Deputy CEO and also Interim CFO. Johan and Björn will give you a short summary of the quarter, including the financials, and also give you some final remarks. After that, we open up for questions which you can either ask orally in the call. Remember that you need to be in the call to ask an oral question, or you can also submit a written question in the text field here under the presentation. Let me also remind you that this session is recorded and will be found through the same link as you used for this webcast, and we will also publish it on our website. With that, I now hand over to you, Johan. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Eva. Also a warm welcome to everyone from my side. As we have communicated on several occasions, the pandemic has had a negative effect on our sales. In the fourth quarter last year, we could start to see clear signs of recovery. The strong order intake and increased sales that we have now seen in Q1, and for which we published preliminary figures last Friday, are a direct consequence of the declining effects of the pandemic. The preliminary figures of last Friday are confirmed and show that the increase in order intake was 88% compared with the year-on-year period. Our net sales were the highest ever for a first quarter, SEK 208 million. Operating profit increased to SEK 30 million, which represents an operating margin of 14%.
We also noted an order backlog reaching an all-time high at SEK 1,489 million. The lifted travel restrictions in many countries meant that we had more opportunities to meet customers face-to-face. For example, last week, when we attended one of the industry's main trade shows, ESTRO, which was a really positive experience, there was a lot of energy among the many visitors to our booth and great interest in our products. We had a large number of product demonstrations and had many interesting discussions with our partners and potential customers. Treatment planning for particle treatments such as protons and carbon ions is an important focus area for us.
RayStation has a global market share of more than 60%, and this position has now been further strengthened by several new orders, such as the ones from Proton International Arkansas, Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital, and Mevion China. Last week, we signed an important agreement with the global med tech company GE HealthCare. Together with GE, we will develop a new radiotherapy simulation and treatment planning workflow solution where we combine RayStation with GE HealthCare's multimodality simulator systems. This is a very exciting field, and I look forward to our collaboration, where we aim at making cancer treatment both faster and more precise. When meeting with customers and potential customers all over the world, we are starting to see an increased interest in RayCare. We know that many centers view RayCare as a next-generation oncology information system.
Apart from that, we see that this growing interest is mainly driven by three factors. The first one is the positive feedback we get from some of our early adopters, like Swiss Medical Network in Switzerland and UZ Leuven in Belgium. RayCare has matured significantly with the last couple of versions, and this is clearly communicated by our users. Another factor is RaySearch's strong offering in proton therapy, making potential new proton customers view RayCare as an attractive alternative. Lastly, we expect to see increased interest when it becomes possible to connect RayCare to Varian's TrueBeam accelerator later in the year. I'm really happy to announce that our latest product, RayCommand, was taken into clinical use for the first time a couple of weeks ago.
RayCommand is our treatment control system, which offers unified management and control of the main systems in the radiotherapy treatment room. That is the treatment machine, treatment couch, imaging systems, and patient positioning devices. The clinical introduction of RayCommand took place at the advanced center MedAustron in Austria. MedAustron has been using RayStation for a long time for their carbon ion therapy, which is the most advanced form of radiotherapy. For several years now, we have also had a unique and close cooperation with them in the development of both RayCare and RayCommand. To see how this has now resulted in a new and innovative product is really gratifying and a breakthrough for RaySearch. Earlier this spring, MedAustron also took RayCare into clinical use and therefore became the first center in the world to use all three systems, RayStation, RayCare, and RayCommand, together to treat patients.
Another key milestone that happened after the end of the quarter was that Swiss Medical Network in Switzerland treated its first patient with Accuray's CyberKnife treatment delivery system together with RayStation and RayCare. Apart from these events, our product development is progressing according to plan for all products, and new versions of RayStation and RayCare will be released in June. Now, let's look at the results for Q1. Björn, please go ahead.
Thank you, Johan. Revisiting some of the numbers that Johan mentioned initially. You see the order intake increased by 88%, which of course is a spectacular increase, and we see it as a result of the effects of COVID-19 declining. Also, net sales increased by 28%. We were somewhat helped there by the currency fluctuations, and the increase would have been 16% at unchanged currency rates. Operating profit was SEK 30 million. That's before tax. After taxes was SEK 19 million. The operating margin increased to 14% compared to 8% last year, and the cash flow was SEK +35 million. There was also a repayment of a loan that was taken in end of last year. That repayment was SEK 21 million.
Disregarding that, the cash flow would have been even more positive amounting to SEK 56 million. Here you see the order intake and net sales, how it has progressed over time. We see here the clear impact of COVID-19 as it hit in Q2 2020. First, of course, the big impact on the order intake, but then eventually also impacting the net sales. Now, from Q4 of last year and also now in Q1, we see the order intake increasing very steeply and the revenues and the net sales following. We also note that we have an order backlog that's on an all-time high, which gives us a bright outlook for the future. Johan.
Thank you, Björn. Given all the positive signals from the market, I'm optimistic about the future. Still, we haven't yet fully left the pandemic behind us, so we will continue on the route that we have set out. That is, we will focus on sales, product development, and cost control. With our strategy, combined with the improving market conditions, a quarter with strong results and an order backlog that once again reached an all-time high, I feel confident that we have a solid foundation for a return to growth during the year. Thank you.
Thank you, Johan and Björn. We now open up for questions. Operator, over to you.
Thank you very much. If you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your touch tone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press zero, then two. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press zero, then one on your touch tone phone. Our first question comes from the line of Kristoffer Liljeberg of Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. I have three questions. First on this strong sales and order growth. Is it so that this quarter and maybe last quarter what has benefited from a pent-up demand mainly, or could we expect this, you know, strong growth momentum to continue here for the rest of the year? The second question relates to the administrative cost has gone up quite a lot. What is that related to? I'm guessing it may be property rental cost and a new head office in Stockholm, but if there's something else. Then finally, also on the cost, how are you thinking now? Previously, you have said that you've been aiming to keep operating costs flat this year.
Is that still the way you see it, given the much better market growth here and maybe opportunities to spend some of them on growing the business also? Thank you.
Thank you, Kristoffer. So the first question regarding sales, whether that was due to pent-up demand. No, I don't think so. There is an underserving of course, the radiotherapy market in terms of software. But as we see it, even in the outlook, in our pipelines and the number of deals that we are in, this is not a temporary increase. This, as we see it, will continue for the rest of this year, and of course, we can't look several years ahead, but it's not a temporary effect only happening over two quarters. The second question was regarding the admin costs.
I think I combined both. I can answer both the last two questions combined. Our aim is unchanged. Many of the effects, the cost saving effects, have a linear effect over the year. For instance, the staff reduction has a linear effect. Subleasing the parts of the headquarters in Stockholm will only take effect the second half of the year. We also had some one-off costs in Q1, about SEK 9 million due to still left from the moving into the new offices, there were some remaining costs there.
Additional costs associated with the change of CFO. We had to bring in additional consultants and so on. That was the main reason. We have increased permanent costs for the new office, about SEK 5 million per quarter. The increased amortization of R&D since we released new versions of all the products has increased another SEK 5 million for the quarter. But we are still very focused on the cost saving, and we will continue to focus on that.
Obviously, we will reconsider some of these items if the strong demand keeps increasing, then we will not lose deals and we will not stop installations of systems or give substandard support to our customers if this happens. Because it's always better for us to grab new deals to increase our install base. It's always worthwhile. We are looking at this carefully. Right now, we keep the cost-saving program in place. The whole plan for the marketing going from 160 events to 80, that will not change. All of these events are planned very far ahead so that we are on that track.
That won't. It will stay the same. We are looking constantly at ways to save costs. We will not sacrifice business for cost savings. That is never good for RaySearch.
Could I ask also about what you define as one of a cost? SEK 9 million, is that both for the ones related to changing CFO here and the extra cost you have for that and for moving the head office?
Yes.
Okay.
That's correct.
Could you give, yeah, could you just give some example of what type of cost you had in this quarter for moving the head office? I would have expected all of it to come last quarter.
Yeah, but we moved in November, so we paid for some consultancy fees and other work that just ended up in January and February. It was a transition period. It is about periodization on how some of these costs were booked. Because the move was of course the main part of the costs were taken during the second half of 2021, but there were some remaining costs carrying over to Q1 2022. We don't see more costs associated with it in the following quarters this year.
All of this was in the admin costs?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Just to remind everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your touchtone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press zero then two. We have no further telephone questions at this time. Please go ahead, Annika Henriksson.
Yeah. We have a few questions here from Ilya Ivanov. Okay, the first one is, are recent orders in Asia the leads that you got recently, or were they older contacts which you got delayed because of the pandemic?
Can you please repeat that question?
Okay. The recent orders in Asia.
Yeah
Are they recent leads, or are they actually older contacts that got delayed because of the pandemic?
It's a combination of both. Normally, the lead times for our sales are rather long, spanning over several months. I would say the major part are from during the pandemic.
Okay. Question number two: Considering your dominant market share in the proton therapy, do you envisage further growth there? How do you assess the overall growth in proton therapy market?
From our point of view, it seems to be exploding. It just continues to grow. There are so many new projects. We don't really have an opinion about the modalities, particle types, and treatment techniques or machines, but since we support absolutely everything that's possible in radiotherapy. We clearly see a lot of new initiatives in Japan, which is one of the biggest markets already. In China, they're investing heavily in particle therapy. In Europe, several centers, Spain is now building another 10 proton treatment rooms. There is initiatives in Canada, for instance, don't have protons or carbon ions. They are aiming now at adding carbon ions.
There is in fact no carbon ions in all of North America, so that's a big opportunity for growth there. In general, a lot of proton deals going on in the U.S. I think there is a lot of interest and a lot of momentum in the proton field right now, and people are working on making the machines more compact and cheaper because yeah, there are clear clinical benefits going to charged particles compared to photons. We are well-positioned to take on this growth.
Thank you. The third question then, you mentioned very positive atmosphere and reviews at ESTRO. Do you envisage further strong momentum into the year?
Yeah, absolutely. It's as we have said, the market is opening up and we go visit customers. The pipelines for all our product lines are expanding and we really have a very bright outlook for this year and going forward.
Thank you. Last question. How certain are you that the interoperability between RayCare and Varian's TrueBeam will happen before the end of the year?
That's an easy question. I'm 100% sure about that.
Good. That's all the questions from Ilya, and there are no more written questions and no more. Okay. Thank you very much. With that then we conclude this session, and we look forward to continue talking to you. If not before then, we present, when we present our report for the second quarter of 2022, and that's on the 25th of August. Last, I'd like to remind you that you can find the presentation through the same link as you used for the webcast. By that, I say thank you very much for your participation today. Goodbye.