Nelson Urdaneta
Chief Financial Officer at Kimberly-Clark
Thanks, Mike. I'm pleased to report a solid start to the year. First quarter net sales were $5.2 billion, up 2% Year-over-Year. Organic sales increased 5%, compared to the last year's 10% increase. On a two-year basis, organic sales growth was consistent across all three segments, with approximately 8% average growth for the company. Strong revenue growth management delivered favorable price and mix benefits, with a better-than-expected elasticity impact on volume.
Organic growth for our personal care business, representing approximately half of the company's revenue grew 3% with a healthy contribution from price and mix and healthy underlying consumption. Growth was negatively impacted by approximately 1 percentage point by the exit of a private-label contract in North America. All Personal Care major geographies contributed to organic growth. After lapping a particularly strong Q1 last year, with North America, setting a new quarterly sales record.
Feminine care and adult care grew at healthy rates, and we continue to focus on the tremendous growth opportunities created by the aging population and ongoing innovation in women's health. In baby and child care, gains from product innovation, moderated the impact of lower birth rates in China and South Korea. Operating profit for the segment improved 3% in the first quarter. We are confident in our strategy to address significant unmet needs, will continue to unlock a long runway of growth for our personal care business.
Organic growth in consumer tissue was 7%. With broad-based growth across all geographies. We continued to improve the profitability of our tissue business with operating profit for this segment, up 40% for the quarter. Finally, our K-C Professional business posted 11% organic growth. All geographies grew, with North America and developed markets, delivering double-digit organic growth. Although, volume remains below pre-pandemic levels, we remain focused on opportunities where we can deliver value and growth.
Operating profit for our Professional segment grew 77% in the first quarter of the year. And we are continuing to make investments in the business to drive long term sustainable growth. First quarter gross margin increased 340 basis points to 33.2%. Pricing, in addition to forced savings of approximately $105 million more than offset the impact of input costs of approximately $160 million, which represented a roughly 300 basis point impact this quarter.
Between the lines spending on an adjusted basis was 18.1% of net sales, up 60 basis points versus year-ago, driven by higher investments in our business. Adjusted operating profit for the quarter increased 25%, and operating margin was 15.1%, an increase of 280 basis points versus last year's adjusted operating margin. Foreign currency was a 12 percentage point headwind on operating profit in the quarter, of which 5 percentage points was due to the impact of translating our foreign subsidiary earnings into US dollars, and the balance impacting input costs.
We have made good progress on our margin recovery over the last few quarters. However, our gross margins are still approximately 200 basis points below pre-pandemic levels. We remain committed to restoring and expanding our margins over-time. The effective tax-rate was 24.5%, compared to an adjusted effective tax-rate of 21% in the year-ago period. Better-than-expected top line and margin performance resulted in earnings per share of $1.67, up 24% versus adjusted results last year.
This quarter also resulted in strong cash generation. Cash provided by operations was approximately $600 million, driven by our healthy increase in operating profit and management of working capital. Capital spending was $201 million, compared to $253 million last year. During the first quarter, we returned $425 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
Now, let me say a few words about our outlook. We are raising our full year earnings guidance to reflect our Q1 performance and the moderation of commodity headwinds. Increasing it to a range of 6% to 10% growth from our prior guidance of 2% to 6% growth. We've maintained a full year outlook for organic growth of 2% to 4%, as we lap last year's pricing actions against a softer economic backdrop. We are committed to investing behind our brands and people. And we'll methodically assess incremental opportunities to drive near-term returns.
As we scale recent innovation to more markets and advance our commercial capabilities, we expect the step-up brand investments in the second quarter and the rest of the year, as we said last quarter. We are optimistic about bringing superior value propositions that will increase household penetration and market share over-time. With the success from our innovation pipeline and brand investments, we have increased confidence in our ability to deliver in the top half of our guidance range for organic growth.
Our input costs assumptions for the year have improved, but remain a headwind of $100 million to $200 million. In addition to the $200 million headwind from higher wages and other manufacturing costs, as stated last quarter. Most of the impact of input costs have been realized in the first quarter. And we expect headwinds to dissipate throughout the year. Bear in mind that the outlook for commodities remains mixed and cost levels continue to hover significantly above 2019 levels. Our revised input costs assumptions take into account benefits from lower transportation and energy costs. However, beyond these, we have not seen material changes in other commodities versus our prior outlook and markets remain volatile.
For example, oil prices have reversed the downward trend, with the recent round of supply cuts. And supply restrictions have contributed to higher prices in other raw materials. Global logistics are improving. However, the labor market remains tight. Certainly, we hope to see commodity abatement in the future. But we cannot count on it to recover the significant impact of inflation in the last three years. We are going to focus on what we can control, which is continuing to offer consumers, superior products, maintain our focus on revenue growth initiatives, accretive innovation and sustain productivity delivery.
We are raising our outlook for operating profit growth to a low-double-digit percent range and for operating margin to increase by approximately 130 basis points at the midpoint of our guidance. Currency is expected to impact operating profit by $300 million to $400 million, the majority of which will impact our costs. Based on these assumptions, we have increased our outlook for earnings per share growth to a range of 6% to 10%. While we do not provide quarterly guidance, let me remind you that we are lapping tough sales comparisons and expect to have continued currency headwinds in the second quarter.
As Mike said, we have a full slate of commercial programs coming up. And our teams are laser-focused on executing with excellence. I'm proud of our team's execution leading to a strong start to the year and we are committed to delivering balanced and sustainable growth that will create shareholder value.
With that, we will open the floor for questions.
