I'll now hand the floor to our speakers. Please begin your meeting.
Good morning. Welcome to Nilfisk annual conference call for the fourth quarter and full year 2020. My name is Antonio Tapia. I am Head of Investor Relations here at Nilfisk. To present Nilfisk result for the full year 2020, we have the CEO, Hans Henrik Lund, and CFO, Prisca Havranek-Kosicek. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this presentation, including remarks from management, may contain forward-looking statement that, for a number of reasons, shall not be relied upon as prediction of actual results. I therefore encourage you to read the content of this slide in connection with the presentation. Now looking at slide four, the agenda of today's presentation is as follows: Hans Henrik Lund will start by going through the key takeaways for the full year 2020, as well as an update on the business in general.
This will be followed by Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, going through the financial performance of Nilfisk in the fourth quarter and the full year of 2020, followed by our outlook for the financial year 2021. As always, you are invited to ask questions during the Q&A session at the end of this presentation. With this, I will hand over to you, Hans Henrik.
Thank you, Antonio. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking part in our call this morning. I hope you're all safe and well. This morning we've released the annual results, and we have, of course, been looking forward to sharing the presentation with you. Let's go to slide five for the key takeaways for the year 2020 for Nilfisk, please. 2020 was a year nobody could have foreseen, for sure. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world dramatically starting in Q2, and of course, we also were deeply affected at Nilfisk by this very extraordinary situation. When looking at the 2020 full year results, what I first and foremost would like to highlight is the fact that we delivered a stable EBITDA margin before special items of 12.1%.
It has indeed been a challenging environment for us, heavily impacted by COVID-19, but with the actions taken, such as disciplined cost control measures and a successful execution of our restructuring program, we did deliver a margin in line with last year, despite the lower revenue that we experienced. In the first half of the year, we experienced a steep decline in customer demand across all markets, basically. Restrictions and lockdowns in response to COVID-19 forced many of our customers to scale down, save cost, or even temporarily close their operations. Obviously that did impact demand and our revenue. There were very large variations in this decline between customer segments and markets. Among the most impacted markets were China, as we saw early on, and then followed by the southern part of Europe.
We also saw the hospitality sector, industries like hotels and restaurants, being very much affected, and more affected than other areas like retail and manufacturing. This has had an impact on our business in many Asian markets in particular, where the hospitality segment is a large contributor to our sales. As the first wave of the pandemic started to ease, we did see a gradual and steady recovery in our demand pattern starting in the end of the second quarter and continuing all the way towards year-end. We completed the fourth quarter with a total organic growth of -2.1%, following the recovery trend that it was initiated earlier in the third quarter and highlighting the America segment that actually got back to positive growth in the fourth quarter with a 2.1% score.
All in all, we are of course pleased to see that we have a continued quarter-by-quarter improvement during the second half of 2020. Despite the significant pickup, demand did not reach the level from before the pandemic, obviously. For the year as a whole, we realized a total revenue of EUR 832.9 million, and this corresponds to an organic growth of -11.5%. Let's move on to slide six, please, for a little more detail on how we responded to the pandemic. Over the course of 2020 and during the pandemic, it has been a key focus for us to keep the business fully operational and serve our customers throughout all markets.
We've been able to continue production and distribution with limited or absolutely no interruptions, also during the peak of the crisis. We implemented precautionary measures to ensure that our sales force and obviously sales service technicians could continue supporting our customers. This has been particularly important for customers that are part of the so-called critical infrastructure, healthcare, manufacturing, part of retail, food manufacturing, medical supplies. As a supplier to these customers, we were granted status as an essential business in countries like the U.S. and the U.K., and this has allowed us to continue our operations also in markets where all non-essential businesses had to shut down temporarily. Through our offering, we also responded rapidly to the pandemic and to the increased focus on cleaning and thereby new demands.
We did bring out selected new solutions to market tailored to specific cleaning challenges our customers were facing during the pandemic. We reintroduced a range of steam cleaners in selected markets. We launched a portable disinfectant sprayer solution in the US. Last but certainly not least, we introduced an innovative UV light solution that can disinfect and remove bacteria and virus. This solution is applied to our autonomous scrubber SC50, and the only one in the market. We're proud of that one. Then we had to completely rethink how we interact with customers, meeting them online and performing virtual product demos. Our customers have responded positively to all of these virtual sales visits, and we're confident that these new ways of working and collaborating we will take with us after the pandemic as well.
Internally, we reacted swiftly to the new situation and changes in demand. We focused on proactive cash management, obviously, as well as CapEx reduction and prioritization. At the same time, we executed a restructuring plan, as you heard, with the aim of lowering our structural cost base. This included a reduction in the workforce by approximately 250 full-time employees across functions and regions. While navigating through this quite unusual situation, we did stay focused on our strategy. Key initiative within Nilfisk Next progressed according to plan, the next slide seven, will give you a little more flavor of the highlights of this. Within our autonomous solutions, we've seen solid progress in the sales of the Liberty SC50. Sales have been expanded to multiple customer segments and cleaning applications within industries like airports, retail, healthcare.
Across segments, we've seen a growing interest in autonomous solutions brought on partly by the pandemic. Because of the COVID-19, cleaning has become more essential for many businesses and institutions, and many of them have turned to autonomous cleaning technology to meet these new demands. In parallel, we kept investing and launched an additional autonomous scrubber, the Liberty SC60. It's our largest machine and our first machine built on the software developed by our technology partner, Brain Corp. Because it's larger and relevant for bigger indoor spaces like warehousing and logistics centers, it complements our existing autonomous scrubber, SC50, really well. We continued the execution of the growth plan for the U.S. business, focusing on leveraging the full portfolio, serving our distribution partners better, and strengthening our approach to strategic accounts.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen progress in these three areas during 2020, and obviously we ended with a positive growth in Q4. In terms of our digital efforts, I'm very happy to see the development during the year. We continued to expand our global e-commerce solution, which has been implemented in 16 European markets by year-end. Together with other initiatives we spoke about, like virtual product launch events and sales meetings, as well as the migration to scalable and more efficient web platforms, we have further supported our digital infrastructure and customer experience. Finally, I would like to mention the development of our supply chain. During 2020, we went live with our new European distribution centers operated by our supply chain partner, which is leading to a faster and more efficient delivery to our customers.
Trying to sum up 2020 as a very special year, we've stayed focused on the strategy during a year that challenged us in the marketplace. We've navigated through these challenges with a determined focus on serving our customers and providing them with the solutions and services they needed, and also new products catering for new demands. We have taken action on the new situation and mitigated the impact through strict cost management and restructuring program that altogether has made us able to maintain margins despite the downfall in revenue. This leaves us confident about the commercial execution for 2021. Before I hand over to Prisca, let's just have a quick look for a moment, moving on to slide 18.
First and foremost, our overall focus for 2021 will be on the recovery in the marketplace, and this is backed, of course, by innovation as a continued key driver for the industry, including bringing digital solutions to market and working with sustainability across our business and our offerings. On this backdrop, 2021 will be characterized by dedication to regaining sales volume as markets are recovering, as we expect them to do, from the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic is still around us, there is no doubt that we, at this point in time, see continued uncertainty for market conditions in 2021. Over the last couple of months, we've seen many countries entering into new lockdowns and introduce more restrictions. However, we do believe that the rollout of the vaccines across markets ultimately will lead to a more normalized market condition during second half of the year.
We're determined to meet and address any peak of in demand and any need that may arise in this comeback of the market. That brings me to commercial execution. Nilfisk Next will continue to set the overall direction of our priorities where we navigate the continuous dynamic market conditions. With the progress made in terms of simplifying structures and processes and setup over the last years, including the actions we've taken over the course of 2020, the foundation for commercial execution is solid. With this, I would now like to hand over to you, Prisca, for a financial review of fourth quarter and the full year 2020.
Thank you, Hans-Henrik.
Let me start off with the income statement for the fourth quarter of 2020. Overall, it was a good quarter, showing strong margins and where we demonstrated our ability to address the demand that we saw coming back in the marketplace. As Hans Henrik has just mentioned, in Q4, we saw a continuation of the positive recovery trend in many markets, as we have seen in Q3. As I will detail in a bit more in a moment, several of our markets reported positive growth in the fourth quarter, and together with the continued strong performance of our consumer business, this resulted in organic growth in Q4 of -2.1%. Total reported revenue in Q4 came to EUR 220.2 million, which is a drop of EUR 13.6 million.
Roughly EUR 1 million of this, or 0.3%, comes from the exit of the consumer business in the Pacific region in Q4 last year, and around EUR 8 million or 3.4% comes from FX effects, of which the drop in the US dollar accounts for around half. As a result, the reported growth in Q4 was -5.8%. I'm happy to report that despite the lower revenue, our gross profit was in line with last year at EUR 93.3 million, and the gross margin was up 230 basis points. It's worth noting though that the comps are low. In Q4 last year, in connection with the transition of the Pacific consumer business, we carried out large one-time sales at low margins, which diluted the gross margin of both the consumer business but also the total Nilfisk business.
If we compare to Q3 2020 instead, we still see an increase in gross margin by 130 basis points, mainly as a result of improved capacity utilization owing to higher activity level. Now looking at overhead costs, we are pleased to see a reduction of EUR 5.4 million compared to Q4 last year. Half of this reduction was driven by lower travel expenses and other related costs, like activity-related costs, and such as marketing and consultants, and the remaining half of the reduction was lower personnel costs. As a consequence of the slightly improved overhead cost ratio together with the gross margin improvement, we delivered in Q4 an EBITDA margin before special items that was 320 basis points higher than last year, coming in at 14%.
Special items amounted to EUR 0.8 million, where the majority was related to our new distribution centers in Ghent, which Hans Henrik has mentioned. To summarize, as a result of lower overhead costs, special items, our reported EBIT for Q4 increased by EUR 7.1 million compared to last year and amounted to EUR 11.3 million. The EBIT margin improved by 3.3 percentage points to 5.1%. Looking back at 2020, Q4 was a positive quarter and a positive ending of a year with four very different quarters. On that note, let's move on to the income statement for the full year 2020 on slide 11. Overall, I will say that 2020 has been a turbulent ride.
In terms of fluctuations, we've seen the market demand in revenue, but we've been able to keep our margins up thanks to strong focus on cost, CapEx, and cash. Our full year revenue amounted to EUR 832.9 million, equal to a reported growth of -13.8%. We had a negative FX effect of 1.5 percentage points. Here, a significant part comes from the lower US dollar. The underlying organic growth came to -11.5%, slightly better than what we had expected in our latest guidance update in November last year, which you remember was -12% to -14%. As I just mentioned, the organic growth for the full year is a combination of four very different quarters in terms of underlying market demand.
To recap, in Q1, we saw the first indications in March of what became a significant drop in demand, continuing obviously into Q2, where we experienced our worst quarter in terms of revenue growth. In Q3 and Q4, however, we saw continued quarterly improvement across most of the markets. That development, in combination with a very strong performance throughout the year in our consumer, as I've already mentioned, led to a slightly better revenue than we expected when we reinstated guidance, full year guidance in October. Looking at our profitability in Q2 and Q3, our gross margin suffered a bit from the low capacity utilization. In Q4, though, the positive pickup in the demand led to high activity, which led us to scale up our production.
As a result, during both Q3 and Q4, we've seen gradual improvement in our capacity utilization, which is reflected in the gross margin coming in at 41.6% overall for the full year and at 42.4% in Q4. For comparison, our gross margin in 2019 was 42.1%. Looking at overhead costs, we managed to reduce these by EUR 43.7 million compared to 2019. During Q2 and Q3, we received grants from government support programs of around EUR 7 million. The underlying reduction was around EUR 37 million. Roughly half of this reduction is driven by activity-related costs, such as travel, marketing, or freight costs. The remaining part of the reduction is driven by lower personnel costs, where our restructuring initiative in Q2 and Q3 has been the key driver.
In general, we have realized savings across all functions and across all key markets at Nilfisk. In R&D, while we have maintained our strong innovation focus, we have prioritized our key projects, thus we're able to reduce the R&D ratio from 3.7% in 2019 to 2.8% in 2020. In terms of sales and admin costs, story is more or less the same. Our activity-related costs were lower than in 2019, we've also reduced personnel costs due to the restructuring that I mentioned. Moving on and looking at earnings, we see that the drop in revenue led to a lower gross profit for the year. However, it was partly offset by the lower costs and our EBITDA before special items ended EUR 17.2 million lower than last year.
At the same time, the EBITDA margin before special items was at the same level as last year at 12.1%. Given the exceptional circumstances that we were operating in, I think we can say that this is a solid performance for a difficult year like 2020, and we came in slightly higher than we anticipated in our latest guidance in November 2020. Special items came in at EUR 10.8 million for the year. Two-thirds of this relates to restructuring, as mentioned, carried out in Q2 and Q3, which was triggered by the pandemic, and the remaining part relates largely to the consolidation of the European distribution centers. All in all, for 2020, we report an EBIT of EUR 22 million and an EBIT margin of 22.7%, equal to 19%.
With that, let's move on to a short review of our reporting segments, starting with EMEA on slide 12. Like most markets in the world, EMEA was hit by the pandemic and demand sharply dropped in March. The EMEA South region was most severely impacted as markets like Italy, France, and Spain struggled with the effects of the pandemic, such as lockdowns and restrictions, which affected the business activity. We are pleased to see that during Q3 and Q4, South region recovered quite strongly and the region ended with negative single-digit growth in Q4. In EMEA Central and EMEA North, they were generally less impacted because of a strong correlation with the lockdowns and the country restrictions, which to a certain extent were lighter in these parts of Europe.
Both Central and North showed good recovery trends during the second half of the year as the restrictions were lifted and demand picked up. All in all, revenue for EMEA for the full year came to EUR 396.6 million, corresponding to organic growth of minus 11.6%, with the South region coming in slightly below this and the North region slightly above. Looking at the gross margin for the full year, we saw a decrease of 1.3 percentage points to 46.2%, which is mainly an effect of lower capacity utilization, higher freight costs in the second half of the year, while pricing had a positive impact on the margin.
We were able to offset a large part of the drop in gross profits through cost reductions in the second half of the year. At the end of the day, we did see a drop of EBITDA margin of 2.5 percentage points in EMEA for the full year due to the reduced top line, obviously. Moving on to Americas on slide 13. Overall, we are happy to report positive development in the U.S., which is our biggest market. Similar to EMEA, sales in Americas were hit hard by the drop in demand in Q1, and in particular in Q2. We did see solid recovery in the second half of the year, most outspoken in the U.S., where I'm happy to report that we ended the year with positive organic growth in Q4.
You do need to bear in mind, though, that revenue in Q4 2019 was negatively impacted by a slowdown in the industrial segment, so the comps for that quarter are supporting us here. On the other hand, Canada showed a very slow recovery trend, and in Latin American markets, we've seen a mixed picture with some markets recovering well in the second half, while others were actually at quite low demand levels throughout the pandemic. All in all, revenue for the Americas came in at EUR 247.6 million, and organic growth is -12.4%. Looking at the gross margin, we improved it in Q4 compared to Q3 as a result of better capacity utilization.
When comparing to last year, though, we see the impact of low capacity utilization we've had during a large part of the year. Higher freight costs also had a negative impact, whereas pricing had a positive impact. Overall, the full year gross margin was 40.6%, which is 1.6 percentage points lower than in 2019. The good news is that our cost management effort throughout the year, in combination with lower personnel costs, had a positive effect on the earnings in both Q3 and Q4, which more than offset the drop in gross profit. This is improving EBITDA margin in Q3 and Q4. For the full year, the EBITDA margin ended on par with the year before at 18.7%. Turning to slide 14, where we have the numbers for APAC.
This region is a bit of a mixed bag, with several markets heavily impacted by the pandemic and other markets actually showing good recovery. Overall, our APAC segment has experienced the most severe drop in the demand and in general, we've seen slower recoveries compared to many other markets. A large part of this is the reason for the slow recovery in APAC is the fact that we have a large presence in the hospitality segment, such as hotels, restaurant, casinos, and these industries have been very negatively impacted by the pandemic. We also do see contract cleaners and institutions that are having low demand levels. As we mentioned in October in our Q3 announcement, we are not entirely satisfied with our performance in China, even though we have seen a quarter on quarter improvement in the second half of the year.
I am pleased, however, to see that the Pacific region has been performing both in Q3 and Q4 quite well. As you know, we've been struggling with these markets for some quarters. It is good to see positive indications from this region. Total revenue for APAC for 2020 amounted to EUR 65.8 million, corresponding to organic growth of minus 28%. Gross profit for the full year dropped by EUR 10.4 million. The gross margin improved slightly to 38.8%. It should be mentioned here that in 2019, the gross margin in APAC was negatively impacted by inventory write-downs in Australia in the second half. Costs were slightly lower in 2019 as compared to 2019 as a result of lower activity-related costs. That was not enough to compensate for the drop in gross profit.
As a result, the EBITDA margin for the full year dropped by eight percentage points to 5.3. For our consumer and private label segments, let's move on to slide 15. Starting with consumer, well, we once again in Q4 saw strong performance from this business. Our revenue for the full year was EUR 76 million, corresponding to organic growth of 15.7%. Obviously, a strong contrast to all of our other segments. We're very pleased with this performance because it's not only a result of high market demand in home improvements as a side effect of the pandemic, but indeed also due to a strong effort from our consumer team. It's great to see that the team picked up on opportunities in the market, not just with our existing customers, but also adding new customers during the year.
As you know, we've outsourced the manufacturing of our consumer products to a third party. We now see the positive effect of this move. Thanks to this, and also to an improved product mix, gross margin for the full year improved. The biggest impact, however, comes from the fact that the consumer business made large one-time sales at low margins in connection with the exit from the Pacific. This obviously has diluted the gross margin in Q4 2019, also affected the full-year gross margin for the year 2019. Overall, to sum up, the year 2020 was a solid year for the consumer business. We are obviously happy to see this development. For the private label business, total revenue of 2020 was EUR 46.9 million, which is EUR 6 million lower than the year before.
This is mainly a result of the gradual phase-out of selected accounts during that year. Organic growth was -11.3%. Gross margin improved to 5.4 percentage points due to better product mix. Turning now to the balance sheet and to the cash flow on slide 16. Since the escalation of the pandemic in spring 2020, we focused quite intensively on proactive cash management. We've worked actively to manage our inventory levels to match the expected demand, and we have further emphasized our focus on credit collection. At the end of 2020, inventory levels were down by EUR 23.4 million compared to end 2019. A large part of this reduction is a natural outcome of the lower levels of activity and reduction in our business compared to the same time last year.
In addition, some of the reduction is driven by FX effects. On our trade receivables, we have maintained our collection efforts, and we've maintained the same level as of end Q3, despite higher sales activity in Q4. Comparing to end 2019, we've reduced trade receivables by EUR 20.8 million. Looking at the underlying KPIs, we've seen a drop on the level of overdues and also in the days outstanding as a result of our continued focus on collection of cash. Trade payables, sorry, were reduced by EUR 12 million compared to last year, but were up by EUR 12.9 million compared to Q3 end. Overall, if you compare to Q3 end, net working capital was reduced by EUR 13 million, and this was largely due to higher trade payables.
All in all, we have delivered good progress on our working capital management, and I am happy to see the working capital ratio drop by 180 bips. Please bear in mind, however, that we will see a reversion of this as a consequence of our anticipated top-line growth in 2021. As we've emphasized throughout the year, we have prioritized our CapEx to protect our cash flow. Compared to 2019, CapEx for 2020 was EUR 26 million lower as a result of lower IT investments, lower R&D activity, and to a certain degree, also lower investments in tangible assets such as tools and equipment. Looking at free cash flow, starting with Q4, we generated free cash flow of EUR 5.4 million, which is double of what we had generated in Q4 2019.
Half of the improvement was driven by better operating result of special items, but cash from working capital reduction and lower CapEx also has contributed. If we look at the full year, free cash flow improved by EUR 38.2 million compared to the year before and amounted to EUR 73.5 million. This was mainly driven by lower CapEx and working capital reduction, as I have explained before, but obviously a better operating result after special items and lower tax payments has also contributed to this cash flow improvement. As you know, over the course of 2020, we have had a strong focus on reducing our net interest-bearing debt, and we've reduced it further in Q4 compared to Q3. We remain firmly focused on managing our debt levels going forward. Net bid at the end of 2020 came in at eight hundred and...
sorry, EUR 383.2 million. This was EUR 30.9 million lower than at the end of 2019, and it's EUR 19.1 million lower than at the end of Q3. The level corresponds to financial gearing of 3.8 times. Our headroom at the end of 2020 amounted to EUR 232 million. We leave 2020 in a fairly good shape from a balance sheet point of view. This brings me to the final topic, our outlook for 2021. Please move to slide 18. First, I'll give you some context on the outlook for 2021. As you know, we have come from a situation where we have seen demand improve quarter-over-quarter in the second half of 2020.
Moving into 2021, there has been an increase in lockdowns and restrictions across markets as a result of the continued outbreak of COVID-19. With the roll out of vaccines across the markets, we expect a more normalized environment during the second half of the year. We see, however, continued uncertainty for market conditions in the whole year. We expect the total business in 2020 to generate organic growth of 5%-10% compared to 2020. In 2021, sorry, did I say that? We expect the total business in 2021 to generate organic growth of 5%-10% compared to 2020, based on market demand trends that we were experiencing and the overall expected economic recovery. Structural costs in 2021 are expected at a lower level compared to the year before.
On the other hand, we expect activity-related costs such as marketing, freight, and travel to increase compared to the relatively low levels reported in Q3 and Q4. With our continued focus on cost discipline and revenue growth as described above, we expect EBITDA margin before special items to stay in the range of 12.5%-14.5%. Finally, on other modeling assumptions, we expect a negative FX impact of around 2%, special items of around EUR 5 million, and a CapEx rate of around 3%. This concludes our presentation, and now we are ready to take your questions. Operator, will you please take over?
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you find it's answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Kristian Johansen of Danske Bank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes, sir. Thank you. A couple of questions from me. First one is on the balance between sales prices and cost inflation. First of all, can you elaborate on what level of sales prices you are pushing through into 2021 and also on the cost inflation you are seeing as we are seeing raw material prices and freight prices and so on surge?
Yeah. Thank you for your question, Kristian. You're right. We do see certain cost inflations as you're going through the year. I think I will mention raw materials, but I will particularly mention freight costs, cargo, sea cargo. You know, at the moment the rates are, you know, sometimes 300%, 400% of what we used to see. We don't expect that to last the full year, but it will definitely be a headwind in for sure the first half of the year. As for sales prices, we don't really see any new developments. It's basically a continuation of the developments which was quite positive, which we've seen in the year 2020.
Do you expect to be able to compensate your cost inflation through sales prices, or will those two elements pose a, sort of a dilution of your gross margin?
Yeah. You know, that's at this point of time, quite difficult to predict for us. I can see a scenario where we see both ways. It will very much depend on the freight rates that we see throughout the year, and obviously also on market conditions from a pricing point of view. At this point of time, I won't be able to give you more specifics on that.
Fair enough. Maybe as a follow-up. In case let's say freight cost doesn't normalize, are you able to sort of push through extraordinary price increases? I mean, what will your metrics be in the scenario where sort of the cost inflation sort of stays on or accelerates?
Kristian, I'll give you a historical perspective. This industry has been very disciplined and good at saying there's a yearly price increase. We've done exactly the same. I have not, in my time, seen many try to do extraordinary ones in the middle of the year. I'm not saying we won't consider that, but I'm just giving you historical data that I haven't seen it happen to any significant extent before.
Okay, that's quite clear. My second question is on overhead costs. By what you say, it seems like you've had sort of tailwind of EUR 25 million from COVID-19 related measures, meaning that I think you said EUR 7 million in grants and then half of the remaining reduction must be EUR 18 million in lower travel cost marketing and so on. One is that figure roughly right, the EUR 25 million? What are you assuming that to rebound to? Is that entire EUR 25 million gonna come back in 2021?
First of all, you're right. We have to normalize the overhead cost level in 2024, the grants that we have seen, as obviously they won't come back. You're also right. We will see. That, of course, I think in marketing costs, we definitely will see a bounce back, because that's a leading indicator, and some of it is also reflected in Q4 already. For the travel costs, we will likely also see a bounce back, and we expect that more, I would say, towards the second to fourth quarter.
Overall, that, of course, will then be somewhat mitigated by the restructuring program which we haven't seen the full year effect yet in 2020, as you know, but we'll see the full year effect in 2021.
Understood. My last question, you and I are guiding for 5 million EUR in special item costs. I mean, you have previously indicated there should not be any special items cost once we get to 2021. Can you just elaborate what these 5 million EUR relates to?
I'm very happy to do that. Honest speaking, it's an estimate at this point. We do see effect of some of the programs that will continue into 2021, but this is very minor. As it's early in the year, we don't have complete visibility on some of the more longer-term projects that we are working on, whether they will have an impact in 2021. You have to see this, you know, as an estimate, a rough estimate at this point of time. Obviously, once we have better visibility, we will be able to say more on this. There is no, maybe just to reiterate, there is no major initiatives that you don't know of that we are working at the moment on.
Understood. Very clear. That was all for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Casper Blom of ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you very much. Congrats on the good end to a difficult year. My first question is actually a little bit of follow-up to Kristian's questions regarding cost inflation and freight costs. Basically just trying to figure out You must have seen much higher freight costs also in Q4. Is the freight cost you see in Q4, is that also sort of a good proxy for the starting point for 2021? That's the first question.
Yeah. I'm afraid we will see... What we see in the market right now would lead me to believe that we'd actually be a step up for the Q4 costs. Of course, you have to always think there will always be a volume-related component, there will always be a flow-related component. Overall, what we are seeing right now would mean a step up from Q4 in freight costs.
Excellent. Okay. That's clear. On the, on the working capital side, Christine, you said we should expect a reversal in 2021. Is it basically a full reversal of the working capital improvement you saw in 2020 that will sort of just flip over, or is it more sort of in between?
I think we have to separate two things. I think we have made good efforts on, you know, managing working capital in the sense of days. You know, the turns are going in the right directions, both for DSOs, DIOs. However, of course, we have had a tailwind in 2020 from the reduction in business where we released working capital. Now, your question as to how material that will be compared to 2020 and 2021, of course, depends very much on the top line growth and also of the phasing of the top line growth.
At this point in time, what I know is that there will be a reversal, but giving you specifics as to how big that impact is difficult to say at this point, as it's very different whether you take a 5% or a 10% growth rate on the top line.
Okay. Fair enough. On the CapEx, you guide for the 3% CapEx of revenue. Could you elaborate a little bit on the split of that between R&D and more sort of tangible CapEx? I noted in your annual report that the R&D spend was down to around EUR 23 million from EUR 36 million in 2019. Should we expect that to sort of come back to, yeah, where it was in 2019?
Yeah. As a rough guidance, I would say on the CapEx ratio, R&D will be roughly half. So capitalized R&D, I would expect, roughly half of the 3% CapEx ratio. The rest will be, you know, other things like tools and equipment, IT, and so on.
Okay. Final question from my side is just on the guidance for 2021. If you could talk a little bit more to what would get you to the high end of the EBITDA margin guidance. I suppose it's relying on growth also being in the high end.
Yes. I mean, it's a very good question, obviously. Of course, I can see various scenarios. With the range, we have tried to cater to, you know, a lot of the different developments that we can think of, both in overhead gross margin, but also in revenue. You would. Of course, it would make it quite much easier if we had the top-end range of organic growth also to get closer to the top end of the margin range. As I mentioned before, on the gross margin, there's a couple of uncertainties at this point that would, of course, also drive a different outcome. It will depend on both gross margin development and revenue.
Okay. Just one follow-up. Is there a scenario where you land in the low end of the revenue growth guidance and in the high end of the margin guidance?
You know, I will never say never, but what I can tell you is we will focus as we have done in 2020 on the things we can control. I'm afraid I can't really control freight rates at this point to a large extent, but we can control overhead costs, and we will continue to strike a careful balance between, you know, investing innovation, but also containing our costs and looking for mitigation action. If that case would happen, of course, we do have some mitigation actions that we could pull on the cost side.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Claus Almer of Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Yeah, I would also like to go back to the whole cost inflation for 2021. I'm a bit confused. If you only look at the more COVID-19 linked cost in 2020, which will hopefully not repeat it in this year. Should we understand that due to that the overhead cost will increase by EUR 20 million- EUR 25 million? Was that a confirmation or how should we think about it? That would be the first question.
I think what we can say is, obviously, we have some one-off effects, and maybe that's the COVID costs you were mentioning, somewhere in the range of EUR 7 million on the EBITDA level that will basically not come back. You know, we've seen that pronounced in Q2, and then to a certain extent in Q3, that's government grants in indirect or direct form. That basically would then be a normalized cost level. What you will see is the effect of our restructuring project that we have mentioned, which we have indicated we've seen about half of the full year effect in 2020, so we'll see the second half in 2021, which will lower costs. We are really managing inflation in a very strict way.
We are really trying as best as we can to reduce inflationary pressure on our personnel costs. The remainder will be, as I've mentioned, a mix between marketing, travel, and an outbound freight. That will then what you call maybe be the rebound of the COVID costs. Overall, I would expect the normalized cost level to increase because of that as a net. You know, to what extent we will see during the year, and we do have a certain flexibility, of course, of things that we can do internally. The COVID restrictions will also have an impact on some of the variable costs.
Sorry, I'm still confused. Can we just leave out the restructuring program? Only the positive impact from, yeah, let's call it the COVID-19, for 2020. Normalizing marketing, normalizing traveling, no grants and so on, what will be the increase in the cost level due to that? That's the question, if possible.
I won't be able to specify, you know, in terms of percentage or millions. What I can tell you is that we will see net on that an increase of costs.
Okay. Obviously, that would have been very helpful to make our estimates for 2021. A question regarding the R&D costs. In 2020, it seems like, or it not seems like, you did capitalize less of the R&D cost than we have seen in the past. That could indicate that you are really cutting down the more long-term R&D spend. Maybe you could put some more color to the R&D strategy. That'll be my second question.
Claus. R&D strategy unchanged. We believe firmly in innovation as we've always done. No change. If I go through 2020 with you, we have kept investing in autonomy. We have launched an even better SC 50. We've kept improving that product. We've added UV lighting. We've launched SC 60, the new product. We've launched a number of mid-range products. We've launched a couple of HPW products. We've launched a complete new range of core products for consumer. I'm probably forgetting a few while we talk. There is no change, Claus. We are becoming more effective, though. It's a reality that we invested a lot of money in our own platform on autonomy for SC 50. That was what you saw in 2018 and 2019.
We've always known that that was a sort of upfront investment we needed to do, and we also knew that it would come back. I think I've communicated that earlier. The other thing that we've done in 2020 is that we are now having the China site for R&D being our biggest site. We've scaled up out there during the year. Of course, that does influence the cost structure as well. We're becoming more effective. The strategy hasn't changed, and we're actually quite content with what we've launched in 2020.
Okay. You know, you had this slide with robotics, but we haven't seen any numbers. You used to have a more aggressive ambition. Where are we? How many machines have you been selling? Are you still as ambitious for the outlook? That would be very helpful to some color.
Of course, Claus. Guess what? I was the first one in the industry being aggressive in September 2017 when I said that it could be up to 10% of our revenue within five to seven years. If I look at what has happened since, I'm actually way more content with that statement than I, than I ought to be when I said it in 2017. Nothing has changed, Claus, on the aggressiveness. I'm not willing to give you numbers because obviously for competitive reasons. You can hear that we are quite content and happy with what happened in 2020. And we've met our internal plan in what we wanted to do with the existing product SC50. We are as bullish on that application and segment as we have been since 2017.
Will you going forward, you know, tell us whether or not you will meet your five to seven year target?
We have no intention of communicating anything that can give us a competitive disadvantage. We're not gonna talk about specific volumes, Claus.
Okay. Now just my final question, which goes to one-off costs. I actually have two questions more, sorry. One-off costs. I think you, Hans, in the past have said no more restructuring program, no more one-off costs. Now 2021 will be another one-off cost year. Will 2021 be the last year with one-off costs?
Can I rephrase that a little bit, Claus? My perspective, and it might not completely be aligned with yours, but my perspective has been we've had major restructuring programs over the three years I've been here because we needed to set ourselves up differently. I would look at that EUR 5 million as prudent from our side, saying, If something comes up, we would like to be able to execute it if it gives us a benefit. Look at it that way, Claus. This is. There is no sort of firm program behind the EUR 5 million. This is for us to say we don't wanna be limited if something comes up that makes sense.
Okay. it would not be employee related, it would be more investment.
We do-
into, you know
We do not know, Claus. We have it because we want to be prudent. I don't want to be in a situation if I get a good idea in June, I've told you it'll be zero, and then you will come back and tell me you were lying to me. I'm not going to do that.
That I will never say.
I know, but we've. We're basically putting it in there. We don't have a dedicated program behind it at the moment, but we think it's prudent to say that we might get ideas through the year, and then it would be good to have told you already that it might be up to EUR 5 million.
Right. Okay. Just a final question. I know you're probably not going to give a quarterly, guidance, but maybe you could, you know, share some details on how this second third wave of COVID-19 have impacted Q1.
You know that we will not and cannot talk to current trading. All you have to look at Claus is the trend you saw Q2, -29%. You saw -7% in Q3, and then you saw -2% in Q4. Look at the recovery trends. We are adding to it that we're not through the woods yet. There are still uncertainties out there given the... People talk about wave three and blah, blah, blah. Look at the trend and then add the speak on top that we're not out of the woodwork yet.
Could you see Q1 2021 be like the same as Q1 last year? There was also lockdowns, and it was slightly different pattern, but still.
It was a very different quarter last year, to be honest. I don't think you can compare because literally January and February were corona free. I know we had impact in China, but the overall majority of our business was not impacted in January, February.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mikael Petersen of SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. The first one goes to regarding the guidance of the growth for 2021. You speak about normalization in the second half as being one of the assumptions. What kind of assumptions do you have for the first half of the year? That'll be my first question.
I think I wanna go with where I just left it, Mikael. We're still seeing uncertainty in first half. We're not looking at a situation where we expect to get back to 2019 levels. We expect some recovery, but definitely not to that level. Because you can ask me, how many products are you selling for airports or for hotels at the moment? Not many, trust me. We're not seeing a full recovery.
Okay, thank you. I have a second question on the APAC market. It seems that China is dragging down the division, but the other part of APAC is doing quite all right with Australia, for instance, but also in comparison with the Tennant, which also reported here recently, we saw like more or less like the opposite picture that China was doing very, very well, but the opposite or the other parts of APAC was doing not so good. Can you try to talk a little bit about the competitive situation in APAC and how you see, how you see that develop through 2020?
I think you did it excellent, Mikael. You just said that we have a little bit of an opposite situation where we are happy with Australia and New Zealand and Tennant is not. Tennant is happy about China, I'm not. That is the competitive situation in that space. We're working obviously on two fronts, right? We have a structural situation in Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Where the hospitality is an issue, and obviously we are hoping that for many good reasons that we can all start traveling to those regions again, and that will help. Then, of course, China, we're doing a little bit more fundamental work, making sure do we have the right indirect setup? Do we have the right push on strategic accounts?
So on and so forth. We've now brought China into direct report to our head of sales globally, Steen. We are having focus on saying, How can we do that better?
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kristian Johansen of Danske Bank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes, thank you. Just two follow-ups here. First one, trying to address the topic of current trading in a slightly different way. I mean, if we look at how your customers have reacted during the current lockdown here in Q1, are there any differences to how they reacted during the lockdown in Q2?
Yes, there is. There is, Kristian. Quite honestly, everybody was scrambling in Q2 last year because it was so new that nobody really knew what to do. Where I believe that where we are now, where we were in Q4, they're finding their ways in how to do things in a safe way and in a different way. I wouldn't compare the two at all. Segment-wise, Kristian, there are just segments that I, as I've highlighted, where obviously they're not buying cleaning equipment at the moment. It's just a fact when you have industries like restaurant, hotels, airports and stuff that is so much under pressure that buying cleaning equipment is not first in their priorities.
Understood. Then the second follow-up here, on cost inflation. Can you quantify how much raw material costs and transportation costs are as a portion of sales?
Sorry, as a percentage of sales? What I can tell you is on our COGS, roughly 85% are variable and a large part of that is transportation and raw materials.
Okay. The split between transportation and raw materials, is that roughly the same or that you have-
I would say the overwhelming part obviously is raw materials. It's components of the 85%.
Understood. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thank you. We have a follow-up from Casper Blom of ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks, Lars. just one follow-up here. I seem to recall that before things started heading south, you had a medium-term target, I think that after IFRS 16, if the target was, like, 15.7%-17.7% in the EBITA margin. Please correct me if I'm wrong. As I also recall it, you were sort of walked away from having any timing to that target. Now, where things are starting to be back on track, at least we're progressing in the right direction, when would you sort of see that old target again being relevant?
Thank you for asking, Casper. Let me confirm that you remember right, 15.7, given the new IFRS 16. You know, the target has always been relevant. I've said it numerous times that I believed in that potential. Honestly, given my learnings from the past, I'm not gonna give you a time. I confirm that I firmly believe in the potential, then we will guide you every year, and take it from there. I'm not in the business of reinstating midterm guidance or anything like that, just coming out of a 2020 COVID year. I'm pleased to see the uptick in our guidance from the 12.5% to 14.5%.
I can't tell you anything more apart from the fact that I still firmly believe in the potential.
Do you also still firmly believe in the high end of that target, which was 17.7%?
Let's get into the interval before we have that conversation, Casper. Let's see.
Yeah. Fair enough. Thanks a lot. Thanks very much.
Thank you. We have one further question in the queue at this time. That's from the line of Mikael Petersen of SEB. Please go ahead, your line is open.
I have a follow-up question regarding the distribution center that you now have changed in Europe. Can you try to quantify the financial impact of this?
Yeah. Can I start in a different place from that, Mikael? First of all, it's a strategic decision, right? We don't believe we are the world's best at running a warehouse and distribution, we've chosen to have a 3 PL check, which means we've closed down our own centers. It gives us a better, we're positioned better down in Belgium than we used to be, being here in Copenhagen. Obviously, it has an impact on our freight costs in a positive way because we're more centrally placed. I really don't wanna quantify it as such. You should see it as, yes, there is a benefit financially, but also importantly, the customer experience will be better given that we're more centrally placed.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe a slightly similar follow-up. The savings in the operations that you moved out of Denmark, are you able to quantify that in any way?
You mean from taking our Danish center to Belgium? Did I hear you say that right?
Yeah. you also moved, other parts of the organization, for example, R&D you moved out.
That is all... I mean, those are two separate questions, right? What is pertaining to the restructuring program, that is included in what we've seen second half 2020 and the full year effect that we see the second part in 2021. I think that is pertaining to your question to the R&D savings and the shifts that we've doing or that we have been doing. On the distribution center, we have definitely incorporated the impacts into our calculations for the guidance range for 2021. This is included.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no further questions on the line at this time, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.
Thank you, operator. Thank you all for spending an hour with us, with lots of great questions and a pleasant dialogue. We look forward to speaking to you soon again. Thank you.