, and that turns into cash when customers pay as expected. Given these large last quarter's healthy cash flow and healthy net cash, in the quarter, we lowered our check credit because we do not see as big a need as we had during the summer period last year. Our check credit is now at SEK 5.5 million.
U.S. import taxes, I think it's on everybody's minds, and we follow the news hour by hour. We're an export company. The U.S. market is pretty big for us. Of course, we are affected by this as well. The current import tax on our instruments is 10%. When I went into this room, let's see what happens next. If I use those 10% and apply them to our sales last year, those 10% would have meant that we would have increased our cost with SEK 2 million, just to give you an estimate of the impact of a 10% import tax to the U.S., to us. Of course, we, as everybody else, we take measures, we take actions to mitigate this.
What we did during Q1 is that we did some stock buildup in the U.S. prior to the import tax implementation, more or less to give us some time to act, to see where we end up. We are prepared to revise our U.S. price list if we see more import tax or big changes coming quickly. We can be pretty fast in acting if this situation changes. Right now, we're not overly concerned about this. In the quarter, we registered and opened up our own subsidiary in Malaysia. That's part of our sales strategy. We want to be closer to our customers in our main regions. The reason behind opening this up is that we want to create a hub in Asia to support continued growth throughout Asia.
In the table on top, you can see that we've had a continued and strong and steady growth year- over- year in APAC, and we continue to believe that there is high potential in Asia for our instruments, for our solutions. That's the reason for us to open up our own office. We want to be present to show customers that we're there, to also better capture needs and requirements and requests from the Asian markets. At the moment, we have six employees connected to this new subsidiary, and we have 17 distributors throughout Asia, and you can see them in the picture below. During the quarter, we've held three partner conferences where we gather our distributors regionally, and you can see pictures of them.
On the bottom right picture, you can see where we gather our distributors throughout Asia in a partner conference in our newly opened office in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. On the top left picture, you can see a partner conference in MEA, Middle East, and African distributors, and we gathered this time in Ethiopia. In the middle picture, we can see our Latin American partners that we gathered for a conference end of March in Mexico. We believe these regional conferences are really important to us and to our partners. We have the same thing on the agenda every time. We capture and we ask for feedback, input from the regions to better understand local requirements. We do sales trainings. We do product launches or updates, and we do demo training, how to sell, how to demonstrate, how product trainings.
We gather the distributors in the region to share customer cases from the region, from different applications, and we want them to share best practices as a way to improve their way of representing us and representing our instruments. Least but not last, it's a way of building a strong network and building relations and building motivation because we want them to focus and prioritize in selling our instruments and not somebody else's. These events are important, and they give results. We also continue with our innovation strategy. This quarter, we released an important product on the ABEM product line, ABEM Ground TEM Rally. It's our first mobile solution for groundwater exploration where you can tow a TEM solution after a vehicle. It's within the TEM family, transient electromagnetics family, and it's to find search for groundwater.
You want to have it mobile because it helps you cover larger areas faster. That is important in many parts of the world. This release is a result of our collaboration and our partnership with a Danish TEM company that we signed about a year ago. If we look at the sustainability perspective, I want to share with you one highlight from Q1. Early this year, UNESCO declared 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation. We teamed up with a team called Project Pressure, and they have conducted a glacier research expedition to Uganda using our geophysical instruments. There you can see Heidi holding one of our GPR antennas to study melting equatorial glaciers and the impact of the groundwater availability in the region. Really important research work in the groundwater sector that really is so important for us.
That was the end of my run-through of Q1, but here are the three key takeaways from me from this quarter. We had a strong Q1, a strong start of this year financially. We have, during the quarter, invested heavily in our go-to-market channel by opening our new office in Malaysia to support growth throughout Asia. We have also invested heavily in our partner network. We've exchanged a couple of distributors, signed new ones, and we've held three partner conferences as a way to make sure that our partner network is the strongest and market-leading in our industry. The last takeaway is around the turbulent macroeconomics that we're in. We are a true export company. 98%-99% is in export. Of course, we are exposed to currency effects, and of course, we are also affected by import taxes.
We think and we strongly believe that our global sales makes us strong, and it also makes us resilient to these turbulent times that we're in. Of course, we are affected by it. With that, I close this session and hand over to any questions that you might have.
Yes.
Do we have any questions from the chat?
Yes. You mentioned Americas. Do you have any competitors that might benefit from the fact of new import taxes?
Yes, good question. It's a bit different if I look at our two different product lines. If I look at Malå, our GPR solution, we have pretty, there are many competitors, and one of them is a U.S.-based competitor. Of course, they benefit from this. Apart from them, we have four European players that are equally strong, one in Sweden and two in Europe.
We're in the same situation with import taxes to the U.S. Some of us have legal entities that we import to and sell directly, and some of them don't, so they import directly from Europe. On Malå, there is one U.S. player that, of course, will have a benefit from the import taxes. On ABEM, we don't face as fierce competition. There is another strong European player, and we have a similar situation from an import tax perspective.
You also mentioned that if the import taxes would have been active in 2024, it would have affected with about SEK 2 million. Can you elaborate on this?
Yes. If you look at our sales to Americas last year, I've showed that to you in earlier calls. It's been roughly 30% of our sales.
In the Americas sales, it includes both North America, which is both U.S. and Canada, and it also includes Latin America, which is a pretty big part of our sales. The numbers that you see in Americas is not only the U.S., it's also Latin American numbers. We have a pretty large service business in the U.S., a recurring service business that is pretty high and that is not affected by import taxes at all. Thirdly, as we have legal entities, we have sales service support offices in the U.S. We have a transfer pricing. Our American legal entity, they buy from Guideline Geo at transfer prices. Our sales prices, it's our transfer prices that has the import tax, not the end user prices. These three things impact the total impact of the import taxes to the U.S.
EMEA had a strong Q1 net sales and order intake compared to last year. Can you elaborate about how EMEA is developing and what is working well there? Which segment is growing?
Yes. EMEA has been working well for us in the quarter. Also, we have to admit that last year's Q1 was pretty weak for EMEA. The segments that work well is utility for the Malå specifically, strong in archaeology, also strong in the infrastructure market is starting to get back in a good way. EMEA, as always, it's ABEM, it's the resistivity and TEM products that go well in Middle East and Africa. It is good to see the bounce back for EMEA in the quarter.
Y ou mentioned that you're opening an office or opened an office in Kuala Lumpur. Do you have any plans to open more offices around the world?
That's a good question.
It's an ongoing, never-ending discussion and that we review how to go to market, our go-to-market channel. We do rely heavily on our partner network. During this quarter, we've signed three new distributors worldwide. We continuously add or review our partner network to make sure that it stays market-leading. We also see that in some areas, we want to go direct. We have sales offices in the U.S. that we consider a really important market. You know that we acquired our distributor in Australia because we saw an opportunity and we wanted to get closer to our customers and have more direct sales in Australia. Now we've seen such a strong sales growth in Asia that we decided to open up an own office to even better serve and support and understand the Asian market.
It has to make business sense when to start an office and when to instead sign on a new distributor. We have that discussion every week. We will let you know when we do that. The go-to-market and the sales channel and where we want to have subsidiaries is really on top of our minds, or my mind. No clear answer, but we are always considering it.
I believe that was the final question. I do not see anything incoming. Thank you.
Thank you. See you again in a quarter's time.