Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Earnings Call on the Q2 and H1 Year Results of the CANCOM Group. In addition to our usual comments on the business performance, we have included a detailed overview of the financial effects of our recently closed deal. We have a lot to talk about, and so let's start right away with Rudi Hotter, our CEO.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Earnings Call for Q2 2021. In this call, my colleague Tom Stark and I will give you a brief update on the developments of the Q2 , the most important factors of influence, and a detailed insight into the effects of the most recent sale of our U.K. business the financial KPIs. Let's start right away with the results of the Q2 2021. The business development of the Q2 and, thus, the H1 of the year 2021, mark for us a return to the dynamic growth trend of the recent years. With these results, we leave the very special year 2020 behind us and focus on profiting from the large opportunities that arose from it. Especially in the Q2 , we have seen outstandingly high growth rates, high profitability, and encouraging demand from customers.
Most important for us, we have seen no major impact of the current supply chain constraints in our half year results. We have been able to manage the situation well in the H1 year and feel absolutely prepared to keep on doing so in the H2 of 2021 as well. The major event after the end of the reporting period has, of course, been the closing of our sale of the U.K. business. The deal shows the value of our business model as CANCOM UK&I was basically a small reproduction of the CANCOM Group as a whole in terms of product offerings and service capabilities. On this slide, we give a brief overview of the important deal KPIs. The deal will lead, based on preliminary estimates, to a book gain of EUR 225 million. This will be recorded in our profit for the period in the Q3 .
After this deal, we will fully focus on market consolidation in the D.A.C.H. region and on strengthening our position as a leader in our core markets. As we all tend to focus very much on financial KPIs in these kind of calls, which is absolutely okay. It's very important to me that from time to time, we change the perspective and see how other stakeholders see CANCOM. This graphic shows the results of an independent market research by ISG, giving CANCOM the top position in the German mid-market for our hybrid cloud data center managed services offerings. This market is characterized by strong competition. This market is very important as it covers exactly what we think is the dominant trend for future IT. The combination of private, dedicated public, and hyperscaler clouds, and the management of these hybrid environments.
This is the new normal for state-of-the-art IT. Thus, we are very proud that our experts are recognized for their great skills and dedication by this independent market analyst. Now let's take a look at our Q2 results again. We have achieved outstanding growth rates of 19% top line and 61% EBITDA growth in the Q2 2021. The EBITDA margin was impressively 9.4%. We show with these results that we can profit from the opportunities of enhanced digitization efforts in all areas of economic and public life. The organic growth rates are strong as well. We are very happy with the outcome of the most recent quarter. The Cloud Solutions segment shows our managed service business. With 4% revenue growth and an EBITDA increase of 26%, we are able to reach an EBITDA margin of almost 32%.
This margin shows to you how high the value of our existing service contracts really is. Please keep in mind that we have always characterized the segment as consisting of three parts: trading of hard and software in connection with service contracts, onboarding contracts of new customers, and last but not least, the most important thing, and running multi-year contracts. The 4% growth means that customers are still reluctant to make strategic IT decisions and sign multi-year contracts. This leads to less low margin hardware sales and less lower margin onboarding projects in the segment, and gives you a clear insight of the profitability of the already existing business. Will the trend towards more complex IT stop? No. Will the scarcity of IT experts go away? No. Will customers return to signing new managed service contracts with us? Absolutely yes.
Consequently, we are very optimistic for the future development for the Cloud Solutions segment and the growth perspective here. The IT Solutions segment was simply very strong in Q2. Good top-line growth, great profitability, even without the special effects shown on this slide. A lot of reasons to be confident for the H2 of 2021. We are able to win projects and especially receive a good chunk of the additional funds being put into the public sector for digitization efforts. Overall, we have achieved a very encouraging development in the H1 of 2021. With 13% revenue growth and 37% EBITA growth, we can show that we are very well able to deal with the current supply chain issues. Based on this experience, we are very confident to be able to do so in the second half of the year as well.
If we manage this, we have very good chances to outperform our forecast for 2021. The most important KPI for our strategic journey towards the hybrid world of IT and what I call Systemhaus 4.0, is the annual recurring revenue. ARR kept on growing year-over-year with almost 20%. The development is fully in line with our internal targets. The EBITA chart below points out the ongoing success of our decision to invest in the managed services offerings years ago. It is now by far the main source of our earnings. After these remarks, I hand over to Tom Stark, who will lead you through some more financial performance indicators and the details of the effects from the U.K. transaction.
Thank you, Rudi. My name is Tom Stark, CFO of CANCOM, and I'm very pleased to have you in the call. We will have, to some extent, a special call and quite some challenges. We are taking care of two topics. We are going to talk about the financial KPIs first, just as usual, and then we have to deal with the effects and impacts of the transaction that we have done in the Q3 , and I will provide you with the most important details on this transaction as a second step on my part. Let's start with the operating cash flow first. We have shown in the H1 of 2021, a significantly improved operating cash flow compared with the previous year. Yes, given that last year we had to face the challenge of the COVID-19 crisis that started, we all had expected a better inflow.
Nevertheless, we do now have to tackle the challenges of a supply chain shortage that we are mastering well. Rudi has already talked about the no significant impact on the revenue line topics, and I will comment further with the outlook on this topic. In detail, we have approximately the same volume of accounts payable, so no significant change year-over-year. We have a significantly improved accounts receivable position, which has improved from -35 to +13, and we have increased level of inventories. Let me comment on the increased level of inventories first. We are all pretty much aware that we are not really aware of what the impact of the supply chain shortage might be. We have taken the decision that business first, we try to manage the business.
We are trying to do things even if they might influence or have a negative impact on the operating working capital. We have a deterioration of the inventories that is even higher than in the previous year, and nevertheless, we have a significantly improved operating working capital. From our point of view, we have very well managed the situation. We do still have a backlog that is 40% higher than our average or at the same point in the previous year, and that's a clear indication of the potential that we see in the business and underlines our optimism going forward. Rudi will talk about the forecast later on. What do we expect going forward for the third and fourth quarter? Again, business first.
If we are taking the decision that we will do all the orders, that we will procure products that are the enabler for our services and that are prerequisites to deliver projects on our customer side, then we will clearly do all the things that are necessary to get the product on board. It's, again, quite difficult to give you a clear insight what's going to happen. Nevertheless, if you look at the previous year, we are very confident that we have a very significant improvement in the third quarter and that we will have a very significant inflow in the fourth quarter again. Finally, the net cash position as at 30th of June was EUR 265 million, so just in line with the development of the working capital that was required for the business. If we take a look at the CapEx, we have as well an improved position.
We have reduced CapEx from EUR 17.3 -EUR 16.5 in this same year-to-date perspective. CapEx to sales ratio ended up with a 2.3% of the last 12 months sales. Again, we have an improvement and we are very confident to achieving our goals of a target of below 2%. Reasons therefore will be at the end of the year, we will have higher revenues. We are expecting clearly just in line of the IT business industry development of having a better second half of the year than first half of the year. Last but not least, we have already commented on a more long-term view of the CapEx requirements where we see a significant improvement to less than 1.5% going forward starting 2022, with reduced CapEx requirements for the introduction of [inaudible] and so on. Let me comment on the cash flow from investing activities with one additional topic.
We have bought Anders & Rodewyk at the beginning of this year. It's in the consolidation since January 1st and you can see that we have finished our preliminary purchase price allocation and we have disclosed the data in the report. You can see there a EUR 12 million share price outflow of investing activities for Anders & Rodewyk and a EUR 4 million earn-out position that has not yet become part of the CapEx. Before we come to the actual impacts and effects of the sale of the UK&I business, first of all, some technical aspects of the sale. We have commented on in an ad hoc statement that we have released mid-May that we are trying to find out or assessing options for the business and what might be the best for Cancom and for the business of UK&I going forward.
The decision finally took place in the third quarter, which is pretty much in line with what we have reported to you. Its effect is that we can consider this business as discontinued operations only starting from Q3, but then having to eliminate and deconsolidate all the data starting from Q1 2020. That means we will now provide you and do our best in order to show you what are the impacts and the effects that you have to expect. What do you need in order to adjust your models, which we will hopefully do in a proper way for you and that's what the intention of the next slide to come. The first slide refers to the most important data, the financial KPIs, revenue, EBITDA, and EBIT. We have disclosed this to you in the most important segments and group-wise.
You will always have the same structure of the slide. You have group, you have UK&I, and you have group without UK&I to provide you with the clarity that you might need. First of all the data are preliminary. Clearly, they are not audited yet. There might be some currency exchange rate effects that have to be considered. All the effects that we are talking about should be minor. There should be no material changes to come. This is basically what you need in order to simply adjust your models. All data are in EUR. It makes it easier for you to compare. Therefore, we can see the group effects of 2020 that were allocated to UK&I were EUR 144.5 million in revenue, EUR 22.1 in EBITDA, and EUR 3.5 in EBIT. Let me comment on the data that you see.
We have sold the business and Rudi has already commented on the multiple. We have sold this EBITDA of EUR 22.1 million for an enterprise value of EUR 398 million. Again, we are very satisfied in what we have achieved in the sales process and we are very happy with the results. What is the most important for you to know and what would we like to highlight most, we have sold EUR 3.5 million of EBIT only. This is something that is very important to know and this is something that we think represents, compared to the previous year's EBIT, just a few percent, roughly 5% of the overall EBIT. Accordingly, the data for the H1 of 2021 to give you some insight what to expect with the Q3 figures. We will have to adjust them and here are the data presented.
Again, focusing on the most important KPI on this slide, We have a contribution of the UK&I business, EBIT-wise, to the group in the H1 of 2021 of EUR 2.0 million EBIT. In line with this development, we can show what the amortization and PPA effects are that we see. We will talk about the balance sheet effects later on. We can see that we will have significantly reduced impact on amortization, both amortization and earnings per share. This slide illustrates that there will be a significantly reduced amount of amortization that will be deducted from EBITDA and from EBITA to get to EBIT. We will have significantly improved figures going forward. EBIT will be impacted most, EPS will be impacted most, and this is something that we have to take into account. Let me, first of all, finally talk about the financial KPIs.
Both EBIT and EPS are not the financial KPIs that we are reporting in our forecast. Rudi will come into them later on. With regards to the annual recurring revenue, we can see and provide you with the split between the U.K.&I. business and the group overall business. Again, you can see what the impact of the sale of the U.K.&I. business are on the group. Clearly, we have seen an effect that is approximately EUR 65 million out of EUR 225 million that will be reduced going forward and looking backwards. We have, as a starting point, provided you with the data December 2019. Important for you to know is the ARR growth, and these are the two figures on the right side of the slide. We have an even accelerated growth after the sale of the U.K.&I. business.
The transformation process is well in line with what you expect and what we expect from ourselves. We have an even accelerated ARR growth after the elimination or deconsolidation of the UK&I data. We are now at a point where we first and foremost have to talk about, well, we are not going to go through the slides in detail, but we are providing you with the relevant data. We always strive to give you all the details that you might need. Hopefully, we will cover them to the best of our knowledge. Do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have further questions. With regards to revenue, EBITDA, EBITA and EBIT, we will have this data in the slide set that is released and published on the website, and do not hesitate to ask if you have further questions.
We are just flipping through these slides, and we will end up with some other KPIs after those splits in terms of quarter, the effects. Just a little look at the balance sheet effect that we see. We have done the following, the transaction effects will be as follows. The goodwill and the intangible assets will be reduced by, well, goodwill EUR 110 million, intangible assets by EUR 19 million. In contrast, we will get the cash inflow, which is EUR 392.9 million, to be more precise on this point. The difference, basically, in very easy words, is the increase of the total equity, which is the book gain that we have achieved by the transaction. We have converted intangibles and goodwill into cash and book gain, and that basically leads to the effect on the balance sheet side.
Let me comment on the tax issue that is related with the book gain. Just to make it clear, the tax rate for the book gain will only be applied to a 5% of taxable amount that are actually to be taxed. 1.5% approximately should be the tax rate to apply on the EUR 225 million book gain. The after-tax effect will be very significant, and clearly, we will have a one-time effect that will be in the earnings per share. We've already talked about the topic of discontinued operations. We will not show the effects in neither EBITDA, nor EBITA, nor EBIT. It will be a profit from discontinued operations and will nevertheless contribute in total to the earnings per share. Finally, and this should be the end of my part, we have some upcoming events in the financial calendar.
We are pretty much aware that the question of you might be, "What are you going to do with the money that you have raised? What is the strategy going forward? What are your plans if you divest the UK&I business? What's the focus and what are you doing in order to grow shareholder value and so on?" That is something that would be, well, too much for just a call like this one. We are going to prepare all this, and we would like to invite all of you to our Capital Markets Day, which should take place mid-October in three locations. Separately, we will be in Paris, in London, and in Frankfurt. We will have with us our strategy. We will be available for you in person. This will be Rudi and myself.
In addition to ourselves, it will be our new COO, Mr. Ruediger Rath. And it's the perfect starting point to get to know you and to talk about what are we going to do with the funds that we have received and what is the strategy going forward. I'm happy to invite you, and it would be great to meet you in person. Hopefully, the COVID-19 situation will allow this event. We are still hoping that it can take place, and this is something I would like to invite you. Apart from that, on the 11th of November, there will be the quarterly statement as at 30th of September, and clearly there's one official analyst conference at the German Equity Forum in Frankfurt at the end of November.
With those words, I would like to hand over to Rudi, and I hope to have fulfilled your expectations regarding the effects and impacts of the transaction.
Thank you, Tom. Dear ladies and gentlemen, we think that 2021 offers more chances to us than risks. This is how I commented our forecast in the last earnings call. Since then, we feel even more sure that the opportunities will prevail. Even on the background of this great first half of the year, we left the forecast as it is for two reasons. Firstly, we believe that Cancom has always been better off with a more defensive stance towards forecasting. This is how you should understand this forecast as well. Secondly, we clearly see very good chances to outperform our forecast. This is simply based on the fact that we have been so successful in the H1 of 2021.
We have been able to manage the current supply chain and the ongoing COVID-19 issues quite well. We feel well prepared to do so also in the H2 of the year. We want to have just a little bit more visibility into the supply chain situation in Q3. This is a factor we cannot fully control ourselves. This is what we want to be absolutely sure about before talking about our forecast again. Thanks a lot for your time and your questions. Hope to see you again, the earliest in our call for the Q3 results. Until then, stay safe. Bye-bye.