Welcome to the RugVista Q1 2023 conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Michael Lindskog and CFO Joakim Tuvner. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Hope everybody is doing well today. We are happy that everybody is joining us to listen in to our earnings call for the first quarter of 2023. Like to start off by giving some highlights on the first quarter. Think the most important thing is that we continue to deliver good profitability despite the somewhat challenging market environment. I'm also very pleased to see that we're that we have been making significant progress on our strategic initiatives.
With the profitability topic, we actually managed to deliver about 14.2% EBIT margin, which represents almost a 3 percentage point increase versus last year. We grew EBIT by about 19% versus last year. The challenging market, of course, is affecting growth. We did, however, end up at about SEK 180 million in total in net revenues, which about a 3% decline. Organically, we declined about 8% versus Q1 last year. Consumer confidence has been stable, but is at a level which in most markets are at historical lows.
In this environment, of course, we've been navigating our cost base carefully, both in terms of the elements affecting the gross margin, but in particular, our marketing investments. We saw a significant improvement there, a bit over 3 percentage points versus last year, due to our continued focus on making sure our marketing spend is as efficient as possible. With all of this said, we continue to have a very strong financial position. Net cash of about SEK 160 million and over SEK 140 million cash on hand.
I think finally I wanna highlight again the assortment enhancements we've done during the quarter in addition to reaching several milestones in the development of the e-com platform to an extent where we about a week or two weeks ago launched the full marketing activities to our Austrian domain. Moving forward, some highlights. The like I mentioned, the growth-related strategic KPIs are a bit continues to be on a downward trend, both in terms of orders and customer acquisition. The decline is at least on the diminishing, so to speak.
The what we continue to be very happy about and also very proud is the extremely high customer satisfaction values that we continue to maintain. Our NPS during the quarter was 68, which was stable versus last year. Our Trustpilot rating remains at 4.8. And if just looking at some of our key markets, again in terms of how consumer confidence has developed, here we're looking at about a 15-month perspective.
What we can see in all of the three markets on the slide here is that during Q1, it was stable or improved slightly, but is at very low levels historically. If looking at some of the achievements during the quarter, number one, wanna highlight the enhancements and additions we've done to our assortment. Number one is that we introduced a new subcategory, bath mats. The second major initiative released during the quarter was essentially doubling or more than doubling our selection within the outdoor subcategory.
Both of these rug types represents what I would argue are somewhat untapped or incremental opportunities for us as an organization. This kind of shows a just an overview in terms of some of the items that we released within the within the bath mat assortment, priced relatively well compared to alternatives in the market. All of it has been designed in-house designed, so quite unique or they are unique to us. Also supported by much enhanced creative assets, which also has been a focus area for us over the past year.
Within the outdoor assortment, same thing, great creative assets, which are being used to capture attention and traffic in various channels, in addition to a significant enhancement to the selection that we offer within rugs suitable for both outdoor but also indoor as well if people wanna use it in that manner. With that said, I'll hand it over to Joakim, who will take us through the financials.
Thank you, Michael. As you've heard Michael say, we start with sales, and as you heard Michael say a couple of quarters now, we've had a focus on profitability, and that is affecting the growth. Our net revenue of SEK 180 million was a decrease of 3.1% and a decrease of 8.1 percentage points organically, if we then put back the 5 percentage points, that is the currency impact. Looking at the different segments, MPO is decreasing 25%. There, again, a focus on profitability. If you look in the report, the segment margin is going up after marketing, is going up 4 percentage points. B2B had a good growth of almost 22%, somewhat visible easy comparables in the prior year for the trade partners area.
We go into B2C, where we lost 5%. You can take a look to the right side there in the picture, how this is distributed geographically. We start at DACH, it was a -11%, the Nordics, a -7.7%. Bear in mind there that the Swedish market is not helped by any currency effect, of course. The rest of world, which is mainly the rest of Europe, because the marginal sales we have outside of Europe is very small. This region accounts for 60% of B2C, and there we had a better performance with -1.5%. Moving into gross margins.
We are improving gross margins with 0.3 percentage points to 62.6%, although you have many effects going in different directions. The increase in margin is driven by the overall price increase that we made in quarter three of last year. We have a negative effect by the mainly higher shipping costs, and we also have a minor increase of discounts. If you look at the gross margins for the different segments to the right. Again, MPO has a drop in margin, but as I said, the focus there has been on profitability. We have been in lower price points to stay relevant in that segment, and we are improving the segment margin with 4 percentage points if you look at the segment margin after marketing costs.
B2B, the drop-in margin there is due to customer mix, whereas one customer group that has higher discounts had low comparables in quarter one last year. B2C, the increased prices in quarter one, as I said earlier, is increasing the margin, and it's partly neutralized through higher freight costs and only a slightly higher average discount rate. If we now look at our P&L from a cost ratio perspective, cost of goods for resale, as you know, include our freight costs. As I mentioned earlier, again, the price increase in quarter three is on the positive side. The cost of goods is down 1.6 percentage points, and freight is up 1.4 percentage points.
Personnel costs, we have a combination of equal parts, negative scale effect, the wage increases from prior year, and we also have some one-offs for recruitment costs. Other operating expenses is our currency effects on transaction and revaluation of assets and liabilities in foreign currency, and it's square against prior year. Depreciation and amortization is driven by the rental increase due to the indexing of our rental agreements, the lease agreements we have for the two sites in Malmö. Bottom line, we're up 2.6 percentage points, arriving at a healthy 14.2%, an increase which is a result, as you can see, for the focus on profitability and the lower marketing cost ratio that deliver this increase of a 2.6 percentage points increase in the operating margin.
If we look at the balance sheet, the biggest item after the goodwill here is the inventory. The inventory is down SEK 9 million from year end. Due to the timeline from the slowdown earlier in quarter one last year and the lead times in supply, we have an increase of SEK 17 million versus prior year. If you look at the right side, you see the net sales that we steer our inventory towards, and we're at 26 percentage points compared to the last 12 months of net sales, and that is an improvement of 1.3 percentage points. We're still outside the span where we want to be, which is 17.5-22.5 percentage points of the last 12 months of sales. Next. Finally, a look at the cash position.
Quarter one is a period where taxes is settled and the 2021 income, when we had a record year, is declared in 2022, and the final settlement of taxes is done in March of 2023. Working capital decreased, and that is explained by what I just mentioned, the SEK 9 million in inventory, which is a big part of this working capital decrease. Cash flow from investing activities, at the bottom left, is mainly the activation of expenses for developing our new e-com platform. This sums up to a net cash position of SEK 116 million. We have SEK 142 million in cash. We have no interest bearing debt, but here we deduct the leasing agreements that are the IFRS 16 reclassification of our leasing agreements assets and debt.
Then we get to the net cash of SEK 116 million. With that, I hand over back to you, Michael.
Thank you. To summarize and also give a bit of perspective for rest of year, we feel that we're quite well-positioned to continue navigating the outlook for 2023 that remains uncertain. We have a very solid financial performance considering the market conditions, where we are handling our top line quite well, balancing that with the focus on profitability. Gross margins are stable. We are improving our EBIT margin, primarily driven by the focus on costs, but especially within the marketing spend line item.
That is of course gives us a fair amount of stability to be able to deliver the level of profitability, despite the fact that we are experiencing a slight decline in net revenues. The financial position continues to be strong and somewhat also strengthened with a very strong, healthy net cash position and also, of course, cash. Inventory is a bit elevated, but also gives us a bit of flexibility in terms of ensuring that we have tools and levers to use in order to be ready when we need to drive sales or when demand picks up.
Also, considering as we mentioned in the report and last quarter, the earthquake in Turkey that of course was quite shocking. Many of our business partners were affected. Luckily, no major issues in terms of our actual business partners being injured and also their facilities were actually quite unaffected by the earthquake, which actually resulted in us only having minor impact in terms of deliveries. Of course, the board proposes a dividend of SEK 1.5 per share, totaling about SEK 31 million at the AGM.
And that is also a testament to the strong financial position that we have. And if we look towards the rest of the year, we have a well adapted fixed cost base. We are continuing to be very focused on marginal cost efficiency, especially within the marketing spend area. We maintain a very strong financial position overall.
In regards to the strategic initiatives we've been working on, we're showing progress there with both assortment enhancements, and the release of the site in the Austrian domain, which now is at a level of maturity where we feel comfortable to activate the full marketing machinery. This of course will be the platform will be rolled out to additional markets moving forward, and we're really looking forward to seeing how that will impact, of course, sales, but most importantly, the overall shopping experience for our customers.
With that being said, I also wanted to conclude by inviting everybody again to our Capital Markets Day, which will be held on May 25th in Malmö, both in person as well as digitally, if you cannot attend in person. That is also the same day that we will be hosting our annual AGM for the shareholders. Thank you, we'll open up for questions at this point in time.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Benjamin Walstedt from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Three quarters in a row now where you beat consensus estimates, I believe, most significantly due to perhaps more efficient marketing than expected. Could you perhaps talk a bit about the development here going forward, please?
Absolutely. I think, like we've mentioned, the focus is ensuring that our marketing funds are invested with the highest possible ROI that we can find. Of course, balancing that with top line and the efforts to continue in terms of investing in different marketing channels as well as different regions or markets and redoing, rebalancing those investments on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis is paying off. And that is something we will continue to do in order to grow as profitably as possible.
You mentioned in the report as well that the marketing intensity seems to be lower this year than last year. Could you quantify this in any way or perhaps comment on your view of the rest of the year here, please?
Yeah. The, we won't quantify, of course, because that's proprietary information. In terms of the view, I think what we mentioned or have mentioned in terms of how the various players behaved during Q1 last year was that I think everybody going out of, let's see here, 2021 were quite optimistic. Then the slowdown in the economy due to various reasons started to happen during Q1 of 2022.
The willingness to adjust aggressiveness, I think there was a lag in that, which of course made Q1 of last year a tad bit overaggressive overall. That has not necessarily been the effect during Q1 this year.
Perfect. Thank you. I also note that your conversion rate keeps growing. Could you perhaps talk a bit about what you see as a mature conversion rate for you, given that the home improvement vertical in general tends to see lower conversion rates compared to fashion, for example?
Sorry, I couldn't understand the middle. There was a word I couldn't hear. Sorry.
No worries. The question is basically could you talk a bit about what you see as a mature conversion rate?
Mature.
For you given-
Understood. Yeah.
given the recent growth in conversion rate?
It's a little bit too early to give that outlook as conversion rate is affected by so many different parameters where price of course, price perception is one important lever. The on-site buying experience is an important factor. Of course, the type of traffic that you buy is another. Those I would argue are kind of the three major factors affecting conversion rate. We're working on all three in terms of buying right now very high probability to convert traffic, of course.
Since the focus is on profitability, we have been getting or reaching milestones in the development in the new e-com platform. One major objective with the platform rebuild is of course to be able to serve more use cases or user types in a better way, which of course has the overall long-term intent to improve conversion rate. Over time, we expect a higher share of what we internally would call earned traffic. That type of traffic have a tendency of being at a slightly higher conversion rate versus more paid upper funnel traffic.
Loud and clear. One final question perhaps. If we talk a bit about the development by market, during Q1, Nordics, was better than DACH for the first time in five or six quarters. Could you perhaps talk a bit more about this? What is driving this trend shift, so to speak?
I think like what Joakim mentioned there in terms of the effect is one portion. And then of course the one thing is how we've been optimizing our marketing investments where we have seen in certain of the during periods in the DACH region that competitiveness in the market has remained quite high. Of course, we've elected to divert some of those funds to markets and channels which in the short term have proven more efficient.
There's also been a little bit of extra focus of course in terms of getting the big Nordic markets back on track.
Perfect. Those were all of my questions for now. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Carl Deijenberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, guys. Two questions from my side. Maybe first following up on the last one here, on the geographical development. Just wanted to ask here on rest of world, obviously performing a bit better here than DACH and the Nordics, and I understand it's a bit of currency impacting that as well. Do you see any particular region within the rest of world region that sort of stands out positively here and maybe where we are past the trough and then where you have some confidence of early signs of improvements? Anything standing out here in the rest of world geography?
Yeah. We won down to specific specific markets, but of course, rest of world, and as Joakim mentioned, it's mostly rest of Europe and the big European markets that are not a part of the Nordics and DACH are driving the performance in rest of world to a large extent. That includes, of course, France, Italy, U.K. Then some of the Eastern European markets have also performed quite well.
Okay. Fair enough. I had my second question is related to the balance sheet, and it continues to strengthen here for every quarter, and I know you have the dividend to be paid out as well. Could you say anything of sort of if you're looking to utilize the balance sheet in any other way? Are you looking at small acquisitions or anything on that topic would be very interested to hear as well?
Yeah, I mean, I think the, I can maybe start off with the acquisition topic and then maybe Joakim can do a little bit about the sort of asset state. Yeah, I mean, we, our focus is still organic growth. As we've, as we've mentioned, if there are opportunities out there and that we feel would be a good strategic fit, we will continue to look at it. Of course, our cash position would in most cases enable us to execute such a transaction without sort of getting additional funding, so to speak.
Yeah. Just to continue on that, as we said during our Capital Markets Day, we have a lot of internal focus on improvements that we can make within the company without buying another company. We have a lot of focus on that. For instance, the new platform that Michael spoke about. On the balance sheet movements going forward, the things we don't project that, what we have mentioned is that we are above our targets in inventory, and we are working towards bringing that down, not in an immediate fashion because it's not needed and it would cost money.
Over time, we will bring inventory down to our target to be between 17.5 and 22.5 percentage points over our last 12 months of sales.
Okay. Very well. I think that was all for me at this stage. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Michael. Hi, Joakim. Yes, a couple of questions from my side here. We already touched upon it but the sales growth in the quarter, it was -8%, mainly due to the hamper growth in the B2C segment in the DACH region and the Nordic region. Can you give us some flavor on how your market shares are developing in this quarter? Are you more or less flat or gaining or decreasing the market shares?
As mentioned, the sort of getting an accurate picture of the total European market is difficult. Of course, we have indications in terms of the main advertising platforms that we operate on in terms of how our position on those platforms are developing over time. With, we're quite comfortable where we're at considering the total market and the focus on efficiency and then cost efficiency that we currently have. I think overall in some markets, of course, one could probably argue that we've lost a little bit, but in other markets, we're definitely gaining.
Overall, we feel quite comfortable where we're trending compared to the others.
Okay. Perfect. That's clear. Thank you. Second one here, entering or already entered the Q2 period. Could you give us some explanations to what we should expect in Q2 in terms of sales growth and also looking back, a year back in terms of comparables? What should we expect in Q2?
I think the outlook for rest of year is remains uncertain. There's some macro indicators that are, you know, pointing towards a bit of a recovery in certain markets, and then other markets are still sort of at a place where one could argue they're still, they haven't seen the worst of it yet. What we're focusing on is trying to manage our own business, have a high degree of focus on cost efficiency. We've already adapted a lot of our fixed cost elements to the new reality.
We continue to invest in our strategic initiatives, which, of course, mid to long term, will improve our competitiveness. Once the overall market turns, we feel that we're well-positioned to capture that demand. I think, just looking at to how last year developed, there was, of course, a gradual worsening of the consumer sentiment, with, of course, the war in Ukraine being the main trigger point.
The rest of year comparables, one potentially could argue are a tad bit easier versus how they looked like last year when comparing to 2021.
Yeah. Perfect, Michael. Thank you very much. I believe that's all of my questions for now. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
There are no more phone questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions.
We had, we thought one written question, but I guess it got deleted. No more questions then. Again, thank you everybody for listening. Again, want to invite everybody to our Capital Markets Day on May 25, as well as our AGM if you are a shareholder. Thank you, and have a great day.