Thank you. This is Johan speaking. Welcome to this conference call presenting the first quarter 2020 for Investment AB Latour. The business climate has changed rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which of course has affected Latour as well as for all other companies around the world today. Our group structure, however, is unchanged from last quarter. We still have two major business lines, a wholly owned industrial operations consisting of five business areas, and a long-term investment portfolio consisting of nine listed holdings where we are the main shareholder, or in some cases the main shareholder together with a partner. In the listed investment portfolio, we have continued to increase our investment in Fagerhult with another 590,000 shares, raising our share capital to 46.7%. We have also made a small increase in Alimak with 65,000 shares, increasing our share capital to 29.3%. Can we turn the page?
As you know, the stock market has been very volatile during the quarter due to the ongoing pandemic. This is very much reflected in the value development of our investment portfolio, which decreased by 19% since the end of December compared to the SIXRX, which decreased with 18.2%. Some of the companies in our investment portfolio have reported for the first quarter, and we have decided not to comment on forward-looking perspective for the holdings. Instead, we refer to each group's own reporting. We can conclude that the effects of COVID-19 have hit some companies more than others, looking at the first three months. Most likely everyone will be affected in the coming months ahead. Several companies have canceled or postponed their proposed dividends, and we continuously evaluate Latour's proposed dividend of SEK 2.75 per share.
Should there be any change to the proposal, we will inform the market before the AGM, which is due May 11th. Until yesterday, the portfolio value had increased to almost SEK 57.8 billion, which means that the total return amounts to -11.9% so far this year compared to the SIXRX development of -13.4%. We turn the page again. The wholly owned operation started off the year very strongly, but has gradually been more and more affected by COVID-19 during the quarter, and this is accelerated in the second quarter. It's a mixed picture depending on market exposure and type of business, although. We had a 20% growth in orders in the quarter, of which 3% was organic. Net sales grew by 16% in total, but slightly negative for comparable units.
The operating profit for the period increased by 8% to SEK 449 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 12.4%, 13.2% last year. There will be a major impact due to the pandemic on all our businesses moving forward, but how big and for how long it will last, at this stage, it's actually impossible to predict. As we have said before, our businesses have been preparing for some time now for a possible downturn, and now they have put a lot of the preparations in actions. No one could predict the rapid change in the market that we are seeing now, but the management in our operations have truly proved themselves and handled the issues and challenges coming from the ongoing world crisis on a daily basis in an excellent way. I really would like to underline and say. Our message going forward is unchanged.
We will invest with undiminished strength in product development, sales, and marketing in our business areas to drive sustainable growth and future strengthen the position of our operations. Latour's ambition is to come out even stronger after the COVID-19 pandemic has finished. We go to the next page, acquisitions during the quarter. Due to the current situation, we have shifted focus from acquisitions into handling the ongoing crisis. Nevertheless, we managed to complete four acquisitions in the first quarter before the pandemic hit the world. Hultafors Group acquired 80% of the shares in Emma Safety Footwear in the Netherlands. Emma is an industry-leading European safety footwear company with a strong presence in Central Europe and in the Benelux area in particular. Net sales amounted to EUR 23 million in 2019, and the company employs around 140 employees.
MS Group, former Rea within Latour Industries, acquired a Spanish company, Batec Mobility, a leading manufacturer of power-assisted devices for manual wheelchairs. Batec Mobility has an annual turnover of EUR 4.8 million and has 41 employees. Swegon acquired Waterloo Air Products, a leading manufacturer of grills and diffusers in the U.K. The company has 140 employees with the head office and the manufacturing located in Aylesford. Net sales in 2019 amounted to GBP 12 million. We have also completed the acquisition of S+S Regeltechnik to Bemsiq within Latour Industries that was announced already during last year. Having said that, I hand over to our CFO, Anders Mörck.
Okay, thank you very much, Johan. Now we want to talk about our five business areas. We start with Caljan. Caljan had a very positive development during the first quarter. The e-commerce sector is strong, and we see a continuous high demand moving forward. The organic growth in sales was 11%. Caljan is the business area that has the least impact of the COVID-19 situation. There are some issues with supply of materials and also difficulties of traveling that makes it hard to visit customers and do installations or service work. All production units are fully booked, and the order stock is on a record level. The factories are not at full productivity, though. The operating profit for Caljan amounts to EUR 3 million, with an operating margin of 13.3%. We turn page to Hultafors Group.
Hultafors continued the growth with another 30% during the quarter, and this was driven by acquisitions. All products areas are developing well, but at the end of the quarter, net sales was clearly affected by the COVID-19 effects and even more so coming into the second quarter. To secure its competitiveness, Hultafors Group has implemented a cost reduction program, as well as keeping its focus on development of the sales organization and marketing on product development and digitization. A lot of focus is also put on further integrate the new companies into the group, following the relatively large number of acquisitions that we have made during the last years. The operating result increased to SEK 108 million, an increase with 23%, with an operating margin of 12.8%.
We move to Latour Industries, that also continues to develop well during the first quarter, with improved profitability in line with our expectations. Net sales increased to SEK 812 million, mainly driven by acquisitions. COVID-19 have had major negative impact on Aritco. Aritco is a part of Latour Industries. Aritco's sales in China in the quarter, and an even bigger impact on Vimec in Italy, the Italian factory that closed down its production unit during the second half of March. The factory has now opened again, with limited capacity. A broader downturn in demand in the second quarter has led to impacts on most of Latour Industries' business units. The operating profit amounted to SEK 71 million, SEK 60 last year, with an operating margin of 8.3%, a slight increase. We turn to the next page, which would be Nord-Lock.
Nord-Lock's order intake growth is flat compared to last year, while sales was down somewhat compared to a very strong last year and amounted to SEK 357 million. The figures for last year included major project deliveries, which is the explanation for the downturn in sales. The operating profit was affected by the lower volumes and amounted to SEK 97 million, with an operating margin of 27%. Still a quite good profit. COVID-19 had major impact on Nord-Lock sales in Asia Pacific when China was closed in the beginning or in the middle of the quarter. However, the order intake made a solid recovery in March. In the beginning of the second quarter, Europe and Americas has been more and more affected by the pandemic in the negative direction, of course. It's also worth to mention that Nord-Lock have received two great awards during the quarter.
The Superbolt tool was appointed a Red Dot Award for Best Product Design in the tool category. In Sweden, Nord-Lock was appointed Sweden's fifth most attractive employer by Brilliant, which was measured in employer commitment. Congratulations to that. We are very glad about that. We turn the page to Swegon, that continues after a very positive 2019, continues with a stable development considering the tough market. Especially on the Swedish market, the year has started off very well. The quarter's total growth in order intake amounted to 6%, of which organic growth was 3%. Net sales grew by 2% to SEK 1.4 billion, I should say, or SEK 1,394,000,000 . However, the organic growth in net sales was slightly negative. COVID-19 affected the growth, especially in the south of Europe, in U.K., and partly in North America.
Coming into the second quarter, this impact is and will be even greater, and Swegon has closed down factories now or have decreased the capacity in Italy, in India, in Belgium, and the U.K. In some regions, delays in deliveries is also causing problems. The operating results during these circumstance is amount to SEK 143 million, almost same as last year, which is very good, and with an operating margin of 10.3%. We turn the page coming into the net asset value of Latour. Well, the weak stock market was also reflected in Latour's net asset value, which decreased by 16.2% to SEK 114 per share, which can be compared then to SIXRX that decreased by 18.2%. The stock market situation also led to a downward adjustment for the multiples in our wholly owned operations for Hultafors and for Swegon.
Our share price at the end of March was SEK 142 per share, which then corresponds to a premium of 25%. Just today on April 27, the net asset value had increased to SEK 122 per share, and the share price at the same time closed at SEK 151, giving a premium of 24%, a rather big premium, we must say. Finally, about Latour's debt situation, it increased during the quarter from SEK 7.5 billion- SEK 8.6 billion, mainly due to the acquisitions that Johan informed about earlier. The net debt now corresponds to about 10% of the market value of our investment, which is two percentage point higher than in the end of December. Now, Johan.
Thank you, Anders.
No problem.
We go to the next page, financial targets. This picture summarizes our financial targets. We are still above all targets. During the last 12 months, we have had growth of 14.9%, EBIT margin of 13.3%, and return on operating capital of 15.9%. We have met all three criterias during a long string of consecutive quarters now. Needless to say, this will be a great challenge to maintain going forward for the next couple of quarters. We turn the page again, and we are now changing the long-term ambition. We are not changing the long-term ambition for Latour, which is to grow our operations by both organic and acquired growth. The uncertainties around COVID-19 right now means that we now choose to put 100% focus on the business that we already have in the portfolio today.
No one can tell what the new normal will be once we are out of this situation. Acquisitions are investigated, but all negotiations are temporarily put on hold. Besides that, all strategic initiatives within our companies continues as usual. It's important that we continue to invest in our companies so that we continue to be in the forefront in a sustainable way, and that we come out even greater on the other side. Thank you. There we open up for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from the line of Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Good day, Johan and Anders. Let's kick it off with, if you look at the chart you provided, providing the long-term trends in terms of trailing sales, order intake, and operating results. In terms of the cyclicality we saw in 2009 and 2012, as you also mentioned, operational metrics have only been improving upwards in the past years. As you have prepared for a downturn now, what sort of operating margins you think the industrial operations as a group can maintain, and what are the actual levers to achieve that?
Long-term through the crisis, we of course maintain all our financial targets, and we want to continue to increase and improve our operating margins. I think that's important to underline. Maybe it's obvious, but in this situation, I think we should underline that. What operating margins we will operate with during the next couple of quarters due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it's really hard to say, actually. We have obviously a very strong focus on cash flow at the moment, extreme focus on cost, but also a very strong focus on not hurting the businesses long-term. That's why we say we are really investing in long-term important issues like product development, market development, and sales. I think that's what we can comment right now. Anders can add some more flavor to that.
Yeah. The long-term answer is actually more easy than the short term, because once you, for example, close a factory, that factory goes from profit to loss from one day to another. No one can actually tell the short-term profitability effectively. We know it's going to be negative, severely or very much lower than last year, but you cannot say which level it will be.
I'd like to also underline that, which we said in the presentation, that we had prepared for a more normal economic type downturn further on. We had a lot of good plans and actions prepared, of course, we couldn't foreseen that it would come so quickly and so sharply, all of those, we were at least prepared. All of those plans are now truly in action plus additional plans, of course. I really like to underline that we operate from a really strong position, a position of strength. I think it really shows the quality in our operations in these difficult times going forward. Once again, I'd like to underline the very strong team members we have and the very strong and efficient management teams that we operate with. Sorry, Joachim, I can't give you operating margin for Q2 and Q3.
No, of course not. Yeah, that's an extensive answer. Coming back to operating out of a position of strength, for basically all of your business areas, investments came up a bit here in Q1. I guess that's in order to, as you alluded to, really drive sustainable growth in the future. The investment rate we saw now in Q1, should we basically extrapolate that throughout 2020? How should we think there?
Acquisitions, you mean, right?
No, I mean, investments in-
In-
say, sales, marketing, et cetera.
No, you should assume more or less the same type of investment levels going forward. That's a fundamental strength of Latour that we should be able to maintain those type of investments for the future. We don't want to eat the seed today that we plant for future harvest.
Very clear. Regarding business momentum, for each of your business areas, we didn't talk that much about what you have seen now in April, and what you think about that going into Q2. Is there anything you want to add in terms of business momentum for the first week of Q2?
I think we can say in Q2, and Anders may please add, we saw in the end of Q1, second half of March, we saw a downturn in order income. I think as you said in the presentation, it accelerated in the beginning of April or in April. Top line-wise, April is a very tough start.
Are we thinking like, say, 20% down, or it's more like in the 10% area?
I don't think we should comment too precisely. It's definitely down. It's no surprise given what's going on now.
Okay. All right. No, I think that's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Joachim.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Once again, ladies and gentlemen. We have a question from the line of Fredrik Olsson from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Hello, Fredrik, your line is open. Fredrik, if you are muted.
Sorry, can you hear me now?
Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.
Sorry. Thank you. Sorry about that. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the unlisted portfolio, and you spoke a little bit about the measures you're taking given the circumstances today. Could you give some examples of the cost-cutting measures in the unlisted portfolio? That's my first question.
Of course, we are a large part of the workforce. I would say it's not done across the line. It's doing business unit by business unit, but we put quite a lot of our team members are on furlough. That's one large part. We are also overseeing the effectiveness of the organization. We had earlier plans that we are now putting forward and implementing much quicker. General overhead is of course down quite a lot in the quarter. I think those are the main actions. Anything to add there, Anders?
No. No unnecessary costs.
Okay. Thank you. That's clear. Regarding the sort of general price tag out there, you said you're putting 100% focus on the current portfolio. The general price tag should be down now, in my view, at least. Would it be possible for an add-on acquisition to sort of support the momentum through this crisis, so to speak? Is that out of the question completely?
As I said, we've temporarily put it on hold. Maybe not only or not for financial reasons or financial strength, but mainly to your point, Fredrik, it's a very good question. It's more that, what is the value today out there? What is the price tag out there? That's quite unclear, actually. That's why we put negotiations temporarily on hold, and I'm underlying the word temporarily. Our ambition, of course, is to be active on the acquisition side as well during this crisis. Number one is to a little bit stop everything and assess damage and get control of the situation. I think we are in a good situation. We have good overview, and we have a good grip of our fully owned operations. In fairly short, we can be more active also on the acquisition side as well. It, of course, also depends on sellers' expectations going forward.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you, Fredrik.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just one final question. You base your investment strategy analysis on these large mega trends you tend to come back to. What shifts are you seeing in these trends? Sustainability has obviously been one that you've highlighted in recent years, but can you elaborate a bit? Do you see any, so to say, COVID-19 related impacts to the trends you base your analysis on?
Yeah, I can start and maybe Anders add it. I think sustainability we have really underlined and stressed, and I think that's actually accelerating probably during the COVID-19. Digitalization is a trend that we've talked a lot about before. I think that's really accelerating during the COVID-19, and you can see a sub-trend to digitalization into e-commerce. Everybody's quarantined and sitting at home and doing e-commerce. I think lots of people are getting into new habits that will not go away after the COVID-19 pandemic. That actually underlines the strength of e-commerce growth going forward, and obviously with Caljan nicely positioned in that situation. We've had the trend, a big trend, a general trend of globalization that's been very strong throughout the last 10- 15 years. I would say, probably after the COVID-19 pandemic, we'll see a slowing trend in the globalization.
We'll probably see a little bit more regional type focus going forward and probably an increased polarization of the economy, are my estimations on that.
That's really interesting. Thank you.
Thanks, Joachim.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. There are currently no further questions registered. I'll hand the conference back to you, speakers.
Okay. That concludes the presentation of Q1 report and investment updates from Anders and myself. Thank you all for listening, and thanks for the good questions to Joachim and Fredrik.