Hello, everyone. David Rönnberg here from Stockholm, and with us, we also have Toni from Helsinki. We are glad to be here today to present our Q4 report that we're extremely happy with. We can move on and change the slides, Toni. We presented a strong growth with best ever quarterly EBITDA. First, I'd like to start with some highlights for the fiscal year 2021, and also some of the fantastic records we've achieved. Extremely happy with this. If we look at the net sales during the year, that was very strong. We had 20%. But not only were we growing 20%, we were able to grow the gross profit with 25%, which means that we were having higher margins even though we were growing 20%. That's fantastic.
Adjusted EBITDA came in at 23% growth. With 20% growth in sales, we were even doing stronger growth in EBITDA. Something that we've been focusing on the full year is the loyalty club and getting as much customers into the system as possible. We had a record growth of 13%. If we include all the customers that has come into the online verticals, we actually go over that, up close to 15%. Another thing that is key for us is to focus on our Own & Exclusive, and that share of sales came in at 51%, growing as well. All of these things is helping out, of course, for stickiness, loyalty, and also driving profitability.
If we look at the cash flow that came in at EUR 55 million, was also very strong. That's of course related to a lot of things, but one thing that we pointed out here is that average spend has been growing with 5%. We also have been focusing on opening and acquiring stores. We acquired all the franchise stores in Finland. We have opened greenfields in Sweden and Norway. The number came in at 49 stores during the year. That's above our own expectations. That was about 30. If we specifically look at the fourth quarter, that was actually the best in Musti's history. We had the highest sales, EUR 91.5 million. We had an accelerating two-year growth.
We look at it from a one-year perspective, but also from a two-year perspective because of the COVID-19 impact that came earlier. On a two-year perspective, we came in at 42%, and that's like during the year, we were accelerating, coming in at 32% two-year growth and going up to 42%. We also achieved the highest adjusted EBITDA in the group's history, came in at EUR 11.2 million. All in all, we are extremely happy with the performance in the fourth quarter and during the year. Let's go in more into the Q4 report on the next slide. If we look at a bit of the details, net sales increased with 18.9%, as I said, to EUR 91.5 million. That's mainly driven from new customers coming in.
We are continuing taking market share in all three countries. Sales in like-for-like, which is something that we look at, we see that was growing with 10.9% in total, coming from 8.2% in the stores and online about 20.2%. We were meeting very high online growth numbers last year. That's why we look at this from a two-year basis as well. Even though we were growing 20% online, the group's adjusted EBITDA increased by 11.2% to EUR 11.2 during the fourth quarter, and the margin came in at 12.2% versus 13.2%.
We have mentioned this before, but last year there was some specific things coming in in lower cost structure related to COVID-19, and also this year we were burdened a bit in the Q4 regarding the warehouse consolidations with about 400. So with Toni, we'll go into this more in detail going forward. From a cash flow perspective, operations came in at EUR 15 million. Last year's were EUR 20 million. This fluctuates a bit up and down during the quarters, but from a full year perspective, we came in at EUR 55 million, which is something that we're extremely happy with. Also here, Toni will go into the details. Number of customers, 1.3 million customers now. That's approximately a growth of 13% in the total customer base.
As I said earlier, if you include all the online verticals, we actually have 1.53 million customers, which is a record number in the Musti history. Important also to point out that the strong trend has continued after this fourth quarter into the first quarter this year. Let's look more into the growth drivers. One important thing that is driving growth, maybe not so much short term, but from a long-term perspective, is these puppy registrations. We've been mentioning this before. We've seen that a lot of new customers is coming in with puppies. The fun thing with this is, of course, that we can serve them and help them. From a long-term perspective, we hopefully can have them around for 10 years.
If we look at the numbers, we see that the puppy registrations that we can follow in Sweden was growing 14% during the quarter. On a two-year growth, it was actually 26%. Which is extremely good, but maybe more interesting is for us to see how many of these puppy customers we can capture into our loyalty program. From a group perspective during Q4 when the puppy registrations in Sweden was 14%, we saw that we had a growth of 34% of new puppy food customers. In July, we had the record high levels. As I said, the important test is that these customers comes in at a low entry, and then they will ramp up hopefully the coming ten years.
This is supporting our long-term growth. Let's look more into the sales on next slide. Net sales increased by 18.9%. Once again, a very strong quarter, 11% like-for-like. Strong growth in all countries. Finland came in at 12% growth, super strong. We were outgrowing the groceries and all the competitors in Finland, even though we've been there now for 30 years. It was strong growth in the stores, a bit lower in the online part, and that's related to meeting strong COVID-19 numbers in the online part. Sweden was growing 19%. Strong growth in stores and a bit lower online as well.
Also here we were having high comp numbers last year, as I talked about with the strong comps that was. Then Norway came in as 53% growth. Very strong growth in both stores and online. In the rolling 12 months, last 12 months, we had sales of EUR 341 million. Per segment, Sweden and Norway is taking a bigger share, as we can see here on the right side. Finland has 44%, Sweden and Norway 56. Last year, same period, Finland had 47%. This is part of the plan, growing Sweden and Norway to be at the same levels as we have in Finland. If you look at the sales on a bit longer perspective, on next slide.
Here, coming back to what I was saying earlier, that we look at it from a one-year perspective, but also from a two-year perspective. This gives you a bit of a easier to see how strong the trends is in Musti Group. Musti Group is actually increasing on a two-year basis. We were coming in at 19% growth in the quarter, but we were meeting high comps last year. Here you can see on the right side how strong actually the growth is on a two-year basis. This is driven by new customers and average spend, as earlier. It's obvious that our concept is working extremely well and that we're taking market share.
If you look at the last four quarters, Musti is growing with about 20%. If you look at the two-year basis, we actually have been speeding up during the year, coming in at 32% growth in Q1, and in the end of the year, we came out of 42%. It's a fantastic situation to be in. If you look into our profitability on next slide. We follow a lot of KPIs. One KPI that we will start following even more going forward is the EBITDA. Here you can see that we deliver a record EBITDA. In Q4, we delivered 17.2. We were still burdened some with the Eskilstuna and the supply chain part with about EUR 400,000.
If you adjust for that, 17.6%. We have some seasonality effect, as you see, and that also affects the margin going a bit up and down. If you look at the last 4 quarters, we see that we came in at EUR 58.8 million in EBITDA. If we adjust for the warehouse consolidation, we end up with a negative effect of EUR 1.5 for the full year, we end up at EUR 60.3. With the EUR 60.3 million euro adjusted, we have EUR 55 million in cash flow. A very good situation. With this, I would like to hand over to Toni that will go into the Q4 EBITDA.
Thank you, David, and hello, everyone. My name is Toni Rannikko. I started as Musti CFO in September, been with the company a very short while of the full year, 2021. Luckily, I have a great finance team in Musti who has helped to put together the report. As mentioned, Musti had its record quarter in EBITDA and still remembering that it was burdened a bit by our warehouse consolidation project with a EUR 400,000 effect on that one. Still kind of recalling the year ago time, especially in Finland, there was quite heavy restrictions related to COVID. If summing up both of these parts, we are actually quite on the level on a relative profitability year-over-year.
Our gross margin improved due to the reasons what David showed there in the first page. Especially our Own & Exclusive share of sales is growing and is now over half of our sales. We have efficient category management, so the team is relentlessly looking opportunities what we can get in the sourcing part. There were adjustments of EUR 0.9 million, mainly related to restructuring costs on the quarter four. Also the EBIT on the quarter was Musti record of improving from last year with a EUR 1 million. Here on the next slide, we can take a look on the EBITDA margin development.
You can see on the left side of the picture, kind of on the normal seasonality and the record high number there on the quarter, and on two-year basis, improvement of 61% on quarter four. Good development in that sense. Then in the right side picture, maybe the red one describing last year with lots of COVID impacts and then the light green describing this year are maybe upside down in a sense, but I see this as a lot of opportunities for Musti. We are doing great in our front part of the company, so in the markets and sales and acquiring new customers.
We have quite good opportunities in the back end of the company, talking about our supply chain, our head office, and so on, how we can do things more efficiently as Musti has been on the rapid growth and continues to be on the rapid growth. There we can have more focus and will have more focus with very firm actions in the future. Going into more detail on the segments. We start from Finland, where we had the net sales increased by 12% in the quarter. Then for the full year, we grew to EUR 153 million, which means 12.5% growth.
At the same time, the market growth in Finland is roughly 6%, so we are growing twice as fast as the marketplace does. Our market share in Finland is now roughly 31%, and we improved that there, of course, as well. What was topical for Finland's quarter and the year was that in quarter four, we acquired altogether 16 new franchise stores and during the year, even a bit more. What comes to the profitability of Finland, so there was the impact on the COVID-19 comp last year and then also the kind of our main warehouse burdening cost to Finland as well.
Going to Sweden, and there we had also a great growth growing faster than Finland, like David there mentioned, which is our plan to grow Sweden and Norway. Here we have the quarterly growth on 19%, and then the full year, we reached almost EUR 150 million with growth of roughly 20%. In Sweden, the market growth was a bit faster than in Finland, around 8%. There our market share at the moment is also around 30-31%. There was a bit of a tailwind from the currencies, but even if you look at in the local currencies, the performance of Sweden was stellar. We also opened new stores in quarter four and also during the whole year in Sweden with large numbers.
The final but not least market we have, Norway, incredible growth there continues. In the quarter, we increased our net sales over 50% to EUR 11.5 million, and the full year numbers for Norway are now a bit north of EUR 40 million with a stellar 60% growth on that marketplace. Due to our fast growth, also the whole market is growing faster than in other countries. We are there around 10%-13% market growth and having now double-digit market share also in Norway. In Norway, the result was sort of on the level compared to previous quarters.
Here may be the main reason is that Norway is growing in size compared to its colleagues in Finland and Sweden. Then also kind of the share that we allocate to Norway in our sort of a central cost, meaning the supply chain warehouse and head office. Norway is getting a proportionally larger share on these ones. Combining that into the rapid growth and openings of the new stores in Norway, which then start to bear fruit in the later stage, quite fast, but still having the ramp-up phase there in the new stores. Looking at Norway, there is good reason to be proud on that growth.
Moving to a slide on our financial position. Net cash flow from last quarter EUR 15 million compared to last year's EUR 20 million. That is explained mainly due to the inventory growth and accounts payable growth as our size is growing bigger. Preparing for the Christmas season at that point is the main item in that one. The full year cash flow, like David said there, EUR 55 million. It's a great number compared to our growth speed and other KPIs. Gearing steady on 70%. The net debt growth from EUR 95 million to EUR 113 million is mainly coming also from the network expansion and IFRS 16 booking. Sort of our leasing liabilities is growing that number.
Maybe the final point on this slide is the investments and CapEx that we have used. On the final quarter, EUR 3.2 million into investments. On top of that, we used also EUR 4 million on acquisitions. As mentioned, in Finland 60 new stores and then during the full year, we invested almost EUR 13 million plus and then EUR 4 million on the acquisitions, which totals to roughly 7% of our top line as investments for the future growth. With these words, I hand over back to David and our ecosystem.
Thanks, Toni. Yeah. I think, coming back also to some of the investments is that during 2021, we have been building and launching a lot of things in our ecosystem. We know that we since before have a, you know, fantastic concept with the stores, with our online presence, the omni-channel, fast deliveries, et cetera. We have been speeding up, especially in the puppy initiatives. We have puppy dates, puppy clubs have been launched in all markets. We're widening also the pet spa, like grooming, trimming. We have about now 80 stores with that spa. We have been launching training, like digital training in the stores, and live shopping is launched. All of this combined is something that we call All You Need is Musti.
This will continue, we can see the fantastic results getting more of these puppy customers in than the market, more than our market share, more than twice as much, actually. We can see that we now have a record number of customers in the loyalty program, 1.3 million, and including the online ones we have in the verticals, we have 1.53 million customers. With that said, we have never been in a stronger position than we are at this point, and that takes us to our financial targets. Musti Group is well on track to reach our net sales and margin targets that was set in May 2021. If you look at the growth, net sales is to reach EUR 500 million at 2024.
Last twelve months, we are at EUR 341 million. If we look at the profitability mid to long term, EBITDA margin has at least 13%, and we are now at 2021 at 10.8%. Capital structure net debt, as Toni was talking about, below 2.5, and we are currently at 1.9. Dividend policy to pay a dividend corresponding to 60%-80% of the net profit, and we now have a suggestion for 70% for 2021. Overall, we are happy with our position and look forward to continue this fantastic journey.
If you do a summary on the quarter, I think something that I want to point out is that the front end with the sales, customers, margin, gross profit is going extremely well. We are growing the business with over 40% with increased margins over two-year basis. Also, all other important indicators that we look at, like Own & Exclusive brands, share of sales, the growth, customers, average spend, et cetera, is all going in the right directions. With that said, we still have opportunities in the back end. We have a clear plan, what we should do, to actually achieve it, and that will have a positive effect on the efficiency and the margin. Coming back then to the store sales, that during the quarter was growing extremely fast.
We saw that online growth has been a bit slower. That will start to speed up again now when we're meeting a bit lower comps online. We had an EBITDA with 11.2%, came in at EUR 11.2 million. That was a record EBITDA quarter, but still we're not happy. We want to have these burden things from the warehouse and the supply chain out of the way so we can have a more efficient and higher EBITDA going forward. EBITDA, the gross margin, is something that we want to point out, as well as I did earlier. It came in at 45.7%, versus last year, 44%. At the same time, we were growing 19%, which is extremely good.
The board has also then proposed a dividend of EUR 0.44 versus last year EUR 0.38, which is also a number that's a bit higher than last year. Extremely important to point out that these trends is very stable and that Musti's underlying growth has continued to be strong after the fourth quarter. With that, we're happy to hand over for questions.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Joni Sundelin from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the good presentation. A couple of questions. Maybe I start with the puppy customers growth. Can you give any comments on how this developed during the Q4 and how it has continued after the Q4?
Yeah. What we've seen is the registrations that we see in Sweden, and that's obviously official data that was down a bit in October. On a two-year basis it was still positive. When we look at our numbers, we still continue to get really good growth in these puppy customers coming in. If we look at the two-year base, it's even stronger. We believe that that's gonna fluctuate a bit up and down in actually registrations in Sweden. From our perspective, it's kind of a linear upwards going.
Okay, thanks. Maybe the ecosystem and related costs are quite interesting developments there. Can you give any more color? Are you aiming to increase the spending on the ecosystem? And when should we see clear materializing in the top line development?
No. We're not planning to increase the spending in the ecosystem that will burden the result going forward. The things we've done are already in the P&L, et cetera. We believe that has a good input and also when we look at the average spend, when we look at the puppies that we're you know able to capture, and also on the O&E part. Good KPIs that we're seeing going the right way due to the ecosystem.
Okay, thanks. Maybe central warehouse and headquarters cost level. There was EUR 0.4 million now extras related to warehouse. Is this now, if we take off this, the run rate that we should expect going forward?
We believe that this will fade out now. We hope that this was the last quarter where we had the impact. Of course the all around the world supply chain problems doesn't help. The other thing is that we're growing extremely fast. What we believe is that during this quarter and quarter on quarter, we will see a more positive view on it. We have clear goals to actually be on the positive sides during the year.
Okay, thanks. A couple more. About the tax level, it was a bit elevated now in the Q4, and then you mentioned that you have had a tax audit going on, and there was what? EUR 0.9 million some extra tax. Are you booking these on the Q1 numbers, or how should we read this?
Yeah, I can take that. Those are related to the IPO phase, VAT deductions in the subsidiaries of Musti. We have a discussion there with the tax authorities and most likely booking them on the quarter one, continuing the discussion with the authorities to give our opinion here.
Okay, thanks. The last question from me, relating to cost savings. If you could just remind us, did you have any bigger cost savings due to the COVID now during H1 2021?
No, nothing. It came in,
No. I think the final COVID related cost savings were there on June, July time. They touched the quarter four. Now looking at the comps in the future, they are more comparable.
Okay, thanks. That's all from me.
The next question comes from the line of Juha Räikkönen from SEB. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. A few more questions, if I may. Firstly, on the Swedish development, which was really good, and you listed the reasons also for the adjusted EBITDA to increase. Could we a bit more specify that? Was that more of a sort of gross margin leap year-over-year, or operating leverage, or perhaps both?
Maybe I take that one. I think it was a combination of both. We have a lot of good initiatives in Sweden and kind of then also looking at the split, how it is between the online and stores and Own and Exclusive. I think the good performance of Sweden was a combination of both of these, and then Daniel and the team in Sweden doing magnificent work.
Okay, thank you. Another gross margin question. Now looking at the group level, you had a nice improvement on that one for all years. Should we assume that profitability or gross margin specifically improved in all three geographies? If so, could you perhaps give us a pecking order? Where we are now, sort of full year. I mean, where is the best gross margin, Finland or Norway perhaps, and then Sweden? Is it far off on that metric? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you. There was a good development in the gross margin, but of course, we are not stopping that. Like mentioned the activities what comes to the supply chain side. We see upsides there, but also then in our efficiency in that sense, and maybe the opportunities on growing still our Own and Exclusive part in the countries where we have just acquired the franchising store. I see there is a good opportunities in Finland and Sweden, especially on this development and maybe then in Norway as well. I probably highlight the Finland and Sweden in that sense.
Okay. Was this specifically for Q4 or the full year?
In general, comment.
You mentioned now.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
You want to confirm that you had a gross margin improvement for all markets in Q4, specifically year-on-year?
Yes.
Yes. Good. Yeah, actually, one more. Could you just talk a bit more on the services that you lagged on this Musti is all you need slide? How much are services today of revenues? I assume very small still. Where could it go in this, say, strategy period of yours, 2024, 2025, maybe just to give a feeling sort of is it going to remain just, you know, low single digits of revenues, or could it become a significant business for you?
Yeah, maybe I can take that.
Exactly. I can take that one. Today it's a limited business if you look at the total in percentage share of sales. It's only in about 80 of our stores. Of course, in the 2024 plan, we have a goal to have much more than that. The biggest impact we see today is part of how we are attracting new customers, stickiness and upspend. That has a positive impact on the average spend as well, loyalty and so on. If we only look at the percentage of revenue coming from that, we believe maybe that could be about 5% of the total sales. It will have a bigger impact if you include everything with the upspend.
All right. That makes sense. Thank you. No other questions. Thanks.
Just as a final reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from the line of Olli Vilppo from Inderes. Please go ahead.
Hello, guys. You didn't open up about the store openings 2022. Can you give us some color on that?
Yeah, maybe I can take that. We opened altogether 49 stores in the financial year combined in all of the countries. That's greenfield stores and including also the franchise acquisitions. 49 was the net number for the year.
And t he out-outlook for the two thousand twenty-two?
Sorry. Now I think the line was bad. Outlook for?
For the openings for 2022. I mean, before you have given these numbers.
Yeah, I can maybe take that. What we've done earlier is that we've been about 30 stores, and now we speed it up due to franchise acquisitions, and we saw bigger opportunities. We still see good opportunities, but we will probably not come up at that kind of a level of 49. We will probably be in around 30 this year when we look at the plans. We can also say that we have a kind of number of stores that is related to our long-term financial plan, which is 500. The importance of this is that we want to increase number of service stations, pickup points, and the omni part, which is related then to the stores. With all of that said, we believe around 30 stores, 2022.
Okay, thanks. That's clear. About the average spend of the loyal customers, it went up 5%. In previous years it has been kind of flat. Was this due to the increased service portfolio or what was the reason behind?
Yeah. It's a combination of the service portfolio. It's a combination of the other things that we have in the ecosystem. It's also mainly the most important driven by that the new customers that we have been able to acquire is spending up the spend ladder faster than earlier. In a way, you could say that the average spend is highest in Finland, and then Norway and Sweden are similar level. Now we're seeing that the average spend in Sweden and Norway are increasing versus Finland levels, which is obviously having impact.
Okay. Last question from me. The Eskilstuna warehouse, is there still like a free room to increase the volumes or do you need to expand the warehouse system?
We at the current plan that we've done now, where we see a lot of things that is obvious for us to execute and deliver, we see that we probably can be there for about 3-4 years still before we need to move.
Okay. Thank you.
We have one more question from Andrew Wade from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi there, both. Just a couple from me. The first one, just looking at the sort of Q4 EBIT margin. I know you've sort of talked about the impact of sort of costs in stores. You know, it's quite a big drop year-over-year, particularly when we consider the gross margin was up 170 basis points. I mean, is that the only pressure point in there, the fact that the sort of store costs and store cost efficiencies, or are there any other factors at play in there?
Yeah, maybe I take that one. Maybe the main things are kind of in profitability comparing to previous year is the comparison numbers and the tailwind sort of from the cost base in COVID-19, and then the extra burden that we have had to take the hit in the warehouse consolidation project. Actually in the stores, we are quite efficient in many metrics, but these impacts are coming then through the comps and through the central warehouse.
Okay. I mean, if we look at, I don't know, say the EBITDA progression on a two-year basis, you were running at sort of 70-odd% through the first nine months, and it's only 60% in Q4. Even if we X out the benefits that you got last year, that doesn't quite explain that sort of step back in the two-year EBITDA growth rate. And you've also been. I know you saw EUR 0.4 million headwind from Eskilstuna in Q4, but you also saw headwinds through previous quarters as well, didn't you? I'm just trying to get at why that. Let's look at it a different way. Why is that two-year growth rate 10 percentage points slower than it has been for the first 9 months in Q4?
Oh, I got your point. There, we need to also look kind of at the group functions in total, maybe. Musti is growing fast. We have also invested into our sort of a head office headquarters capabilities and acquired different kind of talent into the company. There, the difference between that cost level is maybe a little bit leaner even in the future. That gap is also impacting into that one.
Now what we do is, like David said, and what I said myself as well, that we are taking a closer look into the cost structure and opportunities in that one and how we can now leverage these sort of investments into our human capital in Musti more stronger in the future as well. Yeah, thank you for the clarification. Yeah.
Just to be clear on that then. The investment in head office and capability and personnel is more in Q4 than it has been in the previous three quarters.
If you look at it, quarter four on quarter four last year, so there you can see kind of the full impact that during the last financial year, we had quite a few new colleagues joining Musti pack. Same also in the previous year.
Okay. All right. Thanks very much, guys. Appreciate that.
As there are no further audio questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers.
All right. Any more questions? Okay. Thanks, everyone, for listening in, and let's have this nice presentation in a couple of months from now. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.