Welcome, and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we'll have a question and answer session. At that point, if you'd like to ask questions over the phone, please press star followed by the number one. This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this point. Now I'll turn the meeting over to your host, Lloyd Midwinter. You may begin.
Hello, and welcome to AkzoNobel's investor update for Q4 2020. I'm Lloyd Midwinter, Director of Communications and Investor Relations. Today, our CEO, Thierry Vanlancker, and CFO, Maarten de Vries, will guide you through our results. We'll refer to a presentation, which you can follow on screen and download from our website, akzonobel.com. A replay of this webcast will also be available. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. For additional information, please contact the investor relations team. Before we start, I would like to remind you about the disclaimer at the back of this presentation. Please note, this also applies to the conference call and answers to your questions. I now hand over to Thierry, who will start on slide four of the presentation.
Thank you very much, Lloyd. Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome to everybody on the call, and I hope you're doing well in this hopefully last months of the pandemic in most of the world. After such a turbulent pandemic impacted year like 2020 behind us, I hope you understand that with a certain smile and a lot of pride that we can say that we delivered on the 15 by 20, the promise we set out to fulfill in 2017. With doing so that we achieved a really step change in the performance of the company. Return on sales, excluding unallocated costs for the full year 2020 was spot on 15%, in line with the ambition that we set in 2017. The Return on investment, excluding unallocated costs, was up at 20.6%, which in fact exceeds our 2020 ambition.
This is truly a significant milestone for us here in Amsterdam, and therefore it's just with a really genuine thank you to everyone at AkzoNobel, whose passion, commitment, and endurance over the last three years of this journey made this extraordinary performance possible. What is really great, and we'll talk about it probably more, is that we're only halfway through our value transformation. Our new Grow & Deliver strategy builds on what we've already achieved with 15 by 20, and we're very determined to reclaim AkzoNobel's place as the reference in our industry. Let's turn to slide number five. Our really strong results for 2020, delivering on our 15 by 20 promises, were driven by a strong focus on costs and cash. The total cost savings were EUR 243 million for the year, of which EUR 150 million were structural savings related to transformation initiatives.
Net cash from operating activities significantly increased to EUR 1.2 billion, driven by strong working capital management and discipline. We conducted share repurchases over the 2020 year of EUR 545 million, and we have today announced a further EUR 1 billion share buyback to be completed in the first quarter of 2022, and that's on top of the EUR 300 million we announced earlier of where we are about halfway right now. We propose a final dividend of EUR 1.52 per share, representing an increase in dividend per share of about 2.6%. A list of other key financial highlights is shown on slide number six. Our Q4 results are a strong conclusion to our 15 by 20 strategy, delivering frankly on all the metrics from growth, profit, and cash, and outperforming many. Revenue for the fourth quarter was up 6% in constant currencies and adjusted operating income was 32% higher.
Return on sales, excluding unallocated costs for the quarter increased to 15.3% versus 11% for the same period last year. For the full year 2020, adjusted operating income was up 11% and adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations increased 25% to EUR 3.88. Free cash flow, excluding pension top-ups, was 114% higher. Slide seven shows our revenue development during the year. During the fourth quarter, demand increased for most regions and segments after significant market disruption earlier in the year due to the pandemic. This is the second quarter in a row we've delivered strong growth. Both volumes and revenue in constant currencies were 6% higher in Q4. Coatings has now too returned to growth, driven by increased revenue from industrial coatings and powder coatings. For paints, revenue in constant currencies was up in all regions. Let's now turn to slide number eight.
We target to grow at least in line with our relevant markets. Although demand trends continue to differ per region and segment, there are many more positive trends than the opposite. Demand for paints is strong in all regions. Trends in EMEA are driven by both the professional and the do-it-yourself segments. In China, the positive momentum continues, especially for our premium Dulux offering. We see signs of slow recovery for South Asia after being more heavily impacted by COVID-19, with widespread distribution channels being locked down for most of the region for a big part of last year. We see strong demand continuing in South America. Growth trends for powder coatings are being driven both by increased demands, but also by market share gains. For example, in electrical vehicles and architectural applications. Demand for industrial coatings is also very strong, particularly for metal coil and packaging segments.
Automotive and specialty coating trends are gradually returning to growth, especially vehicle refinishes and consumer electronic segments, whereas the demand for aerospace coatings has stabilized, albeit at a lower level, after having been heavily impacted by COVID-19 in the previous quarters. Demand for marine and protective coatings has remained subdued as marine and oil and gas related projects continue to be impacted by the pandemic. Raw material inflation is expected, but we have solid margin management and cost saving programs in place to compensate for it. Let's move to some of our key actions and achievements as shown on slide nine. Our 15 by 20 strategy has created a very strong foundation and a really positive momentum for the next phase of our strategy, Grow & Deliver. Our disciplined approach to margin management has become part of who we are as a company.
As an example, gross margins were up 170 basis points for 2020. We continue to invest in innovation with regional versions of our industry leading Paint the Future challenge taking place in Brazil last year and recently launched also in China. During the year, we continued to implement our global business services with 80% of the total finance transitions now completed. Our ERP integration is also steadily moving forward with around 90% of our revenue in SAP applications and 65% of our total revenue within our final ERP platform solution. Cost savings in the fourth quarter were EUR 34 million, including EUR 25 million transformation cost savings. We continue to strive for a high performance culture, and in the second half of 2020, we achieved our highest engagement score and highest participation rate since 2017, when we started measuring OHI.
When it comes to sustainability, AkzoNobel continues to be widely recognized as a number one in the paints and coatings industry, and our People. Planet. Paint. approach of sustainable businesses should ensure we continue to lead the way. Let's continue on slide number 10 and give a bit more color. We've achieved significant cost savings in 2020 and the recent years. During the 15 by 20 phase of our transformation, we delivered a total of EUR 335 million structural cost savings.
For the full year of 2020, EUR 150 million of the total EUR 243 million cost savings were related to our transformation initiatives, while the rest were temporary measures in response to COVID-19. The total identified items associated with the transformation initiatives were EUR 321 million, including EUR 49 million of non-cash items. We delivered our savings at a much lower expense than the EUR 350 million initially estimated and announced.
Turning now to slide 11. Our company-wide engagement score is up 23% in just a couple of years, and we're now in the second quartile with an ambition to reach top quartile. Our top 300 managers' OHI score is even higher and puts it in the top decile of the industry. In addition, we were once again accredited by the Top Employers Institute in key countries including Brazil, China, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the United States. Slide 12 shows some of our key highlights related to sustainability. We continue to build on our leading track record with our People. Planet. Paint. approach to sustainable business. Around 40% of our revenue is already generated from sustainable solutions, and we aim to increase this to more than 50% by 2030. In 2020, we announced our planet ambitions, and we are steadily progressing towards our goals.
The percentage of renewable electricity we used in 2020 was 40%, four zero, up 8% versus 2019. We also reduced relative waste by 5% and achieved a 4% reduction in carbon emissions during the year. I'm proud to say that we were, and continue to be widely seen as the leader in paints and coatings, and our sustainability performance has been recognized by key benchmarks, including Sustainalytics, MSCI, and EcoVadis, as being by far the number one in our paints and coatings industry. With that, let me hand it over to Maarten, who will run you through the financial results in more details from slide 14 onwards. Maarten?
Yes, thank you, Thierry. Hello, everybody on the call. I'll now go through some of the key messages from our quarterly results. During the fourth quarter, revenue was up 6% in constant currencies, driven by higher volumes and positive price mix. Adjusted operating income increased with 32% to EUR 294 million, due to strong margin management and cost-saving programs. This resulted in a return on sales, excluding unallocated costs, up 430 basis points to 15.3% for the fourth quarter. Moving to slide 15, shows the quarterly trends in volume and price mix. We achieved growth for the second quarter in a row. Volumes were up 6% in the fourth quarter, mainly driven by 12% increase for paints, while coatings also returned to growth. Price mix was up 1% overall due to margin management. Geographic mix trends normalized for paints.
Slide 16 shows the development of adjusted operating income during the fourth quarter. We delivered 32% more profit in the fourth quarter, resulting from higher volumes and cost savings. Revenue growth from volumes and price mix contributed EUR 62 million and EUR 7 million respectively, although foreign exchange rates had an adverse effect of EUR 23 million during the quarter. Cost savings of EUR 25 million resulted from transformation initiatives and temporary measures added EUR 9 million with a further EUR 15 million from lower raw material and other variable costs. Several one-off items impacted the year-over-year comparison, including higher royalty income and a one-off gain on a disposal in 2019, which both were reported in other activities. Turning to slide 17, the results for decorative paints during the fourth quarter.
Revenue grew 14% in constant currencies due to strong demand in all regions, resulting in 12% higher volumes and price mix up 2%. Strong growth in EMEA with revenue up 14% in constant currencies, was driven by demand in both the professional and the DIY segments. South America also delivered strong performance with market share gains and demand recovering from the impact of COVID-19, although pricing initiatives and cost control was offset by significant currency devaluation. Positive growth momentum continued in China, especially for our premium offering, and for South Asia, which has been more heavily impacted by COVID-19, showed signs of recovery. Revenue growth, combined with ongoing margin management and cost discipline, resulted in adjusted operating income of up 45% to EUR 126 million and return on sales 400 basis points higher at 14% in the fourth quarter. Moving now to the fourth quarter results of performance coatings.
Revenue in constant currencies was up 1% due to higher volumes resulting from improving end market demand, particularly strong in industrial and powder coatings. Demand for automotive and specialty coatings has returned to growth, especially for vehicle refinishes and consumer electronic segments, although demand for aerospace coatings stabilized at a lower level after being heavily impacted by COVID-19 in previous quarters. Revenue from marine and protective coatings continues to be impacted by subdued demand for marine and oil and gas related projects. Strong growth for powder coatings with revenue in constant currencies up 10%, was driven by both increased demand and market share gains. Demand for industrial coatings was especially strong in the metal and packaging coating segments, resulting in 12% higher revenue in constant currencies. Adjusted operating income was up 33% at EUR 212 million due to volume growth, margin management and cost savings.
Return on sales increased 460 basis points to 16.2%. Now turning to slide 19. In the fourth quarter of 2020, profit from continuing operations increased significantly to EUR 182 million, up from EUR 80 million last year, and net income attributable to shareholders also more than doubled to EUR 167 million. Adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations was 46% higher for the quarter and up 25% for the full year. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA increased 8% and was around 40% higher versus 2018. This shows the structural profitability improvement from the first phase of our transformation. Moving now to cash flow on slide 20. We continue to maintain a strong focus on cash and working capital management. This resulted in significantly improved operating working capital as a percentage of revenue to 9.9% in the fourth quarter from 11.9% last year.
At the same time, we continue to invest in our business with capital expenditures of EUR 258 million for the full year, up from EUR 214 million in 2019. Free cash flow improved 37% to EUR 530 million in Q4 2020, mainly due to higher profit and working capital inflow. AkzoNobel has now become a highly cash generative company. Excluding pension top-up payments, which were substantial in 2019, free cash flow increased 114% to nearly EUR 1 billion in 2020. This represents a free cash flow yield of 11.6% of revenue. We ended the year with net debt around EUR 1 billion and a leverage ratio of 0.8 x net debt EBITDA. We continue to target a leverage ratio of net debt EBITDA of 1x-2x and remain committed to retain a strong investment credit rating. Now turning to shareholder returns on slide 21.
In line with our policy of paying stable to rising dividends, we propose a final dividend of EUR 1.52 per share. This will result in a total dividend for 2020 up 2.6% at EUR 1.95 per share. As mentioned earlier, adjusted earnings per share from continuing items was 25% higher at EUR 3.88 for the full year. We continue our modular approach to share buybacks. We completed a EUR 500 million share buyback program in the first half of 2020. A EUR 300 million program was currently underway to be completed in the first half of this year. Today, we announced a further EUR 1 billion share buyback to be completed in the first quarter of 2022. Now our capital allocation priorities, as shown on slide 22. As we've shown during the fourth quarter and 2020, and summarized in this presentation, we are delivering on our commitments.
We continue investing for growth, paying stable to rising dividends, conducting value-creating acquisitions, and carrying out share buybacks. We are basically firing on all cylinders. Executing with discipline has been key to our transformation. This is working well for us and part of who we are. I now hand over back to Thierry for some concluding remarks on the next slide.
Thank you, Maarten. Our exceptional results for the fourth quarter and 2020 demonstrate the deep structural performance improvement from the first phase of our transformation. Despite COVID-19 headwinds, our teams rose to the challenge and delivered our 15 by 20 promise, achieving 15% return on sales and more than 20% return on investment. We continue to look after our customers despite very challenging supply chains. Everyone at AkzoNobel deserves enormous credit for their passion, commitment, and endurance, specifically in such a challenging year. During our 15 by 20 journey, we transformed our systems and processes and brought back innovation to the forefront by, for example, our industry-leading Paint the Future innovation ecosystem. We've also streamlined and accelerated our People. Planet. Paint. approach to sustainability and are being recognized by key benchmarks as the leader in the paints and coatings industry.
We also are very focused on delivering for our shareholders and other stakeholders. Turning to slide 25. What is even more exciting to us is that we are literally only halfway through our transformation. Our new Grow & Deliver strategy that we announced in February last year, just before the pandemic, represents the second stage of the journey we started in 2017 with a purpose to build a strong foundation and positive momentum in 15 by 20, and to double from 2017 to 2023, to double the profit of AkzoNobel and reclaim our place as the reference in the industry, and we're really only just halfway. Going forward, we'll balance growth and profitability improvement. We target to grow at least in line with our relevant markets and deliver an average 50 basis points increase in return on sales each year.
Our ambitious targets as part of our People. Planet. Paint. approach to sustainability will ensure that we remain the reference in our industry. We target a top quartile engagement score and at least 30% female executives by 2025. As announced last year, we're also moving towards zero waste as a company. Aim to cut our carbon emissions in half by 2030. We'll do this by saving energy and using 100% renewable energy. We're also aiming to generate more than 50% of our revenue from sustainable solutions by 2030. Finally, turning to the slide 26, which shows our outlook for 2021. As mentioned, we target to grow at least in line with our relevant markets. Although trends differ per region and segment, as outlined earlier, with raw material inflation expected, we have solid margin management and cost-saving programs in place to deliver 50 basis point increase in return on sales.
We target a leverage ratio of 1x-2x net debt over EBITDA and commit to retain a strong investment-grade credit rating. With that, I'll now hand it over to Lloyd for information about the Q&A session. Lloyd?
Thank you, Thierry. Before we start the Q&A, I would like to draw your attention to some upcoming events shown on slide 27. On March 10, we'll publish our annual report for 2020. We'll announce our Q1 results on April 21, and followed by the annual general meeting of shareholders on April 22. This concludes our presentation, and we would be happy to receive your questions. Please state your name and company when asking a question and limit the number of questions to two per person so others can participate. I now hand over to Ethan to start the Q&A session.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask questions over the phone, please press star followed by the number one. Please unmute your phone and record your name clearly. Your name is needed to introduce your question. To cancel the request, please press star followed by the number two. One moment please for the first question. The first question comes from the line of Gunther Zechmann. Sir, your line is now open. Gunther, your line is now open.
Maybe if we come back to Gunther.
Can you hear me?
In just a moment, we start with.
Gunther, we can hear you now, Gunther.
Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Not sure what happened here. Good morning, gents, anyway. Couple of questions if I can start with. Thierry, what do you consider a good number to look at for relevant market growth in 2021, please? I know it's a moving target, any outlook you can give or any details or sensitivities around it, where you expect market growth to be in the year as a benchmark for your outlook would be very helpful. The second one, Maarten, if I can ask you on cash flow. How sustainable is the cash flow that you produced in 2020? Looking at if you return to growth in 2021 and you have had very low CapEx in 2020 as well, you're guiding to an increase in raw materials as we go through 2021.
Any color you can give around where you expect to end up on cash flow for the year, please?
Yep. Gunther, indeed for your first question, and then you are right, it's always a bit difficult to judge the growth of the market given the different basket and dynamic basket, the segments, the dynamics, et cetera. What we use when we say those sentences, we're assuming for market about a 2% growth versus 2019. Just to put it in perspective, and then it's probably going to be variations around the team depending on how we all come out of the pandemic, but that is our underlying assumption when we make the statements around how we're going to perform versus the market. Does that answer your first question, Gunther?
Absolutely. Thank you.
Maarten?
On the cash flow, I think you are referring to, first of all, our strong cash generation in 2020. By the way, it's good to know you mentioned lower CapEx. In fact, our CapEx was EUR 258 million in 2020, which was really in line with what we have also guided for, the roughly EUR 250 million. In 2021, CapEx will be also roughly at a similar level. I think it's good to know that by the end of 2020, we had a run-up of payables, and it was very much given the demand fluctuations. We've been pulling in raw materials to satisfy the demand. Overall, I expect very much a similar cash generative nature in 2021, as we are continuing our journey.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Gunther.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Matthew Yates. Matthew, your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. A couple of questions. Your revenue guidance of growing in line or faster than the market, as you just mentioned. Are there any specific products or geographies where you think you've gained share over the course of 2020 or expect to going forward? The second question is around the buyback and really just curious on your thinking here. This modular approach, you could have considered, say, a few hundred million buybacks for now and then seeing what M&A opportunities arise. Does the fact that you've announced EUR 1 billion suggest that the deal pipeline is relatively empty? I'm just struggling to reconcile your messaging on the buyback with your slide 22, that acquisitions have a higher priority for using capital.
Yep. Good question, sir Matthew. Let me try then to give the answer, then Maarten can build on it. Revenue, at least in line with the segments, in fact, shows some confidence in where we go. Let me first talk about the deco market. The deco market, despite all the brouhaha around it in 2020, is, in fact, if you take the helicopter view, not that great. It was more negatively impacted by COVID-19 than we often seem to be getting across to analysts. Yes, it was significantly up in Western Europe. Everybody seems to be doing some home improvement. If you look at South America, which is a big market, very lucrative market for us. If you look at Southeast Asia, very lucrative market. In fact, China, for a big part of the year last year, very lucrative markets for us.
These were actually not up at all. If you look globally for the whole year of 2020, it is very much influenced by the very strong markets we had here in Western Europe. As we see South Latin America coming back, as we see Southeast Asia coming back, and we see some really healthy growth with our Dulux paint in China now two quarters in a row. That's why we're pretty confident that we can sustain that and that it actually is going to be outperforming the market. That's on the deco side. By the way, in Europe, surveys that we've done in November and December indicate that 60% of the consumers in the do-it-yourself segment feel that they're going to do at least, if not more, home improvement in 2021.
I also want to point out that in Europe, the trade segment, so the professional painter segment, in fact, has been slightly down through the whole year, again, because nobody wanted to have probably painters during the pandemic in their homes. We're very optimistic going forward in 2021 and beyond for our decorative paints business. If I go to performance coatings, we can go to all of the segments. I would say suffice it to say that in industrial coatings, our coil segment and our packaging segment for beverage cans is doing very well. There we have actually, the markets are doing well. There is an intrinsic segment growth, but also our more sustainable non-bisphenol A containing products are obviously gaining share in that segment. There the trend is very positive.
Powder coatings, I know we go on like a broken record, but you see the numbers. Powder coatings just structurally has the market going with them. We're now seeing really significant volume pickup in battery applications for electrical vehicles, which in fact, we were not really very present in the automotive market. That is in fact a very nice growing niche for us. On top of that technology, et cetera, the Stahl UV acquisition for UV curing we did last year, is obviously already starting to show commercial application. Powder, we're anyway, generally okay. The two other segments where we see less buoyancy is on marine and protective. It's holding its own. It continues to be on both fronts, not necessarily a strong market.
If you look at automotive and specialty coatings, refinish, we're obviously gaining share on both sides of the Atlantic, and that's now becoming a pattern actually throughout the year, which is very encouraging. Yes, aerospace coatings, of course, was impacted by the travel restrictions driven by COVID-19. As people stay home, they have much more consumer electronics appliances, and here, in fact, we saw an almost equal increase in our business in Asia. So all in all, I think we see, and you saw that also in our segment chart, much more positives than negatives also going into 2021 and beyond, to be honest. You can refer to what we showed in the February investor update on Grow & Deliver. The segments we highlighted are still very much the ones that we will be pushing as such.
Secondly, on the buyback and the modular approach, Matthew, in one side, if we do modular approach, why are you not bolder to do a bolder step? When we do a bolder step, it's not a modular approach. The reality is that we are very religious around our capital allocation. We are generating a lot of cash, and in fact, at one point, we also want to stick to a leverage between 1x and 2x, which is not exactly very risky to start with. In that sense, it was, well, what do we do with the cash? There's M&A opportunities, but the most recent one got to a level where, frankly, even after checking the batteries in our calculator, that made no sense anymore. We don't want to go there. We want to keep the discipline because that's what helped us.
At the same time, we still have enough financial power to do any relevant or realistic acquisition we want to do this year. That's why we came to that conclusion of announcing a one-step EUR 1 billion share buyback acquisition. Maarten, I don't know if you want to add more to that.
Yeah. Matthew, I think it should be clear that given our capital allocation and given the leverage ratio that announced EUR 1 billion share buyback does not exclude further M&A opportunities. We are looking at the pipeline, and given the leverage ratio where we are now, we have still ample firepower and therefore opportunities to also, in the meantime, do M&A. It doesn't exclude each other.
Does that answer your question, sir Matthew?
Absolutely understood. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mobasher Choudhary. Sir, your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Just the first one's on the guidance. You talk about the guidance of 50 basis points of improvement in ROS. That looks a little bit conservative compared to where consensus is already, for example. Given that the 50 basis points is a multi-year target, do you see any upside to that target in 2021? Then the second question is around the cost savings. Could you help me understand the cash flow impact of the cost savings in 2021? What the cost savings that you're targeting for 2021 are. Some way to size those would be really helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. Good question. Let me do maybe the first one, and then, Maarten, if you do the second one. On the guidance, Basher, you know that we don't give guidance, and we're not going to get tricked in giving guidance. What we did say for the Grow & Deliver period, that's for the ROS, and that there's no misunderstanding, that's the ROS for the company. We're not talking about ROS excluding business, although et cetera, which was a necessity in the 15 by 20. What we said for the period of three years, we can basically see a 50% increase per year.
What we indicate that despite indeed raw materials increasing and all sorts of other topics and uncertainties that might be there in the market as we come out of the other end of the pandemic, that we feel comfortable about indicating that we will also be able to stick to that in 2021. As you probably have noticed by now, we typically do statements that we can stick to, in the 15 by 20 along the way. We would stick to that also. I would rather not go into guidance. We've been doing very well without giving guidance, and we're not going to start doing that either. We just wanted to give the reassurance that we feel it is very much steady as she goes on the delivery that we had promised earlier. Maarten, maybe on the-
Yeah, on your question on cost savings, I think it's important to mention that we really will continue our OpEx discipline to manage the OpEx or the cost levels at the current levels. That means that savings programs are in place to offset recurring inflation, because that's always the case, wage inflation, but also other cost inflation. We continue with a number of transformation initiatives. One to mention is, of course, our asset network footprint and our footprint rationalization. Coupled to that, we will indeed have, and that was your question, we will have identified items in 2021, which sits in the bandwidth between EUR 50 million and EUR 75 million. We go structurally to a lower level of identified items. Overall, all these actions are supporting the 50 basis points return on sales improvement as we have indicated.
Does that answer your question, sir Basher?
Yes, that's very helpful. Thank you.
Yep, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Tony Jones. Tony, your line is now open.
Thanks, everybody. Good morning, Thierry, and good morning, Maarten. I've got two.
Good morning.
Good morning. On the temporary savings, I think that totaled up just over EUR 150 million over the year. Could you help us think about if any of that might start to reverse in 2021 as growth comes back? On deco and performance coatings, could you talk a little bit about the price campaigns? Have you already put any price gains in, or are there more in the pipe? Thank you.
Yeah. Maarten, why don't you take the first one? I'll take the second one.
On the temporary savings, which were EUR 128 million in 2020, I think it's good to look at the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter, in fact, our temporary savings were EUR 9 million. Two areas there, travel and entertainment and some advertising and promotion. If you look at the EUR 9 million in the fourth quarter and cycle that forward, roughly half will continue, and that's mainly in the travel and entertainment area. That means, talking about EUR 128 million, that most of that will come back and we will retain a piece of the EUR 9 million, as we've seen still in the fourth quarter.
Let me then get the second question around the price campaigns. Indeed, there's raw material escalations that we see. Although, to be honest, it's more the assurance of supply, given the impact of COVID-19 and some of the suppliers having people in, et cetera. That's actually more of a headache in the last two, three months. Going on pricing, yes, there is a bit of an escalation. Oil prices go up, and that will have a trickle-through as we get through the year. The one thing is that we have, compared to two years ago, we have a very early warning system. We saw this coming pretty early on what was going to be the potential, if any impact in 2021.
The price campaigns in deco, as we said, we were planning them anyway as a routine action so that we've been taking into account. I have to say, we see relatively good traction on that. Every other paint supplier sits exactly in the same situation. We see quite some similar actions as we hear it come from customers. There, I think we feel pretty comfortable. On the performance coatings, it is not in all the segments, and in some segments, we are able to get more than what in fact the inflation is. Some others, it's typically on the type of buyers or the consolidation of those markets may be a bit more difficult. All in all, I think the actions are going as such that we can definitely offset any increase in raw materials in 2021 as we had predicted.
In fact, maybe even get a little bit more of the, I would say, more of the year-over-year inflationary effect also still covered. We're pretty upbeat on where we go right now.
Thank you. That's really good.
Yep. Thanks, Tony.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mutlu Gundogan. Sir, your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The first one is a clarification, if I can. If I add the 2% that you referred to the 2019 sales, I arrive at an expected sales of EUR 9.5 billion, and that will be 5% above market expectations. Is that correct? Is this what you meant with that remark? Secondly, on performance coatings, I see on slide seven that the exit rate was some 10% of volume growth at the end of Q4. How has that growth evolved so far in the year? Thank you.
Maarten, you want to handle the first one?
I think on your first point, it's indeed a good clarification because if you look at our 2020 numbers, there has been, apart from a decline in top line of 4%, there has been a significant FX impact to the tune of almost EUR 400 million. You need to look at comparable rates versus 2019, how that will evolve. Based on comparable rates versus 2019, we indicate that's their 2%. I hope that helps in your thinking.
Yeah. The second thing on performance coatings, I think the trend is indeed positive. The 10% seems a little bit enthusiastic, I think, from your side. It is definitely up. If you look at our revenue in constant currencies in the fourth quarter, it was up 1%. That must be a bit of a misread, I think, on the chart there. The trends are actually quite positive. I think we went through it. First of all, powder coatings, definitely very strong. I think that's in an order of magnitude and even slightly higher than what you just indicated. In automotive and specialty coatings, you have the not so good, the aerospace, but you have offset that with the very good, which is consumer electronics, so that balances it out to some extent.
We did see very strong traction in industrial coatings, both on the packaging side and in metal coatings with wood, in fact, returning because that had been pretty depressed. That actually is getting back to what it was in the previous years. Then marine and protective, as we've indicated, it's stable, but it continues to be stable at a low level. There, in fact, we don't see necessarily an uptick also not short term. That's not what we take into account given where the markets are going. Maybe we have to take it offline on what your perception is versus what we stated.
All right. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Charlie Webb. Charlie, your line is now open.
Brilliant. Thank you very much. Morning, gentlemen. Just a couple from me then. Just a few kind of qualifications of some of your comments already. On the price versus raw materials, some of your peers have talked about a kind of mid-single digit increase in the raw material basket. Is this similar to what you see? Therefore, when you say you expect to offset this, you need some sort of 2% positive pricing at a group level to do that if it is a mid-single digit raw material increase. Just trying to understand, is that the right types of order of magnitude that you're seeing, both from a raw material perspective, but also from a price perspective? Then second question on the savings.
Can I handle that?
Oh.
Charlie, can I maybe handle that?
Yes, of course. Yeah.
[audio distortion] I think we see low single digits. The mid is an overstatement on that. We see a low single digit, and yeah, pricing effect that we will be offsetting all of that. Just want to correct that we haven't seen that also, but that's what we see.
We see low single digits, raw material price impact, and we compensate, as Thierry mentioned earlier, with our pricing actions, which are more or less in the range of the 1%-2%.
That may be offset with a combination of price and mix, by the way.
Yeah.
There's other ways of offsetting it, but that's just to make sure that we are all aligned there. Sorry, Charlie, I interrupted you, but that's probably an easy one to answer.
No, that's great. Thank you very much. Just again, following up on the savings, both temporary and structural. On the structural side, obviously, we're targeting this 50 basis point ROS improvement CAGR over the next three years, in absolute terms, and that's a number of factors that play into that. From a structural savings perspective, you talk about being halfway through this structural transformation of AkzoNobel. Is it right to assume then that we're talking about some sort of EUR 300 million of incremental structural savings from where we are today? Is that the wrong way to interpret that, given that's what you've delivered EUR 335 million thus far? Just understanding what that halfway through this transformation really implies. I'm not expecting exact numbers, but just rough orders of magnitude.
Just on the temporary savings, you kind of said EUR 9 million is the right run rate. So just to be crystal clear, does that mean saying we're able to keep hold of roughly EUR 35 million, EUR 40 million of these temporary savings in 2021? That's the message.
Yeah, Charlie, thanks for the question. Let me maybe do the overall picture and then, Maarten, you can fill in as you like to do anyway on the gruesome details of the numbers as you go through it. Maybe take a step back, Charlie. In 2017, when the new management team got in place, our ambition was to double the EBITDA of the company in about five, six years' time. In 2017, by 2023, we wanted to lift the paints and coatings business from what was then about EUR 1 billion EBITDA to about EUR 2 billion EBITDA. The first step, which was clear to us, is that we had to do quite some housekeeping items around cost, around margin, and just setting up the systems and the processes to do that. That was in fact 15 by 20.
We put a stake in the ground and halfway after the first three years, we want to be at halfway with all the programs, and that in fact is about EUR 1.5 billion EBITDA, that's about where we landed on that. That was the mystique of 15 by 20. The second step is around Grow & Deliver. Yes, we were going to keep the discipline on costs, but it's a bit of a different situation. We want to finish the processes and the systems that we have in place on our ERP systems, integrated business planning, et cetera. By the way, that gives us now the flexibility, foresight, et cetera, to go after growth in an intelligent way because that basis we felt was not necessarily there in 2017. You have to have a transparency on your cost and your abilities to just go after specific markets.
In the second part, I would say of the story, on getting to this EUR 2 billion EBITDA is basically Grow & Deliver. It's going to be much more focusing on continuing to build the margins, continuing to build our franchises in the markets. We really want to go back to growth, and that is the first part. Two, we want to keep the discipline on the cost, et cetera. In fact, implicitly, what Maarten already indicated around the identified items will be significantly lower than we had in the previous years, already indicates that that will continue to be part of the mix, but to a much lesser extent than we had in the last three years. I don't know, Maarten, if you want to put more on the costs.
Yeah. On the cost, it is indeed a continuation of the cost EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million. If you take that forward, that would be kind of the run rate, which we see still as temporary cost savings going forward. If that would be the whole year the case, and we will see how that pans out, that would lead to and close to EUR 20 million. That depends on how the pandemic and the impact on travel and entertainment cost will continue.
That's really helpful.
Does that answer your question now?
Yeah, that does. Sorry, Maarten, just to be crystal clear. If we take the EUR 5 million and roll that forward, that's an incremental saving in 2021. Is that correct? Or are we saying we're reversing the rest?
No, that's a retention, because we talked.
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If raws go up, prices continue, and therefore this 150 is actually a retained benefit for Akzo, that's the first question. The second question is really I think the first time in 10 years that deco margins are higher than performance coatings margins. So just very simply, are you overearning in deco as of last year and underearning in performance coatings or am I being too negative in your performance? Thank you.
Yeah. Good. Well, first of all, thanks, Jaideep. I thought your three thank you for the three questions you had, but I mean, okay. Let me try to answer on the raw material inflation. To be fair, I haven't done necessarily the calculation on how we this versus 2017. We already indicated that we went from pricing for the price, which we had to do, which was really a correction of the past, to going to margin management, and that we wanted to keep the margin versus the raw materials, to keep that at least the same or expanding. You are correct that it isn't really our-- that works pretty well. In fact, right now, also this year, which is a bit of an upwards situation that seems on raw material costing, that seems to be working well.
It is indeed our intent to keep that delta between our prices and our input costs indeed to tame or expanding depending what it is. We definitely do not want to have that run away from us. In fact, the transparency we have with our ERP systems now, the transparency we have on connecting sourcing, procurement input, much closer to what the business are doing in the market. Now we have the systems in place to also assure that. That's the first answer on that. Secondly, on deco margins and performance coatings margins, well, to be fair to the performance coatings businesses, this year has been kind of a tough year given the marine protective, typically very profitable, has been down for most of the year. A number of very good franchises in our automotive and specialty coatings business, including aerospace, have been down.
That mix-wise, I would say that gives it a bit of a reset. I think that's going to come back in 2021. On deco over-earning it, I'm not sure, Jaideep. I see quite some more stretch in there. I just want to point out that we are very encouraged by getting from what was probably seven, eight years ago, a break-even situation for deco in Europe to having now a really very attractive business. This is important, it is still the lower margin business versus what we have in all the other regions of the world. The reason why it may sound a bit more encouraged is that what we see, the significantly higher profitability of our business in Asia and Latin America, is actually kind of an example to see, well, why don't we get there in Europe too?
Although the EMEA business is already in a very healthy place. I'm not think it's a question of overearning and underearning. To be honest, if you look at the deco business, we have extremely strong franchises, extremely significant market positions in countries, probably the set of the strongest brands in our industry. You would expect me to brag about it, but I actually think it is true. In that sense, with the somewhat consumer width in those businesses, you would expect that we can keep expanding that margin, and that's what we are setting out to do.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Laurent Favre. Sir, your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, all. Two questions, please. The first one is related to, I guess, the cadence of volumes in growth in Q4. We saw a sharp acceleration towards the end of the quarter, which is also when we had, I would say, a big improvement or big increase in expectations of inflation, in particular in raw materials. I was wondering if you think you've seen some restocking in some chains that really helped Q4, or can you characterize where inventories are in some of the key markets? That's the first question. The second question would be to push you a little bit more on inflation. Rather than talking about expectations for the full year, could you perhaps talk about what you are seeing, where you have visibility, which I guess by now is through most of H1 for both Q1 and Q2?
You were saying that you were a bit less negative than your peers, but you've also, well, in the past few weeks, we've also seen quite a big increase in price like propylene. I'm just wondering what gives you that level of confidence?
Yeah, Laurent, thank you. Thank you very much. Let me try to do the first one, and then, Matthew, you can maybe take the second one. On the inventories, of course, again, don't want to take you on an excursion through the whole business on that. I would say that if anything, the inventories in the channel are probably relatively low. I wouldn't say they're dry, but they're probably relatively low. That is mostly driven by some of the, I would say, conservativism in many of our regions and segments from customers on having that cash tied up in inventory, which is kind of understandable. We see some of that happening, but I think it's only a minor part of it.
What you do see in the fourth quarter is, taking deco for example, you have in Southeast Asia, many markets were still closed until the third quarter, so that means the distribution channels were actually closed. Big markets for us, Indonesia, Vietnam, India had a lot of these closures. With that opening up, you see people ordering again, and that probably gives it a little bit of an upward traction in the fourth quarter. Same as in South America, where you have now it's the high season, so there are people who were, on the pandemic, holding back and then basically were reordering. I think there's some of that. In performance coatings, I think it's much more subdued, I would say. I'm not sure that it was really restocking, but the inventories, if anything, there's not really much of an uplift in that.
It's interesting to note, by the way, and you may not have registered that, but the ending of 2019 was in performance coatings for virtually every supplier was a bit disappointing. I think you also have a contrast there in percentage-wise versus what you see in the fourth quarter for performance coatings. Long answer to say the inventory in the channels are probably a little bit more at the lower end than being high. The second question is more on the raw materials.
Yeah, on the raw materials, I think we've said already earlier that we started to see raw material price indexes going up from early Q4 onwards. That's what we flagged, I think, a quarter ago. As we said earlier, from an inflation perspective, we are looking at a low single-digit impact in this year 2021. If you see with the delay factor, because that's also always what we indicated, the impact will still be limited in the first quarter, and from there on in the second quarter and onwards, we will still see some further impact. Still for the total year, as indicated, low single digits. I hope that helps to give you a little bit of flavor.
Laurent, does that answer your questions?
That's around the raw materials. If you look at Q2, for instance, is that a comment on the sequential inflation or is it year-over-year as Q2 last year, obviously raw materials were very low?
Yeah, that's versus the previous year. What I'm saying is all versus 2020.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi. Chetan, your line is now open.
Yeah, hi. Two quick questions, actually. One was clarification on the total transformation costs, which were, I think, EUR 335 million in total. How much of that is yet to hit the cash flows? In other words, how much of the cash out from that is yet to be seen in numbers? Would be useful. The second point, or second question rather, was looking at the Asian constant currency revenue, which was up, I think, 2% in Q4. Looking at some of the markets like China, India, at least some of your local peers there have been reporting very strong growth. I was just wondering why is AkzoNobel sort of lacking to some extent in that particular region? Is this just a factor of maybe one particular country which might still be significantly impacted from lockdowns? Trying to understand the Asian bit. Thank you.
Chetan, let me try to take the second question and then Maarten can come back on the cash cost of that. Our Asian business is doing fantastic. First of all, you may be aware that we are focusing on paints and coatings and that we have refrained from starting to sell mortar tile kits, facade stuff, waterproofing, et cetera, which by the way, yes, growth-wise from some players, they are outperforming growth, but just look at what's left on the bottom line. Here, I just want to point out, we don't give necessarily the numbers for each of our businesses, but if I look at our decorative coatings businesses in Asia, it is at the very high end of our profitability of any of our businesses. In fact, we have a healthy base there.
It is growing, in the segments that we've chosen to play higher than the markets. That is the case for Dulux in retail in China. That's definitely been the case also in other places in Southeast Asia. Some of the countries where we are pretty big in have been still under lockdown. If you look at our Southeast Asia business, we're not that big in India. If you look at the other places, it starts looking much brighter right now as some of these countries, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, et cetera, are coming out of lockdown. That may explain certain items. Again, in 15 by 20, we were not in window dressing to ship stuff with no margin. If you analyze some other players there, that seems to be exactly what's happening. Our Asian business is accretive to the average of the company.
Definitely that, not surprisingly, that now that we have the basis for it and the clarity on what we want to offer in the market, we can go for growth and continue to expand that franchise. With the second thing, maybe, Maarten, it's good for you to answer the question.
Yeah. The transformation cost, first of all, I think it's good indeed, and Thierry mentioned it earlier, the EUR 321 million compares to the EUR 350 million, which we announced at the end of 2018. We have been very much consistently executing on our savings, but also on the expected transformation related costs. Out of that EUR 320 million, still roughly EUR 40 million will flow as cash out beyond 2020. That mainly relates to the restructuring provisions we've taken in the fourth quarter. That will be the flow over effect. Just to indicate, every year there is a flow over effect. That doesn't give an impact on the recurring cash flow, let's say it like this.
Chetan, does that answer your questions?
Yes. Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Peter Clark. Peter, your line is now open.
Yes. Thank you, everyone. I just want to come back on deco and I've heard all your comments, but I'm just wondering, obviously your peers talked about a record U.K. in the fourth quarter. Obviously for you, we can look at a record U.K., I think for the full year, a record Northern Europe, which is the most profitable part of the business in Europe. I'm just wondering how you see the Northern European business year-on-year in 2021. I know a lot of things are still going on. You talk about structural uplift in demand. I know some of the trade business was weak for part of the year, but then got stronger. I'm just wondering how you think about that year-on-year, because obviously that's going to be quite crucial on how far the deco business advances as a whole.
On the auto refinish side, you're now seeing volumes up, which is a little bit better than your peer, presumably regional's part of that. I'm just wondering how you see that pan out. Certainly it looks like lockdowns are going to start easing here in a month or two. Just wondering how you see auto refinish this year.
Peter, thanks. Good question. First of all, on the deco North Europe, we believe that for 2021, since the situation will probably be for most of Northern Europe, still the same for the first half of the year, which in fact typically is the stronger season. That's not going to be much difference. We think that's going to be, in that respect, a maintain. You say it's the highest profitability part of the business. If you exclude Asia and you exclude Latin America and you exclude some other places in Europe, it is a good business. In that sense, we're not too worried about it, but it is indeed on the retail side, it is somewhat inflated. The trade situation is still running behind, which is for us an equally good business.
In that sense, there's none of us who is actually afraid that this is going to be a completely negative trend or anything. Again, we account that Europe may get out of lockdowns sometime by summertime, to be honest. That would probably keep about the same dynamic. Now, it's interesting you say that, Peter, because we did quite some in-depth surveys in November and December, also in the U.K., by the way, whereby 60% of the consumers, this was retail oriented, were indicating that they were in fact going to continuing the work that they had started or actually even do more than they did. That has been correlated now also with some of our retail partners in the market who see exactly the same response of the home improvement situation kicking in. We're not too worried around that.
Secondly, on the volume up, and I think you specifically talked about refinish. When we talk about refinish, the regional impact is a bit excluded. If you look at the regions like North America and Europe, it is the same trend. It's not like it's an overall mix around the globe. It's really on the regions themselves that we see dynamic, which is, in fact, very positive for us. The pandemic hasn't had that much impact, to be honest, on refinish.
It has had it for a while, in the very beginning. Frankly, since then, what we believe at least, and that's anybody's guess, and you may hear alternative stories, what we seem to hear, there may be less people on the road. Much less people in the offices, but more people, specifically in Europe, are driving and not taking public transportation. If we look at our data, there's not that much difference, to be honest, on the amount of cars that are on the road. If you look at these statistics, mobility statistics, that seems to indicate that, too. One would expect that's not going to be a massive change during the year, even if people come out of lockdown. I think other dynamics starts kicking in.
At least those closer to those markets and some of our channel partners don't see a big change there anytime soon in the accident or incident rate with cars. Does that answer your question, Philip?
It does. Thank you. Certainly, it's picking up here, by the way, the traffic in London has moved up markedly in the last few days.
We love having a lot of drivers on the road who have lost a little bit of the habit of driving. That's the stuff our business is made from.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Rob Hales. Rob, your line is now open.
Good morning. Rob Hales, Morningstar. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just a couple on protective coatings. You talked about maintenance being delayed before, I'm just wondering, how long can that maintenance be delayed? Is it one year? Is it five years? Just what's kind of the time there when people have to do it? Is there opportunities in new energy applications like the offshore wind or solar? Can you play in there, or what's the opportunity around new energy applications?
Yep. Good question, Rob. On protective, we start seeing signs that, in fact, the procrastinating of maintenance is coming a bit to an end. As you know, rust does not stop during a recession. That's coming back. Of course, a lot of our business effect is more focused versus gas, natural gas than the oil part. In fact, the energy costs or prices going up, of course, always give traction for demothballing, if you can say, some of the projects, et cetera. Our team is somewhat upbeat for the rest of the year. We are very careful there because we've been upbeat a couple of times, so we have them in our minds as a hold, and if they overperform, we'll be as happy as a baby if that is happening.
We do see that, again, with the energy cost going up, typically that triggers some of the pent-up demand for those things. Secondly, on solar and wind turbines. Solar is less of a factor in our business for coatings in general. For wind turbines, I'm not sure if that's necessarily known to people, we are by far the market leader when it comes to wind turbines, both on the blades and on the, I call it the shaft of the wind turbine. There, we have a very strong position. As that grows, we see that business also growing. It's a pretty demanding coatings application, there we're well positioned. For the time being, in fact, if you look at liters of product, it's still on the oil and gas business. It's still bigger than what you can make up on the wind turbine business.
There we have a very strong position. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, very helpful. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you. I think we have time for one last question.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Geoff Haire . Geoff, your line is now open.
Good morning. Thank you for giving me the last question. Just kind of one follow-up. You mentioned that you had market share gains, I think in auto refinish. Could you help us by sort of saying where those are and quantifying them?
The quantifying we'd rather not do. I think because again, in car refinish, those changes tend to be at a glacial speed because it's the body shops at the end who use the product, tend to be pretty loyal to the product. It's a body shop by body shop change. Where it is basically North America and in Europe, we see now since a while already kind of a nicely comforting trend of seeing some share gains and body shop gains, et cetera. Quantifying probably is not that meaningful at this moment of time. It's pretty noticeable to us.
Sorry, are the gains driven by your product or on other services, or how have you managed to persuade body shops to change to you from others?
I think it's a couple of elements. I think it is, like in North America, there's often more through distribution where we get a position in. Obviously there we are a number three player in that market, so we've obviously had quite some gains in the distribution. That might be either on commercial terms or because there's a feeling that the partnership with us is slightly more preferred than with an existing incumbent supplier in there. That's a typical North America dynamic. In Europe then, which is our big market, there I think it's based on, frankly, the continuation and the service to the customers during the whole period. We have not exactly in automotive refinish, we have not saved at the front end. I think we've tried to leverage our internal resources.
One would guess that customers see the same market activity and offerings, including all sorts of IT services that they have continued and are accelerating probably versus what they've seen from some others and therefore make that choice to move over. I think our team has been very active on the ground, even through pandemic and even accommodating customers who went through some really difficult periods earlier in the year.
Okay, thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you. At this time.
Okay.
I think we have no questions on queue. You may proceed.
Great. Thank you. That's about all we have time for today. Thank you very much for joining the call.