Welcome, everyone, to Sweco and to the report for the fourth quarter and for the full year 2020. Today, we have the privilege of listening to Åsa Bergman, our CEO, and Olof Stålnacke, our CFO, who will walk us through the presentation. With that, I think we should start. Please, Åsa. Thank you, Katarina, and welcome, everyone, to Sweco's Q4 presentation. Before we move into the quarter, I want to give you a short recap of Sweco. We are Europe's leading engineering and architectural consultancy, with focus on eight Business Areas in Europe, and with projects in more than 70 countries worldwide. Our net sales rolling 12 months, which this quarter equals a full year of 2020, is SEK 20.9 billion, and our margin is 8.5%. With our 17,500 experts, we have unique expertise to develop the solutions needed for a more sustainable society. Let us now move into the result of the fourth quarter. We end a strong year with a quarter that was affected by the second wave of the pandemic and the previously announced writedown in Germany. We report net sales of SEK 5.1 billion. Adjusted for the calendar and the writedown in Germany, our organic growth was -5%. The reason behind the decrease in organic growth is mainly linked to a continued weak demand within parts of the industry and private real estate and building segments. It's also related to the second wave of the pandemic and the lockdowns and restriction that came as a result of that. The pandemic has affected our ability to recruit new people, and it has impacted some of our clients and projects. The impact from the second wave of the pandemic is especially clear in the U.K., but it has affected all Business Areas in the fourth quarters as the restrictions have been more extensive overall. We have a positive contribution of 3% from acquisitions and a negative currency effect in the quarter of -3%. Moving over to EBITDA, as communicated on December 21st, we had a major impact in the quarter related to the writedown of SEK 290 million in Germany. Adjusted for the write-down, our EBITDA decreased by 3% to SEK 514 million. When adjusted for the write-down and calendar effect, EBITDA decreased by 14%. When summarizing the quarter result, I would like to highlight that five out of eight Business Areas improved their margins in the fourth quarter. We are not satisfied with the result in the quarter, but given the circumstances, I would like to emphasize that most Business Areas delivered a strong and a solid quarter, and that Sweco delivered an overall strong full year. Before we move over to a recap of 2020, I would like to highlight a new assignment that we recently won. Sweco has been involved in the development phase of a new central hospital in Hämeenlinna, Finland since 2018, and we will now continue with the implementation phase. The total order value for Sweco, including the development phase, is approximately EUR 22 million. Looking at the full year for 2020, I can conclude that it was a strong year for Sweco in light of the challenging market conditions. We delivered net sales in line with and actually a bit better than 2019, which was Sweco's best year- to- date. Adjusted for the writedown in Germany, we strengthened our overall margin and reached close to 10%. We also managed to improve margins in seven out of eight Business Areas compared to last year. Five Business Areas also had an all-time record margin: Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. I'm also pleased that our two largest Business Areas, Sweden and Finland, outperformed the group profitability target and showed EBITDA margins well above 12%. There are many things that we have done right throughout the year, and that has proven that our Sweco model is successful even in a more challenging market. One of those things is that we have continued to acquire companies that complement and strengthen our position in our core markets. In 2020, we completed 10 acquisitions, and we have started 2021 with new acquisitions as well. I will get back to this more in detail later in the presentation. I would also like to point out that we have a strong financial position. In 2020, we managed to improve our operating cash flow and decrease our net debt. This means that we have a strong position to capture market opportunities going forward. In light of our performance and financial position, the board proposes a dividend of SEK 2.20 per share. Before we move over to the market situation, I would like to highlight an assignment in Denmark for Green Square Garden in Copenhagen. We are providing architectural services in a project covering more than 30,000 sq m. That has been gold pre-certified. This is a really good example of how we win assignments based on our expertise within sustainability. If we then look at the overall market situation, the demand for our services is rather unchanged compared with the previous quarters. As previously communicated, we see weaker markets in some parts of the industry segment and the private building and real estate segments. What we have seen in the fourth quarter is that the second wave of the pandemic has impacted our business. It has been associated with yet another set of lockdowns and even harder restrictions. This has impacted our ability to recruit new people to Sweco, and it has impacted our ability to grow. We expect COVID-19 to continue to impact our ability to grow for some time, but we see gradual improvements as measures are taken throughout Europe to improve the situation. All in all, the overall demand for our services remains good, and our order book is on stable levels. We also see that the long-term driver that I have talked about many quarters before, those remain strong. There is an increased demand for sustainable solutions. We see an accelerated need for digital solutions, and the ongoing urbanization will, of course, also drive demand for many of our services. One example of this is the assignment commissioned by the Swedish Transport Administration to provide railway services for the section between Uppsala Central and Söderby Brunna in Sweden. In uncertain times like these, we see that our diverse business is one of Sweco's core strengths. We have a broad geographical footprint across eight Business Areas in Europe. Sweden is our largest market, while our other Business Areas are relatively comparable in terms of net sales for the quarter. Looking at our offering, we have a balanced mix between the three business segments: building and urban district, water, energy, and industry, transport infrastructure. We have a good mix between public and private clients, which together with the fact that we have many small and mid-size projects, enable us to stand stable. Let us now take a closer look at Q4. Organic growth in the quarter was 5%, adjusted for calendar effect and the write-down in Germany. COVID-19 and the imposed restriction have resulted in us not being able to recruit as much as we normally would have. A flat FTE development, together with lower average fees, have impacted organic growth negatively. We also see a slightly lower billing ratio. I would like to mention Finland, that has delivered strong organic growth of 5%, which is very good considering the circumstances. The organic growth in Germany and Central Europe is weak in the quarter. Sweco Germany now has full focus on implementing the Sweco model, including strict project governance and execution. With the new leadership, we have taken significant actions, and I am positive about the long-term outlook for our German operations. This is a change journey, and that will take time. In U.K., we report negative organic growth of 13%. The decline was mainly driven by lower average fees and slightly lower billing ratio. Going forward, we will have full focus on resuming recruitment while maintaining profitability at a stable level. However, we expect continued impact in the coming quarters due to onboarding processes. Let me now present the acquisition that we have made during 2020. Since our listing, 1998, Sweco has successfully acquired and integrated more than 130 companies. Despite the uncertainties caused by the pandemic, we have continued to execute on our long-term strategy and completed 10 acquisitions in 2020, of which eight were of more significant size. We are continuously looking for targets that strengthen our market position and multidisciplinary architectural and engineering offering. A strong financial position and low net debt that creates strong opportunities for continued acquired growth going forward. I would now like to talk about two recent announced acquisitions. We announced that we have signed an agreement with NCC Finland to acquire Optiplan. The company provides engineering and architectural services with a focus on designing sustainable and energy-efficient real estate and efficient residential and non-residential buildings in the area of Helsinki, Tampere, Turku, and Oulu. In 2019, Optiplan had 150 employees and had a revenue of EUR 13 million. On January 19, we announced the acquisition of BUUR in Belgium. The company has a strong reputation in climate adaptation, urban planning, and landscape architecture in the area of Leuven, Ghent, Antwerp, and Brussels. In the financial year ending June 13, 2020, BUUR had over 60 employees and a revenue of EUR 4.5 million. These acquisitions strengthen our market positions in Finland and Belgium, as well as our multidisciplinary engineering and architectural offerings to our clients. As we have communicated in previous quarters, Sweco had some challenges in our German operations. Therefore, we announced in the third quarter that we would conduct a full project review in the German project portfolio. After concluding the review, Sweco announced a significant write-down of working capital amounted to SEK 290 million in the fourth quarter. The write-down is mainly related to large public contracts within buildings and civil engineering and contracts within architecture. In these cases, revenue recognition has been too aggressive and project governance unsatisfactory. As a result of the action plan for Germany, we now have full focus on taking necessary actions to ensure profitable growth. This includes accelerating the implementation of the Sweco model, including stricter project governance and execution, as well as tighter project portfolio and performance management. With a new leadership in Sweco Germany, we have taken significant steps in the right direction. As I mentioned before, this is a change journey that will take time, but the long-term potential for our German operations remains. It is one of our core markets, and we see great potential in the long-term perspective for Sweco to continue to grow on the market. We will, of course, put further focus on working close to our clients and winning new contracts on the German market. One example of the assignment that we recently won is to renew the waste to energy plant in Schwandorf. It is a project where we bring expertise from many different fields and work closely together with the clients to find the best solutions. With the average size of waste to energy plants in Germany, there will be many similar projects in the years to come. With that said, I will now hand over to Olof to walk you through the numbers. Please, Olof. Thank you, Åsa, and good morning, everyone. Starting with the net sales development. Net sales in the quarter was SEK 5.1 billion, taking the full-year net sales to SEK 20.9 billion. Net sales is, of course, impacted by the German write-down. As Åsa already said, adjusted for calendar and the write-down, organic growth is -5% in the fourth quarter. We have a significant positive calendar effect from six more hours. This positive calendar effect, however, fell entirely in December, and with the holidays and vacation taken, it didn't really materialize in this quarter, so we only got a small portion of that positive calendar effect. The positive effect from M&A and the negative FX effect balance out in the quarter. Looking at the EBITDA development. EBITDA is SEK 540 million, excluding IACs, and full-year EBITDA is SEK 2.1 billion. EBITDA is slightly down versus Q4 last year. Adjusted for the calendar effect, we are SEK 73 million or 14% down. Again, this significant positive calendar effect didn't really materialize in the quarter. Looking at the EBITDA bridge by Business Area. The main EBITDA drivers in the quarter were, again, Finland and Belgium, which have consistently shown the strongest improvements over the last two years. Both BAs also showed double-digit margins. Sweden is somewhat down in EBITDA but delivers a margin of 14.2% in the quarter. Including Denmark and the Netherlands, we have 5 BAs that show margin improvements versus last year. Norway is impacted by negative project review and a quite significant FX effect. The U.K. continues to be the market most impacted by COVID-19, as we've already seen from the top-line growth. EBITDA in Germany and Central Europe is significantly impacted by the net sales decline that we see in the quarter versus a very strong growth quarter last year. We also have year-to-date corrections in the quarter. Underlying EBITDA in Germany and Central Europe is around break even, and that's also more or less where they are for the full year 2020. Overall in the quarter, as for the whole of this year, cost reductions are the main drivers of the margin improvements, and we see about SEK 90 million of cost savings in this quarter compared to last year. Overall, looking at the full year, we are very pleased that in this kind of challenging environment, seven out of our 8 BAs improved their margins versus last year, and 5 BAs reach all-time high levels in terms of margins. The financial position remains strong. Net debt is below SEK 1 billion in the quarter at the end of the year, which is SEK 1.2 billion less than at the end of last year. This is driven primarily by very strong cash flow from operations. The total outflow for M&A and dividend is also SEK 200 million lower than last year. Leverage is at 0.5 at the end of the year, which is half of what it was at year-end 2019. We have available liquid assets of SEK 3.9 billion, and we have also terminated the insurance bridge credit line that was set up in April at the start of the COVID-19 situation. We believe we are well-positioned to manage through the current situation, and also to capture any opportunities that may come out of it. With that, back to you, Åsa. Thank you, Olof. Let us now conclude the fourth quarter. We end a strong year with a quarter that was affected by the second wave of the pandemic and the write-down in Germany. Despite that, most Business Areas are delivering a solid performance in the quarter, with five out of eight Business Areas improving margins. For the full year, it's also positive that our two largest Business Areas, Sweden and Finland, outperformed the group profitability target and show EBITDA margins well above 12%. Even though COVID-19 causes uncertainties, our order book, and the overall demand for our services remains stable. We have a strong financial position, and we continue to acquire companies to strengthen our position on our core market and as the European leader. In light of the strong financial position and a stable full-year result, the board proposes a dividend of SEK 2.20 per share. 2020 was a challenging year, but also a strong year for Sweco. We continue to grow, to improve our margins, and to strengthen our market position. We will continue to focus on a long-term strategy that is the foundation for Sweco's success, with profitable growth through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. We will also focus on implementing the Sweco model through all our markets and with special attention to our German operations. Of course, we will continue to work close together with our clients and monitor the COVID-19 situation carefully to be able to take actions if needed, but also to capture opportunities when they arise. Thank you. Thank you, Åsa and Olof. With that, we will open up for questions. We begin by taking questions through the phone line. Please go ahead. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, if you wish to ask questions over the web, click the Q&A button on bottom left of the screen, type in your message, and click submit to attend. Your first question comes on the line of Erik Paulsson. Your line is now ope n. Please go ahead. Hi there. This is Erik. Hi, Erik. Regarding the order book, you talk about a very stable order book. I was just wondering if you can give some numbers around this regarding the order book and the order intake in the quarter. Thank you. As said, we have continued to win projects over the quarter at the same levels as previous quarters. We are of course seeing some effects of the COVID-19 situation, meaning with some clients affected and some projects postponed. In the overall perspective, we are stable in our order book. We normally do not give you any detailed figures around the order book. We are pleased with what we see when it comes both to orders received and with the development of the order book. I don't know if you would like to add something, Olof. As we don't communicate numbers on the order book, but it is basically the same numbers as we have seen previous quarters. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Dan Johansson. Your line is now open. Good morning. Dan Johansson at BAB. Good morning. Good morning. A couple of questions from my side. First one on the somewhat weaker market we saw in Q4. Organic growth is, of course, a bit lower now than Q3, Q4. My question is really, what has changed compared to previous in terms of market outlook? Is it mainly related to the new lockdown restrictions, or is there any specific segments that are weaker than previously, or is it just that you're feeling a general slowdown with a bit of a time lag? It would be interesting if you could elaborate on that. We don't see that much changes compared to Q3 when it comes to the market condition, despite that we have been, in this quarter, into this second wave of more restriction lockdowns, and some construction sites affected, meaning that our clients and some of our projects are affected. That is the overall picture, I would say. Again, we are continuously winning projects, and I would say that our decentralized business model of having those local teams working really close with the clients to ensure that we adapt and capture the opportunities, even if there are changes going on or events happening on each market, that is really our success at times like this. As communicated before, where we see a more weak market is in parts of the industry and the private building and real estate segment, but on same levels as previous quarters. I also talked about, we have communicated that we haven't been able to recruit as we normally do. This is, of course, if you look at the FTE development over the last quarters and compare it with the previous years, you see that we haven't been able to recruit on a pace as normally, and that is now affecting us in the quarters. Of course, we are now focusing on taking on recruitment again. As you all know, we are living in those uncertain times, meaning that having strong views about the market development going forward, I would say, we can't really tell, because this is strongly related how long those lockdowns and this uncertainty around COVID-19 will look like. We do what we can to resume the recruitment. As you know, there is time lags in those kind of processes. I hope that answers your question. Yes, it does. Thank you. If I may add also to just put some numbers on this. If you take out Germany, which is a bit of a special situation as you have seen in the quarter, also excluding the writedowns, and the fact that the calendar effect didn't really materialize given where it fell, we were at about -2% in organic growth, and it was -1% in Q3. I would say that development is entirely related to stricter restrictions in Q4. Also to add on that, is that in the spring, or before the summer, we were up at high levels of our employees working from home, and we are back to that situation again, with most of our employees working remote as this second wave has affected the whole office environment and working environment for us. Okay, thank you. Additional question, if I may. You quantified the additional one of the impacts in Germany on EBITDA, which was quite large. In terms of the project adjustment you seem to have in Norway, U.K., and there's also some unrest officially in Netherlands. How much are we talking about here in total? Is it SEK 10 million+, or is it just marginally impact them? In terms of the project adjustments, is the COVID-19 affecting there as well, meaning that project delays due to the restrictions, or what is the main driver to project adjustments? If I can take that one also, and you can add. Yeah. The project adjustments in Norway and the U.K. are so significant that we mention them in the report, but they are more part of the normal up and writedowns that you have in the project portfolio. Office onerous lease in the Netherlands is about EUR 800,000, so a little bit north of SEK 8 million. That's quite significant. That's an old office that we are not using anymore, that then you sort of write it off. The other things are more within what's normal fluctuations in the business. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. The last question. You're obviously doing great in taking out costs during 2020. I think you had temporary savings of SEK 90 million or so now in Q4. How should we think about this going into 2020? What are these costs of temporary, and what portion can actually stick when demand returns, for example, by new ways of working and new ways of meeting digitally, etc? How should we think about that when demand returns? I can start, Olof, and then you can add on if you wish. Right now, as I said, we have most of our engineers and architects working from home, remote work. We are not allowed to travel. What you will see is that as long as we are in this situation, we will, of course, have the non-critical activities on low levels, meaning that you could foresee that we can work with those cost savings going forward. How much of this that we will bring into the future is too early to say, because it depends on, of course, how we will work and how much of office work, remote work, how much we will travel, and in what kind of pace. It's related to restrictions, but it's also related to the working methods that we will choose for the future. What we will ensure is, of course, that we use what we have learned, that we capture the efficiency that we think is the right for us. It also saw that working in this mode and in this way is not only positive. We have to go back to office. We have to have our project team together. Yeah, I hope that answers your question. Yes, it does also. Thank you so much. That was all for me. Thank you. There are no questions over the phone. Please continue. Okay, I think we have questions on the chat. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello. I'm really not lovely here. There are some few questions from Johan Sundén from Carnegie. The first question, please quantify negative effect of project adjustment in Norway, and please quantify negative non-recurring effects in the Netherlands. How long time do you expect that the negative effect from weaker fee development and lower billing ratio to persist? Given your current state of the order book, how should we think about organic growth for the first half of 2021? Should we expect a sequential improvement, or is it reasonable to expect that Q1 2021 to continue on the same level as Q4 2020? How big was the actual favorable calendar effect on sales and EBITDA? Thank you, Johan. Olof, should you start? I can. I think we mentioned the onerous lease in the Netherlands. It's slightly north of SEK 8 million in the quarter. Without that, Netherlands would have been at somewhere around 9.7 in margin for the quarter. If we look at Norway, again, it's sort of within the normal fluctuation. For the quarter, it's somewhere between SEK 5 million and SEK 10 million for Norway, maybe closer to SEK 5 million. The calendar effect, I would say the theoretical calendar effect was SEK 55 million. It's difficult to quantify exactly, I think we only got out about SEK 5 million- SEK 10 million of that. Let's see now. The remaining questions, we had the impact in Q1. Maybe you want to comment on sort of how long we will see the impact on the growth. As we have communicated, the organic growth in Q4 is affected by that we haven't been able to recruit on the pace that we normally would do. Also, of course, of the write-down in Germany. As long as we are in this pandemic situation, you could expect that it's hard to really see positive FTE development. We will do what we can to ensure that we start up the recruitment, as said, but there is time lags in those processes. It is still uncertain how fast we can go back at normal organic growth levels. We are strongly dependent on what will happen in the market environment around us going forward. Yes, we have two follow-up questions from Johan Sundén, Carnegie. Please clarify the organic growth in Q4 2020, excluding actual calendar effects and German write-down. You write -5% in the report, but you said -2% during the presentation. Yes, that -2% is excluding the calendar effect and excluding Germany and Central Europe. Germany and Central Europe is 21% down organically excluding the write-down. That's with Finland being positive in the quarter and then having small negatives across the other BAS, the total is -2%, excluding Germany and the fact that the calendar effect didn't materialize. Another question from Johan Sundén, Carnegie. Please give an update on your M&A activity. Has that ramped up during the quarter? As you heard in the presentation and also stated in the report, we completed 10 acquisitions, and eight of those were significant. We also started out the year to announce activities and completed acquisition. We have an M&A plan for each Business Area. We have an M&A organization that works in a very clear and solid way. We have ongoing dialogues, and when we find the right target that suits us, then we will acquire. As I said before, we are not acquiring for the sake of it. We really ensure that we find the right competence and the companies for Sweco, and when it happens, it happens. In relation to our financial position and also that we have those plans in place, we are in good shape. Okay, I think that concludes the questions. Thank you, Åsa. Thank you, Olof. Thank you, everyone, for joining Sweco today. Have a good day and stay safe. Thank you.
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