Abstract. New explicit results on exponential stability, improving recently published results by the authors, are derived for linear delayed systemṡwhere t ≥ 0, m and r ij , i, j = 1, . . . , m are natural numbers, a k ij : [0, ∞) → R are measurable coefficients, and h k ij : [0, ∞) → R are measurable delays. The progress was achieved by using a new technique making it possible to replace the constant 1 by the constant 1 + 1/e on the right-hand sides of crucial inequalities ensuring exponential stability.