Hello, welcome to the presentation of RaySearch report for the first quarter of 2023. My name is Eva Nelson, and I will be the moderator here today. Joining us in the call is, as always, Johan Löf, RaySearch founder and CEO, and also the CFO, Henrik Bergentoft. Johan and Henrik will give you a short summary of the quarter, we will look into the financials, and then there'll be some final remarks. After that, we open up for questions, and you can ask them either orally in the call or submit them in the text field under the presentation. Remember, if you want to ask a question orally, you need to be in the call. The session is recorded, and you can find it through the same link as you used for the call and soon also on RaySearch website.
With that, I now hand over to you. Johan, please go ahead.
Thank you, Eva. I would also like to welcome everyone to today's webcast. We're happy to note that our net sales for the first quarter were the highest ever for a first quarter, SEK 230 million, which is an 11% increase compared to the previous record net sales for the corresponding period last year. At unchanged exchange rates, the increase would have been 4%. This is also the second highest net sales for a quarter ever, and Q4 last year is still the highest. In the quarter, we had a cash flow SEK 85 million and an EBIT of SEK 24 million, resulting in an operating margin of 10%.
While operating margin is higher than that of the full year 2022, it was negatively affected by currency and translation effects, increased rental costs from inflation, and higher expenses in our finance function. The second half of 2022 and the beginning of this year have clearly demonstrated a reopening of the market. This has had a positive effect on our sales. To leverage this potential and momentum, we have intensified our marketing activities, which has led to higher costs, but also presents significant opportunities for continued growth. We usually point out that RaySearch order intake can vary significantly between quarters depending on the timing of single larger orders. In this quarter, order intake decreased by 24%, although the comparison was quite tough since orders in Q1 2022 grew by 88%.
It's worth mentioning that net sales for this quarter is not based on any major orders at all. The largest single revenue was actually SEK 11 million. Instead, it mainly consists of a combination of revenue from many small and normal-sized orders, as well as support revenues. The support revenues continue to grow steadily with our growing installed base, and they were 38% of the total revenues this quarter. Last Sunday, during the trade show ESTRO, we signed a renewed agreement with BEBIG Medical that expands and deepens our collaboration within brachytherapy and also extends it to other areas in radiotherapy. Within the new agreement, RaySearch software, RayStation and RayCare, will be more integrated in within Shinva linacs, Chinese Shinva.
BEBIG distribute these linacs globally outside of China. Our initial partnership started in 2018, and the purpose then was to integrate RayStation and RayCare with BEBIG's brachytherapy system. Since then, we've taken significant steps together, and with the new agreement, we look forward to an even closer connectivity between our products, something that will enhance both quality and availability of cancer treatments. UniteRT is a new and exciting collaboration between leading vendors within radiotherapy, and this was launched at ESTRO this last weekend. The exactly.
The main objective of UniteRT is to ensure that patients get the best possible care throughout the treatment, regardless of provider, as the initiative gives healthcare professionals the freedom and flexibility to choose the best equipment from different suppliers, without compromising on quality, patient safety, or efficiency. This also promotes innovation within the industry, as UniteRT encourages and facilitates for new players to enter the market. We really look forward to participating in this important initiative and to continue to improve cancer care together with our industry colleagues. The reception at ESTRO was very positive. Many more companies will join the collaboration within short. Our base of loyal customers keeps growing. This quarter, we reached another important milestone, namely that RayStation has now been adopted by more than 100 clinics for ion radiotherapy.
Most of them are proton centers. This means that we have more than 80% of the market. RaySearch has by far the most advanced treatment planning system for ion therapy planning. Thanks to our commitment and continuous delivery of cutting-edge solutions, we have managed to remain at the forefront. Now, let's take a closer look at the financials. Please, Henrik, go ahead.
Thank you, Johan. This slide's displays are main financial metrics with a couple of comments to be made, starting off with order intake. As Johan pointed out, we traditionally see a quite a heavily fluctuations between quarters when it comes to order intake. The decrease in order intake of 24% is to be seen in that context, meaning that we live in an environment where volatility is certainly part of our business, and also compared to a very strong order intake last year. Net sales in the quarter rose with close to 11% to SEK 230 million . The change was attributable mainly to higher sales of support and hardware revenue.
Again, highlighting what also Johan said that the very important recurring support revenue rose with 13% to SEK 87 million and now constitutes 38% of the total sales during the first quarter. Operating profit in the first quarter amounted to SEK 24 million as compared to close to SEK 30 million last year, representing a margin of 10.3%. Now, the decreased profit compared to last year is mainly explained by increased selling and administrative costs as a result of a more normalized level of activity this year as compared to previous years, which was still affected by the pandemic. On top of that, we do have higher cost for rent as a pure consequence of the current inflation rates. The finance function still have a large degree of financial resources.
On top of that, we have a negative effect of currency effect as compared to last year where it was positive. Cash flow in the first quarter from operating activities was SEK 151 million as compared to SEK 125 million last year. That change was largely attributable to a decrease in working capital and our ability to collect outstanding receivables from a very strong fourth quarter, meaning that total cash flow for the quarter amounted to SEK 85 million as compared to SEK 35 million last year. At the end of the period, total cash and cash equivalents amounted to SEK 244 million as compared to SEK 140 million.
In this context, I also want to mention that the results in the first quarter of 2023, as previously announced, meant that RaySearch breached a solvency ratio and an EBITDA-based covenant in the company's credit facility with SEB, meaning our bank. The total credit facility available is SEK 200 million, where SEK 0 million has been utilized, which is an important point to be make. Another equally important point to be make is that RaySearch has now received a so-called waiver for this covenant breaches, meaning that the credit facility now is entirely available to us. This graph displays order intake and revenue over the last 10 quarters in a rolling 12 months perspective.
The pandemic really started to impact the company towards the mid-year of 2020 and started to pick up again at the end of 2021. As displayed on these graphs, both trend lines for order intake and revenue has evolved very positively since then. In the context, I also wanna mention that the total order backlog at the end of the first quarter amounts to SEK 1.9 billion as compared to almost SEK 1.5 last year. A very strong number. Out of that, about SEK 520 million is expected to convert into revenue in the coming 12 months. Another slide to put things in context.
This one displays our operating profit for the last quarters, where we can see where the pandemic certainly generated several loss-making quarters with a volatility to follow. As we can see here that the last three quarters, we have seen a constant improvement in the operating profit. A positive trend line here as well. Now over to you again, Johan.
Thank you, Henrik. To summarize, the effects of the pandemic have finally subsided in most markets. With all the positive signals we're seeing around the world, I feel quite optimistic about the future. Moving forward, our focus will remain on sales, product development, and cost control. To take advantage of the opportunities presented by the improved market conditions, we have ramped up our sales activities and also lifted the hiring freeze. With this strategy, combined with a strong quarter and a robust order backlog of SEK 1.9 billion, we have a good foundation for continued growth and an increased operating margin. With that, I thank you for listening.
Thank you, Johan and Henrik. We now open up for the questions. Operator, over to you.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, good morning. Four questions. First, if you could explain this sharp drop for the level of amortization in the quarter and whether they will remain at this level for the remainder of the year or if there are any large new R&D products that will start to be amortized? I was wondering how we should think here about marketing and R&D cost for the remainder of the year, given that you want to start recruit again? My third question relates to administrative cost, now almost not 200%, but almost twice as high as two years ago. What potential do you see to lower that line in the P&L and the timing of that? For example, what's the status when it comes to sublease of some office space?
Finally, working capital, good release here in the quarter. What should we expect for the full year when it comes to working capital? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Kristofer. I'll start off and pick a couple of questions. The first one, the sharp drop in amortization cost is simply based on the fact that, just putting that into context, those are R&D projects that are activated as immaterial assets in the balance sheet, and those are depreciated over a five-year period of time. At the end of 2022, several of those activated projects had been fully amortized, creating this drop in amortizations. Those will pick up slightly now again from the midyear while we have new releases that are completed and then will be started to be amortized.
Just as, should we expect them to be back around SEK 50 million per quarter towards the end of this year or somewhere in between?
Yeah. I would say somewhere in between. I mean, it will, you know, it will be trending back to that level, yes.
Okay.
Regarding the second question. We are, as I said, we are recruiting again for, we quit the hiring freeze. To get a feel for what sort of volume we're talking about. Something around I think we'll go back to around 400, maximum 400 employees, towards the end of the year. I think we topped out at before the pandemic at 430+, and we've been down to 370 employees. That's the order of magnitude. We need to strengthen our marketing organization or our market or service organization in APAC, in some areas, in some regions. We also need to fill in some holes in the development organization. People that we, important key positions that we lost, during the hiring freeze.
Yes. With regards to admin cost and saving potential, as you pointed out that the office facilities here at the headquarters, we do have a potential to sublease some of that, and that is ongoing. That would roughly mean a SEK 15 million annual saving potentials. Activity is ongoing, but we have not yet concluded on anything there, but definitely saving potential. That's the main driver really behind us lowering that cost line. When it comes to working capital, I mean, that is certainly the intention to work as good as we can with that. That also has a lot to do with how deals with customers are arranged, really.
Certainly, we try to push for some upfront payments and then payment upon delivery. That will certainly sort of depend from case by case. I mean, we believe, I mean, over time, that operating profit and, and cash flow will be fairly closely linked together over time. As with order intake, we will definitely see volatility in this line as well onwards.
Makes sense. Could I just follow up on cost and on margins? I think you said that the ambition is to improve margin. At the same time, you want to expand the organization. Would you expect margin this year to improve if we strip out the positive effect from lower amortization? I guess amortization must be like, I don't know, SEK 20 million lower this year than last year.
Yes. We will focus on the margin for this year. Meaning that the recruitment is also will be adapted to that. I mean, that's a, it's a good control knob that we have. If we can accelerate or slow down recruitment, linked to how the sales are evolving, simply put.
Okay. Sounds good. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Kristofer.
Mattias Johansson has a couple of questions again. I think you've answered some of them, but I'll repeat anyway. You showed an EBIT margin over 30% back in 2016 to 2017 on much lower sales volumes than today. When will you exceed these levels again?
Okay. Shall I answer that one first? I mean, that will happen. It's not that many years into the future as well. One has to keep in mind that RaySearch is a completely different company now compared to when we had those 30% margins. We have an extremely strong product portfolio, and we have the 900-plus customer base that is growing steadily. So it's a very good position to be in. I think we would probably be at a healthy margin now had it not been to the pandemic that really set us back for some time. I think this and the previous couple of quarters has shown a turning point when things are moving in the direction of margins that are representative of a growing software company.
Okay. Thank you. You already talked about the increased rental costs. Mattias has another question on this. How large a % of your headquarters are you currently using possible to sublease? You wanna add something, Henrik, maybe?
I don't think we're gonna express a percentage on that, but I'm rather saying that there's a SEK 50 million saving potential on the rental. Yeah.
Thank you. You already mentioned that. Last question from Mattias then. Great cash flow for the quarter. Extrapolatable for the future?
Extrapolate for the future. Is it? Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think Kristofer already asked that question. I mean.
Yeah.
That is certainly our intention to be as effective as we can with working capital, but it comes down a little bit to how deals are structured really. We certainly see a close link between our operating profit and our cash flow over time.
Mm-hmm. Good. Thank you. There's one question from Mathias Dahlgren. It's in Swedish, I'll translate now. Congratulations to a good report. One question. Q1 2022, you wrote in the report, at last, we expect a growing interest for RayCare later during the year, where RayCare will be able to be connected to Varian's TrueBeam. How are we doing with this? Is it ready already, or when can we expect something?
Thank you. Thank you for that question. It's a very good question. There has been delays, obviously. The testing has been done earlier this year. All the testing has been successfully completed, and we are now waiting for administrative, some administrative processes within Varian. We are in a waiting mode now, and as soon as we receive the certificate of interoperability between RayCare and TrueBeam, we can start to promote that to customers.
Thank you, Johan. Are there any more questions?
From the phone? No.
No. No written questions either. By that, I say thank you, and we can conclude this session, and we look forward to continue talking to you, if not before, then when we RaySearch present the second quarter report, and that's on the 25th of August. You can always find the presentation through the same link as you used for this call, and soon also on RaySearch website. Thank you very much for your participation today. Goodbye.
Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you.