But the AI starts to drive and there’s a lot of things that are happening in this segment. And on the other side as I said that the Industrial and Scientific were down for the quarter. And also confirming then that the growth for service continues for us. It also confirms the trends that we are seeing. Revenues down, and as I said, orders on hand have normalized now. So there is no backlog to invoice from. And operating profit at 21.8% and we have not held back on next-generation of products for semi, for abatements, we go full speed ahead and we’re also building on the local — for local strategy in terms of capacity and agility for the big globalization in this industry that we see. You can also see the Polycold, a new cooler with very good data on energy efficiency.
We go to Slide #10 which is an Industrial Technique and as we honor them with the first page, there you can see that they’re up 3%. What we do see is that the strategy surrounding the tools with automation is paying off. We see more product order for when we get screw feeding, we get vision, we get software. So the supply from us is greater than before. So sometimes I think we are gaining market shares in these areas. In the quarter aerospace did really well. It actually did really well in electronics as well. I don’t think that market is specifically strong, but I think we gained a little bit of market share there. And also here then continued solid growth for service and in this case also the record revenues with 19% growth and an operating profit model at 21.9%.
We move to the last business area which is the Power Technique. I would not read too much into the decline that was expected, especially if you take a look at the graph. You have one quarter that really stands out and that was the rental companies when we had long lead times but they placed more orders. So this is the second best, even though it’s down somewhat. And still this year then it’s the change, if you would compare those two graphs, it would be the U.S. rental companies mainly that placed less orders. And acquisitions continue to do really well. I mentioned the Industrial accounts before. They have had a solid quarter. They also continue to grow in service and I always said that it’s fairly tricky with the portable equipment to be good in service, but we are doing a good job there.
We’re also industrializing the pump service as we know how to do it. So I think that will continue to be a positive development for us and the margin at — operating margin is 19.3%. Maybe I should highlight the product here. You can see it’s a portable compressor. It’s under the Chicago Pneumatic brand and it’s a study that we’ve been working for a couple of years. It’s starting to get good traction now. It’s a clearly differentiated product for the mainly for stock into the U.S. market, but we can implement this study and it’s a really good study for us. Premium product, Atlas Copco, CT, more basic, old functionality and it’s a good price and good quality, and if you want the highest efficiency, you will go with this yellow [ph] product.
In the month also we closed on the Kracht external gear pump company, added SEK750 million. They’re really strong into wind power. So we are learning more about the external gear pumps as well. So adding to our portfolio industrial pumps. So then go to the profit and loss. Yeah, we guide you on the EBITA and the A is the amortization on the intangibles on the acquisitions we have done. And then you can see that we were at the margin at 23.1% and on EBIT level we reported 21.8%. So, to summarize, it was orders received wise the second best order for us, second best for CT, IT and PT, and we can see that there is a strong acceptance for our new products and the concept and the services continuing to grow. And by that I hand over to you Peter.
Peter Kinnart: Thank you, Mats. If we then continue after the line profit, operating profit, then we have the net financial items, which are, I would say, overall in the total, in the bigger scheme of things, insignificant and mostly supported by higher interest on our also growing cash, as you will see on the balance sheet as well. The profit before tax is the SEK9.4 billion, compared to SEK8.7 billion. The income tax expense is almost on the same level as last year, with an effective tax rate now of 23.4%, compared to 24.6% last year. We say that 24.6% last year was a bit of an exception due to the fact that we had some higher taxes in the U.K. The withholding tax for China, we needed to provide for due to the fact that we did more business there and also we had somewhat lower Belgian and U.K. innovation incentives.
So 23.4% is more of the normalized level and it’s also the level we should think about when we look forward towards the whole year, in fact, that we will probably land around 23.5%. And that gives us then a profit for the period of SEK7.2 billion, compared to SEK6.5 billion, basic earnings per share of SEK1.47, return capital employed of 30%. If I then move on to the next slide, the profit bridge, say, of course, the margin at face value is on exactly the same level, 21.8%. The LTI programs have a dilutive effect and reduce the margin a bit, so do the acquisition in roughly similar terms. The currency was, in fact, you could say neutral, was a very minor impact and only slightly contributed to the net margin. When it comes to currency, what is the outlook for the second quarter?
