Welcome to the Profoto Q1 2026 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. I will hand the conference over to CEO Anders Hedebark and CFO Linus Marmstedt. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Profoto Q1 presentation. We had an organic growth of a positive 1%, and we also had a large currency effect with minus 11%, resulting in the decreased reported sales of 10%, SEK 249 million. We had some positive organic growth. It was based on that large studios are continuing to invest in more content production, both still and video. We are very positive to the demand situation in that part of the industry. We also had quite good cost control during the quarter. That started early on last year. Also the product mix was a favorable one. The result was the EBIT was SEK 17 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 11%.
Our financial position is still strong, and it's stronger thanks to good result this quarter. We also had a very positive thing. We started to ship our Profoto ProPanel, which you see up to the left in the presentation. And we could take the next slide, by the way. Our first deliveries took place during the quarter. We have some we can't see a big effect there or a visible effect in the first quarter. We will start to see something during this second quarter. We presented it at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas in April, and we are continuing with them this weekend, Cine Gear in Europe, and then we have Cine Gear trade show in beginning of June in Los Angeles.
We are very active right now in promoting being out with customers, showing our new great product for the cinematic industry. Concerning the sales and the activity in different regions, we see that we have a positive organic growth in the Americas. We have a problem with currency, as you all know. We see especially in the U.S., where we had a very strong uptick of Pro-11 sales during the quarter. In Europe and EMEA, it is very soft development, and we have an increased uncertainty in comparison with other previous quarters. In APAC, we see especially China is doing great, where Japan and the rest of APAC is yet to recover and not doing as good as we would like it to do. All in all, we are in the market.
We are working very hard to find the deals and do the deals that is possible to do all around. We had successes and a stable quarter if you look at it on a global basis. Thank you very much, and I'll leave this now to you, Linus.
Okay. Thank you, Anders. As Anders touched upon, sales during the quarter was okay with an organic growth of 1%. I think it's also important to bear in mind that Q1 last year was actually on the soft side. As you remember, all the tariff turmoil actually started already in February, March last year. It's good to see organic growth, but it's also important to bear in mind that the corresponding quarter last year wasn't a very strong one. The second comment to the result is the product mix, which were favor during the quarter with strong sales within the segment, studio segment, which is positive when we see a large portion of Pro-11 sale.
The third comment on this slide is the cost base, which is still under control, and I will come back to that on the next slide. All in all, we actually had an increase in the EBIT margin, which is good to see in the as a first start of the year. Here is the slide that we have shown you before, and we see that compared to last year, we actually had a over 30% reduction in our cost base, and which is a reflection of the all the initiatives that we actually started spring last year, and now we have seen the full effects of these initiatives. But also it's important. You shouldn't really extract this trend going forward.
As we had touched upon before, we will now go out and launch the ProPanel and that including all the fairs, et cetera. We will see some uptick in the coming quarter once we now are really entering the next phase of the ProPanel launch process. Also that we will do some investment in the sales and marketing organization to drive sales. All in all, the cost base is very much under control. I think this is a slide which we still think is really important, is the ratio between the capitalization and depreciation. As you can see last year, we had actually capitalization of SEK 34 million compared to this year's SEK 8 million.
That, of course, is an reflection of the reorganization that we did primarily on the R&D side, which we now see the full effect of. Of course, in combination with the high depreciation, the full impact is quite substantial if you compare quarter by quarter. On, on the cash flow and financial position, we see a continued strong cash flow actually during the quarter. The quarter, the first quarter last year was actually affected with a release in accounts receivables. When you compare to last year, you actually see it as an decline or not as strong as last year, but that's mainly effect of the release of accounts receivable. Once you have actually decline in sales, then you release AR.
All in all, we believe that our financial position is good, and also that we see the reduction in the net debt ratio from 1.7 to 1.5. I think that's a okay start from to go further with. Okay, Anders, some final remarks from you.
The final remark, we could say that we have the house is in order in the way that we all have a great organization at the moment. We also see that our products are getting making inroads into the market and we see hence a slight positive organic growth, even if it’s very small. Part of this is also that we are positive at the moment with, especially with our new products and the ProPanel we have started to ship finally. We see some small improvements in EBIT margin and mainly because of the, our cost control. Linus is, thanks to you, Linus, is remaining to be tight.
As you said also and informed the panel about, is that we expect it not to continue to be lower, it continue to be lowered. We are, we will invest in marketing activities in the market in a limited way. We our finances are good. Thank you very much for this, and then we open up for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
We would like to thank you all for listening in and, see you in a quarter. Thank you very much.
Thank you.