Thank you Tracy. Welcome to Columbus presentation of Q1 report for 2021. I'm Hans Henrik Thrane, and I'm currently acting CEO, but also our Corporate CFO in Columbus. Let's start to go through our agenda on slide number four, and here we'll go through taking you through the highlights of Q1, and then we will end the presentation with an outlook for 2021 and the long-term guidance, followed by a Q&A session. Now let's go to slide five of the presentation, which is a welcome to our new CEO. I'd like to start the presentation by welcoming our new appointed CEO, Søren Krogh Knudsen. Søren Knudsen comes with a background within the manufacturing consultancy and advisory on digital transformation. I am really confident that Søren Knudsen will both complement and accelerate our organic growth and strategic executions towards our position as a digital trusted advisor.
Søren will join Columbus on June 7th, 2021 and we look very much forward to welcoming him into Columbus. Next slide, please. Columbus delivered a very profitable first quarter with a 40% EBITDA increase. Overall revenue declined by 8% due to the capacity adjustment we executed in second quarter last year due to the COVID impacting in March 2020 . Overall, we are fewer consultants now than we were Q1 last year, despite that we actually started hiring people again in Q4 last year. Despite the overall revenue decline, we have realized growth in our strategic growth areas as Digital commerce, Data analytics, and Customer experience. The EBITDA increase was mainly driven by higher efficiency as the rate of invoiced hours rose from 54%- 58%. Also, tight cost control and less travel cost plays a role in our improved EBITDA.
Consequent EBITDA margin increased from 9%- 13%, which we consider a satisfactory result. With regards to the strategic execution in general, we reached an important milestone in focusing on consultancy in Digital Transformation only. Therefore, the completion of the divestment of our software company on January 26th, 2021 was an important milestone. With the sale of To-Increase, Columbus realized a net proceeds of DKK 859 million. This proceed was also the reason for Columbus paying out an extraordinary dividend of DKK 6 per share in April this year. Another step in our strategic execution was the divestment of our Baltic entities in Estonia and Lithuania, completed on March 30th, 2021. Further, we are currently reorganizing and implementing a more focused and simplified operation with increased customer- centricity. This means that we reorganize the business into global business lines and local market units.
This reorganization allows us to pull together our global strength around our service areas and create full customer focus in each marketplace. We are also changing the way we strategically work with customers, which means that we focus our capabilities on our prioritized customers. All in all, Q1 was a good start of the year, where we generated a strong EBITDA growth, and we took the first important steps into our new strategy, Focus23. Looking ahead forward, we have built a solid pipeline for the coming quarters, and we do expect to deliver top-line growth already in Q2 this year. Next slide, please. On this slide, we have illustrated the bridge between reported numbers and what we call normalized numbers. We have also included this in order to demonstrate currency impact on our business.
The adjustment of provision for a loss-making contract in the last year's numbers is related to the Norwegian fixed-price project we have previously disclosed. In Q4 last year, we made a settlement with the customer, and therefore, we will not have any further negative impact from this project going forward. The key takeaway from this slide is that despite a revenue decline, we have managed to improve our normalized EBITDA significantly with an improved EBITDA margin as a result. Next slide. This is the full income statement, and I'll now briefly touch on this. Our staff cost is slightly decreased compared to last year. This is primarily related to the capacity adjustment back in March and April last year. External project cost has also decreased significantly due to reduced usage of subcontractors. This is a significant part of the capacity adjustment.
Other external costs decreased by 52% in Q1 2021 to DKK 22 million, primarily related to less internal travel cost, employee-related cost, and provisions for bad debt that are lower this year than last year. Columbus realized a profit before tax of DKK 48 million in Q1 2021, corresponding to an increase of all 103%. The increase is mainly driven by the positive EBITDA development and financial income from currency adjustments. Profits after tax from discontinued operations amounts to DKK 721 million in Q1. The result is mainly related to the realized gain of the sale of To-Increase in January this year. Now I'm on slide development in service business first quarter. Service revenue declined by 5% to DKK 349 million in Q1 2021. The decline is impacted by the reduced number of consultants, especially in our Cloud ERP business, declining by 8%.
However, we see a high demand for Digital Transformation and especially our new strategic business lines, digital commerce, data analytics, and customer experience and engagements are increasing, respectively 4%, 9%, and 45% compared to first quarter 2020 . Columbus Care declined by 4% due to decline in the consultancy revenue. However, the recurring revenue from our care contracts did increase by 21%. Next slide, please. Here you have the development in our recurring revenue. In the first quarter, recurring revenue was at the same level as last year with DKK 95 million. The recurring revenue continues to constitute a larger part of the total revenue, with Q1 recurring revenue constituting 23% of total revenue. The development in recurring revenue shows great progress in Columbus Care contracts and cloud products and a decline in subscription. Going forward, Columbus expects subscriptions to decline as part of the cloud conversion.
The decline in first quarter is higher than expected due to a larger decline from SMB customers in our U.S. business. Next slide. Our chargeability is significantly higher in Q1 2021 than last year, amounting to 58% versus 54% last year. The high demand in Q1 2021, combined with the reduced number of consultants, resulted in a very high utilization of our consultancy business, despite that most of our employees are still serving our customers remotely working from home. We consider the development satisfactory. Next slide, please. I'll now shortly present our market units. As you'll see, we have changed the segment reporting from geographical segment to market units, which gives a more detailed view into our business. Next slide. Most of our market units declined in revenue due to the reduced number of employees, as already mentioned.
Columbus Norway delivered a growth in first quarter with an improvement across the business. Especially our market units in U.S. and Russia are affected by corona pandemic as well as a decline in the U.S. dollars and Russian rubles compared to last year. The reported decline in revenue for U.S. is 17%. In local currency, the decline is 9%. The reported decline in revenue for Russia is 33%. Again, in local currency, the decline is 17%. Despite the revenue decline in our market units, we have managed to deliver significant EBITDA growth. The improved EBITDA is mainly driven by significantly higher efficiency across all market units and by cost savings, in particular, less travel cost, employee-related cost, and provisions for bad debt. Particular, our market units in the U.S. have been able to improve their earnings in the first quarter compared to last year.
When the corona pandemic broke out back in March 2020, Columbus did its utmost to mitigate risk and to keep the business in good health by adjusting the business to expected activity levels. During Q4 2020, we began to see the market picking up, and therefore we started onboarding people, which is expected to continue throughout 2021. In first quarter, market demand has significantly increased, and we have a solid pipeline. We expect revenue growth for second quarter 2021 and onwards. Thanks to all our market units. Next slide. Outlook. I will now cover our outlook on Slide 15 with the top line or headline guidance for 2021 maintained. Columbus is confident that there is a great market potential in what Columbus brings to market. Despite the continued COVID-19 uncertainty and the negative market impact, the management believes that there are good business opportunities going forward.
With our Focus23 strategy, it is Columbus' long-term ambitions to gradually increase profitable organic growth to a minimum 10% annually from 2023. In our latest 2021 guidance, which was published with our annual report for 2020, we had included Baltics' fully expected revenue and EBITDA. We divested Baltics in first quarter this year, Baltics will not be included in the figures for the continued business for 2021. Based on the financial performance in first quarter, current order book, and pipeline, our guidance for full year 2021 remains unchanged despite this divestment of the Baltics countries. Revenue is expected to be in the range of DKK 1,650 million to DKK 1.8 billion, corresponding to a growth between 5% and 14% organic growth.
EBITDA is expected to be in the range of DKK 125 million-DKK 150 million, corresponding to an increase between 1%- 21% compared to the 2020 EBITDA, adjusted for customer retention and earn-out adjustments. Next slide, please. This was the end of my presentation, and here, just the overview of our upcoming events. Let's go to the next slide, and I'll hand back the conference to our operator, Tracy, for opening up for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel that request, hit the hash key. Once again, that's star and one if you have any questions or comments. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, star and one for any questions. We have no questions on the telephone lines, sir.
Let's conclude today's call, thanks to everyone listening in, I wish everyone a great rest of the day. Thank you so much for listening and showing your interest in Columbus. Thank you.