Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Prosegur Cash full- year 2021 results presentation conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. I must advise you this conference is being recorded today. I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Miguel Bandrés, Head of IR. Please go ahead, Miguel.
Thank you for the introduction. On behalf of the Prosegur team, I would like to welcome you to our 2021 Q4 results review that will be led by our CEO, José Antonio Lasanta, our CFO, Javier Hergueta, and myself. We estimate it will last around 25 minutes, and throughout this time, we'll review the key events and actions that have occurred in the quarter and the year that are behind our performance. At the end of the call, we'll open the floor for a Q&A session, where we'll try to address all the questions you might have. Should we not get to respond all points today, we'll be pleased to answer those remaining on an individual basis with each of you. I wish to thank you all for your attendance and remind you that this presentation has been prerecorded and is available via webcast on our corporate webpage.
Now, before turning the call over to José Antonio, let me comment some relevant news regarding cash during the quarter that cover from how important cash is for the economy in Brazil, how much cyber fraud has risen in the last Black Friday campaign, the resilient increase of cash in circulation during the pandemic, or the law passed in Spain, as has occurred in other countries, to ensure that cash is accepted everywhere as a means of payment. First, I would like to share the view of Brazilians that consider cash as their preferred means of payment. Folha de S.Paulo, a highly regarded Brazilian newspaper, shared an interview with Locomotiva's president that show that cash is the most used means of payment in Brazil.
It underlined as one of cash advantages the fact that when chosen versus other payment means, the consumer can often obtain at least a 5% discount. This reflecting it's the most efficient mean of payment in commerce today. Second, the ever-growing menace of online frauds is creating a larger unrest and worry, putting in the limelight the fragility of such systems. Infosecurity Magazine, the leading online security information page, outlined the fact that prior to 2021's Black Friday campaign, online payment systems fraud climbed over 200%, giving an idea of the dangers these means pose for millions of unaware consumers. Third, the London School of Economics and Feigen Consulting released an article on the increase of money in circulation during these past two years.
The report states that during these critical two years, money in circulation not only increased, but also its growth rate rose. Far from certifying its decline as announced by parties with a biased agenda, people show their trust in the security only money provides them with. Lastly, underlined the important piece of law passed by the Spanish government in November, in which it stated the obligation of merchants to accept cash and the total ban on rejecting it. Quoting, "Consumer's right to pay in cash has to be protected by the state, and whomever denies that right will be accordingly sanctioned." I'll now proceed to share today's agenda that will be as follows. Firstly, we'll review the key events that have taken place in the quarter.
In a second part, we will analyze the performance of our business regions, as well as the environment in which they have evolved. Thirdly, Javier will follow with a presentation of our key financials for the period. Lastly, to conclude, our CEO will comment on relevant ESG progress and the key highlights for the year. After which, we'll take the questions that you may have. I'll now give the floor to José Antonio, who will review the key events in the last three months.
Thank you, Miguel. I'm pleased to address the investors community this morning. Our Q4 results presentation is an important highlight of the year since it enables us to share with you the many events our company has gone through in the period, as well as the financial impact those events have resulted in. For me, the most relevant message is that in Q4, as we already share in Q3, the improvement we had announced continued to materialize. This reflects in all our key indicators, they being sales recovery, nonstop advancement of our transformation, margin improvement, cash generation, or commitment to sustainability. Regarding the recovery confirmation, our volumes have shown a constant recovery throughout the year after two very hard initial quarters across our geographies.
With the release of restriction measures, once again, society has shown that when allowed to move with a certain degree of freedom, people are willing to spend and move commerce, and hence the economy. It's there that we play a role that is critical to our business. That recovery has been the case in Q4, even though in late November and mid-December, in some countries, the Omicron variants reduced the comeback rate we were experiencing. To this point, I'm happy to share that in the last four weeks, we have seen activity recovery as well in those Omicron-struck markets. I would like to underline that in several markets, we are already at pre-pandemic cash volumes, despite the fact that the economies are not fully back yet.
With that activity recovery, sales have continued their improvement, and in the quarter they show a very healthy 18.7% improvement versus last year's Q4, driven by an impressive 15.2% organic growth. If we look at the full- year effect, the improvement of 0.7% leverages our remarkable organic 7% growth versus 2020, despite the fact that last year we had a pre-pandemic Q1, and that in 2021, the H1 of the year was very slow due to the Delta variant. We as well have a net inorganic impact of 0.2% that added to the organic growth, more than offsets the negative, though lessening by quarter, Forex impact of 6.4%. Important to note that our transformation continues to accelerate.
Loyal to our perform and transform strategy, I am happy to share that our new product efforts grew by a phenomenal 36%. If we factor out the AVOS disposal, we materialized early this year. If we consider the overall figure and take into account the sale, we're able to more than offset it, achieving total growth of 15.2%. As a measure of our transformation, its penetration over sales grew by 260 basis points to 21.4% of sales, more than doubling its share in just four years. Margin profitability kept improving along the year, with Q4 showing a 14.6% EBITDA margin, implying a 22.1% growth in the quarter versus last year, and driving full- year margin to 13.5%, and full year EBITDA growth to 10.8%.
This is a direct consequence of both the continuing increase in turnover and the impacts from the efficiency measures undertaken in the last two years. Lastly, on the numbers side, it is important to underline our financial discipline. Our commitment to generate cash remains intact, but increased, having generated EUR 57 million free cash flow in the quarter, one of our best performances ever, and over 50% improvement versus Q3. This has uplifted total free cash flow generation in the year to EUR 159 million, that together with the results improvement, take our leverage down to 2.2x from 2.5x a year ago. Turning to sustainability, it is very important to stress our continuous commitment to corporate governance and sustainability, where we have been included in the IBEX Gender Equality Index, that recognizes those companies promoting gender equality.
On these same lines, the staff of Prosegur Cash comprises of a share of 26% of women in an industry where such ratio is normally much lower. We expect to keep on growing this percentage as part of our sustainability director master plan. Before diving into the numbers, I would like to spend some time in this slide that shows some very important trends for our business that are showing already in our performance, and should continue to do so in the future. Firstly, two graphs that reflect the evolution of money circulating by the strongest central banks, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. They show that for the last two years, the growth pace in absolute terms of money in circulation has accelerated. This, I believe, shares two very important underlying messages.
On one side, that people constantly and increasingly trust money, physical money, and that they particularly do so in uncertain environments. If there is one thing we can conclude from these last two years, is that uncertainty has increased, and that is the only variable that has become a constant. Secondly, we see a heat map of inflation across the globe, showing its growing trend, especially in geographies that are relevant to us. Inflation, as you all know, is positive for our business since increases the velocity of money in circulation, rising our volumes. Of course, this is a very important advantage when we manage our cost base actively and rise prices accordingly.
Thirdly, it's important to underline that despite the impact of COVID-19 and its variants in 2021, mostly Delta and lately Omicron, the progress of the vaccination campaigns have reached most of the global population, and this should help the economy regain its normal activity. This is as well great news for the world and subsequently for us. Turning to the next slide, we can see on a full year basis how growth ex Forex has evolved versus last year, as well as how our margins have improved throughout the year 2021. On the top graph, we can see our top line growth in constant currency terms for the full- year reaches 7.2%. Confirming the good trend we announced in Q3, when that figure was 4.5%, already higher than the 3.1% increase we observed for the H1 of the year.
This reflects and confirms the comeback of the activity in our countries. When we look at the breakdown by areas, the improvement is very notable in Latam, where it climbs up to 13.9% after seeing a very strong growth of 28.3% in the last quarter of the year. Europe shows a 6.3% organic growth and in the quarter, despite the toll of the Omicron variants, and is able to reach a yearly figure of positive 0.8% organic and -8.4%, inorganic, due to the sale of AVOS. Asia- Pacific has delivered a 5.1% growth in the quarter, reflecting the easing of the last restrictions, closing the year at 9% in local currency terms.
On the bottom graph, it's noteworthy to point out the constant improvement of our underlying EBITA margin quarter after quarter, rising to 12.2% for the full- year result. These numbers reflect the above-mentioned increase of activity level and commercial actions combined with the constant efforts we have undertaken to improve the efficiency of our company. We are very confident that these results, combined with a positive macro and inflationary environment, set us on the good track for the future. In the coming page, I want to share the results of the important initiatives to transform our company today for the best of our futures. Our growth initiatives rely fundamentally on Cash Today and Corban, have delivered a yearly growth of 15%, reaching a total share of 21.4% of sales.
This means we have increased our penetration by 260 basis points, and taking the absolute level of our remarkable EUR 326 million. If we factor out the AVOS business, the increase in sales has been of 36% and increase in share of sales of almost 500 basis points. I would like to stress that this performance has been strong across all geographies, giving an idea of the robustness of our transformation strategy. Pillar growth initiatives mentioned, Cash Today and Corban, have grown by almost 50% in the year. In parallel to that, we have been making progress in identifying new product niches, which we expect will also play an important role in the future transformation of our product mix.
At the same time, we have continued our commitment to the digital transformation projects, which are preparing us for a leaner and more scalable future. In this area, we have quoted EUR 22 million, an increase of 33% versus last year, which as said, we are sure will result in strong advantages going forward. The evolution of the markets we operate in and the customer trends underway make us very optimistic toward the performance of our transformation strategy into the future. With this, I ask Miguel to please highlight the main events by region.
Thank you, José Antonio. I'll start with Latin America, our main region, accounting for 67% of our sales. Here, we can see a very strong organic growth of 9.9% that added to a 4.1% push of M&A more than offsets the FX impact of -10.1% and leaves an overall sales increase of +4%, reaching over EUR 1 billion. It's important to highlight the evolution of the region quarter after quarter, where we have seen a very positive development of both organic growth, which ended being 20.9% in the last quarter, and the constant decrease of the negative impact of foreign exchange.
Transformation has performed extraordinarily in the region, where sales reached almost EUR 240 million and grew by 40% over 2020, increasing its share of sales to 23.6%, almost 600 basis points better than the prior year. In this area, it's relevant to mention the growth of Corban in the region to which our Redpagos acquisition strongly contributes. Regarding EBITDA, it has improved in absolute terms, despite the foreign exchange negative impact, as well as the shift in mix and displays a constant positive evolution quarter after quarter. Looking now at Europe, that contributes 26% of total sales, we continue to see a positive evolution on a quarterly basis.
Organic growth improvement in the quarter of 6.3% shows the resilience of our business as consumption returns despite the Omicron effect in the last month of the year, allowing it to reach 0.8% in the full- year. It's important to note that 2021's organic growth compares a very slow H1 of 2021 versus Q1 in 2020 with a fully opened economy. In absolute terms, we're reducing the gap created by the AVOS divestment that accounts to -9.2%. Transformation for the region has been an absolute priority as well, totaling EUR 67 million and reaching 16.8% of sales. New products without AVOS have grown by 17%, and the penetration has grown by over 280 basis points.
In terms of EBITDA, it totaled EUR 22 million, reflecting ex AVOS, a notable improvement of profitability in the second half of the year that reached EUR 6 million versus the -EUR 4 million of the first half. Lastly, we turn to Asia-Pacific that accounts for 7% of total sales. Here, once the last lockdowns were finally released in mid-October and the economy started returning, although not at full swing yet, the commercial initiatives we pursued and achieved in the last quarters kicked in and showed a 7.2% growth, resulting in sales of EUR 30 million in the quarter, the highest quarterly sales we've ever achieved. On a full- year basis, sales totaled EUR 110 million, 11% better than 2020, with organic accounting for almost 6% of the total growth.
Transformation has climbed in the year by over 50% to reach EUR 20 million. New product sales now account for almost 18% of sales and have increased the penetration by 490 basis points. It's important to understand when looking at the region's margins, that losses have decreased in the second half of the year versus the first half of the year and 2020, despite having to offset the absence of the state aids received last year. With this, I finalize the review of our performance by geographic region and will ask Javier to please continue with the financials.
Thank you, Miguel. Regarding the financials, I am glad to share a consistent message with that I gave you three months ago. We continue to see an improvement in both absolute and relative terms. Both are a consequence of all the initiatives we placed in the sales and in the operating areas, as well as to the tailwind we have seen from a macro level and volumes in the last months. Looking at the top line, full- year sales of EUR 1,519 million are 0.7% better than full year 2020. This is particularly noteworthy when we started with a Q1 gap over 2020 of 16.8% that has been narrowing to 5% in 9 months and then reverted to the mentioned positive 0.7% at year-end.
These sales imply a healthy organic growth of 7% with inorganic contributing a net effect of 0.2% and with FX deducting 6.4%. All in euro terms, quarterly growth year-on-year in Q4 has been a remarkably strong 18.7%. Reading down on margins, reported EBIT of EUR 205 million represents 13.5% of sales and implies an improvement of almost 11% versus 2020. Interestingly, if we look at underlying EBITA, adjusted for divestments in 2020 efficiency plans, it reached EUR 185 million, and to it, I would like to point to two factors.
On one side, the sustained positive constant quarterly evolution in both absolute and relative terms, reaching 14.6% of sales in Q4, a 470 basis points improvement over the one reached in Q1. On the other side, the fact that the gap in year-on-year performance has been closed along the year and in Q4, the underlying EBITA of EUR 64 million overtook that of Q4 2020 by 14.6%. If we look below EBITA, amortizations increased versus prior quarters and reached EUR 39 million because of an EUR 18 million impairment on our Australian investment.
Despite the improving performance of the Australian business quarter after quarter and of its enhanced behavior more than offsetting the government support it received back in 2020, together with the auditors, we decided to impair part of the investment following a prudent approach principle. The amount impaired is lesser compared to the EUR 27 million accounted for in 2020. It's important to underline that this item is merely accounting and has a non-cash effect. Financial costs totaled EUR 59 million on the back of lower FX gains versus last year, despite lower interest and financial costs versus 2020. Finally, the effective tax rate reached 69.2% affected by the impairment accounted for and a more disadvantageous fiscal mix and higher corporate tax rates in some countries.
This all results in a net profit of EUR 33.1 million, which more than doubles last year's figure. Turning now to cash flow, I would like to underline the free cash flow figure achieved in 2021, reaching EUR 159 million after an extraordinary Q4, where we generated EUR 57 million. In relative terms, this EUR 159 million free cash flow implies an improved conversion ratio up to 78% versus 74% a year ago, and a yield of 10%, which makes our stock price very attractive. Lower tax-related outflows are explained by the time gap between accruals and effective payments and recovery from previous years' excess payments in advance. CapEx in the quarter added to EUR 25 million, taking the full- year amount to EUR 67 million, a 4% decrease over the previous year.
Working capital variation reflected a EUR 15 million surplus in the quarter, thanks to a very proactive management that took the yearly amount to a EUR 12 million investment. This is remarkable given the 7% increase of organic growth in the period. If we look below the free cash flow line, interest payments remain in line with previous year, while M&A payments summed EUR 32.6 million and are the net effect of payments of acquisitions made in the year, deferred payments of acquisitions, and proceeds from the divestment of the AVOS business. Last line, dividend and treasury stock, accounts for the payment of the four installments of our dividend program, together with the share buyback program in place till the beginning of Q3.
As you can see, we keep on stressing the importance of our cash flow generation that has been improving throughout the year and most significantly in this last quarter. Moving to the next page, we can review our total net debt, which besides our net financial position, includes deferred payments coming from former acquisitions, treasury stock, and IFRS 16 related debt. In this quarter, the mentioned total net debt has decreased by EUR 39 million in the quarter, driven by the good cash flow behavior. At year-end, total net debt of EUR 672 million was equal to that of one year before. After having financed its organic growth, reinvested in the company to prepare it best for the future, increased substantially client CapEx, and as well, rewarded shareholders.
This debt level, when compared versus our EBITDA, brings down our leverage ratio by 0.3x to total 2.2x . I would like to remind as well that our debt maturity profile remains stable with no major refinancing efforts required before 2026. In this environment, as we shared in our Q3 presentation, S&P has confirmed a BBB rating with a stable outlook for our company, underlining our strong financial health. Let me also remind you that more recently, the board of directors approved in December the payment of a dividend of EUR 30 million, plus a share buyback program of up to EUR 50 million. With this, I conclude the financial review and hand it over to José Antonio.
Thank you, Javier. Before concluding, I would like to outline some key aspects of our commitment to sustainability. The first topic to point out regarding our concern for the environment is that we can proudly share that all the electricity we use in Spain comes from renewable sources. With all these efforts, plus our reduced usage of paper and plastic, we contribute to a better environment. On these lines, I am proud to share we have signed a climate pledge to protect the environment, by which we commit to reach the net zero carbon by 2040, ten years earlier than the Paris Agreement. Related to corporate governance, I would like to highlight that we have been awarded with the maximum recognition for our good corporate governance on the field by AENOR.
Moreover, we have become members of the IBEX Gender Equality Index, which acknowledges our efforts to promote gender equality. We have joined Forética, that strives to integrate ESG into the strategy of companies. On the sustainability front, we have stressed the importance of having a properly trained workforce, for which we total over 720,000 training hours in 2021, an average of 17 hours per employee. Reflecting the pivotal role sustainability has for us, we made compulsory training in the matter for everyone. In our efforts to digitalize, I want to stand out that online training reach almost 60% of these trainings through our Prosegur University platform that has seen an increase of more than 50% of users during the year.
Making our associates' safety paramount to our priorities in 2021, we continue with our quarterly health and safety committees to track performance and monitor action plans, and over 11,000 employees follow driving safety training. All these initiatives contributed to a reduction of light accidents by over 12% and of major ones by 16%. Last but not least, we would like to share that we have actively communicated on the matter with an increasing number of proxies and ESG related bodies. To conclude, I would stress that our business has experienced throughout the year a constant and solid recovery that can be observed in a healthy organic growth of 7% versus last year. That has allowed us to more than offset the negative Forex impact as well as the AVOS divestment. New products have strongly contributed to the above mentioned growth.
AVOS, these have grown by over one-third and account for over 20.5% of total sales. These EUR 310 million consolidate results from the date of the acquisition and a very promising base to face the future. Margin levels resulting from both the efforts made at commercial and operation levels have grown from 9.9% in Q1 to 14.6% in Q4, isolating capital gains. This is as well a very positive indicator of profitability, sustained improvement potential in the future. It's important as well to underline our absolute commitment to cash flow generation and financial discipline, which have allowed us to reduce our leverage to 2.2x after investing in the company's future and growth and rewarding our shareholders.
This discipline has been recognized, as we already shared in Q3, with the Standard & Poor's BBB stable outlook recognition. In order to conclude the presentation, I would like to stress our commitment to keep developing our sustainability director plan that together with our transformation initiatives and the great team working for the company, are the best guarantee for a solid future. Before taking your questions, I would like to thank you all for your attention and summarize the year 2021 under the phrase of a consistent and strong recovery. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. This will just take a few moments. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, please press star one if you wish to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Enrique Yagüe from Bestinver Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. I have four questions. The first one is if you could quantify the organic growth that you are foreseeing in those first month of the year in the different business areas, organically, I mean. Secondly, in the fourth quarter, we have had a cash outflow of EUR 22 million from acquisitions. Could you disclose if it's from pending payments or something small? Third, I don't know if you could disclose the numbers of small cash terminals that you have now and what will be your target for this year, taking into account that this is one of the main growth drivers. Finally, regarding the operations in Asia Pacific, I don't know what kind of operating profit do you foresee for this year. Do you expect to reach break even or not?
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Enrique. Going to your first question about the organic growth by region, we would say that LatAm has grown 9.9%, Europe has grown 0.8% positive, as we said, and APAC has grown 5.8%. That was throughout the year. We had, I think, a very weak first semester. Q3 volumes have come back. In fourth quarter, I think the volumes are mostly where we will be able to see them in 2022. Going to your second question about the growth, the M&A payments, yes, all of them were payments of prior acquisitions, and there is nothing new.
Although I must say that we have a strong pipeline for 2022, and we are very close to announce transactions that will be in the lower range of our target, which is around EUR 50 million. About Cash Today, we say that we are not disclosing the number of machines, but our outlook for 2022 is to multiply by three.
What we've done in the last year, which was 2021, was a year very similar to 2020. In the last quarter, we had a very, very strong quarter. I think that 2022, we are expecting it to be even stronger what we've seen in the first month of the year. Regarding the operations of Australia, mainly of APAC and mainly Australia, I have to say that this is gonna be the first or the first quarter in which we are gonna be without any restrictions in Australia with any pandemic. Hopefully this year, we're gonna see all the results of all the measures that we've been taking the last two years.
Our target is to reach out at one point in time, breakeven, but not for the whole of the year. I think this is gonna be a very important year for us because it will be the first year with no restrictions, as we said. The first year that is gonna be a clean year for us, and will be very decisive, or will be very important in order to take decisions on it.
Thank you. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your keypad, and it's the hash key to cancel. That's star one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Joaquín García-Quirós. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Hello, everyone. I had one question. I was wondering if you could provide the split on the 15% organic growth, and what is related to hike in prices and what is related to volume recovery. Thank you.
Thank you, Joaquín. I would say that is more or less a 50-50. I would say that it's been a recovery of volumes of half of it more or less in price. This is a very rough idea, but it's very. I think we are gonna see this organic growth in these volumes that are high we have in the last quarter are gonna be the volumes we are gonna see throughout 2022. The Omicron variant has some effect on absenteeism, but not much on volumes. I think that 2022 is gonna be a full year. It seems that it's gonna be a full- year of recovered volumes.
Perfect. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. As a reminder, it's star and one if you do have any further questions. Star and one to ask a question. As there are no further questions in the queue, that will conclude today's Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. José Antonio Lasanta for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you. Now I would like to conclude by thanking everyone's attendance and by emphasizing the positive evolution of our company has shown in the last quarters, where our resilience in performing and our proven transformation is generating positive results, which I reckon will continue despite the global volatility that we've seen in the last few months. Thank you all again. Thank you very much.
That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.