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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nederman Holding Q1 report for 2018. Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Sven Kristensson, and the CFO, Matthew Cusick. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to Sven Kristensson. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you, very much and welcome to this phone conference on the interim report for Q1 2018. Starting at the first slide, in Americas, we had an organic growth in the order intake of 4% and we had it due to the currency exposure. Certainly, some changes, that means a negative currency impact. So therefore, the sales -- and then the sales decreased organically in the period. For EMEA, incoming orders increased to SEK 402 million and sales increased to SEK 406 million. A strong development is largely related to acquisition of NEO Monitors in last quarter 2017. And the positive development in EMEA's profitability continued with an adjusted operating margin of 13.3%, which is the highest level for the first quarter. APAC continued to perform well in Q1 in terms of both incoming orders and sales. We had an organic order [ achievement ] going up 14.6% and sales by 23.4%. And we also continued to increase the profitability in APAC region. So if we look at Nederman as a total for Q1, incoming orders, SEK 781.7 million, which is 3%. Net sales SEK 785 million -- or SEK 786 million, which is increase of 1.2% organically. And we have an operating profit of SEK 60.4 million, which gives us an operating margin of 7.7%. It's a 1.3% increase as well as the net profit increased to SEK 37 million and earnings per share SEK 3.15. Going now to Americas, which slide number? It is Slide #4? Yes. The general market situation in U.S. is still affected by the uncertainty concerning trade health environmental. We see that we had good growth in small systems reported as well as the aftermarket in general. However, the -- we lack the signing of large project that are in the pipe. And the situation has stabilized to a degree, and we do see some areas where we have an increasing demand. Brazilian economy continued to show signs of recovery and the long term, we believe that it will have a positive impact going forward. There are more stringent requirements in compliance in the country's environmental legislation and that will further enhance our sales capacity. The Canadian economy is currently developing positively and we have seen an increasing demand. Mexico, unclarified situation. NAFTA and so on has an impact, however, we have been able to continue to grow in that area. And yes. I think that's what's said in that part.
If you move onto the financials for America and -- onto Slide 5 now, incoming orders SEK 263.6 million in Quarter 1. Organically 4.1% increase, as Sven previously said. Sales organically up by -- organically down by 3.4%. They amounted SEK 280.2 million in the quarter. Adjusted operating profit decreased to SEK 26.9 million, which is an adjusted operating margin of 9.6%. We move now onto EMEA for Quarter 1, 2018.
The market situation has definitely further stabilized. And when we talk about stabilization, it's stronger utilization in the industry that leads to a start of investment in the -- in our field as well as in the general industry. The utilization of the European industry comes now on the level where investments are started to be seen, but still, the industrial investments are on a fairly low level. On the U.K., we haven't seen a lot of effects of the BREXIT decision. So we cannot really judge if and how much it will affect our business in Britain going forward. Several countries have a good development during the quarter and the backlog is good. Germany has seen double-digit growth in incoming orders and very good development in core business of sales of product and smaller systems.Denmark, favorable growth during the quarter. Strong profitability. Benelux countries during the quarter are positive development in most segments. South Europe, a slightly weaker development during the quarter, mainly explained by lower sales in medium large project. U.K, a little bit weaker, but if that can be attributed to BREXIT discussion or not, we cannot say. Eastern Europe, very sound development in the quarter, double-digit growth in Poland. Very strong performance in all respects. Distributor markets reached roughly the same level. There are areas, Middle East and so on, that are weaker, but there are also areas that are continuing to grow. And the digital sales channels are continuing to perform very well and more distributors are now being introduced to the Nederman's highly regarded Partner Web Shop. It's quite interesting to say that 80% of the distribution in sales in China this quarter went through Partner Web Shop.
Move on to Slide 9 now and the financials for EMEA. For Quarter 1, incoming orders amounting to SEK 402.5 million in the quarter. That's an organic increase of 0.1%. Sales amounted to SEK 406.5 million in the quarter. Organically, that's an increase of 0.3%, compared to Q1, 2018. And adjusting operating profit in Quarter 1, 4 -- SEK 54.2 million from SEK 37.6 million in the same quarter last year. So a good improvement given an adjusted operating profit of 13.3% during Quarter 1. Slide 10 and APAC.
The general market situation is still, in most countries in APAC, good. And some areas in the raw-material-intensive countries are affected still by weak demand and some of the protracted decision-making processes. China, new environmental legislation, together with other government initiatives, is expected to increase the importance of environmental issues. It's so that since several years China has had very strong environmental legislation. However, the follow-up on that legislation has been very poor. That is gradually changing at the moment. And in India, the negative effect of the new indirect tax implemented last year has now diminished. And we still see some good recovery in Australia, including some of the raw material industry and mining side of it. China had another good quarter with an organic increase of incoming orders by 20%. And it was both large projects mainly to foundry and the metal industry, but also some others and -- as well as the distribution sales and also to compensate industry. India had to show a weaker development during the first quarter. There were no really large sales projects if practically comparing to the very strong Q1 last year. Thailand has a weak market. Malaysia, small market, but very strong. Indonesia had a very strong first quarter. Australia continue to perform fairly well or very well in some sectors.
Slide 11 and the financials for APAC in Q1. Incoming orders SEK 115.6 million. That's an organic increase of 14.6% compared to Q1 2017. Net sales SEK 99.1 million during the quarter. That's an increase of 23.4% compared to Q1 2017. Adjusted operating profit improved to negative SEK 0.6 million from a negative SEK 6.7 million in Q1 2017. On Slide 12, Nederman Insight.
Nederman Insight, as we have announced earlier, the Nederman Insight organization is established to manage and develop opportunities associated with connected services, Internet of Things and mobile devices to provide Nederman's customer with new services and values. And to do this, Nederman has and will successfully build up the new competence necessary to develop a complete ecosystem of services and thereby, create an attractive offering with a robust infrastructure for the IoT. The IoT platform that did some knowledge offering is based on Nederman's IoT platform, Nederman Insight. This platform consists of hardware installed in Nederman's product and solutions and software that communicate with the cloud to provide customers with the information and insight into critical parameters and processes. As these services and solutions are successively launched, they will strengthen Nederman's offering and customer relations. NEO man -- Monitor was acquired in 2017 and it's now a part of Nederman Insight. Nederman's NEO Monitor solution will become an integrated part of Nederman Insight applications and digital ecosystem. Late in March, we signed a deal of acquiring Auburn FilterSense and the closing happened on April 5. And the company manufactures particulate monitors incorporating sensing technologies, intelligent controls including real-time diagnostics and software for filter leak detectors for process control, maintenance planning, regulatory compliance and increased production efficiency. Nederman Insight will also incorporate Auburn FilterSense in the organization. [ Brand and ] team will continue to operate as before and acquisition adds further solution that can be integrated into the Nederman Insight application. And in -- already so that during this quarter, we will have their solutions, their sensors and their systems integrated, as we sit here, there are people from our side in the Boston working with them. So we can -- already did some offer or even before that depends on when you define summer, and offer an integrated system with Nederman's Internet of Things platform and connect it to Auburn FilterSense's systems.
Moving on to key figures now and I believe cash flow from operations is Slide #14. And we see that cash flow from operations in Quarter 1 2018 was negative SEK 4 million. That's actually an improvement of almost SEK 30 million over quarter 1 for 2017. Net debt remains largely flat from the quarter 4 of 2017 and remains well -- we remain well inside our banking covenants, for example.
If we go for the summary. First quarter had a solid organic order intake growth, improved profitability and stable cash flow from operating activities. If we summarize it even further, we had 24% increase in our operating result and EMEA had a significant improvement of the profitability. We continue the journey with -- against a profitable APAC and we had a strong improvement in the result, Q1 compared to Q1 last year. Americas, we had an organic growth, but we had some reduced sales impacting the profitability. Coming to next slide, which is the outlook going forward. What we say is that the situation in Europe continues to improve with positive growth for both incoming orders and sales. In U.S., we also see a continued growth in sales in the core business, while uncertainty surrounding major projects is expected to remain for some time, although some improvement has been evident. Asia, several markets are growing positively. In China, we have again seen increased environmental activity.
Finally, we have the financial calendar for 2018. And July the 12, the interim report for January to June will be released. And on October the 18, 2018, we will release the quarter 3 report.
That was the end of the presentation. We are now open for questions.
[Operator Instructions] And there are no questions on the telephone lines. So please go ahead, speakers.
Okay. If there's no questions, we thank you for taking time listening and wish you a good evening. Thank you.