Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Wayside Technology Group's conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question and answer session. Please note that all callers are limited to one question each. As a reminder ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Melanie Cavanegro. Kapanegra, you may begin your conference at this time.
Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Wayside Technologies First Quarter 2 15 earnings call. Before turning the call over to Simon Ninen, the company's Chairman and CEO, I'll dispense with the customary cautionary language and comment about the webcast for this earnings call. We released earnings for the first quarter at approximately 5 pm Eastern Time Thursday, April 30, 2015. The earnings release is available at the company's investor relations website at waysidetechnology dot com.
Today's call including all questions and answers is being webcast live and a rebroadcast will be available at ww.waysidetechnology.com/earningscall. This conference call and the associated web contain time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, May 1, 2015. A detailed discussions of risks and uncertainties are discussed in our forms 10 Q and also in greater detail in our forms 10 K. Layside Technology Group, Inc. Sees no obligation to update and does not intend to update any forward looking statements.
I would like to turn the call over to Simon Ninance.
Thank you, Melanie, and good morning to everyone. We had an outstanding quarter. Revenue increased 29 percent to a 1st quarter record of $92,700,000 and gross profit increased 15% and income from operations increased 27%. Our LIFO division represented 89% of our revenue and 87 percent of segment income in the first quarter. Cash and long term receivables were $26,700,000 and represented a very healthy 71% of equity at the end of March 2015.
Working capital amounted to $32,000,000, representing of our equity. Regarding cash flow and capital, we are very fortunate to be in a position continue to return capital to our shareholders. And attractive views of our capital. In this quarter, we bought back approximately 156,000 shares for a total of 2,500,000 and paid dividends totaling $800,000. Looking at the future, we continue to invest in the growth of our business.
On March 17th, we announced that we hired an appointed Justin Kurt as Director of Professional Services. Justin has been a professional and technical service leader for both distribution and software vendor company. Most recently, before being software Justin launched the Global View Certified Engineered And Our Authorized Education Provider Program. And also established professional services offerings for human resellers to provide around any backup and application software. And just last week, we announced the addition of Ryan Gilbertson, a Senior Director, new vendor business development.
Brian has many excellent reseller and vendor relationships in our industry and his expertise will be a tremendous asset in accelerating its strategic spend of solutions we offer to our resellers as well as in driving growth within the new vendor lines. Regarding offices, we are reviewing several options for our new headquarters. We expect to move next year. Our European office will relocate to Amsterdam this summer. Finally, we will open up offices this summer as well in Arizona to better serve our mountain and Pacific Time zone customers.
We do not expect significant cost increases due to these land moves. We were also selected again as one of the best places to work in New Jersey by NJBiz. This is the 3rd straight year and a testament to the stronger positive culture here at Wayside Technology Group. We are excited about the prospect of more software partners joining us and customer and vendor feedback confirms that we are on the right track. Our customer service is outstanding.
We care and our customers notice. We look forward to growing our business us. Now I would like to hand it over to Bill Badai, our Executive Vice President. Bill?
Thank you, Simon. As noted in our release, we had a good quarter overall with revenue of 29% income from operations up 27% year over year. Our light boat business grew about 40% in Q1, while our tech extends segment retracted 22% when compared to the same period last year. Due to a continued decrease in our extended payment term transactions. Gross profit for our Lifeboat segment in the first quarter was up 27% $5,200,000 versus 0.1 for the same period last year due to an increase in sales volume.
The Dick Extin segment had a higher percentage of GP compared to last year, but declined 21% due to the lower volumes. We announced the addition of 2 new will continue to build on our solution sets for our partners. Also announced was a key addition to LIFO staff as Justin Curran joined as Director of Professional Services. With the assignment to build out a services portfolio that is sold through our reseller partners to improve the availability and margins for both parties. Like other resellers, package 10 will use the lifeboat services for their engineering projects.
Our plans continue to be executed effectively by the organization, and I expect several new lines to be brought aboard led by Brian Gilbertson and other staff additions in both organizations. As Simon indicated in order to better serve our Mount And Pacific Time Zone customers, We're expanding our inside sales team, but adding a remote office in Phoenix area for this additional staff. We'll be assigned to the 5 territories in these 2 time zones and will augment their teammates in New Jersey already covering these areas. We also added some mines and additional staff in our tech Accent team and TechXHEN's overall business remains solid except for the extended payment term business, which are traditionally large transactions. As stated previously, we are focusing our efforts for opportunities that include higher margin opportunities as seen by the slightly higher GP percentage for check extend.
We continue to manage our expenses and build our product portfolio to help achieve our continued growth targets. Ms. Simon, thank you. Back to you.
Thank you, Bill. Kevin Skol will now report in the financial numbers. Kevin?
Thank you, Simon, and good morning to our investors, analysts and employees. I will discuss our first quarter financial results both on a consolidated basis as well as by business segment. Net sales for the quarter or $92,700,000. This is compared to $71,700,000 in Q1 last year, representing an increase on a consolidated basis. Sales for our Lifeboat distribution segment were $82,900,000 and represent 89% of total revenue during the quarter.
Lifeboat sales reflect a 40% increase compared to Q1 last year. The increase in sales in the Lifeboat segment was mainly a result of the addition of several key product lines and strengthening of our account penetration. We sales for our Tech Extense segment were $9,700,000 compared to $12,500,000 in the prior year, representing a 22% decrease. The decrease in sales in the Tech Extense segment was primarily due to a decrease in extended payment term transaction and larger transactions as compared to the prior year. On a consolidated basis, our gross profit was $6,400,000 compared to 5.5 $1,000,000 for the first quarter of 2014, representing a 15% increase.
Our gross profit margin percent for the quarter was 6.9% compared 7.7% in the prior year. Lifeboat distributions gross profit for the quarter was $5,200,000. This compared to 4,100,000 the prior year, and this represents a 27% increase.
Year.
Our Tech Extense segment gross profit was $1,100,000 and decreased by 21% compared to the prior year. The decrease in margin for our Tech Expense segment was due to lower sales volume. Total selling, general and administrative expenses were $4,500,000 compared to $1,000,000 in the prior year. This increase is primarily the result of an increase in lifeboat distributions, employee and employee related expense salaries, commissions, bonus and benefits in 2015 compared to 2014. We plan to continue to invest to grow was $1,300,000 compared to $1,100,000 in the prior year.
Earnings per share on a fully diluted basis was were $0.28 per share compared to $0.23 in the prior year. Now moving on to the balance sheet, compared to our year end balance sheet, the following accounts had fluctuations. Cash was a healthy $21,400,000 at quarter end compared to $23,100,000 at year This decrease is comprised primarily of stock purchases of $2,500,000 and dividend payments of $800,000, offset by cash flow from operations of $1,500,000. Accounts receivable current and long term decreased by 8%. Decrease was primarily due to a lower level of sales as compared to the fourth quarter of 2014.
Accounts payable on accrued expenses decreased by 8% due also due to lower sales volume and an increase in early payment discounts taken by the company in the current year. The company has no debt. We do have our have a $10,000,000 revolving credit facility that can be used for working capital, including financing transaction. As of March 31, we have no outstanding balance under the facility. Working capital at the end of the quarter was 30 $600,000.
During the quarter, we've repurchased approximately 156,000 shares of our stock. We still have Board authorization to buybacks approximately 555,000 shares. Our stockholders' equity now stands at 37,600,000 At our April 29, Board of Directors meeting, the Board declared a dividend of $0.17 per share, Bertz common stock payable May 28 to shareholders of record on May 13, 2015. In conclusion, the company continues to have solid upper and results, a strong balance sheet and is adequately capitalized to support our continued growth plans. Simon, I turn it back to you.
Thank you, Kevin.
Questions.
You.
Our first question comes from Jeff Gagan from Milwaukee Private Wealth Management. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. And gentlemen. I appreciate you taking my call this morning.
Oh, you're welcome.
Bill, can you please elaborate on the services portfolio that Justin will be heading up, how that really fits into your overall business strategy and how that potentially affects your margin?
Yes, I'm happy to do so. The program we're building is to provide a combination of a vendor oriented specific services as seen by the recent release of Veeam Services for health checks and implementation services on a SKU basis that allows our reseller partners to add a SKU to their quotes and sales processes that allow the product to get installed by an engineer remotely. And, ensure a competent install and good customer experience. Our intention is to expand that type of service to other vendors like Sophos and unit trends and more creating for the of those product lines and ability to capture service revenue that they might not currently be doing depending upon the reseller. Some do, some do not, but now we provide that expansion.
Also, we were working with our vendor partners directly. To provide an expanded capability for, their service organizations and capabilities to do the similar type of thing for them actually kicking on some of their, implementation services for their professional services organization. This is another route to market that we're exploring with our suppliers. And thirdly, there's a custom support implementation capability that allows for custom statement of work development for project based orientation and project management And this whole process, we had done previously when Justin worked as part of my organization at alternative technology in Arrow, And our partners found that they were able to use our engineers to augment the peaks and their service requirements well, they staff directly for their Valleys. So we could take some of that off load off of them.
We had our engineers would be spread across multiple reseller cellular utilization always remained high and were driven directly by profits offsetting their costs and improving the profits for us. It creates an an overall, improvement in our gross profit percentage as we drive this forward during 2015 2016. Which should have a positive impact on our OI for both our partners and for us directly. So while the revenue needle won't move significant only as compared to our larger distribution revenue. The profit number should be driven in a positive fashion, disproportionate to that
At this time, there are no further questions. Please continue with any closing remarks.
We want to thank our investors, our employees and our partners and our customers for their interest in our company, and we look forward to reporting our second quarter results at the end of July of 2015. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may connect at this time, and thank you for your participation.