Good afternoon or good morning to all of you. Thank you for making it this afternoon. We are welcoming you again on this presentation. Please, Brahim. We'll go through different parts of this presentation. In the beginning, just giving you some trends on what we have been able to capture on the past months or on the past periods, at least. The highlights of 2021. I'll leave the floor to Brahim to finish, and we will all with Aziz, Brahim and myself answer to your questions if any.
After last year, where we had a significant slowdown of all what we were doing somehow, we managed to see a significant boost this year, coming either from administrations, from government or from public sector, where the economy has restarted in many different places over the world. We most probably at the end of this session have questions about what happens right now in the world with the war in Ukraine and in Europe, how we are seeing this as an impact for our industry. Globally, 2021 has been a year of progress when it comes to economies and when it comes to payment, even though 2020 may not have been that bad for payments globally. Right.
We have all the analysts agree that we are on a very interesting market. We are in a very interesting industry where it is growing despite all events all over the world, maybe at different speeds. We see that every year there is a growth on the electronic payment industry, and we have a growth all over the regions where we are active and even where we are not active. It's always a growth, and we believe that this is a great opportunity for our company. We also see and we agree with the analysts because we are capturing the same feedback from the market. What makes the payment boost? What makes the payment profitable?
What makes the payment grow globally are always on the obviously the innovation on the user experience that payments or that banks or fintechs will be able to to offer to the end customers, and also on the cost of these new experiences. As we know and we have witnessed as well that when something is too costly to be put on the market, doesn't work and it doesn't fly. We see that the investment on the new products on innovative propositions are what the banks are looking for.
The orchestration or what has been named by different analysts the composable IT, where we are looking at this API industry, this API trend where I will be able to use the best of or the of the best in class in each process of payment. I will be able to to use processor one with supplier one when it comes to security. I will use supplier two when it comes to issuance. I will use supplier three when it comes to authorization, et cetera. The last point that is really more and more we are witnessing it more and more is this externalization or this processing mode or this SaaS mode that is getting bigger and bigger all over the world.
These three aspects that are really the most important for us is how can we provide innovation? How can we provide to customers not all the spectrum of payment, but offer to some that may consider that we may not be able to have all the spectrum as the best in class. We will still be able to offer some functionalities and all this with the less investment from their side because we will be able to materialize a lot of these processes for many customers and where the SaaS or the processing mode is the right answer to this issue. Right?
In 2021, we have had some important events, the acquisition of IPRC and ICPS in Morocco and in Mauritius with approximately MAD 100 million. These two companies that we will describe in the next slide have enriched and completed our offers by adding some very specific functionalities or services to our global offer. We have had a significant increase on ramp-up of our processing activity. We have seen that there was a significant growth on this, not only growth in numbers, but also in customers and also in functionalities or services provided to our customers. We have seen also or we have closed the year with a more strong backlog.
We will see this with Brahim later, not only in numbers but also in the composition of this backlog that is having more and more or the part of the recurring or regular revenue is getting bigger. We have increased the share of the recurring revenue, not only in the backlog but in the processing themselves. Obviously, we are getting closer and closer to the release of this or the full release of this PowerCARD V4 that we have also tested in the market and with a very, very positive return because of its technology but also because of the savings that this PowerCARD V4 will be able to provide to the users of this new version.
IPRC has enriched HPS offer by offering an additional layer that we were not able to provide before on the monitoring of the ATMs, on the monitoring of the fraud. What we have been able to produce on the market with IPRC this year is a forecasting function based on algorithms, based on machine learning, where the services that we provide to the customer makes them save a significant amount of costs on the cash on the ATM. It's not only that we are telling them that the ATM is up or down, we are able to tell them how much they need to refill on that ATM.
at what time to make sure that we have a proper optimization of the cash in the machine and also making sure that the ATM will never go out of cash. This is also this logic or this algorithm, this machine learning is also used to provide information for the maintenance to make sure that the spare parts of the ATMs are changed before the ATM go down. IPRC has been for years a company that has worked mainly in a country or in a region, and since we have acquired this company, we have started offering these services in all the HPS portfolio. We believe a cross-selling function will really work with these services. ICPS is also a very interesting acquisition.
Not only it has provided us with a very strong position and a strength in the African market, but it has also provided us with a layer of banking knowledge, since ICPS has been owned from the very beginning by a bank. Within this company, there is a specific knowledge about the banking layer that we maybe have missed before in HPS, and now we are able to offer through ICPS additional services that will give additional value to our services to all our existing and future customers.
Besides the additional services, we believe that there is a very strong or a very heavy optimization that we'll be able to do on the data centers, on the processing team, on the IT infrastructure. All this will make the joining of ICPS something very positive in the coming years. To make sure that this growth that we have started, we have increased our workforces, we have increased our, we've duplicated our locations. We also decided to have a proper organization to support this growth and also to make sure that we are really giving the tools to each unit of the organization to be able to better serve any of its customer.
We have had a revenue unit that is what we have called market that have in its responsibilities the most of the revenues of the group. We have not anymore segregated between the processing or the license. We want to have a very consolidated, very consistent way of recognizing the revenue and making sure that we do not fail in any internal competition somewhere, somehow. We have also made sure that we have a very professional processing center, what we have called the payment services, where we have a kind of factory that is really focusing on the IT processing, on the IT services that we are providing to our customers.
The software factory, that is the heart of our existence, I would say, where our PowerCARD product is being built, where this PowerCARD V4 is being produced. It is a pure back office function where it's really a factory. We have some of the engineers, some of the responsible of this unit that are still facing the market to make sure that they do not have a tunnel vision to be able to access the market. The switching unit also to handle the Moroccan switch itself. This has been in the previous year maybe not provided with the proper resources.
We will be able to promote the switching in Morocco to promote the electronic payment and being a real actor there. We also believe that the fragmentation of the payment industry requires also some specific offers, and we are preparing some B2B2C offers that fintechs may want to use. These are ready products, these are white label products that we are putting on the market and asking for fintechs and maybe other actors that would personalize this last mile offer to put them on the market. We remain on our B2B DNA, but we will help some last mile actors with technology so that they can provide this to the market.
The last but not least unit is this testing unit we have that has also been. We have changed the management of this unit. The previous management has come to an age of retirement in France. We have asked two of the most talented people in this unit to lead this. Obviously, the corporate services that are managed by Brahim that will give the support to all our other units with maybe two main changes on this unit. With all that is ESG that we want to be very present in the company with a special focus on that, and also institutionalize our external growth will or desire.
These two things that have been, maybe in the previous organization, merged with others, are today very well-positioned and very well-identified with clear targets. Maybe, Brahim, I'll leave the floor to you.
Okay. Thank you, Ghizlane, and good afternoon for all the participants. Thank you for joining this conference. I will try to give you some explanations on the figures that we've disclosed two or three days ago. Despite this 2021 year that is still impacted by the pandemic, we have been able to achieve a growth of 14% for our revenue. This growth is coming mainly from the strong organic growth of the processing activity or the SaaS activity, from the acquisitions, of course, of ICPS, but also with the strong sales growth for our solution business in the Q4 of 2021 that has create some growth on the revenue also.
On the service activity, we start to see a recovery of the services in the second half of 2021, linked to the improvement of the health and economic situation in France. Thanks to this growth, we have been able to also increase our recurring revenue by 18% to reach, today at the end of 2021, all the recurring and regular revenue represents 64% of the total revenue, compared to 62% in 2020. The EBITDA margin also has been improved. Despite the exceptional research and development that we are doing since last year or 2020, with this version four that we want to have full ready by end of 2022.
Also, despite the impact of the exchange rate, that has impacted all the revenue that we have in US dollars. To minimize also the impact of the service activity, we have been able to deploy and to have important synergies between service activity and other activities of the group to improve our own testing in the development of the product and the development of the project for our customers. Thanks to the acquisition of ICPS, but also thanks to the sales growth at the end of 2021, the backlog has increased by 28%.
This backlog today represents more or less 90% of the total revenue of 2021, which is very important and give us a lot of confidence in terms of growth for 2022 and beyond. The last one is our cash position. We have been able to continue to improve and to optimize our working capital with the better control of the deployment or the project deployment cycle and also on a better recovery processes. Thanks to this, we have been able to increase our cash position at the end of the year by 36%.
If we have a look at the split of the different activities, one thing that is important is the mix between the software and processing and the solution business that start to become more balanced than in the past. I remember that last year or in 2020, processing activity was representing more or less 14% of the total revenue. In 2021, it's 26%. This growth, we have been able to have a growth by more than 100% compared to last year, thanks to the strong organic growth of the payment and the switching activities in Morocco, but also thanks to the acquisition of ICPS and IPRC that contributes a lot to this growth.
On the solution business, we have been able to have a growth around 3.6% and 4.6% on a pro forma basis. This growth has been slowed by the restrictions that impacted the project deployments all over 2021. We have been able to accelerate the deployment of our project at the end of 2021, but the pandemic situation has still impacted our revenue and our project deployments during 2021. We saw also at the end of the year a rebound on the sales activity. We have been able to finalize some big contracts with some big customers or big prospects in Asia.
Thanks to this, we have been able to increase our backlog, as we saw in the previous slides. Thanks also to this new product, we have been able to expand our presence in Asia. Even in the solution business, but also in the processing with some new customers in the Philippines. Today, thanks to the investment that we've made three years ago with opening an office in Singapore, we have been able to increase our market shares in Asia. Today, we are still a small player in terms of market share, but we have a very strong dynamic in the region.
The service, as I explained, we still suffer from the health context in France in 2021. We have been able in the second half to limit the impact. I remember that the decrease of the revenue at the end of the first half was around 9% or 10%, if I remember well. We have been able to accelerate the activities in the second half to reduce this decrease to 5%. The solution activity in detail. It represent today more than 60% of our activities.
Thanks to the restriction that start to be lifted at the end of 2021, we have been able to have a deployment pace similar to before the COVID. We are not fully on the same pace, but we are close to a normal situation. We have been able to have a growth of our revenue coming from new projects by 32% with the execution of the main or the major projects that we have. We have also the sales, but also our pipeline that increased at the end of 2021. We believe that in 2022 and beyond, we will be able to continue to have a growth on the solution business.
On the upselling, we have a revenue that were down by 5.7% due mainly to a decline of sales linked to the migration to our version 3.5 that today are at the end before the release of the new version 4 that will be on the market at the end of this 2022. On the processing activities, we still have a very strong organic growth. On the payments, the organic growth is 40%, thanks to the rollout of new subsidiaries of Société Générale on HPS platform.
We have in 2021, Cameroon, Congo, Chad, etc., on the platform. We have also the business with Loomis in Europe that has been expanded to Belgium with new ATMs network. [Foreign language]. I lost the connection. We lost you. We lost you a few seconds. But I lost the connection for the presentation. Aziz, [Foreign language]. It seems okay. Okay. I was saying that we have also our business with Loomis in Europe that has been extended to Belgium with the new network of ATMs to be managed on our platform. The operation also with the major franchisor in the Middle East that started on the platform.
All of this give us a growth of 40% in 2021. In addition to this, organic growth, we have also the integration of ICPS and also ICPS that has contributed to the global growth of processing. During the last five years, since 2017 to last year, we have average annual growth around 37%, which is really very important. That will contribute to have a mix between the processing and the solution business in the future that will be more balanced between the two businesses, and that will improve also our EBITDA margins. Aziz, tu peux passer la slide, s'il te plaît? [Foreign language] For the audience, sorry, but. C'est bon. [Foreign language]
I lost the control of the presentation. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I have it. So for the service activity, as explained before, we have a business that is still impacted by the health situation in France, but also the economy, the global economy in France. So we started to see a recovery at the end of 2021. And we have been able to reduce the decrease of the business in 2021. We believe that thanks to the new organization and also the new head of our service activity, we will be able in 2022 and beyond to recover, I would say, a normal growth for this activity.
In 2021, we have been also able to expand our client bases or client base in France with new customers. So like Somfy, like ARTE Television and some others. We believe that this new customers portfolio will contribute to the growth in 2022. If we want to analyze the revenue growth and the different impacts, we will show you what we call a normal growth without the acquisition, the impact of the acquisitions. After that, all the one-off impacts that impacted the growth of our revenue.
We have all the, I would say, the payment activities or solution activity and processing activities that have a strong contribution to the growth with 4.7% and 5.4% growth coming from these two activities, with service activity that slightly impacted this growth. This gives us normalized organic growth around 7% compared to last year. In addition to this, we have 9.6% coming from ICPS in 2021, and thanks to this acquisition, the global growth without the one-off impacts is around 16.7% compared to last year, 2020. After that, we have some one-off impacts.
One of them is the currency exchange rates that have impacted all our revenue in US dollars. We have the average exchange rate of US dollars that declined by 5.7% compared to 2020. This has impacted our revenue by MAD 27 million, so more or less $3 million. We have also the impact of the pandemic. If we compare the situation to 2020, this impact is positive because in 2020, the situation was worse than in 2021. We have been able, in 2021, to restart our on-premise deployments with the customers.
Thanks to this, the COVID impact on 2021 is positive at a level of MAD 11 million. With this one-off impact that has impacted the growth by 2.3%, we have been able to achieve a global revenue of MAD 833 million, so more or less $90 million. If we have a look to the cost and the operating expenses. On the constant scope, on the pro forma basis, the cost or the increase of cost has been contained to 4.4%, coming mainly from the increase of our human resource costs due to the change of scope, but also due to the new hiring of people in 2021.
Also to the increase of subcontracting. We have increased our subcontracting costs with all the effort that we are deploying today on the research and development to release our version four, but also on the big project that we have today with some tier one customers in Europe, in Asia, or in the Middle East with the Capgemini that help us to accelerate the deployment and the implementation of this project. On the external expenses, even if we have recovered some travel outside the different countries where we are based, we have been able to reduce all external expenses due to a decrease of all the fees linked to the M&A that we have initiated last year with ICPS.
Thanks to this, all the external expenses, including travel and expenses, has been declined by 15%. The taxes has increased by 85%, the impact is not huge on the total cost, it's mainly due to the increase of withholding tax, mainly for some tier one banks in tier one bank projects in Mexico. Of course, this withholding taxes are not on HPS. They are invoiced to the customer at the end, there is no impact on the EBITDA or the EBIT. On the cost, it has increased the cost by MAD 10 million compared to 2020. Elise?
As I said, we have increased our task force by more than 250 people in 1 year. Eleven percent of this growth is coming from our organic growth of people, and the others are coming from the acquisitions. We have 200 people that joined HPS, coming from ICPS and ICPS, and the others has been hired by HPS during all the year 2021. In terms of research and development, as explained by Abdelkarim in the beginning of the presentation, the innovation is really the heart of HPS.
The product today is considered by the market as one of the most complete and most flexible products on the market. To achieve this, we invest around every year between 10%-15% of our revenue on the product. Last year, we have reinvest 12.4% of the global revenue in the platform PowerCARD, mainly in the version four, but also on the other versions of the product. If we compare this level to other years, last year or before 2020, we were investing around 16% of payments or of solution revenue on the product. Last year, it was 19% of the solution revenue.
This year, this 12.4% represent 21% of the solution revenue that is invested in the product. We start to have modules on the version four ready. We have the switching module that is ready. We have other modules that are also ready. We expect to have the full version four ready by the end of 2022. This version four will bring to the market really new innovations and new advantages that we don't have on the previous versions. One of them is that it will be a database-agnostic technology.
It means that we will have no more link with the Oracle database, which is a huge cost for banks when they decide to go for our technology before this version four. It will create new advantage in terms of the cost for our customers for this version four. In addition to this, of course, we will bring also on this version a lot of innovation. We started to market or to show this version during 2021 on the users meeting that we've created on a virtual mode.
Last year, we have decided to maintain our users meeting not on a physical mode, but on a virtual mode to present our version four to the market and to our customers. The feedback from our customers, from our prospects, and from the market in general is that it's something that is really interesting for them, and they expect to have it very soon on the market. It's something that creates a real difference to other technologies that are existing on the market. Mainly for tier one banks, where they see the real impact on their business and on the growth that they can have on this technology.
If we look to the EBITDA again, on normalized growth, we have been able to achieve an EBITDA of 25%, compared to 22% in 2020. When we say here normalized is on a 2020 basis, it means that compared to all the currency exchange rate of 2020 to the deployment project pace of 2020, and also to the research and development efforts that we had in 2020. This normalized growth is around 32% in terms of EBITDA, but we have some one-off impact again. One is coming from currency.
One is coming positive from the restriction that start to be lifted compared to 2020, and an impact of the exceptional research and development that has been reinforced compared to the research and development efforts in 2020. If we look to the EBITDA evolution this last 5 years, so we see that we have a continuous growth since 2017. Since we've created and launched our switching and processing activities. Thanks to this new activity that bring additional margin to the group, the margin or the EBITDA margin have a continuous growth till 2019. In 2020, with the COVID situation, we see that we had an impact on the EBITDA, and in 2021, less than in 2020.
If we look now to a normalized EBITDA evolution, we see that if we exclude all the pandemic impacts and all the exceptional research and development that we've started in 2020, we have a continuous growth of this EBITDA from 20% in 2017 to 27% in 2021. We believe that with the continuous growth of processing or the SaaS offer, this EBITDA will continue to grow in the coming years. We said at the beginning, we have been able to increase our backlog by 28% compared to 2020.
Thanks to the acquisitions, of course, of ICPS and IPRC that bring new recurring revenue in this backlog, but also to the sales that we achieved at the end of 2021, that have increased our backlog in Q4 of 2021. If we look in detail to this backlog, more or less 80% of this backlog or 75% of this backlog is recurrent. It will be 80% of this backlog, so more or less MAD 600 million will be recognized in 2022. Because a lot of this backlog is annual fees coming from the switching, the processing or the monitoring, but also the maintenance.
We will be able also to deploy project and upselling based on our historical level of recognition of the backlog. It means that we will be able to, without any new business in 2022, to recognize at least MAD 600 million in 2022. We have been able to increase our cash position at the end of the year. Of course, this growth is coming from our improvement of the working capital and of the improvement of our collection process. We have been able to generate more or less MAD 180 million, so more or less $20 million coming from the operations.
One part of this cash has been used or invested in part of the acquisitions of ICPS and ICPS. We have also slightly increased our debt to finance part of these acquisitions. If we look now to the net debt, the same. We have been able to increase our net debt by 60%. Despite the investment that we've made in the acquisitions of ICPS and ICPS to reach MAD 180 million, so $20 million of net debt, minus $20 million of net debt at the end of 2021.
Now we will share with you our view of the future of HPS on the short term and midterm. Before we see how we see 2022 and beyond, we want to share with you perhaps our strategic initiative plan on the different activities that we have. We have today, in the new organization, the payment activities as a technological provider so that we group all the solution and processing offer or the in-house and SaaS offer.
We have all the switching activities where we act as a switch operator in Morocco, and we have all what is not yet covered in the payments by HPS today that will be covered by the business innovation unit. In the payment activities, in terms of organic growth, in the in-house offer today, we have different regions in the world where we have a different position. We have our historical markets, so French-speaking region of Africa, Middle East, where HPS main objective is to defend our market shares in these two regions.
To achieve this, the main tool that we have in our hands is really the innovation, the product innovation to bring to our existing customers new functionality, new innovation, and to really cut off the opportunity or close any opportunities of our competitors to get into our existing markets. The second market where we are present today and where we have big growth is the European market and the South Africa markets. In these two regions today, this is the two regions that bring the main part of the growth of HPS for the in-house offer. Our objective is really to consolidate this growth in the next years to have more significant market share in these two regions.
To achieve this, we have, of course, the product innovation that is still the main tool that we have to reach new customers, but also the expansion of some local delivery centers. In the past, we have opened delivery centers in France with an office in Paris, one in Aix-en-Provence. We have also opened some new local delivery centers in Greece last year or two years ago. We will continue in this strategy to have local support and to be more close to our customers and to the market that we want to address, and to be more local for these markets.
The last point that is important in our strategy for the in-house offer is really to prepare the future of HPS in the Asian and American markets. To achieve this, we have this strategy overall. We have our product that is our main assets, and the version four of PowerCARD will be a real growth driver of HPS in these two regions. We have also our local delivery centers strategy that will continue. We have opened 3 years ago a delivery center in Singapore. We are in 2021 reinforcing this delivery center with new people to address all the customers that we have in the region.
We will continue in this strategy to reinforce our existing offices, but also by creating new offices in other regions. The other tool that we will use is also an adapted partnership strategy. Today we are working with different partners like Capgemini to address these tier-one markets and tier-one banks in these big markets. We are also today working with IBM to build a new partnership to address the American market on the sales side to build a joint offer with our product and with the IT infrastructure of IBM to bring on to the market a SaaS offer or an in-house offer based on the two technologies.
On the SaaS offer, our main objective is to build a strong HPS processing or HPS SaaS brand in Africa and Middle East, where we have today a strong presence and strong market share. Beyond these two markets, to capture any opportunities to start positioning our SaaS offer in other regions. All this organic growth will be supported by also M&A strategy. We have some targets or we want to target some companies for consolidation of our business in processing, like what we did with the ICPS in Mauritius.
Also, we have some M&A targets for product innovation to accelerate our product innovation and to bring new functionality or new innovation on our technology to the market and to our customers. On the switching activity, the second line of business. We have a unique position in Morocco today. We are the unique switch. We are the national switch of the country. Thanks to this position, our objective is really to evolve our position from a technology player to a broader role in Morocco and to act more as a regulator or arbitrator in the payment in the country.
Thanks to this, we believe that we can also accelerate all the payments industry in the country and to bring new transaction, new business, new revenue to the switching activity of HPS. Just to give you perhaps some figures, today, we have less than one card for two inhabitants. We have more or less three or four transactions per year per card for payments in Morocco. It means that all the growth is in front of us and not behind us. We want also to work closely with all the players in the market, so Société Générale, the financial institutions, fintechs, to accelerate the mobile payments in the country.
Today, or since two or three years, we have built the switching for mobile payments in the country. Today, we have very few transactions that are on the platform. We believe that we can add some dynamic on this activity with the more interaction with all the players and having HPS in the center of the game and not just as a technological partner, a technology partner of the markets.
On the business innovation, the principle and the idea, as explained by Abdelilah, is really to try to find some new area of growth of HPS around the payments, but that are not yet today, some businesses that are not yet covered today by the existing organization or the existing businesses of HPS. We have on the table today two initiatives. One of them is to really address the fintech market and the fintech players by building a B2B2C offer, and to bring this fintech on our platforms, on our technology, and to give them a ready platform on the processing to be able to address their customers based on our technology.
To achieve this, we want also to be a one-stop shop for these players, so for fintechs or for new banks, by proposing BIN sponsoring. All players that want to issue means of payment or cards needs to have a BIN from Visa, from Mastercard, or from any other scheme. We have finalized an agreement with Visa some couple of days or couple of weeks, where we have this ability to propose or to give a BIN to these new players or new banks or fintechs.
The idea is really to start with this and to offer the technology, but also the BIN to this player and to be the right partner for these kinds of new players and to bring them on our technology. This organic growth that will be conducted by our existing organization could also be accelerated by an M&A strategy with some targets of payments players or payment offers that are not today already covered by HPS.
It's what we did with ICPS with IPRC in 2021 that bring to HPS new services that were not covered by HPS and that today are in the service portfolio of the group. Thanks to all these initiative plans, as is, we believe that in for 2022, we will be able to continue to have a strong organic growth, thanks to first our pipeline that has increased a lot in 2021. Two, our position that has been reinforced also in Asia and Europe.
We believe that with the customers that we or the big contracts that we signed in 2021 and before, today we have a strong visibility in these two regions. With our local presence also, we believe that we will be able to address some main or major opportunities that we have today on the table and that we are discussing with to be finalized in 2022. We will also, in 2022, maintain our efforts of research and development around the version four. This version four will be a real strong growth driver. The investment level will be maintained for 2022 if we compare to 2021.
The EBITDA will continue to be improved mainly thanks to the recovery of a normal situation or normal basis with the restrictions that are lifted more and more, with also an exchange rate that is coming back to a normal level compared to 2021 and 2020. In 2022, the EBITDA margin should increase compared to last year. On a midterm view, we will continue to have a strong organic growth thanks to the partnerships that we are building today, with first with Capgemini with Capgemini that will be, you know, that will increase our ability to really address the tier one banks in the different regions where HPS is active today.
To help us to achieve and to deploy a very big project with the, I will say, low investment from HPS in terms of resources on these kinds of projects. We have also, on the sales side, this partnership with IBM that, on midterm view, will bring some new businesses to HPS, we hope, in the American market but also in the European market, where IBM will open some big opportunities to HPS and to help us to increase or to accelerate our growth in the payments. This version four that will be released at the end of this year will be a growth driver.
We believe that it will be something that will help us to continue to have this strong growth in the coming years. The profitability also will continue to be improved. Of course, when all the restrictions and the normalized situation will come back with the normal research and development efforts, we will have, I would say, an automatic contribution to the improvement of EBITDA.
We have also this mix between the processing activity or the SaaS offer and the in-house offer that will be more balanced and that will also bring more profitability for HPS because the SaaS activity is more profitable than an in-house offer where all the revenue of the license is recognized one time only and we don't really consolidate all the license revenue year after year. On top of this, we will continue to accelerate our growth with the M&A strategy. This strategy will address different kind of opportunities or opportunities of consolidation or opening new markets or acquisition of new technology or services.
Our ambition is to bring, in terms of growth, an additional 10%-15% yearly through these new acquisitions, like we did last year with ICPS and IPRC that brings more or less 10%-11% of growth compared to the revenue of 2020. To conclude, we believe that we have a really very strong fundamentals that give us confidence in terms of outlook. We have a strategic plan initiative that we believe will continue to bring growth to the group in terms of different businesses that we conduct today.
On the in-house offer, on the SaaS offer, but also on new businesses that are not today covered, thanks to this new organization that we have in place since the beginning of this year. The external growth strategy that we have in place will help us to accelerate the growth and to continue to have an average annual growth that is strong and will continue on the same levels that we had in the past years. Thank you very much for your attention. Sorry for the issue that we have on the technical side. I propose to open the Q&A session.
Brian-
Okay.
You will-
Yeah.
Read the question.
We have first question from Seki. What impact has the Russian crisis had on contract negotiation, business development in the European and new markets? Today, we have no exposure in terms of business in these two regions. We have some businesses in the region that are coming from global businesses. There is no impact on the existing revenue of HPS. We believe that this crisis could have or could create some opportunities for HPS. I remind you that we have some big competitors that are Russians that are addressing the European markets, the Middle East market, and also
Brian.
Yeah?
It's the next question.
Yeah.
It's-
Husam?
It's the next question. I think you will answer this in the next question.
Okay. Yes, more or less the same. So in the context of economic sanction on Russia, what will be its impact on HPS activities? More precisely, can we imagine that in the event of an eventual termination of activities of Russian companies with the same business segment as HPS in Europe, HPS could possibly increase market share in Europe. Okay. You will take this one, Samira for...
Okay. As Brahim Berrada was mentioning in the first question, and he was going to answer the second at the same time. Yes, there are opportunities. Obviously we are all sad about what happens in Ukraine now. But we have started to receive some questions about our position to be able to serve previous customers of Russian companies. Obviously, this is not something that we will promote or will push, et cetera. But we are able to offer services to whoever is not able to be supported by the existing suppliers. Another point that has arisen with this crisis is the availability of resources.
This is something that we have not expected, that a lot of payment experts on different parts of the world that would have been linked to previous suppliers coming from Russia are today on the market. This is easing a little bit the pressure we have on the resource.
Okay. Next question is, I will read it in English even if it's in French on the chat. It's about dividends. The question is asking if we will or not pay dividends this year. If yes, how much? For sure, yes. I remind you that our policy in terms of dividend is 50% of the net profits that is paid to the shareholders. For this year, 2021, the board didn't yet discuss this point, it will be discussed in the coming weeks and will be released or announced with the AGM convocation. Next one for you perhaps, Husam.
Yes.
How do you see the future of tokenization in Africa?
The tokenization in Africa is a bit slower than in other countries. I just want to remind to all the entities that to be able to tokenize a card, the card has to exist. Because of the financial inclusion or the card numbers that are not yet there compared to Europe, North America or any mature market, the tokenization will not be at least in one year or two there. Obviously, it's starting. Obviously, products that are offered either locals or coming from Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, etcetera, maybe not yet covering these markets except a few ones. It is something that will be coming, but we do not see it as an immediate opportunity for us.
One point that is also important, it is a very nice user experience. It creates a lot of payment opportunity, but it barely creates costs. The benefit of it is that it is this user experience pushes more toward payment than cash, and this is really the benefit. Our interest of all is to push this payment by mobile because it is really helping customers to use their cards in payments and not in cash.
Next one from Florian. Is the service business unit core to HPS? Could the resources, financial and management, better invested elsewhere in the group? I would say yes and no. Today, services activity in France is not in the core or in the core business of HPS, so it's not in the payment. So definitely it's not in our DNA. Now, the testing activity, more than service activity because it's mainly around the testing. It's something that is still important for HPS in terms of our own developments, our own research and developments, our projects for customers, etcetera.
We have some benefits to maintain this activity in our group, even if the growth of testing in France is not on the same level as payment and the margin is not the same. Your question is valid. It's something that we are looking at on a regular basis to see if this activity should remain or not in our activity. At this stage, it's something that will remain.
Maybe just one additional point on this. On this last budget for this year. We have also requested the team to build a testing platform that we could link to our deliveries. There will be a kind of link between the testing activities and the payment practice. It will not be. Not all the resources will be involved in that. We want to have the testing practice involved in the payment somehow.
Next one from Florian. The execution of the U.S. strategy was put on pause during COVID-19. When do you expect to restart commercial deployment in the U.S.? Can you tell us more about the IBM partnership? Do you want to grow with the SaaS processing or licensed solution business model? Do you wait for the release of PowerCARD V4 to penetrate the U.S. markets? Abdeslam, want to take this one?
I'll take this one. The strategy to penetrate again the U.S. market has restarted, and we are working on couple of prospects as of now. We want to have the same approach than the one we had in Singapore, make sure that we have a minimum activity to be able to build a delivery center because we believe that proximity has made the success of HPS. Yes, we are working on it. Yes, we are in advanced exploration. I would say it's even more than that. Our plan is to be present as HPS in this part of the world. The IBM partnership is moving.
We are not the same size company, so you will believe that things are not moving at the same pace as well. It is processing. It is moving positively. Are we offering SaaS or a licensed solution? I think in the U.S., both would work. But we are looking at a SaaS, not HPS offered by HPS, but offered with partners that could be IBM, that could be AWS, that could be other partners with whom we are working with a privileged one for IBM. I think version 3.5 that we have today is already advanced for the American market that is still working on very mature platforms.
Version four will definitely be a wow effect on this market.
Next one from Hicham Seddini. What is the part of research and development of the revenue for 2022 and 2023? For 2022, we should be at the same level as 2021. For 2023, I don't know yet. Abdeslam, we will reduce.
I think there will be a cap of the R&D because we are going to convert some of the engineers that are today working on the R&D on the delivery. Yes, it will, in terms of value or in terms of cost, remain more or less the same. Compared to the growth of the company, the percentage will decrease.
The effort on the PowerCARD V4 in 2033 should be less than in this year.
Exactly. We will definitely have other innovations in place, but not at this level of costs, because PowerCARD V4 has requested a deep transformation of a lot of our processes.
Next one from NS. Can you explain how can your international USD revenue were impacted by USD appreciation against MAD during 2021? I believe it should be the opposite. Yes, if you look to the final position of the exchange rate of US dollars at the end of the year, but when you look to the average exchange rate of the US dollars, the average has declined by 5.7% compared to 2020. This has been calculated on our revenue basis, so all the monthly revenue that we've made in US dollars. When you look to the average, the US dollars exchange rate was less than in 2020. This is why we have been impacted.
The impact is also on the euros, but the main one is on the US dollars, and the global impact on the revenue is around MAD 27 million less on the revenue in 2021. Next one from Hicham Hassani. How will you use the cash that we have? Abdeslam, what do you want to do with the cash?
The cash will be used to pay dividend this year. Not all, of course. The rest will be used to continue our development. We will see would we use it fully or partially in our external growth.
Okay. Next one from Florian. What are the biggest bottlenecks and challenges to the execution of your business plan in the coming five years? Any change in human resource retention, attraction, training, wage inflation strategy? Okay.
So-
Go ahead, Abdeslam.
I think the biggest bottleneck is human resources. I think the two questions are linked. Today, we believe that our technology is really superior to most of what exists on the market and needs to be deployed, sold and maintained by humans. This human resources today is where we are getting a bottleneck. One of the usage of the cash through acquisition could be to help us getting more resources, but not only on the numbers, but also on the experience and the maturity of the people that we are intending to hire.
We have hired high potential people or confirmed talents in Middle East, in Morocco, in Singapore. Our strategy now is really to reinforce the team with confirmed experts. This goes as we have done it two years ago with a stock plan. We are waiting anxiously to see what will be the legal framework in Morocco in the coming months. Are we able to do this in a real stock plan or do we need to do it the way we did it previously?
This is something that we are contemplating with the team to make sure that not only we hire the best, but we keep them and we incentivize them, not only with the work we do, not only with the ambiance of work we provide, but also with sharing the profit.
Next one. Can you please elaborate on potential opportunities that could arise from Russia-Ukraine conflict? I think that we've already replied to this one in the beginning. This one is from NS. If it's not the case, please re-put the question in the chat, please. Next one, from Youssef Zedeh, do you intend to distribute dividend to shareholders this year? Yes, definitely. If yes, the payouts maintained at 50%? It should not be less. It's not yet discussed as explained, but it should not be less than 50. By end of 2021, you have cash position of MAD 306 million. Are you still in logic of external growth for the next years? Yes. Is there any direct or indirect impact of the war in Ukraine on your activity?
We've already replied to this one also. Next one from Hicham Seddini. What is your assessment of the Moroccan experience of mobile payments? As a service provider present in several markets, what do you think are the obstacles preventing this market from taking off in Morocco?
Brahim, do you want to go?
Where is this? Where is this?
I think the platform that have been built by HPS is adapted to the needs. At the same time, we had on a very small market, a market that is just being created, more than 27 actors. Definitely there was an issue to be able to have major actors, small actors. What we have seen is that not all the actors have invested at the same level. Not all the actors have been promoting these products in the same way. What has been most probably missing is really have a leader that would have pushed this product in Morocco. This has changed.
As you have noticed, the Wshipi two M has been created and up to work, and is working now, and start giving guidance and directions to all the actors. The market is getting or the actors are being more specialized and are trying to address verticals. With our reorganization, we have also requested the switch, the national switch team to be more, as Brahim said, more an actor in this promoter developing to put a new dynamic in the market than remaining a pure technical provider. We believe that this year will be not the explosion, but we will be able to see hopefully soon a starting of transactions all over the place.
Okay. Next one. In which areas are you targeting new acquisitions? We don't have specific areas. Of course, we are. I will not say small, but we are not a big company that all the growth is coming from acquisitions. It's something to help our existing growth. Our objective is really to find the right target in terms of size, in terms of how do you say facilité?
Ease. In terms of ease.
In terms of ease.
Ease, integrate.
Yeah. Easy to manage the business from Casablanca for this new target in our organization. We try to find targets that are not too huge or too big for HPS to not create any risk for our existing business. That are close to HPS in terms of culture, in terms of mindset, et cetera. We don't have any specific area as you probably noticed in the past. We had some acquisition in Morocco but also in France, in Mauritius.
We will finalize acquisition in any place if it fits with the nature of the targets that we're looking at or looking for. Next one. Are you currently in the process of potential acquisitions? Yes, if we consider the process as a whole. Even if we are in an active position in terms of active strategy in terms of acquisition. We are looking at some opportunities. We are discussing, et cetera. But if for you process means, are we under or are we signing some or under signature of any new deal? Not yet.
Next question from Hicham Seddini. What is the average transaction fee for the processing, and how is the evolution between 2020 and 2021? I'm not sure if the question is around processing in general or around the switching. If it's around processing, it's difficult to answer to this question because we have different business models depending on the kind of the customer. Sometimes or for the majority of the customers we have, we have a monthly fee for all the platform that is a fixed monthly fee. And on top of this, we could have a fee for the number of cards managed, the number of transaction or the number of ATM. It's not necessarily linked to transactions.
We cannot provide an average fee per transaction. If it's for the switching, for the switching is easier. We have, I think it's published the number of transaction in Morocco. We have the revenue of HPS for the switching that is public also. You could calculate the average fee for this activity. Next one. Does the rise in energy costs impact your OpEx, particularly with cloud service providers? Not sure to understand. Okay. At this stage, we don't have any impact on our costs, except the cost for driving to come to the office. For our payment business, no, we don't have any impact on our costs. Next one.
How do you expect the evolution of IT budget for Moroccan companies in the coming years of 2020 to 2024? Samira, do you want to take this one or you want-
I think for companies, we may not be the best to answer, but we have seen the budget of the banks towards externalization, and this is something that is really on the trend. The budget themselves, we do not have the exact figures for all of them. There is an increase of the externalization, and this is where we are positioning our offers.
Next one. What is the profitability.
The internal profitability.
Profitability of the PowerCARD V3 compared to the PowerCARD V2.
The internal rate of return.
To be honest, today the cost of the products is really marginal compared to the revenue that is generating from versions all over the years. So we don't have some exact figures to share about this, but I think without any doubt that the PowerCARD V3 that started to be marketed on the market since 2003, so since more than 17 years now, is really more profitable than the PowerCARD V2 that has been on the market only for 6 or 7 years. Abdeslam, I don't know if you have view on this.
Right. Yeah. There is another factor is that the PowerCARD V2 was able also to handle a limited number of volume. PowerCARD V3 is really big, and PowerCARD V4 is bigger. For the same between bracket costs, we will be able to sell more usage. Yes, the profitability on the sophistication of technology is better.
Next one from Sam Griffiths. Please, can you give an update on the IBM partnership? How do you expect the size of the partnership to compare with Capgemini? Abdeslam?
The partnership that we have with IBM is different than the one with Capgemini. They are complementary in the sense that with IBM we are targeting to deploy or we have deployed our platform on the IBM cloud. The idea here is to sell the IBM cloud plus PowerCARD operated by whoever wants to operate. Wisecap is helping us in deploying huge resources for our biggest project. It's two different things. We believe that the volume of business that we will do with IBM would be bigger than the one we do with Cap. At the same time, who knows, maybe one year it will be different.
It's two different approaches. Sorry.
Next one. What is your dividend policy? We've already answered to this one. It's our policy is 50% of the net profits. Next one. With your new B2B2C orientation to service fintech company, would you potentially target East African markets such as Kenya, where non-cash payments are led by non-financial institutions?
[Foreign language] Tu as le pays, non?
Oui. On y reviendra après.
Okay. With your new B2C orientation to Fintech, would you potentially target this? Yes, definitely. The idea here is to target not only Kenya, where we already have the market is already sufficiently has sufficient offers. We see what Central Bank of West African States is planning, what Ghana has reached, and we are very present in Ghana. What BEAC, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo are putting in place. There is a huge move of this banking communities towards inclusion, not only on the traditional way with the banks and the microfinance, but there is this fragmentation I was mentioning.
Yes, we are addressing the East, the West, East Africa market through the HPS traditional forces, but through the ICPS forces that are very present in this region. Also confirm and sell through our existing presence in West Africa, North Africa, and Egypt as well.
Okay, next one. Abdeslam, perhaps if you can elaborate on this question around our technology and how it's the position of our technology in the world compared to others.
Yes. When we compare our technology with the other players, we have been able to build a platform that is. Hello? Can you hear me?
Oui, oui. Oui.]
Okay.
Yeah, there's music.
Oui.
Okay
There is a very strong difference in terms of platform because we are mostly the very rare or only platform that offers an A to Z functionalities when it comes to payment. Not only in a basic form, but we really offer huge or very strong capabilities. We are able to address mature market needs when it comes to some very advanced economies in Southeast Asia, it comes to some economies in Europe. This is coming in a very flexible platform, technologically advanced with experts.
It's a whole offer that we believe is different from the other leaders because we are able to not only provide a technology, but offer all the services that will go with it. Besides of this, we are continuously investing, and our PowerCARD V4 that really will be very interesting in when it will be deployed, and this will happen soon. When I give just a small example where we had these huge banks that have billions of transactions and millions of transactions to process per day, and they have a window of two or three hours only. While this PowerCARD V4 enable us to process the transaction through all the day, and we are not anymore on this traditional processing in a batch mode, et cetera.
We are on something that is very much advanced. We are on microservices. We are on very smooth processing during the day, which makes the investments in IT less heavy because we don't need a huge machine that will work only 2 or 3 or 4 hours per day, but we will need medium resources that will work the whole day. This is something that is also extremely adapted to what cloud is today, and we will be able to really offer to our customers or we are offering to our customers something that is really extremely performant when it comes to costs and also to time of processing.
Okay.
Okay.
Next one, it's about the EBITDA. Do you believe that 25%-27% normalized EBITDA margin is achievable from 2023 under your base case scenario or further out? Yes, definitely. We believe that it's something that should be achieved in 2023. Next one, what will be the pricing structure of PowerCARD V4, license versus maintenance, versus upselling and compared to existing version? Abdeslam, but I think that there is no change from this.
No major change. We will push more the PowerCARD V4 on SaaS basis than other. No, there is no change.
Next one from Emil. So did you say that you will pay dividend this year and not less than MAD 50? Is it correct? Will we pay dividend? Yes. Not less than MAD 50, I don't know. I said it's not yet discussed by the board. I just said it should not be less than our policy. But it's a decision of the board, so I don't have the answer to this one. Okay.
La dernière?
Not sure I understand the points correctly. If
Okay.
If it want to be reasked, if needed. If not, so.
No, no, it's okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you everyone.
If there is no more questions, we will close the session. Okay. I think we do not have any more questions. Thank you all.
[Au revoir]. Yeah. Thank you all for your participation to attend this meeting.
Perfect. Thank you.