Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the presentation of our Q1 financials report. We will go directly into slide number three, and as the headline states, we had a little weak start to the year. Our first quarter was weak in terms of sales, but after the closing of the period, we did receive a significant order from a new customer in the U.S., and we estimate that there are good prospects of further orders from this customer. We will go into slide four, and as I said, the weak start was shown in our revenue in terms of reaching SEK 67 million, a decline of about 20% towards last year. As we have stated many times in the past quarters and years, this is quite normal for our type of business. It does show significant fluctuations between quarters, both in terms of order intake and revenue.
This is an example of that. On a positive note, our gross margin was almost 61%, and as we have said recently, we believe our gross margin should be at least above 55% going forward. Now we are at 61%, which is attributed to a higher share of direct sales in our main markets. We also had, on the operating side, continued to see investments towards growth initiatives in both market activities and new products as we have communicated many times before. All in all, this has an impact on our operating profit, which was significantly lower than the year before. Again, mainly because of the decline in revenue compared to last year. On slide number four, our usual rolling 12 months overview for sales and order backlog, and especially on the order backlog, we can see that we are at the lowest level for quite a while.
Outgoing backlog was SEK 48 million at the end of the quarter. But then again, as stated in my introduction, we did receive large orders after the end of the period. On page six, we have the highlights for the quarter and after the period. During the quarter, we did receive our GSA status that we have talked about already in the previous report and also in press releases. Our GSA status will make it a lot easier for customers in the U.S. to buy directly from us, and we expect this to be a significant contributor to our growth in the U.S. over the coming years. The contract is for five years but can be extended up to three times five years, so in total up to 20 years. We also did get an order from an existing customer for about SEK 29 million.
Another significant initiative during the quarter was that we have now slowly but surely intensified marketing of our new intercom system that we will start hopefully seeing revenue from in the end of this year, and then hopefully being able to grow that into a significant business over the years. We still also see good development in the new geographies, even though large orders are still on the verge. We, as communicated before, do believe that we, in the not too distant future, will see a good-sized order from one of our markets in new geographies. After the period close, we received a large order from the U.S., a new customer, order value SEK 111 million.
This is an order we have been talking about in previous reports and where we have been building stock and therefore our inventory. We believe that a majority of this order will be delivered in Q2. We also did receive a follow-up order from SFAB in the U.S., the security forces, of SEK 26 million. The announced orders so far in Q2 have been quite high and still some time to go still in Q2. There was also a press release from us last week regarding a tender that we won in Germany. We are slowly but surely moving also into the police and law enforcement market, and we have been doing significant work in many countries, but especially in Germany with a partner called IMTRADEX.
Here we won the first police tender that we think will be a reference for us in Germany and that can lead to other significant and larger orders in the German market over the years to come. Interesting progress there. Moving on to next slide. We, as said before, have our focus set on business expansion. We are continuing to invest heavily in both existing and new product categories. It is the highest investment level in our company history, but we are also putting a lot of efforts into sales projects and our market activities. We have several new product launches planned, and it is also fair to say that the number of customer projects we are working on and processing is higher than ever. Even though we had a weak start to the year, we believe that the outlook for INVISIO is still very positive.
Turning to page eight, we, as I've said many times before, have a simple strategy based on four pillars that we continue to execute from, and we will be following up on the initiatives in each area during the year. Finally, on page nine, also just a reminder to everyone that we are in a market that is driven by a couple of things that are definitely here to stay. The modernization of soldier communications, and also the awareness and focus on hearing impairment and hearing loss and the cost associated with it, both for the individuals and for society. We believe INVISIO has a very strong position that we have developed over the past 10 years, and that we are also helping drive the market by developing new and innovative solutions that help the users, both in terms of protection but also enhancing their performance.
This market, we believe, is still in its early phase. We have a very strong market position. As I said, we believe that with the addition of our new I ntercom system, we also have a very interesting new market area that we will be addressing, and that will be contributing to our growth over the coming years. As the Q1 report shows, there will continue to be uneven order flow and sales in quarters and also over the years due to the nature of the markets that we operate in. That was what I had in mind when wanting to give you a short overview of how Q1 went for INVISIO, and we are ready to take questions.
Okay. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Viktor Westman from Redeye. Please ask your question.
Good morning. Thank you. My first question is about an update on the U.S. Marines. Has this money been reallocated to other business, or is this still alive?
That is a very good question, Viktor. I think I will pass on the answer for now since no official information is out. As to my best knowledge, the program is still running.
Okay. Just another question also. Have you seen any new numbers on hearing injury costs, hearing loss injury costs? If they are any lower now that the TCAPS program has run for a few years?
We have not seen such number officially. I think the numbers that are available from the Veterans Administration always lags a little bit in time behind actual years. Not yet, but I am definitely sure that we will see such reductions in hearing damages once we get a little bit further down the road. We haven’t been presented with them yet, no.
Okay. Thank you.
You are welcome.
Another reminder, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have another question from the line of Viktor Westman.
Okay. Thank you. It appears to be only me on the call. Maybe you could say something about the order from Germany, how long you have been working on it, and what kind of police force is this? Is this special police or ordinary police?
It is a regional police force. It is not traffic police. It is people that are more involved in areas where they can be exposed to high noise. So any type of high noise environment that you could imagine. As always, this has taken time. I think we have been working with IMTRADEX now for almost 18 months on different projects, and this is the first one that came to fruition in Germany. But there are many similar projects with police customers, not only in Germany but also elsewhere.
I assume you have more partners similar to IMTRADEX, and that you are going after even more partners.
Yes, absolutely. Of course, it is either with our own resources or with partners. But in Germany, it makes a lot of sense to work with IMTRADEX since they have been on the German market for 30 years and have a very strong footprint with the customers. So it is an easy inroad for us to work with them as they are very well connected, and also that our product portfolio fits very well with what they do.
Okay, very good. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
We currently have no further questions. Another reminder to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We now have a question from the line of Henrik Hviid from C WorldWide.
Hi, Lars. How are you doing?
Hi.
I was listening to the conference call on Harris, and they were pretty upbeat on the whole modernization program of radios in the U.S., and they talked about acceleration of radios over the next two, three years. What is the lag time between Harris getting the orders from the U.S. Army, the Marines, and there is an official tender for hearing protecting equipment? That was my question.
Yeah. Thanks, Henrik. It will be, I think, a little different from customer to customer how big the time difference is. I think it is of course very positive also for us to see that Harris is very upbeat regarding the possibilities in the U.S., and I think we have the same feeling. But we also know that radios are bought in one process, and hearing protection equipment is bought in another process. There is a time difference, as you say. We are not always fully informed about as many of these programs, especially also buying radios, are not official, at least not to us, then it's sometimes a little difficult to exactly know what the time difference is. But it is also clear that in order to utilize the radios in a good way, they need some kind of hearing protection device.
This is of course positive for us.
Thank you.
Please press star one if you wish to ask a question. We have no further questions.
Thank you very much then. I wish everybody a good day. Thank you for calling in.