Good morning, and welcome to Synsam's Q1 Presentation for 2022. This conference call is being recorded and will be posted on Synsam's and Financial Hearings's webpages afterwards. Today, I am pleased to present Deputy CEO and Chief Innovation Officer, Martin Daniels, and CFO, Per Hedblom. With that, I will hand over to Mr. Daniels. Go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased to present the quarterly results for Q1, 2022. We will go through a business update, deep dive into the financial development, summarize, and then open up for questions from the audience. Starting up with a brief summary of the first quarter, we have seen a very strong start in 2022, with a strong organic growth and a strong results. In a situation where we have seen a continued high pace of new store establishment, we have reached net sales of SEK 1,186 million, an EBITDA margin of 24.4%, and a strong organic growth of 12.3%. This should be seen in light of an environment which has been affected by inflation, global disruptions into supply chain.
But even in that situation, we've been able to deliver very strong results. The earnings per share before and after dilution amounts to 0.66 SEK per share. Going into a bit more detail into the business update, as you know, we're focusing a lot on innovation, and that entails all parts of our business, and of course, our main arena for meeting customers is the store. Looking a bit into the store concept development, as you may be familiar with, we have the largest store format called flagship stores, now amounting to five stores in total. On the picture here, you can see our latest flagship store in Hötorget, city center of Stockholm. This is a concept that was launched in 2019, and since then been fine-tuned and upgraded ever since.
This is the full-out largest store format in our portfolio, where customers can find 5x-7x the amount of frames compared to a regular store. These stores really are a destination for customers. We're seeing that customers come from not only the closest area next to the store but travel to these stores because of the offering, which is truly unique in the marketplace. From this flagship store format, we have developed from 2020 the Megastore format, and this takes some of the best parts of the flagship store and puts that into a smaller square meter area, but still keeping some of the unique features like its broad range of assortment.
These stores typically have 2.5x-3x the number of frames in the store, and that we've seen is a real trigger to drive conversion to subscription. With that assortment, not only attracting more customers, but seeing more customers ending up into a subscription model. Similarly to the flagship store concept, these stores are located in attractive locations with a high customer throughput, and they also have a larger capacity to take on more eye examinations with more rooms compared to a standard store. To date, we have opened 22 stores by the end of last quarter, and this is a very important store format for us in our rollout, which is ongoing and also continuing into the coming quarters.
During Q1, we opened one Megastore in Finland and one Megastore in Denmark, which was an upgrade from an existing store in Denmark. The latest store concept development is, or store format is the Recycling Outlet concept, which is somewhat of a different animal in the portfolio in the sense that it has a unique product offering. Here it's primarily second-hand frames, and this allows us to attract a new customer group, customers looking for sustainable choice and also lower price points. In this store format or banner, we can offer very attractive price points, and by doing that, we're seeing that we can attract new customer groups that did not previously consider Synsam an option. Here to date, we have 14 stores by end of Q1 2022, of which five opened during the quarter.
This, in terms of rollout, we're seeing that we're able to open these stores fairly close to a Synsam store and drive growth, by attracting new customers and not really affecting the existing store. During Q1, we opened five Recycling Outlet stores in Turku, Finland, Helsinki, also Finland, two stores in Sweden and one in Denmark. As I said, this is really a good vehicle for us in attracting new customer groups, and we're seeing very little cannibalization on existing stores. We have communicated it before, our ambition is to open 90 stores over a three-year period. We're continuing to perform according to that plan. During Q1, we opened nine directly owned stores, and we're now at a number of 509 in total, of which the directly owned stores are 476.
Going from the store format to the lifestyle subscription offering, we're glad to tell you that here we're also seeing a strong growth compared to Q1 last year. We've grown by 18.1% in terms of net sales in the lifestyle subscription program. We're seeing that development is consistent across all four countries. Very glad to say also that Denmark has shown a very strong performance during Q1 with a growth of 26%, and also that Finland, largely of course due to growth in new stores, but also an improved conversion to lifestyle is showing a 63% growth. LTM Q1 2022 lifestyle now represents over 46% of our total net sales. If we double-click into the intake and outflow into the program, we can see that we're now at 419,000 subscribers.
That represents an increase by 36% compared to last year, and a 7% increase compared to the end of year 2021. We've talked about this in previous quarterly report meetings that managing the churn is an important aspect of this part of the business. We're seeing the churn rate in Q1 remaining stable around the 2%, actually dropping a bit compared to Q4 of last year. With all the focus that we have on making sure that each and every customer coming into the program come in with a solution and a set of products that they are happy with, that's the best way for us to manage churn. Of course, a number of churn prevention efforts that are giving fruit in these numbers now in Q1.
Reiterating again the lifestyle subscription offering, we're seeing that in turbulent times that the subscription model is remaining a very strong or even potentially more attractive offering for consumers in the Nordics. Creating financial certainty in terms of cost in this category, spreading out the investment over time, and also the flexibility in the model to adjust in your yearly swaps, the monthly fee, depending on your needs and your financial abilities. We're also seeing that with the development of the offering that we're continuing to be better at meeting more customer needs.
And of course, as we've said before, the next generation or upgrade of the program called Lifestyle 5.0 will target even better customer needs, and we'll come back to that after we've launched it in the summer of 2022 this year. From the Lifestyle subscription, which started with different types of glasses and with the 4.0, including contact lenses as one of the product, we also have, as you know, the standalone contact lens subscriptions. Which from the get-go in now three, four years ago, has grown to a substantial part of the business now amounting to SEK 46 million in Q1, a growth of 39% compared to last year, and an active customer base exceeding 100,000 customers.
The most important thing here for us is that with the contact lens subscription, we've been able to package not only the product with all the benefits of attractive price points and fast deliveries, but also adding things like a yearly meeting with the optician, the full service in store, that we're actually able to recapture market share from online players. We're seeing this continue also in this quarter. On the topic of sustainability, the aggressive agenda or strong focus on sustainability is continuing to pay off in terms of Synsam now being rewarded as the most sustainable brand in optical retail by the Sustainable Brand Index for the fourth year in a row. We're continuing to push on the initiatives that create most impact in our business.
Of course, the opening of our production and innovation center in Östersund planned to take place on the 17th of August is one of the most important initiatives. The work now is continuing to focus on getting the site in place, getting all the machinery, and the first employees are now in place, and focus now is on training and testing the production facility, and that work has intensified during the quarter. As mentioned, we've opened fve new Recycling Outlet stores during the quarter, and the initiative Alla ska se, or Everyone Should See, is continuing to help kids between the ages of five participate in sports and activities on equal terms. We've given out approximately 2,000 additional activity glasses during the quarter and over 36,000 during the year.
Summarizing, the Q1 before we go into the financial deep dive, again, SEK 1,186 million, very strong sales growth compared to last year, an increase of 14.7%. An increased gross margin, amounting to 79.3%. As you've known, we're an organically driven business. We're proud to say that the organic growth was in excess of 12%, and more importantly perhaps that we're continuing to drive a strong like-for-like, so the core offering of our business proposition is driving growth in existing mature stores well above where we see the market growing. With that, I hand it over to Per to go through the financial development more in detail.
Thank you, Martin. If you go to page 16, we can see a strong growth development in all segments. I want to highlight Denmark specifically, which has made a strong comeback here with 16.8% growth and increased profitability. Also, Finland, I would say, exceptional growth, thanks also, of course, to six new stores during the quarter. Also, based upon a strong like-for-like of almost 10% growth in Finland. Like-for-like for the group in total above 8%. Finland, then, as I said, almost 10. Denmark more than 14% like-for-like growth. Sweden, we go to Sweden, 10.6% organic growth. Sweden has had a lot of new establishments last quarter, 2 in this quarter, which has helped organic growth, but also almost 7% like-for-like. Norway, somewhat slower growth this quarter.
I also want to mention the somewhat lower profitability in Finland. That's because of the strong high rate of establishments where we have somewhat lower profitability in the first months of the opening, after the opening. In Sweden, the lower EBITDA is a result of a focus we've had during the quarter to ensure availability of opticians. The start of the quarter was marked to some extent by the Omicron variant of the COVID-19. We came back strongly in the end of March, but we had to put a lot of effort in ensuring availability of opticians. We had to hire consultants and so forth to make up for sick leaves, et cetera, among opticians as an effect of Omicron in the beginning of the quarter. That result in increased costs.
We also hired extra people to ensure that we can continue our growth in Sweden at a strong rate in the coming quarters. Spent on marketing for the future as well, not just the quarter. Overall in the group, electricity costs had a negative impact of SEK 5 million compared to the first quarter 2021. SEK 2 million affected Sweden specifically. These are some examples of OPEX drivers during the quarter. Want to mention that we to remind you that we opened 12 new stores in the fourth quarter, and we plan to open, if everything goes according to plan, 9-12 new stores in the second quarter, making up, that'll be a rate of more than 30 stores for during three quarters.
We really have a strong growth in number of stores. We had that for the last quarters. To page 17. We have talked about the numbers a lot. I want to highlight a few details here. One is that EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA are similar now. We don't have any items affecting comparability in this quarter since we do not have any outdoor costs and no other items affecting comparability, which is in line with our plans. Now these measures are the same. That's good, we think. Also, want to highlight the increased gross margin. This is once again an effect of the increased share of extensions.
Also in some lifestyle subscriptions, you know, we have new subscriptions, and we have extensions and the extensions mathematically give us higher gross margin and as the share of extensions be increasingly a larger part of sales, that has a positive gross margin effect. We also have effects of supply negotiations as we increase volumes. It's beneficial for us in our relationship with the suppliers, which has impacted our gross margin positively. Also want to have a certain focus on EBITDA margin. The EBITDA margin increased somewhat, and adjusted EBITDA margin as well and of course, the EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin were higher than last year. We talked about that. Going to slide 18, our strong growth trajectory continues.
If we look for the full last twelve months up until Q1 2022, if you compare this with the previous twelve months ending Q1 2021, we have a 22% growth rate. Of course, there's a COVID effect there as well. Nevertheless, strong growth trajectory and also an LTM adjusted EBITDA margin of 27% above our financial goal and LTM EBITDA above SEK 1.3 billion. Going to slide 19. We have strong profitability, but this quarter, we had negative cash flow from operating activities. That is due to two effects. One is the increased inventories, which is a result of three things actually. One is well, the buildup of inventories is seasonal.
The first and second quarter, we see buildup inventories ahead of the summer season, then seasonally that goes down in the third and fourth quarter, but that's the same every year. We have these new stores, some of them being quite large stores, including also conversions to Megastores in addition to new stores, drives inventories. We do want to ensure that we have a broad range of products in our stores. As we increase our store network and as we convert to Megastores, we get higher inventory level.
In addition, as an effect of the disturbances in the world, the macro effects, the supply chain effects that we can see in other industries, we haven't been affected really yet, and that could be because we have increased the safety stock level, and we have done that to ensure that we can withstand negative effects from supply chain disruptions, which we believe is necessary in the environment we are all living in now. We have sacrificed cash flow to some extent in order to drive growth, and that's something we believe is good. Of course, there is negative effect on cash flow as a result of that. Receivables also during this quarter had negative effect.
I want to highlight that this is receivables, not to customers actually, B2B customers, but rather the effect is mostly receivables towards vendors. I talked about these bonuses and market contributions, so forth. This is an effect during this quarter that we have a lot of receivables to vendors actually. That's the main explanation. Liabilities, credit institutions around SEK 2.4 billion and net debt increased somewhat due to this cash flow in this quarter to around SEK 2.6 billion compared to around SEK 2.4 billion at the end of 2021. With that, I move into summary and over to Martin again.
Yeah. Summarizing the quarter, we see a very strong start of the year, a strong quarter with high organic growth and also a strong improvement in earnings. This should be seen in the light of a market that's been characterized by cost inflation, transport and purchasing, supply chain challenges. As Per said, we've been able to work with our partners and with the strong volume growth that we're seeing, driving very strong results. Our concept, the offering focus on the customer, attractive stores, attractive price points, a unique subscription offering, and a focus on sustainability has paid off. On the subscription model, we're seeing that it's potentially even more attractive in tougher times. With that, we're very happy to share the results.
We think they are a strong start of the year, and we are opening up for questions with that.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two. There will now be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Thank you. At this time, there are no questions. I will be handing over to the speakers. Go ahead.
To conclude, I mean, we see this as a strong quarter, both in terms of results, but very much strong organic growth. We continue our strong growth trajectory. This is in line with our strategy and our plans. With that, I want to conclude. You want to add something more?
No, unless there are any questions. Thank you for your time.