Hello, and warmly welcome to Orthex Financial Statement Release of 2021. I have with me Saara Mäkelä, our CFO, and Hanna Kukkonen, our CMO, who will guide us through the presentation today. First of all, our sympathies goes to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. It's tough times and hope for a peaceful solution as soon as possible. I hope you all are safe. Today we'll do as normally we do a quick wrap-up about what Orthex is all about, and then the interesting part is we think to be able to tell you about 2021 in brief. We'll have a few words on sustainability, as sustainability is one of the key things in our strategy. There, from there on, a natural bridge to how we look at the coming years, what to do in terms of strategy.
We'll have a look at the financials, and at the end, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. A small reminder there around the Q&As, you are able to post your questions during the whole presentation. Don't hold back. If you have any questions, just put them in the chat, and we'll be happy to answer at the end. We are quite used to having a lot of questions, so we'll try to answer most of them and group them somehow in a relevant way. That's the agenda of the following about 30 minutes for you. We are a leading Nordic producer of everyday household goods. This is a picture of where we are active today.
We have seven sales offices in all of the Nordics, in the U.K., France and Germany. I think one thing to highlight here in this picture is actually the green dot on the border between Germany and France. That's our fairly new warehouse to serve Europe. We see increasing volumes going through that warehouse. Also we have been able to establish EDI contacts that mean electronic ordering systems with many of our new European customers. That's a big progress that we made during the past quarter. As you know, we're about 300 people. 90% of the sales is from our own brands, and our strategic brands are SmartStore, GastroMax, and Orthex, which stands for quality and well-known products.
We have customers in about 40 countries, but the main business or the bulk of the business is around Europe. If we go forward, how has the business in terms of category sales gone? Storage is still the most important category, the one growing the fastest. It's about 66% of sales. Here you can see in the picture a small application of how you can use our storage boxes, for example, in an office environment. On the kitchen side, 20%-22% of sales, it's a lot about new materials, about sustainable materials, about bio materials, and it's about kitchen utensils making everyday life easier, helping you to cook even better, practical products. We have the two last categories, Home & Yard and plant care, which are about the same size.
A small point about plant care is that all the flower pots are made of consumer recycled or recycled materials, so that's something to keep in mind. We use the old scrap to make new nice flower pots. Design is close to our heart. We don't do any single-use products. All of our products are designed to last for decades, and all of them can be recycled at the end of life. We want to be a forerunner in sustainability, and that's at the heart of the strategy we run. And as well, innovation is always both interesting internally, but interesting to our customers. Our aim is that about 10% of the turnover should come from products launched within the last two years, new products.
Our clear mission here is to make everyday life easier with practical, beautiful products. That's what we do. That's why we operate. Going into the financials of 2021, the first year of being a listed company, and it's been an interesting year in many terms. We've seen strong sales, strong net sales. We've seen excellent growth outside the Nordics. We've also seen excellent growth in the Nordics, and we've seen excellent growth in the storage category. The world has been a rollercoaster. We had Corona, year two of Corona, and then we've had extraordinary jumps in raw materials, and now we have the unfortunate Russian-Ukrainian crisis that we've navigated in and through.
I think, first of all, if you look at the performance, the raw material prices have been exceptionally high. They've been increasingly high. I think they've never been at this high a level before. It's been both the producer's margins, but it's also been availability, and it's been the unrest in the world pushing up the raw material prices. It's been a constant adapting to, let's say, a moving target that we have worked with. Having said that, I think we've been quite prudent in taking necessary action to do as much as we can with the information we have at the moment. Implementation of the first measures against raw material prices, that means sort of saving, and that means price increases.
They started to become visible at the end of the second or towards the end of the third quarter and in the fourth quarter as well. The price increase is based on the situation we have at hand and the facts we have. It takes usually four to six months before the implementation is possible in the retail environment. It's a, let's say, race against moving targets sometimes, and there can be a lag in when you get the full effect of the price increases and then how the price of raw materials develops meanwhile. A comment on can't not comment on Russia and Ukraine.
First of all, there's no direct, let's say suppliers or business that we have in that area of the world. However, indirectly, of course, the volatility in the environment leads to very quick changes in all kinds of costs and stability as well. However, we believe that our products are quite basic everyday products, not the last products that the consumer stops buying if times are tough. In that sense, we are quite a stable commodity for the consumer to put their money in. Corona, I think first of all, the main sort of guidance we give here is that the main thing that we want is that our people are safe during the Corona time.
There we've been, I think, fairly spared by the Corona. I think we haven't suffered more or less than anyone else in that sense. However, you saw towards summer a good decrease of sick absence, but then when Omicron started again, the sick absence started to increase both for safety reasons. We didn't want sick people or risking that perhaps sick people came into the office and then those who really had Corona. That's always an additional cost when you have high sick leave. That's one effect of Corona. If you then look at the full year, 2021, we grew almost by 17% and Adjusted EBITA was EUR 11 million.
We ended up with net sales at EUR 88.7 million and the invoiced sales also increased 16.3%, and in invoice terms, we broke the EUR 90-million mark at EUR 90.6 million when we did EUR 77.9 million the year before. On EBITA, you can see the full year EUR 11 million when we did adjusted EUR 12.9 million last year. The margin clearly down by mostly raw material issues and extremely high raw material cost down to 12.4%. The net debt to Adjusted EBITA, the leverage, so to speak, was at 1.7x, and net cash flow from operating activities was EUR 9 million. A short comment on that one, why is cash flow a bit lower?
If you remember well, we did an additional investment in capacity in a machine line that's now up and running. That took the investments up a bit. Then the other thing that clearly affects the raw material is the raw material because when you value the inventory at higher raw material prices, the value of the inventory goes up. That's the main reasons. We're also prepared for continued growth. The stock of high-running products is on an accurate and nice level to have a good service level to our customers. If we then dive into Q4, which was a tough quarter in many senses, however, it was the biggest quarter we've ever had.
In terms of absolute sales, I think it was a terrific quarter on top line. We grew against the quite tough comparison numbers last year by 6.8%. I think the EBITA was probably the main sort of topic to speak about, and it decreased to EUR 1.8 million. In total net sales, 23.1 when we did in EUR 21.6 million last year. The invoiced sales due to good growth was also of course 7.1% and then EUR 23.5 million. If you look at the Adjusted EBITA, we did EUR 1.8 million when we did EUR 3.8 million last year, and I think most of this is attributed to higher cost.
Even if we've done rounds of price increases during 2021, I think at the beginning of the year, there was no one who could even guess how the world would look like at the stage we were at the end of last year and especially where we are today. The Adjusted EBITA margin was 7.6% at Q4. Looking at net cash flow from activities EUR 1.8 million in the fourth quarter, there you can see bullet points of what I explained already around anticipation of growth and then the higher than usual raw material prices taking up the inventory values.
Going into the geographies, I mean, we are looking for growth both in Nordic but also outside of the Nordics. I'm really happy to report the full year numbers there. I think the growth, especially outside the Nordic, has been quite terrific at 33.4% compared to last year, taking actually outside or in the rest of Europe sales up to EUR 15.1 million. Looking at sort of rest of the world, and that's quite a lot, the U.S. and that's the main chunk of the business. It's been quite flat there. The reasons are probably many. I think Corona and campaign strategies and so on has been driving that one for a while.
We are not too worried. The numbers are small. The percentages are small. We still have the same customers and maybe a few new ones as well down the pipeline. The main focus, clearly Europe and Nordics for us and the chunk of the business as well. The sales increase, if you look at the Nordic countries, comes especially from existing customers, a few new ones even in the Nordic, but mostly sort of nice new products, nice way of displaying the products in the shelves and good cooperation with our partner customers driving sales. In the export markets, it's a mixed bag.
I think we have quite a few interesting customers already where we have quite a limited distribution where we're actively working to increase the distribution in existing customers and also increase the assortment. That's one part of the growth in exports. The other one is finding completely new customers. There as well I think we've been extremely active even though it's been a bit tough because you can't really meet people physically. You can't show our products physically when you have Corona going on. We're hopeful that soon fairs will start and we can meet up our new and existing partners in person again.
Q4 change outside the Nordics in invoice sales 12% up, quite in line with our expectations. According to the strategy, I think we still grow faster outside the Nordic. Then if you look at the rest of the world, the Q4 there the comparison was a bit tough because last year in 2020, there was a lockdown of the U.S. market, especially the customer, which is big for us. We are working against the comparison where you had a pipeline of a lot of sales. As I said, the numbers are small, the percentages are big, so not too worried about that development. No loss of customers, no loss of business in real terms.
If we look at the product categories, storage by far the biggest, almost EUR 60 million in sales. Kitchen also. Basically, all the categories growing in the full year of 2021. I think plant care as well showing promising growth even though the numbers are small there. It's a nice picture we see with overall growth in total. Looking at Q4, storage continues to grow. In the kitchen category, you see a small decline, and that has mostly to do with non-strategic products. It's the ones that we fill up the assortment with, which are maybe not our own produced products but imported from other countries.
Since both transports and availability of products from other producers has been tough, it's a little bit visible in our numbers. That increases the focus for us on actually producing our own products and not being too reliant on others. Not worried there as well about the situation. We have good growth and good development in those product groups under the kitchen category, which are strategic to us. Home & Yard, small growth, and then plant care, a bit flat in Q4. Of course, selling flower pots towards Christmas is not the biggest business, so we expect those sales to pick up again now when we look forward, it's more likely.
I think here, sustainability and Hanna will take you through this slide.
Thank you, Alexander. As you know, sustainability is in the core of our strategy, and we work hard every day to improve our work around sustainability. We work especially hard to reduce our carbon footprint since we have a target to be carbon neutral in our production by 2030. We will publish our sustainability report for 2021 together with the Annual Report next week on the 16th of March. I wanted to already today lift some of the highlights of our sustainability work last year. Last year the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra selected Orthex as one of the pioneering companies around circular economy. Sitra especially appreciated Orthex for the long history with circular economy. Orthex has been using recycled material for many years, and also has always been designing products that can be recycled.
Last year we wanted also to secure our high ethical standards and introduced and rolled out the Orthex's Code of Conduct. The Orthex's Code of Conduct defines how we engage in business, how we treat each other, and how we safeguard the Orthex assets. We also introduced a whistleblowing channel for both internal and external stakeholders, so they can report possible non-compliances with the Code of Conduct. We also took a significant step in reducing the carbon footprint by switching to fossil-free hydro-powered electricity in all our factories. We already changed to fossil-free electricity in Lohja factory in 2020, but from the beginning of 2021, we also switched to fossil-free electricity in our two factories in Sweden.
For many years we have been certified for quality and environmental management systems, the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certificates. Last year we took a step further, and our operations were audited and received the certification for occupational health and safety. That's the ISO 45001 certification. The goal with that certificate is to even further improve the prevention of work-related injuries and health issues. Last year we also calculated the carbon footprint for our operations in our three factories, and we calculated the carbon footprint for both 2020 and 2021. This will then significantly help us to build our roadmaps to carbon neutrality by 2030. Now, moving on to the strategy part.
Thanks. Thanks, Hanna. I'm trying to get to the slide here somehow. Maybe you can take it down one slide. I'm not getting control over it now. From the sustainability one. One more please. The key objectives we have or growth strategies is quite clear to us. It's to become the number one player in the storage category in Europe and also meanwhile strengthening the position we have in the Nordics. That's sort of the goal we have here. Let's see now. It's strange because I can't access the slide. Good. Somebody helped me here. A clear growth strategy to deliver the objectives. I think this slide is known to you as well.
This year you can see if you go to the left of this picture, last year we did EUR 76 million. This year we did EUR 89 million in sales. How we are looking at the future, how to continue to grow as a company, I think first of all, we need to keep the traction solid in the Nordics, continue to grow in the Nordics. This means category management, good focus on the storage and the critical categories we have. It's bringing new products. It's doing the right campaigns, having a solid commercial strategy.
The number two box which we actually believe is, at least at the moment, one of the biggest opportunities we have is to accelerate the growth in our export markets, and especially those markets where we have our own organization close by, either in the same country or neighboring countries, with a key account approach. Meaning that we gradually, as much as we can, increase the number of stores where our products are, and we increase the width of the assortment so that we get more and more shelf space. We have actually landed quite many of the customers that we wanted to have a few years back, and now it's more about how can we make those customers bigger for us?
How can we become an even better partner so our products are favored and gets good shelf space? The third one, the world is changing in terms of online business, and we are part of that change. We believe that the online channels are growing, and we are actually putting efforts into both omnichannels and pure online visibility and business. The last bit, which is a bit of a box up in the right-hand corner, so to speak. It's the market consolidation and clearly the market is not highly consolidated, and we believe that there could be good opportunities out there to capture in terms of M&As.
We're actively looking at that one as well, but not taking any too fast action if we don't find a perfect match, I think. I think we are growing organically very nice at the moment and expanding the business. However, that's a very interesting card to have on your hand as well. With this, we aim to be the number one storage brand in Europe and maintain the leading household player position in the Nordics. Most of all, throughout the strategy, I think in every part, in every function we have is actually the high focus on sustainability and showing the way in sustainability in the industry. That's something which is dear to us.
If we take the next slide here, it's actually Saara who will take you through the financials on the 2021 release.
Thank you, Alexander. Alexander was going through the net sales quite much already in detail. Growth continued during the last quarter of the year, and it was a record quarter for the company. Growth was 6.8% during the reporting period, and cumulatively it's 16.9%. According to our strategy, the storage category was growing the fastest. Also in Central Europe, especially in France and Germany, growth was fast, and it was coming from the new customers. During 2021, the quarterly phasing was rather stable, and there was no significant differences between the quarters. As in the year before, COVID-19 effect can be seen as lower first quarters and higher third and fourth quarter.
Quite familiar graph for everyone who has been following our journey. This is a picture where we are showing the raw material indexes. Raw material prices started to peak at the end of quarter one, and then we started to react with the first price increases. The lead time is, I mean, the shortest is four. It can be even up to nine months time when the price increases are visible. Raw material prices stayed on a very high level for a couple of quarters. Then during quarter four, prices unfortunately again started to increase. Index prices during the quarter four 2021 compared to quarter four 2020 were over 70% higher. That is affecting the profitability despite the measures already taken. The
There were no significant availability issues anymore. Supply and demand are quite much in balance. Currently, supplier margins are not increasing, but the raw material prices for producers. I mean, C3s is increasing. Imports outside EU are still limited as logistics costs continue to be on very high level. Unfortunately, the high unpredictability in raw material prices continues still. Regarding profitability, Adjusted full year EBITA was EUR 11 million. Due to decreased gross margin driven by high raw material prices, the Adjusted EBITA decreased by EUR 1.9 million compared to last year. On yearly level, negative raw material price effect was, I mean, very significant. Due to increased sales volumes and realized price increasing effects, the EBITA was not affected as significantly.
As I already mentioned, the raw material prices, the indexes were more than 70% higher during the quarter, and that affected the profitability. We also started to have effects regarding very high freights and electricity costs. Then we had some inefficiency due to high sick leave levels at the factories due to Omicron pandemic which started during quarter four. If we go through the investments, full year investments were EUR 4.8 million, which is EUR 1.6 million higher compared to last year. That of course affected the cash flow as well. We invested in an additional pick machine in Tingsryd for big storage boxes where the demand is high.
We have also invested to second or third molds for some of the high runner products and of course the normal investments for novelties, what we do on a yearly basis. Currently there's no change to communicate the investments plans. Capacity has increased according to our plan. In net debt, no significant change there. Compared to quarter three, net debt was EUR 25.69 million, and leverage was 1.7x. If we go through next the long-term financial targets.
As mentioned already many times, profitability has been affected by high raw material prices, and latest Adjusted EBITA was 12.4%. Currently there's no need to change our long-term target, which is still 18%. Leverage is 1.7x, which is below the target 2.5x. Dividend payout ratio is at least 50% in our financial targets. We are proposing to the Annual General Meeting EUR 0.18 per share, which is 52% of the net result. Now during the first year this will be technically distributed as return of capital. We have simplified our group structure by merging one of the holding companies, so in the future it will be much more straightforward to distribute dividends.
The sales part, total sales growth was 16.9%, which is over the 5% target, and outside Nordics the growth was 27.4%. The long-term target is to grow more than 10% on yearly basis. If I give stage to Alexander again, who can then summarize the quarter and year 2021.
Thank you. Thank you, Saara. In summary, I think looking at sales growth was strong in 2021. I think the raw material prices probably highest here on the agenda, a continued perhaps even accelerating rise throughout the year. I would say high uncertainty and volatile cost levels. You see both transport cost moving up and especially transports from countries far away being extremely expensive compared to what they were a year ago. The same goes for electricity cost and so on. It's been an interesting environment with many moving things where we are actually quite happy about the strong sales growth that we have been able to show. If we go into the Q&A session next.
Yes. Thank you. I will try to moderate the questions here. Maybe if we start with an easy one that I can answer myself. What are the biggest novelties that has come or will come to the markets in 2022? I can answer what's happening this spring. We have concentrated quite a lot in products made of recycled plastic. We have launched new products in our fishing nets range, products made of old fishing nets, and there will be a SmartStore storage range, storage boxes made of fishing nets. We have added to our Home & Yard category, besides the fishing net bucket, a fishing net washing bowl, and a scoop. Excellent products for your summer house.
We have also renovated our bins range and launched a new design of bins and now also are making the bins from post-consumer plastic. All from old plastic packages. There's a lot of questions about raw material prices and price increases. Oil prices have continued to rise strongly in the early part of the year, and plastic polymers in Europe will probably follow soon. Do you believe that the sector will be able to swallow more price increases? I can add to that what is our plan for price increases and why are we acting so slow? Three questions at the same time.
Good. That's a tricky one to answer three questions, but I'll give it a try. First of all, how price increases work in the industry. Our biggest customers are of course the retail stores and retail. In order for a price increase to go through, we present them, we put a lot of facts behind it and we basically explain why a price increase should be done. Then that is presented to the buyers of our customers, so the big chains. They usually have, depending on customer, two or three or so different windows during the year when they implement changes in prices or in assortment.
Between that we actually tell about the price increase and do it, we always do it widely. We always do the same increase to the customers we have because it's a market increase. We communicate it, but then it can take up to six months before they are actually accepted and on the shelf. When we do a price increase, it means that we work with the facts we have at the moment. We communicate, and then a lot of things can happen between that point of time and six months later when the new price hits sort of the shelves and the consumers. That we have seen over this time.
You have seen that the facts that we had in February when we, for example, did one price increase were quite different from the facts that six months later that when the price increase was implemented. At that time, we again looked at the situation and there was again a need for an increase. It's a bit of a running against the development of the different cost levels with a small lag. That's basically the reason. We wouldn't like to be in a situation where we take up the price and then suddenly all the costs start going down. What we do is more of a, as with all the facts we have at the moment, we try to make the best possible decision. That's everyday work for us. We do it constantly.
If somebody asks, are we doing price increases this year, the answer is probably not, and the correct answer, not only probably, is that we do price increases when needed and when the cost goes up, and when we have the facts on the table, we do it to basically stay on the levels we are. That's the strategy there. I don't think if you think about last year and how the world has developed and until now, I think we haven't been slow at all. I think we have taken exactly the price increases with the facts we've had at the time, and then there comes the lag. If needed, we will continue to take price increases as well. Did I forget something, Hanna, on that one?
No.
It was a long, long answer.
That was a good answer. Thank you. Continuing on the increasing costs, so there's a question about electricity. Could you remind us of your direct electricity exposure/sensitivity/hedging?
Yeah. Let's see if I can remind you or if I can tell you something new. I think electricity is not the biggest cost component we have, first of all, and it's just part of the production cost. Of course, our machines run on electricity and nowadays on green electricity from renewable sources. We have been able so far to actually hedge quite a lot of the exposure, the peaks we can see now. We have up until now quite a good position in terms of the cost of electricity. With the way the world is going, I think the electricity cost is going upwards, and it's going upwards for all the players and all the competitors on the market.
It's one of the cost components even though it's small for us compared to raw material, for example.
Thank you.
Sorry, maybe I can add that, I mean, the volumes, I mean, the consumption volumes, they're higher than sort of the hedge volumes. We started to see some effect during the quarter related to higher electricity prices.
Good. Continuing on costs, aside from increased production cost, you have been able to trim your cost structure in absolute terms quite a bit from last year to support your profitability. How do you see these other cost line items developing moving forward?
That's a good question. I think the world we're living in today is a world of increasing costs at least at the moment. I think everybody can draw their own conclusions there. Our task in this environment is to become more and more efficient and produce more efficiently product. That's our goal as well to minimize the cost at the same time growing the top line. I think that's the recipe to continue to strive to reach our long-term goals, which we still are aiming for.
Yes. I'll change to the competitive landscape. How do you currently view your competitive landscape? Are you noticing delivery struggles from example, stuff coming from further away like Asia?
Excellent question. Yes, absolutely. I think we don't suffer too much from that ourselves because we produce most of our products locally in the Nordics. For the part of our portfolio which is imported, and that's a small part of the kitchen business where we need to fill up to have full assortments like cooking thermometers and such, is a good example. The transportation is hard to get and it's extremely expensive. What does this mean then to us?
Okay, there's a small exposure for us, but then if you think about retail throughout Europe, who buy a lot of these goods from the Far East or from China, I think they are especially hit by the fact that you have rising transport costs and tough availabilities. In my books, that means that we should have a quite good opportunity to try and push in products which are produced closer to the source, meaning our products. That can open opportunities for us. Clearly for all the importers, all the competition that works mostly with imports or a lot with imports, I think they are more hit by these facts than we are. There may be a general comment on competition.
Competition is of course in categories where we are. It's tough because all the products we have and all the functions have basically been around for decades, if not centuries already. You have to be a little bit better, and that's our task to be better on the shelf, to be better in terms of quality, to be better in terms of sustainability. It's a tough game, and it's hard competition. There's no question about it. We can see some nice growth of our products.
There's actually one more question about competition. Is competition significantly harder in Middle Europe than Nordics? Is that market dynamic the same or different than in Nordics?
That's a good one as well. I think in the Nordics we have very long customer relationships, keeping in mind that a part of the company has been around since more than 100 years. I think in the Nordics we are quite well known both to customers and consumers. When we go outside of the Nordics, I think we still have a lot of opportunity to make our both brands and products known. That's of course a task to have. One of the ways of doing that is actually putting up your own local organizations.
I think a German who sells, a German employed by Orthex in the German Orthex organization that sells to a German customer has probably a higher probability of succeeding than, for example, a Finn or a Swede traveling from time to time to Germany to do the job. That's only one part of how to localize the business. Of course, our heritage is not as long in Europe as in the Nordics, so clearly competition for us is tougher there. We are gaining.
Yes. Okay. about the horrible situation in Ukraine. There's a question that have you done anything to support the Ukrainians in the crisis?
Thanks for asking. Yeah. First of all, of course, it's horrible, and our sympathies goes there, and absolutely peace is what I think we all hope for. We have already donated quite a considerable sum to the Red Cross, EUR 10,000 to start with. I think most of all we are looking to see what kind of products that could be needed in the catastrophe zones. Is it lunch boxes, or is it thermoses, or is it something else? We're actually at the moment finding out how we can be of help there.
We've got quite many contacts of people wanting our storage boxes both for storing necessary supplies in homes in Finland to fill up with I don't know transistor radios and food stuff and so on, but also for shipping clothes or shipping necessities to the catastrophe areas. We are clearly following the situation with as much urgency as we can and ready to help where we can.
Thank you, Alexander. I think I've now. We've answered the majority of the questions. Saara and Alexander, let me know if there's something missing, but I think we've answered the majority. Please contact us if we didn't answer your question. We'll answer you later then in that case.
Okay. Thank you very much for listening, and stay safe.
Thank you.
Thank you.