Good morning, and welcome to the results presentation of Dominion. If you want to follow this presentation in English, you can do so by selecting the English language on the world icon at the bottom of your screen. Before starting, we would like to remind you that once we've finished with the presentation, as usual, we will open the Q&A session. You can leave us your questions in writing in the section, in the Q&A section of Zoom, or you can call in by telephone, or can you raise your hand in the internal Zoom menu. Let's start off with the presentation. We have Mikel Barandiaran, CEO of Dominion; Roberto Tobillas, who's the Director General, and Patricia Berjón, who's the Director for Corporate Development.
Hello, good morning, and thank you very much for attending this disclosure of the year 2021. If we were to describe in a very few words what 2021 has been like, I'd say that we've had a very complex year as regards this environment, but it's been a very good year for Dominion, the best until now. A year in which, quarter after quarter, we've smashed all previous records, and we've created more value than ever before with more than EUR 42 million in net profit. We've advanced in our strategic plan, too, by focusing on consolidating the environmental activities and by also implementing the renewables business and transforming the B2C segment. We've done all of this within a much more complex macroeconomic environment than any of us believed would happen when this year started. It seems that it's not stabilizing, nor do we expect it to do so.
It's a context full of uncertainties and also with higher energy prices and higher prices of commodities and the devaluation of certain currencies and the onset of the COVID variant. This is why these results are very good. We have to feel very proud about our figures and our team. It's more than 10,500 employees, and we're also proud of our management model that has enabled us to achieve these goals and will allow us to carry on with our strategic plan. Our management plan is based on a culture of diversification by means of which we evaluate the different market alternatives, and we can evolve and adapt to them in a flexible manner. We're not afraid of renovating and changing to offer our customers what they need most.
This is what we have done throughout our history, starting off by applying technology and digitization to improve the efficiency of the processes of our telco companies. After that, we replicated this know-how in energy and industry, and we are leading partners for our customers, and we're offering them end-to-end solutions. More recently, our customers want to reduce the environmental impact, and this is boosting the demand for energy-efficient solutions. At Dominion, we think that sustainability is like long-term efficiency, and we're ready to meet the needs of our customers in this field, too. Now that we have the context clear for Dominion, let's move on to the figures in much greater detail.
Figures that we compare with those of 2019 due to obvious reasons, because it's clear that all of these growths that we're gonna be talking about right now will be much greater if we were to compare ourselves with 2020. It would be growth of about 100% in EBIT or 237% in net profit, for instance. In 2021, we have exceeded, for the first time ever, EUR 1 billion in adjusted sales figure. To reach this figure, we have grown organically at a constant currency of 12.6%, in other words, double digits, as we pointed out at the beginning, and far above the minimum threshold established by the strategic plan. This growth has taken place in all segments, in B2B services, in B2B projects, and in B2C.
Compared to 2019, Forex has had a negative impact of more than EUR 30 million in the year and especially in Q4. On the other hand, the inorganic effect has been netted between acquisitions and divestitures that have been carried out over these years. As regards EBITDA, it stands above EUR 111 million, which is about 40% higher compared to the figure of last year, and 7% higher to the figure of 2019. Whilst EBIT grew 13% versus 2019. That means that we have operational leverage. It has to be underscored that we have reduced its structural cost by more than EUR 800,000 in relation to 2019, although we've grown. These costs account for less than 2.6% of our adjusted sales.
This is due to the less trips we've had, but it's also thanks to a continuous optimization of central structures. The levels of amortization are in line with the previous year and also in line with the financial results. However, as regards the accounts, we have to consider that this year we have exchange differences with a very high figure of EUR -7.5 million, which affect the net profit. But even so, we have a net profit of EUR 42.2 million, which is 20% higher than what we recorded in 2019. In other words, in 2021, we have reached a net profit which is 20% higher than what we achieved in a year that was excellent before the pandemic. Of course, we are addressing 2022 convinced that we will have another record year.
Let's move on to the segments. If we look at the contribution made by each one of them, all of them have undergone a positive evolution, and each one has had different elements that we're gonna be talking about. As regards our B2B business and services and projects, our technological knowledge and sectoral knowledge has allowed us to have the global vision of the businesses, and we've implemented innovation throughout the entire value chain of our customers. This differential contribution has allowed us to obtain higher margins, and we're now strategic partners in a moment of transition and business disruption. In 2021, we saw how the contribution margins relative to sales evolved very positively and they are especially high in the two B2B segments.
On the other hand, the industrial activities, as well as T&T, are growing at a very good pace, although it's the energy field of activity where we've seen more growth, in particular 37% compared to 2020, which confirms this continuous diversification. That means that energy, which at the beginning of the strategic plan didn't account for 10%, now has a weight of 20% in the total of B2B sales. As regards B2B services, we've seen a very good behavior throughout the entire year with an organic growth rate in excess of 7% relative to 2019, which would be 17.2% more versus 2020. It's been the segment that has had the biggest forex impact, negative impact, and its consolidation perimeter has been reduced because the divestitures carried out since 2019 have exceeded the new acquisitions.
It has to be pointed out that there's been an improvement of margins that have reached and even exceeded the target of 12%, something that has happened quarter after quarter. As regards activities, we've signed new recurrent contracts in different geographies and with different customers. In energy, for instance, and then in Colombia, apart from already being present in Peru and Chile. In 2022, a new very relevant contract with Endesa in Spain that will start to operate in 2022. In the case of telecommunications, we have a contract, for instance, with Claro in Colombia as an example of country diversification and our presence in the deployment of fiber in Germany, which is one of the European countries with less fiber, and where we can apply our very extensive experience in this field.
Within this segment, we have placed our strategic focus on setting up a business unit in the environmental area, which has the already existing capacities of the company and wants to grow organically and inorganically and make use of the trends that we can see in terms of sustainability. This is fully in line with the taxonomy analysis according to the EU criteria. As you know, this year, companies are only reporting the percentage of our sales that are considered to be sustainable in accordance with two out of six fields that will be analyzed in the next few years. Bearing in mind these two fields, 16% of our sales are contributing towards environmental criteria.
We estimate that once we take into account all six criteria, the totality of criteria, we could be talking about something like 40% of our sales that can be considered to be taxonomy. Let's move on to B2B 360 projects, where our turnover reached EUR 296 million, and the contribution margin has grown compared to 2019, up to EUR 53.5 million. This is due to circumstantially high margins in the last three quarters, which means that the segment has closed the year with a margin of 18% relative to sales over and above the 15% target. It's been a year in which we've had significant projects like the transmission line in Angola or the wind farm in Mexico or a new solar plant in the Dominican Republic.
As regards the future, we have a solid portfolio of EUR 660 million that includes the Hospital of Buin-Paine in Chile, which we will soon start to build, and several renewable projects also in this portfolio that will be carried out throughout the year in the Dominican Republic and Spain and Italy, and a major diversity of projects in the industrial sphere, which gives us a visibility of about two years. We would also like to underscore the expansion of the renewables business and this presence of a minority shareholder in Dominion Energy. We are going to fulfill our commitment. In other words, in whose capital it provided EUR 50 million for shares, minority shares representing 23%. The business has an IPP value of more than EUR 230 million.
These funds, together with the other EUR 25 million Dominion is providing, will finance the development, execution, and operation of our pipeline that is over 1 GW. Moving on to B2C, in the last few months and quarters, we saw how the increase in the price of energy has produced an increase in the churn rate and an impairment, or it deteriorated our commercial proposal, the attractiveness of our commercial proposal. In the last quarter, we also have the temporary closure of a large number of shops during the Christmas campaign because of the Omicron variant. In spite of these difficulties, we haven't stopped growing. Although we've had lots of vertical energy issues in the field of telecommunications, we have multiplied the number of lines by two compared to 2020.
B2C accounts for 18% of the total adjusted sales, and there's been a growth of 65% compared to 2019 because we have attracted more than 115,000 new subscriptions or contracts, of which more than 45,000 were carried out in 2021. In this segment, we've also boosted the digitalization. We've carried out an in-depth transformation process to transform the business into household service integrator. See, we are less phone, more house. In 2022, we will continue with this multi-brand, multi-product, and multi-channel strategy. We'll be launching new brands and products. We'll open up new channels and be working to adapt our commercial energy proposal to the energy transition we are experiencing. In other words, we want to play the role of energy tech with the signing of PPAs or other options.
We close the review of business, moving on to the balance sheet, and the main movements of our net equity are related to three events. In positive, we have the EUR 42 million in profits of the year and the arrival of this minority shareholder in the renewable business, which adds on another EUR 50 million. Then we have the shares acquired within these buyback programs, that is EUR 37 million in total. There are no changes in the perimeter. As regards the net cash variation, instead of EUR 87 million on the closing date of 2020, it's now EUR 65.5 million.
Now, what we have, to explain this, we have EUR 52 million of operational cash generated in the year, of which we are dedicating EUR 45 million to inorganic operations, EUR 25 million of the renewables operation, and about EUR 20 million for M&A in the year and earn-outs for the previous year and the cash positions or inorganic debt. Twenty-seven million are going to remuneration, remunerating the shareholder with the payment of dividends totaling EUR 4 million and the rebuying of shares, EUR 23 million. A rapid calculation that I would like to derive, and if we bear in mind that one third of the results of the year, in other words, EUR 14 million that are charged to the results of 2021 are going to be used to pay dividends, and that we've spent EUR 23.3 million to purchase our own shares.
We have 88.5% of the net result that goes back to the shareholder. I would also like to underscore the greater operational cash generation capacity that Dominion has as part of our financial discipline. In 2021, we generated EUR 52.4 million in cash that I mentioned previously that stand above the target of 75% of EBITDA established by the strategic plan. It is 77% of EBITDA this year, which is higher than the net profit of this year. EUR 52 million in cash generation vis-à-vis EUR 42 million of net profit. This includes all the maintenance CapEx of the year, and it's been sufficient to address the inorganic growth and the distribution of dividends.
I'd also like to say that we have a RONA level of 21%, which is over and above our commitment of 20%. To conclude, I would like to underscore the message that I started off with. We are living in complex environments where the only constant thing is change. At Dominion, we're ready to sail in this sea, and we tested this during the pandemic and during the different adaptations we've carried out. We are resilient, and we are evolving to adapt to the context, as can be clearly seen in the results of the last two years and of this year, of the year 2021. As regards 2022, it's not gonna be different. We would like to stress our commitment towards the strategic plan to generate more value that we've implemented and will last until 2023. Thank you very much for your attention, and we'll now move on to your questions. I would like to remind you that you can either ask via the chat or you can do so directly via telephone.
Thank you. You can either use the Q&A section on Zoom, or you can raise your hand by clicking on the button in the menu, and we'll give you the floor. Should you follow this presentation by telephone, please, press asterisk nine and wait for us to give you the floor so that you can ask your question. We have Juan Peña from GVC Gaesco .
Hello. Good morning. Can you hear me now?
Juan, the connection isn't very good.
Can you hear me better now?
Yes, much better now.
Okay. Sorry about that. Well, good morning, everybody. I wanted to ask a couple of questions. Firstly, you said that the margin of projects has been high, which is true. Perhaps you could give me some guidance on which guidance would be comfortable for you in 2022, this business area. Could you please give me some kind of indication of how much growth you expect in the top line of your business in 2022? Could you give me details of the telco customers, because you've given us the consolidated figure. Finally, as regards to the free cash flow, this year it's been negative, well, because of the enlargement of capital. Do you expect to have a positive free cash flow in 2022? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Juan. Well, I'll start off with the final question, negative free cash flow. As Patricia said in her presentation, if you compare the initial balance with the final balance, there's been a reduction. I think it's of 87. It's gone down to EUR 65 million. What we've explained is that this reduction of EUR 22 million, together with another additional EUR 5 million that we get from the operational cash flow, have gone back to the shareholder. Our operational cash flow generation is EUR 82 million. It's still above 75% of EBITDA. It's healthy, and it's what we advanced, and nothing has changed relative to the previous year and also relative to the guidance we've established for this year. I'm not sure if this clarifies the issue. Well, we're talking about the semantics of free cash flow. I suppose that you're referring to that.
Okay, perfect.
As regards to the margin of the projects, well, it is true that this year, in the last few years, we'd never reached 18% because you know that our strategic guidance had always been 15%. What I would say is that if we were to refer to the fact that the inertia of the projects we have and the portfolio here we have and the visibility we have, well, for 2022, we should maintain 15% as the floor. This is what I would say about this. Well, yes. You were also asking, Juan, about the sales guidance for 2022. The truth is that, as usual, we have a strategic plan for 2023, and we have certain targets in the guidance.
What we're gonna be doing in 2022 is we're going to carry on growing according to this guidance or according to the metrics established by the strategic plan. Therefore, we're gonna be growing organically 5% in sales, at least. Then we will see how the year unfolds, but we're not going to establish a specific guidance for 2022. I think that finally, you were asking me about, I'm not sure if I understood you properly, the number of telco companies in the B2C segment.
Yes, the split. The split between the two businesses, which is what you usually give us.
Well, basically, of the 287,000, if I'm not mistaken, of our total supplies, half would be telco and the other half would be energy. This is why we're saying that in telco, we are multiplying by two, those that we had at the, on the closing date of last year. It's more than double, in fact.
Thank you very much. Perfect.
Carlos Treviño from Santander has the floor now.
Hello. Good morning. Can you hear me clearly?
Yes. Good morning, Carlos.
Thank you. Thank you for accepting my question. Two things. Firstly, it is true that growth in the year has been good, but if we look at this, if you look at the breakdown, we can see, growth of 23% in organic growth in the first months of the year, and in the fourth quarter, we had a drop of 6%, which, also was organic. What I would like to do is ask you a little bit about that inertia. Is there anything that's a concern for you or anything that has changed as regards to trends when we extrapolate this for 2022?
My second question is, are you coming across any kind of problems with supplies or are raw materials becoming more expensive? Could this reduce the margins? Do you expect that there's gonna be big wage increase to this year, which could affect your profitability? I don't know, perhaps you could give us the figure of how much you intend to spend on the workforce, how much you're going to put up the wages.
Well, there are several issues here, Carlos, and the first subject, the issue of the sales of Q4. I think that while we were comparing ourselves with 2020, which was spectacular because well, the contribution of the project business and the product solutions was very significant. Here, we are working against the portfolio and against executions. If we compare Q4 of 2020 with Q4 of 2021, the levels are somewhat similar or somewhat lower, which is what you were saying. We're not worried about this because the portfolio is healthy, and we can see that these EUR 300 million solutions have to follow those lines, and that's how we have to make further progress.
Yes, I think that it's important for you to understand that we accompany that we link the development of projects to incentives. It so happens that the executives that we consider to be entrepreneurs, when they reach the limit of the initiatives due to operational reasons, the limit is 130%. The year has been spectacular in the different quarters. This is why in the final quarter, perhaps there's been a little bit less thrust, as it were, a little bit less enthusiasm, but that's no problem. As regards to inflation issues, here, there's a bit of a debate because we think that in the company that this is circumstantial, it's stable and that these levels we had of 6% or whatever are not recurrent.
What we are seeing in the company is that the wage increases, well, they have to be according to the labor agreements, but there are links to productivity, et cetera, et cetera. I think that there's not gonna be a very relevant impact, although we haven't calculated this to date. As Mikel points out in the contracts and so on and so forth, this is transferred to the customer. As regards supplies, it is true, and if you were to ask me about the effect of Russia, well, there's gonna be no direct effect, and let's really hope that this situation between Russia and Ukraine will solve itself. Well, there's going to be an increase in raw materials.
You saw that yesterday, all of the companies in the world of renewables have gone up, and their curve is going to go up too. As you know, we end to end here in this business, and there's no doubt but in recent months, we have seen increases in the logistic costs of transport. There could be some specific increases in the price of components. But as we have a global vision, we have, for instance, the interest rate and possibly with this situation, they will maintain a very relaxed monetary policy and we'll have prices at the end of the energy chain that I think will be increasing. There will be an upward trend.
Some of the suppliers could be affected, and there could be some cost increases, but I think that this can be transferred to the end customer at the end of the chain.
Thank you very much for the answer.
Okay. Gabriel Colominas from GESIURIS, please.
Well, hello.
Good morning, Gabriel.
Well, I have a very straightforward question, and this has to do with the margins that have clearly grown in B2C. Has this been due to operational leverage, or has there been any other effect as regards the improvement of margins?
Yes, B2C is operational leverage, so we have the same structure. You know that we are now transforming all of our B2C world, and the increase in sales has increased or produced an increase in margins, and that is what you just said. You're right.
What about your forecast? Well, not forecast. The idea that you have as regards to optimization for shops and B2C plans for 2022. Could you please advance something about this? Could you say something about this?
Well, we are expectant. We are waiting for consumption to recover so that we can carry out some campaigns. We want to launch some significant campaigns. We want to change the model, and as Phone House, as Patricia pointed out, it's more house and less phone. So we're gonna be carrying out some campaigns along those lines, and we'll see how the market evolves. What we need at this point in time is for people to feel optimistic, and we need the public bodies to put across some optimism so that people can move more and consume more. Well, the news on Ukraine doesn't really help very much. Let's wait and see how things evolve over time.
Okay, the final question from me. 2020, well, obviously, because of the context, and 2021, I think, have been years of consolidation and very few acquisitions or practically no acquisitions. I don't know what your prospects are as regards to acquisitions over the next few years, and it's clear, as shareholders and investors in Dominion, nobody expected that Phone House operation because it's working out fantastically well. I'm not sure, are you considering entering other verticals, or are you going to consider any other specific areas?
Well, as regards to the B2C world, well, yes, we are creating new verticals. We've created a new vertical, and soon it's gonna be a financial vertical that only had insurance policy for terminals, and now we have a new service that is called Rentik, which is all about going back to those origins from where cell phones came from, and we're very happy with that initiative because we are in an environment of about 1,000 contracts per month, which is pretty good because this greatly increases the value of our customers, and they stay with us for a long time, for at least two years. Then the service itself has a very significant value. It's about EUR 400.
In other activities, and as Patricia pointed out, yes, we are trying to do a build-up in the environmental segment so that we can create this future Dominion Environment. Let's say that the situation is complex and due to two reasons, because there have been many customers that were affected before the pandemic. Well, we've had the ICO loans, and now we have companies that apply for those loans, and now they have problems, and it's something that we don't want. That's where we've had a difficulty because of those loans. We have the assessment of Dominion or the valuation of Dominion, rather. It's in low terms if you could put it that way, and it means that practically any purchase at a reasonable cost would have a dilution of value.
We're looking into other possibilities, and we're, let's say, expectant, and we're waiting to have some other possibility to rebuy our shares because we believe that's the best investment and that's the best buy we can do. Well, I think that you've carried out the buyback. You've completed the buyback program. Yes. We completed it in October, and we have a new one now in place. We will go all the way up to 95%. In October, we finished the first one, where we have reduced the figure with about 9 million shares, and now we're moving on to the second buyback plan.
Well, very good. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Finally, we're going to give the floor to Joaquín García-Quirós. It's the final question we have right here in front of us. Bear in mind that we've already answered about the impact that the Russia conflict has.
Can you hear me?
Yes, go ahead. Perfectly loud and clear.
Well, hello. Well, this is a very quick question. Could you please give us a little bit more information on how you've injected that capital you mentioned, EUR 75 million. How did you transfer that capital? And I'd also like to know if the other partners in BAS, if they are also going to contribute a proportional figure, proportional to your EUR 75 million.
I think that Patricia pointed this out. The inorganic operation we've invested since in Dominion and BAS, which is the sponsoring arm or which is the company that is the holder of the equity or the capital of these companies, and it's been EUR 75 million of EUR 25 million of our own equity that have to do with inorganic operations and EUR 50 that have been received from Incus and Dominion. The way of reducing this has been based on a participative convertible loan, and we have the possibility of flexibility in the future. This money in this company gives them the possibility of launching everything over and above the gigawatt that we'd considered for the portfolio. This allows Dominion to carry out the development, construction, commissioning, and then operation and maintenance.
These partners, well, this was contribution from Dominion, and the partners are still there, and they still have their shares, or they have the different share segments. You know that there were some original partners and partners from family offices, et cetera.
As this is convertible, could you increase your stake in the future? With these EUR 75 million?
Yes, that is correct. Correct.
Thank you. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Perhaps to complement what has just been pointed out as regards to the impact that the conflict with Russia has or Russia, Ukraine, I would like to say that we had very little activity with Russia. It was activity from Germany with a specific technology that had to do with improving furnace efficiency and some other engineering projects, only engineering and not construction.
The truth is that it's a minimum impact. On the other hand, well, we are always glad to see oil to go up because let's say that our activity in the refinery world, in improving their processes and in the Near East world and Angola, this facilitates our economic flows tremendously. Okay. Well, if there are no further questions then, we will close our disclosure here. Thank you very much indeed to all of you for your participation. Thank you very much. Goodbye.