Welcome to Swedencare's Q1 seminar. Sorry for being delayed. There were some technical issues here, so Jenn and I have been talking now for five minutes, thought that we were live, but.
Yeah, we started without you, but now we are here with you.
We'll get back to it immediately. Sorry for that. Q1 2022, an exciting quarter for us. Record quarter, of course, that we knew would come since we have had excellent acquisitions. We started off end of January with two fantastic acquisitions for us, really game-changer acquisitions, NaturVet in the U.S. and Innovet. I will come back to that. Our organic growth was 7%, below our target of 20% full year. As we expected, basically since we knew that the Asian export market was going to be hit, and especially China, that had the highest ever sales in Q1 2021. Unfortunately, no sales there, but hopefully it will bounce back later this year.
We do have, let's say a bit sluggish quarter. Last year, as you probably remember, Q3 last year was 0% organic growth. We are not worried about that. Our target is 20% and looking forward to delivering stronger results the quarters to come. We have had many product launches for lots of our different brands, both, let's say, completely new product launches and also expanding the product ranges for different group companies from other group companies' product lines. There has been, as you probably know, lots of live expos coming back, so it's good to be on the road again, meeting both the pet owners and also B2B customers.
Both in the U.S. and Europe, there's been lots of different interactions and expos. When it comes to Asia, still not much happening there, but hopefully second half year, the expos will return there as well. Business development, we are focusing on really utilizing all of the resources that we have for fast business development. Lots of end customers, B2B customers are really excited and curious about what we can offer now as a group, and we are really an attractive and quite unique player on the market, especially on the North American market. I'll come back to that as well.
All right, net sales and our operating EBITA for the quarter. This quarter, we reached revenues of SEK 378 million. That is our highest quarterly revenue so far. Of course, impacted by the two new acquisitions that we have done, which are partly included this quarter. NaturVet, which we acquired from 1st of February, is included by SEK 110 million, and Innovet, which we included from March 1st, has about SEK 10 million of the revenue for this quarter. The growth from Q1 2021 is 182%. 10% of those is the currency impact due to the strong USD. We also have 7% organic growth. Again, we are comparing the entities that we had one year ago and where China was a big impact.
Due to the fact that we didn't get the China order, it had an impact on our organic growth. Also in the SEK 134 million that we had in Q1 last year, there was several of our entities that had record quarters. They had a great start last year as well, so that also impacted the, let's say, the growth number. We are very happy with the SEK 378 million. When it comes to Operating EBITA, again, it's the highest one so far, SEK 94.7 million. Our operating gross margin, which in the last quarter was at 52%, has now increased to 55.9% this quarter. I would say there's two main reasons for this. One of them is that we have now implemented the price increases, which provides us with a higher gross margin.
Many of them were implemented from the beginning of the year, but we will also see further increases in April and later this year as well. Of course, we have two new companies which have a higher gross margin than, let's say, the average of the group. When it comes to cost, this quarter, we have continued to invest in personnel. We need to grow our group with talented people in order to reach our financial targets and keep up with our growth. In addition to that, we are doing a reorganization in one of our entities in Vetio North because we are preparing that entity for more production at the end of the year.
That had an impact on, let's say, one-off costs as well this year, or this quarter. When we look at the growth in the EBITA margin, we landed at 24.9% for the quarter. Very good improvement from 18.9% last quarter. A couple of KPIs. Of course, we have covered a little bit on the P&L. When it comes to the balance sheet, of course, the two new entities that we have now added to our group has a big impact on the balance sheet. One of them is a production facility, which of course then builds the balance sheet and equity. The other big thing that happened during the quarter is, of course, that we paid for the two new acquisitions.
They were paid partly with shares, about SEK 500 million, and partly with cash of SEK 4.2 billion. This cash was financed with one directed share new share issue, as well as we have taken up a new loan of about SEK 750 million. In addition to that, we have a positive operating cash flow of SEK 45 million for the quarter. In addition to that, we also have a positive cash flow for the quarter of about SEK 140 million, which means that our cash is at SEK 277 million at the end of the quarter. I can also add that the personnel, last year at this time, we were 102 people. Now with the new companies, we are 517. Sales per region.
Well, as you can see on the left one, North America is. It's really becoming bigger and bigger due to the fact that many of the acquisitions that we do has been in the U.S. Last year in North America was 63% of our total revenue. Now it's 81%. The other market that I can mention is U.K. and Ireland. Nutravet, which is the company that we bought in the fall of 2020, has had a fantastic start of the year. The market of U.K., Ireland grew by 35% this quarter compared to last year. Even though they grew by 35%, their part of the total revenue has decreased from 21 to 10% due to the fact that we have NaturVet, which is the biggest impact on North America.
Rest of Europe is of course impacted by both a strong growth in Spain, for example, but also the fact that we have acquired Innovet, which is an Italian company. Asia is the one that we have it's an increase of 20%. That is partly impacted by the fact that we have no sales in China, but it's partly offset by the fact that we have other entities that sell into Asia and rest of Asia.
Going through the different region, what's happened there is, as you see, North America, 81% of our total sales, and that will continue to be stronger as the quarters go, especially next quarter since NaturVet has another month within our group. Sales increasing by 264%. And that is, of course, last year we didn't have Vetio as well, which is a really big entity within our group. What has happened? As I mentioned, we've had a strong interest from the market, lots of meetings and strategic discussions, both with existing customers and new customers wanting to hear more about our group and what we can offer.
Both from our branded products, we and especially for private label solutions, that's being more and more sought after within the sector, both from the veterinary side, but also from the pet retail side. We have discussions of big collaborations, but we're also introducing new sets of working. For example, as some of you remember, we have a unique private label solution for the vet sector in the U.S. where even a single vet clinic can have their own brand being serviced by Stratford, the Stratford team down in Florida. We are now introducing the same setup for the pet retail sector. As far as we know, we don't know anyone else offering this kind of service.
We are expanding the take on that in the U.S., and it will be very exciting to see. We will use the NaturVet sales group being out on the market, offering this to the pet retailers and being serviced from the Stratford team down in Florida, who has expanded their product line with lots of products from NaturVet. Online continues to grow, even though we've seen some pullback from the physical stores, both in Europe and the U.S. Pet MD had a really strong quarter, growing over 20%. Rx continues to grow as we focus more and more on the online sector for them. ProDen PlaqueOff also, and NaturVet, all strong online.
Particularly Amazon has been strong for us this quarter. Looking at different brands, it's really impressive to see that the ProDen PlaqueOff sales for North America grew by 27% this quarter compared to last year. That's also due to the fact that we are taking more charge of the online sales where we have had some partners previously. Launching Dr. Pol, as we mentioned, we are now present in more than six big online platforms, and we keep on expanding. As Jenny said, building the organization in Vetio North and South.
As some of you remember, we have just started a new site in Vetio South for soft chew and supplement production, and there are lots of different projects there, being done together with the customers. The full production will start in Q2, or at least the full real production will start in Q2, and in Q3 and Q4 it will scale up, so having full production. We have had success for Vetio North with the drug development projects, improving the sales funnel there. There are long-term projects being done over several years. The integration has been fantastic with the NaturVet team.
As you all know, it's a big acquisition for us and you can never be sure how that will work out, but it's been fantastic. All organizations in the U.S. are thrilled about this, and we have just started lots of different projects and we are just looking at all of the options that we have. It's really important now to be focused, focusing on the key projects, and we have actually hired one new person being responsible for all of the internal initiatives that we have. We are launching a completely new product line within the NaturVet products offering, called Evolutions, a holistic and organic, all-natural product line being launched in lots of big retailers as of 1st of June.
We presented it at Global Pet Expo with strong interest from the market. Already 65,000 units ordered, and those are growing by the day, basically. We are also in the finishing touches of installing our third soft chew line in Temecula, California with NaturVet, actually doubling the capacity for our soft chew production from Q3 going forward. We've also taken part in organizing a fundraiser for Ukraine in North America. Going over to Europe, net sales was 16% of our total sales. As Jenny mentioned, we had a fantastic quarter for NutraVet both for the U.K. and Irish market, but also export markets. We are just about to launch in Scandinavia and some other markets.
It's a well-thought-of and unique brand that is really making presence in the veterinary side. Our Irish production facility has strong numbers both for internal and external customers, and we are now making also a organizational change so that our Irish facility will be included in the Vetio setup, being headed by John Kane. Many internal transfer project, as you all know, it's difficult sometimes to export and import between the U.S. and Europe. We are really focusing both from a cost perspective and an environmental impact perspective that we do not want to ship products over the Atlantic back and forth. It's really lots of project for interesting U.S. products to be launched in Europe. We want to produce them in Ireland.
We have changed the setup in France with our new leadership there. We have taken charge of the pet retail sector that we previously worked with a distributor. Now we are selling direct and opening up several new customers for us. Spain continues to grow from a fairly slow small number, but impressive work being included in both the veterinary sector and the pet retail sector. Then rest of the world and Asia, as you see, 13% down compared to Q1, and that doesn't seem to be too bad perhaps, but as Jenny said, our organic sales were hit a lot more than the non-organic.
For some of our acquired companies, they had good export orders and for our organic sales, they were hit a bit more. However, except for China, we do see that most of our export markets are really coming back. We had some late deliveries in the quarter and also looking forward for the coming quarters since the interest and the activity has definitely increased. We will be attending the world's biggest pet show in Nuremberg, Germany in end of May, where we will meet lots of our current distributors around the world, but also some new ones.
Mentioning some projects, as you know, we have started a Brazilian food project, and it's really taking off now being sold in over 300 stores and we look forward for the continued growth there. Strong market for us for the quarter was Japan, South Korea, Chile, and Brazil.
Okay, if we look at sales per product category, one year ago, we had quite an even split between the ProDen PlaqueOff, nutraceuticals, and topical dermatology. The new acquisitions that we have done, let's say mainly NaturVet, has more products within the nutraceuticals, which makes this group grow, from 31% of the total revenues to 45% of the total revenues. At the same time, the ProDen PlaqueOff is the group that had a decrease this quarter. This I would say is solely impacted by the fact that we did not get the large powder delivery to China. Because as Håkan mentioned, the U.S. market had a 27% growth in ProDen PlaqueOff, and in addition to that, our Bones and Bites have also had a very strong growth.
Bones grew by 74% and Bites by 54%. Now ProDen PlaqueOff is about 11% of our total revenues. Pharma, which you can see on the left-hand side, is 4%. This is our Vetio North facility, and as we have mentioned in the past as well, is that this is the one that we expect to see growing over the next second half year of the year, or of 2022. Our rolling four quarters. For the first time, we have more than SEK 1 billion in sales in our rolling twelve-month. As you remember from the last annual report, 2021 has a pro forma of SEK 1.6 billion. Also our operating EBITDA margin is increasing, as our new acquisitions contribute with a higher margin.
Our operating EBITDA is at SEK 248 million at the moment.
Coming back to the two acquisitions we made in the quarter, just to freshen up for those of you that have heard it before. NaturVet, one of the biggest pet retail brands in the U.S., dominating in pet retail and also growing a lot online. Have sales to over 15,000 pet shops, number one pet supplement brand in four out of five biggest pet retail chains in the U.S., and has a really wide product offering and producing over 95% of the products themselves. It's powders, soft chews, some liquids, and some gels. Sales in 2021 was almost $64 million with a EBITA over 30%.
As I've mentioned, we have really started lots of different projects within the group to offer the excellent NaturVet product to all of the other channels and brands where we are selling. Innovet, a more specialized company, but really strong in the Italian market, 90% of the sales in Italy, being one of the leaders within nutraceuticals in Italy and one of the oldest companies on the market. We have gotten a really fantastic addition to our group with a high technical and scientific level. It is nutraceutical supplements, but with a very strong scientific basis. Several patents and also other IP protection. We are looking forward to helping Innovet to get their products out into the global market.
They are present on some markets with a couple of products, but we do look forward to presenting them in a larger scale onto the market. Sales of about EUR 13.5 million last year, also with a strong margin over 30%. They are really strong additions to our group. As we grow, we are formalizing a bit more. John Kane and Brian Nugent is joining our group management that has up till now been Jenny and me. They have been, let's say, in informal group management. Now John Kane, who is the CEO of Vetio, will take charge of all of the group production that we have.
Ireland will integrate even more with the Vetio setup. Brian Nugent, who was one of the first acquisitions we made to the group, or at least in 2020 when we started acquiring. Since then, we have acquired a number of companies and Brian has been a key addition to the group and being a key player also in finding acquisitions. He has been involved in many of our transactions and also growing the group as a joint company. He has also successfully made a merger between Stratford and Animal Pharm, another group company that we acquired.
He will be joining the group management as the commercial director of North America for the veterinary side and the online side. The pet retail that includes NaturVet and Swedencare U.S. Will still report to me as the group CEO. Priorities going forward, 2022. Keep on integrating our group companies and focusing on growing the sales. That's the prime objective for us. We don't focus that much on, let's say, cost initiatives where it's not obvious. We really focus on to grow our business, together with as a group. We keep on increasing marketing spend.
We see a really good return on investment, primarily on the online side, but also in brand building. We are focusing more on social media and also developing our own D2C channel for many of our brands. We have launched new websites, new web stores for many of our group companies, and we'll be launching a completely new one for NaturVet as of first of June or first of July. Brand and product development will continue, and also, as I mentioned, prioritizing efforts on strategic partners. We're really focusing on key deals that will have a major impact on our sales of the group. Organization and adding talent. I am impressed of the interest from all around the world when we look for new people to join our group.
Lots of interest from fantastic people with the strong education and experience from what we are looking for. We will keep on building but still having, let's say, the goal of adding as few as we need since we want to be a small and fast and agile company and not having too much red tape. Of course, as we grow, we need to grow with the organization as well. M&A, as you all know, we've been very active, and we are still active looking at lots of different opportunities.
Of course, since the activity that we've had, we get lots of offers, but we are very selective and you can expect us to make more deals going forward. It will be companies that really add something to our group. We are scrutinizing lots of different offers that we get. I expect us to be, let's say, slowing down a bit, perhaps not one acquisition per quarter going forward.
Okay. Finally, we have a couple of questions that we will cover, and then after that, we will have a five-minute break, and then we will open the live chat. Before that, we have a couple of questions, Håkan. Tell us more about the ongoing integration of NaturVet and Innovet into the group, and what is the focus?
The focus is really to make them feel welcome and really understanding how we operate and work. I would like to say that we are very open and very informative when it comes to acquisitions. I think that both NaturVet and Innovet knew what they were getting into. The integration has gone as I expected very well. No problems whatsoever, I would say. It's just the only issue is really to prioritizing the different initiatives that we are working on.
Of course, for both Innovet and NaturVet being privately held companies, I think the integration and workload has been really focused on your things, Jenny, with the reporting and finance. It's been good and setting all of that in place, and then going forward, it just continue to focus on business development.
Sounds great. What is the status of China and Asia? There was no delivery in Q1 to China. Are you worried about that?
I'm not extremely worried, but it's of course not what we planned for. Now, China is not as an important market for us as it was a couple of years ago. Of course, not only for the ProDen PlaqueOff that we are not shipping right now, I would say that I'm more annoyed that we can't bring more brands to China because our distributor in China would like to introduce many of our new brands that we have acquired since last year or two. It's more of an annoying bit, but I'm not worried. I think China will bounce back, but of course, it needs to open up.
Our distributor are still selling pretty good numbers in China, but not the growth as we expected. Looking at other Asian countries, I'm thrilled about it. We are growing in Japan. We will grow a lot in South Korea, both with our present brands that we have had, but also introducing new ones in both of those countries. Taiwan has been strong, for example, for Rx Vitamins. Looking forward to developing Asia a lot more, but still we haven't been able to travel there. I know that at least South Korea has opened up a bit, so we will, I guess we'll travel to Korea this year, second half, I guess.
Okay. You seem confident that the second half of 2022 will be better than the first half. Please explain the background to that.
Yes. It's primarily due to two things. It's when it comes to NaturVet, we are in the final phase of introducing a completely new third production line that will double our capacity for soft chews in that facility. That of course, since we do have a private label contract manufacturing offering as well, those opportunities have had to wait a bit. We service some of them, but we know that the demand is a lot higher than what we have serviced as of last year and this first half year. We know that that will grow.
When it comes to Vetio, both for the Vetio South, where we have implemented a completely new facility, that will start real production in end of Q2. Vetio North, where we also have assigned and approved manufacturing contracts that will start second half this year. I'm pretty sure that the sales will grow second half compared to first.
Great. Let me put the camera on. That's it for our presentation. We will come back in a couple of minutes, and then we will answer any chat questions. Please feel free. Any questions you have, might have, just write them down in the chat. See you soon.
See you soon. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thanks.