Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We have today announced our third-quarter report, and to introduce the highlights of our progress during the quarter, we have here Kimmo Alkio, our President and CEO, and Tomi Hyryläinen, our CFO. If you have any questions, please dial into our conference call. My name is Tanja Lounevirta, Head of Financial Communications. I warmly welcome you on my behalf. Now time to hand over to Kimmo, please.
Thank you very much, Tanja. A very warm welcome also on my behalf to our Q3 results announcement. The main highlights being that we did again experience a good quarter, a strong quarter. Main factors behind the third quarter being good development in the underlying operating margin of 14%. We are being impacted, like any of the peer group, through the pandemic, and organic revenue growth being -4%. Good continued development in our industry software with profitability over 20% level. We continue to make strong progress in the total merger integration, both in terms of quality, in terms of our employee engagement, and naturally continuing the very firm synergy drive, very much at the anticipated levels. As noticed, I am sure all of you, we did restore our guidance on the 20th of October.
It is also fair to highlight the recent considerations around the challenges of the pandemic and what type of signals are we reading and interpreting from our markets and from our customers. We maintain our prior perspective of the industry sector decline within the range of -3% to -7%. We are not changing in that sense how we read the overall market signals, as interpreted primarily by the industry analysts. Furthermore, we have experienced, as we had predicted and I think shared three months ago, we have anticipated higher impact on revenues, approximately 4% in the third quarter. We had about 2% in the second quarter, and we expect the fourth quarter be at the levels what we have seen in the third quarter.
Clearly the pandemic, as we have anticipated, seems to have very clear higher implications in the behavior of the market than we experienced in the earlier quarters. We would also like to confirm that the negative profit impact due to the pandemic, we continue to very actively and fully mitigate through rigid cost-saving activities. Furthermore, we naturally work kind of continuously what we call the future work amongst our employee base worldwide, developing the ways of working, being extremely mindful of employee safety, overall productivity, overall wellbeing, and naturally a huge degree of focus around delivering to our customers in a predictable manner and maintaining high service levels. With these considerations in mind, we have so far coped from the employee standpoint quite well. We are happy with the progress and also when we listen to the feedback from our customers around the quality of our services.
I would also like to highlight a few considerations now as we are three quarters into the actual merger integration, that what type of considerations and activities are we currently working on in order to turn to the next very interesting chapter when we enter 2021? First of all, as well recognized, I believe, by all of our constituent groups, we've been very open around the year of integration with the whole objective of actually taking to the market highly competitive set of services, gaining customer trust, following the full agenda of the integration as we had originated the whole consideration for the merger success, and also adding the whole considerations which we reflected upon around COVID mitigation. Second important factor that we may not have touched on that much in the quarterly dialogues with the analyst community is the Cultural Foundation.
I'd like to confirm that the beliefs around the Nordic heritage as the common value base for 24,000 colleagues around the world is a very good and strong foundation. We have taken forward recently our diversity charters, our culture code work that was actually crowdsourced within the colleague community. We have released internally new leadership aspirations and continue very active employee engagement and pulse surveying on exactly how our people feel.
Very important part always, and I would like to also confirm this is especially important given the overall uncertainty that people feel due to the pandemic in the world. A very important part that many of us and myself very used to working on the growth and innovation agenda in the technology sector while we are running with the year of integration, as we communicated already nine months ago, year of integration is anticipated to be an era of low growth. It's very important companies look in the future, pinpoint the investments for future growth, and this is something that we are currently working on, looking at the growth drivers around the full cloud transformation, around automation, AIOps, data science, artificial intelligence, and the likes, which are clearly significant market drivers today and greater opportunities I believe we will be seeing in the future.
As a firm, we shall be, as we then enter 2021, be talking a lot more around the shift towards a growth agenda and naturally these type of growth investments, growth bets, and program plans, something that is very natural for us to be currently working on. Next, I would like to provide as usual a brief update on the integration progress. Just as a kind reminder, we do have a centrally led 12- to 18-month program, after which many of the responsibilities will then move towards business as usual in the respective businesses and functions. During the third quarter regarding the integrated structure and leadership, we took very firm, good, big step forward in the full integration of the financial services service line comprising of very important business domains, capabilities, and software assets from the both ex companies.
There we are very far already regarding our total objectives as being integrated in structure and from a leadership standpoint. Common processes and systems, we continue to make good progress. This is an area that certainly will take at least 18 months in order to make sure toolings, the processes are fully implemented all across the new combined company. Go-to-market and service portfolio, good positive feedback from customers. I'll share a few very good win examples in couple of minutes. The common value propositions will continue to deserve attention from us. Employee engagement and cultural integration, briefly referred to actually a few minutes ago. We believe we are actually in a good shape. Will continue to deserve a huge degree of attention continuously. I think we are currently and have been on a constructive path together with our colleagues worldwide. Finally, synergy planning and realization.
We are tracking well relative to our ambition of delivering EUR 100 million synergies to the bottom line of the company, as well as reaching the EUR 70 million-EUR 80 million run rate by the end of 2020. Integration, as always, continues to be demanding. We believe we are tracking relative to our main objectives and outcomes quite well. I'd like to also share, as referred to, a couple of the important and really interesting customer wins. First, I'd like to share example from the public sector in Sweden regarding the city of Västerås, an area where, and as in the public sector, the whole notion of digital acceleration and contactless interaction becomes extremely important and being emphasized now in the era of the pandemic, as well as the drive overall for the digital workplace-related demand.
This example with city of Västerås covers a broad set of services regarding the total digital transformation use of data science and analytics, and very specifically around delivering the workplace, the infrastructure, and the types of security services. As highlighted briefly earlier, this is an example of success in the public sector and all across the Nordic countries as TietoEVRY. It is one of our strongholds, and also very positively dynamic also in the era of the pandemic. The next example I would like to refer to is Kesko, recent naming convention, the K Group. Very interesting and an important expansion of our prior relationship for greater business opportunities also for TietoEVRY to really boost the productivity and cost efficiency of K Group through automation and new technologies.
A very extensive set of services covering next-generation application services, analytics, data services, digital operations, multi-cloud, and capacity services. This example is a normal, I would call, a competitive case whereby any and all of the global competitors would have been present, and something that continues to send a very good signal, a confirmation in the marketplace that TietoEVRY is actually becoming even richer in the set of services and well able to compete and win. Next, a very interesting and probably the most important part of today's dialogue is around the third quarter financial performance and financial highlights. Revenues of EUR 644 million, organic growth of - 4.3%. Here is already very good to just to be very clear, our sizing says that the COVID-19 impact is indeed - 4% on the revenues.
We continue to make solid progress regarding our profitability improvement trajectory, systemic improvement in adjusted EBIT at 14% level, EUR 90.2 million. Reported EBIT, EUR 28.6 million, naturally being impacted by the one-time items of EUR 61.5 million, fully as planned by the management. First of all, and furthermore, it is good to confirm that the profitability improvement is fully supported, driven by the synergy contribution and strong performance, especially in our industry software business with profitability over 20%. I would furthermore like to confirm that the backlog is healthy at EUR 3.2 billion, supporting our short-term revenue objectives, and furthermore, a strong operative cash flow in the third quarter of EUR 108 million. We move on to a few very interesting considerations of the service lines. In digital consulting, we have seen strong profitability improvement to nearly 15% level while volumes revenues are being impacted significantly, especially by the pandemic.
Revenues were EUR 143 million, organically -9%, adjusted EBIT EUR 21 million at the 14.7 level as mentioned earlier. Number of interesting, important new agreements, won during the quarter. As an example, the before-mentioned Kesko Group and Servicegrossistene in Norway. COVID impact, as mentioned, -7%, and currently we expect this to remain at similar level for the fourth quarter, and we believe from the industry peer group on digital consulting, we are seeing very much similar signals. Furthermore, the revenue level is temporarily impacted by integration and project portfolio quality improvement with extensive focus on profit as crafted in the business plan for digital consulting in the beginning of this year. Profitability development continues to be driven by the efficiency improvement and cost mitigation activities around COVID-19.
I would like to also offer a perspective that we do expect to be returning to a growth mode as COVID-19 situation improves and we proceed with the integration, and we expect to be very far in the integration by the end of this year. Furthermore, we do anticipate our growth mode to be returning by mid-2021 for digital consulting, assuming diminishing COVID impact. Furthermore, we have added a consideration for our service lines to be very open on what has been the full game plan objectives for the service lines regarding the full year 2021, the broader agenda. The longer-term agenda you'll be hearing more about in the Capital Markets Day in December. For digital consulting, the focus for this fiscal year has been for integrating the diverse set of services, service practices, and capabilities with extensive efficiency and profitability drive while preparing for future growth.
Next, we move into cloud and infrastructure profitability remaining at a good level of 11%, while revenues being impacted by a number of factors. Revenues being EUR 220 million, organically - 8.6%, and adjusted EBIT at the 10.9% level, and the COVID-19 impact being approximately - 1% on revenues. We anticipate this to be slightly higher during the fourth quarter as we are seeing early signals on impact on add-on volumes. Furthermore, it is fair to highlight that the - 9% being impacted by really high comparative third quarter of 2019, impacting by about 3 percentage point, and the aforementioned considerations on lost customers during 2019 due to quality issues that existed at that point in time, impacting by about 5%. I would also like to confirm that the IBM transition regarding the people and assets has been completed on schedule.
Quality improvement and process harmonization is fully underway, and the automation and productivity gains shall follow. With these considerations in mind, we expect the cloud and infrastructure profitability to be temporarily lower until summer 2021 due to the combination of volume development and incremental costs in IBM-related quality improvement and process harmonization. Fully as announced earlier. We fully expect that through these transformations in cloud and infrastructure, the cloud and infrastructure business shall be accretive to the financial objectives of the company. I would also like to confirm that when we have talked about this full program transformation regarding IBM, the temporary cost increase impact is approximately 2% on profit until mid-2021. Even when we have seen this type of a dynamics in the business, it's been important to see that the cost-saving activities are working and cloud and infra delivered nearly 11% profitability.
The future growth, we believe, is supported by recent new customer wins and larger renewals. Regarding 2020 overall agenda, huge degree of attention on reshaping the service delivery model, the full technology backbone, and the drive for automation and efficiency. That will take cloud and infrastructure towards the business performance and trajectory that we have fully had in mind, both prior to merger, during the merger, and as we speak here. Regarding performance of Industry Software, strong progress very much as anticipated by the management. Organic growth - 1.4%, adjusted EBIT EUR 25 million at 21.7 percentage points, we were impacted in the software business by 3% due to the pandemic. Healthy growth in number of our software businesses, specifically in welfare and the public sector, Public 360° solutions up by 17 and 7%.
Within the public sector, pleased to share a bit of a data point for the full transformation in the architecture and the business model to a software as a service business logic, the Public 360 solution gaining 75% annual revenue growth in this SaaSified world. The profit improvement, I do believe, is driven by the systematic transformation of the global software R&D practices that we have been working on for approximately a two-year timeframe. Furthermore, I would like to confirm that all the considerations we shared at the end of Q2 regarding Smart Utility, the end of life is progressing fully as planned and as shared earlier. Regarding full year 2020, the focus of Industry Software for integrating the software businesses, the R&D practices, and building the selective domain expertise and SaaS business models, again in anticipation of further future growth ambition and opportunities.
Next on Financial Services, continued good momentum, organic growth of 3.1%, COVID impacting by approximately -3%, adjusted EBIT at 15.2 level. We are seeing the top-line drive being supported, the continued development in the card services especially, and profitability remaining strong while investment level maintained at a somewhat higher level than we would do longer term to actually support the delivery of One Contracts, One Business throughout 2020. The primary focus for our financial services solutions business for year 2020 is to integrate the software and utility models of the both ex companies and to drive the common software R&D practices and actually aim at accelerating growth businesses, growth opportunities, and should already be visible as we shall see 2021.
Product Development Services, as the last service line sharing, strong continued execution, organic growth be -4% while being impacted by the pandemic at -6% level, specifically in the automotive sector, very much a similar levels as we saw in Q2, adjusted profitability at 12.3 percentage point level. We continue to see good market activity level in the telecom 5G, radio 5G core, activity level good, and overall customer interaction across the sectors continue actually third quarter at a good pace. The increased profitability driven by effective cost-based management. The overall agenda for PDS for this year, building new markets, expanding the customer base, and continuing to drive operational efficiency, within which PDS has done well already for a longer period of time. This would conclude the summary of the business performance and service line views. Now over to Tomi.
Thank you, Kimmo, good morning, everyone. I'm pleased with our Q3 performance overall and specifically in our ability to deliver 14% profitability during high activity period in the integration and COVID-19. Our synergy execution, which aims to build a competitive and sustainable cost structure for the company, has progressed well, confirming our ability to reach the target of EUR 100 million of synergies during 2022. We have continued successfully to mitigate the negative profit impact from COVID-19 through rigid cost management. FX headwinds have continued during the quarter with EUR -16 million or - 2.5% impact to revenue compared to prior year. Our operating cash flow was solid, supported by effective working capital management. As mentioned, we estimate the COVID-19 impact on top line for Q3 to be approximately - 4%, and that we have been able to mitigate the negative profit impact as visible in our Q3 profitability.
In practice, our cost-based mitigation in euros was in the range of EUR 20 million-EUR 23 million. This cost-based reduction was achieved through delivery cost management and rigid cost control of our operative costs. On delivery cost, we have carefully managed the usage of external consultants and subcontractors, as well as temporary laid off our own employees to respond to the decrease in demand. Cost-based reduction from temporary layoffs have been relatively minor, roughly at the same level as at the end of Q2, representing less than 1% of the workforce in FTE terms.
Secondly, in the operative cost side, we have continued with rigid cost control over short-term spending, as well as started to take a longer-term view on post-COVID era, specifically as it relates to future of work and the needed facilities to support it. This quarter again demonstrated to us that we have the ability to mitigate negative short-term financial impacts from COVID. We have made good progress with merger integration and related synergy contribution, as mentioned. In Q2, we were able to increase our synergy target from EUR 75 million to EUR 100 million. Today I can confirm that we are well on our way to realize the EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million run rate at the end of 2020 as planned. This means a EUR 25 million to EUR 30 million profit contribution in the P&L already in 2020.
In addition to making sound progress in the synergy delivery, we aim to complete the integration with less cost than our original estimate. We are lowering and narrowing the range of our estimate of the one-time integration cost from EUR 120 million-EUR 140 million to EUR 110 million-EUR 120 million. We're able to do this as we are far enough with the progress of integration and the maturity of our plans for the remaining integration activities is sufficiently high. I'll give you an update on our one-time items. It's important to state that our estimate for 2020 is unchanged. Q3 one-time items of EUR 62 million were as planned, consisting of EUR 42 million of integration-related costs, EUR 9 million of IBM service transition cost in addition to PPA amortization.
Q3 integration cost consisted primarily of restructuring-related costs from September announcement, IT system integration cost, as well as one-time non-cash cost of EUR 17.4 million from R&D roadmap integration in FSS service line. The FSS R&D roadmap integration was one of the areas already identified in the early stages of the merger and has now been executed, delivering merger benefits in a form of decrease in R&D spending over next one to two years. In Q4, we expect only EUR 25 million-EUR 30 million of one-time costs. However, a higher cash flow impact due to delayed cash flow profile of the items, as discussed earlier. Our view for 2021 remains unchanged with significant decrease in one-time items as planned. As already stated, we delivered a solid EUR 108.4 million of operative cash flow for the quarter. Consistent with Q2, we did not experience any delays in receivables collection due to COVID-19.
This is likely due to our relatively high exposure towards the public and financial services sector, as well as share of large corporations in our customer base. Our working capital developed favorably with the decrease of EUR 31.5 million from Q2. It's fair to recognize that we don't expect this strong cash flow generation in Q4 as the cash flow impact from one-time items increases into Q4, as mentioned. Capital expenditure was temporarily at lower level in Q3, amounting to EUR 17.6 million. We estimate the Q4 CapEx to be back on a more normalized levels of H1, maybe even slightly higher level. Back to you, Kimmo.
Very well. Thank you very much, Tomi, for the good views, good CFO perspective, and continued extensive focus, very important to us on the synergy drive, one of the foundational factors for the merger benefits. In the next section, I'd like to briefly, as usual, first begin by the performance drivers and recap the full performance summary. The performance drivers for the fourth quarter, our typical categories, COVID-19 that Tomi and I have both touched on already, Q3 impact having been - 4%, Q4 estimated to be at a similar level. The profit impact mitigation we continue to have big on our agenda. Accelerated synergies, exactly as Tomi just summarized, we continue to be on that path very rigidly. Furthermore, the negative currency impact estimated for Q4 revenues around EUR 14 million, and about EUR 80 million on revenues and EUR 30 million full-year adjusted EBIT.
Also important to confirm and summarize the other operational factors, drivers that we do believe that the backlog is in full support of our revenue ambition for the fourth quarter. As we gave a few highlights regarding cloud and infra, the revenue and profitability temporarily impacted due to lost customers in 2019, an incremental cost in the IBM-related quality improvement and process harmonization according to the plans that were originally announced in May and further specified in the Q2 report as well. With this in mind, we expect that we shall have all the opportunities to conclude year 2020 by being successful in the merger integration, driving rigidly performance improvement, as well as preparing for exciting opportunities for year 2021. You have noticed last week the reissuance of guidance.
We expect the comparable full-year adjusted operating profit to increase from the previous year's level. I'd like to give a bit of an overview of the upcoming CMD for the 3rd of December. Our consideration is by nature to outline our future strategic and financial ambitions. The combination of Tomi and myself to go through the long-term ambition, the merger progress, and combination of growth, profitability, and capital allocation objectives. I think we'll have a very interesting and exciting dialogue regarding the future. The service lines shall be describing the market opportunity, the services within the service line, how we differentiate, as well as offering insights to the business objectives and drivers of competitiveness. The country team perspectives through a roundtable dialogue on how the aggregate value propositions are working in our main markets.
This shall be a virtual event given the context of the pandemic, broadcasting taking place from our three main locations. Our plan is to send the invitations by the 11th of November. To conclude our session, and then we move to Q&A, we believe we have had in the post-merger era, third good quarter, strong quarter, guidance restored, strong delivery in the underlying margin of 14%, organic decline of 4%. Over time, absolutely we will be a growth company. This is also being impacted by the pandemic. In the software, really strong progress. Merger on schedule, including synergy drive, and from a confidence standpoint, good that we were able to also restore our guidance. With this in mind, this is probably the best time to switch it over to a Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Kimmo, and thank you, Tomi. We are ready to proceed to the questions from the conference call. Moderator, please go ahead.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw a question you may do so by pressing zero to cancel. Our first question is from Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Congratulations to the solid underlying margin. Question on the Tieto integration cost lower to EUR 110 million-120 million. To me, it seems like you have EUR 30 million-40 million left to recognize in the P&L. You state you will have EUR 20 million-25 million in Q4. You also have some EUR 37 million in restructuring provisions, so you can use that in the cash flow. My question is really, how sure are you that this roughly EUR 70 million cash flow buffer for the integration will be enough and not raise again later to meet this over EUR 100 million cost efficiency target? Will the EUR 10 million-15 million that remains for 2021 be enough? Thanks.
Sorry, the line was broken.
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at one point. It died here, so we did not quite get the question fully. If you can repeat.
The question.
Yeah
The question is how sure you are that you will not need to raise your restructuring cost? To me, you have roughly EUR 70 million in a buffer if you take the remaining EUR 30 million, EUR 40 million for the P&L and what you have in the provisions. Given your comment on Q4, 20 million EUR, 25 million EUR in restructuring charges, that leaves EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million for 2021. My question is how sure are you that this will be enough to meet the EUR 100 million target?
Yes. Thank you. Now we heard it properly. We are very comfortable with our current numbers. As I mentioned, our remaining integration activity plans are mature enough that we feel very comfortable. Just to recap the numbers, just that we get them right. Integration cost for this year, EUR 80 million-EUR 85 million. We have never specifically said, now what is restructuring of that? I have referred to those numbers as you have heard as well. For 2021, EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million, for 2022, EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million. These are the components ending up to the EUR 110 million-EUR 120 million. As I said, very comfortable with these numbers.
Perfect. One more question, if I may. With regards to the Smart Utility exit in Q2, can you comment on the aftermath from the customer reactions and so on? Was everybody satisfied with the outcome, or how are things?
Yeah. While the topic, whenever you end of life a platform, is a difficult topic, we did reach agreements in really good faith and full agreement with all of our customers.
Perfect. My last question would be on the competitive outlook and pricing indication in the public sector in the Nordics.
Thank you for that question as well. There are a number of kind of variants or variables in the marketplace when the pandemic is creating fluctuations in demand. What I now summarize is kind of very typical in this type of a macro demand fluctuation. We are so far coping fine. We need to be really price sensitive, delivery efficiency sensitive. Yes, there are some cases here and there, not many, where kind of price disruption exists, but I would not like to portray that it would be a market practice. We are mindful this can also happen.
Okay, thank you very much, and good luck in Q4.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Sami Sarkamies from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, starting from the COVID-19 headwind for this year. Previously, you've been expecting 2%-5% negative impact. What is the current estimate based on Q4 outlook?
Currently, by the way, the reason we did not so far kind of want to do an annual average because right at the background being Q1 hardly any, Q2 2%, Q3 4%, our prediction is 4% for Q4. I think that is hopefully a bit more insightful than an annual average that we look at exactly what we try to share openly what is our belief also in the shorter term.
Okay, I would actually continue on Q4 outlook. Are you seeing any pickup in demand for your services in any business areas as you do not seem to be more positive on Q4 revenue outlook on the group level yet?
Couple of factors. Yes, we are seeing actually in several of our markets improved good win rates, good activity level, winning big contracts. These are the factors, and as you have noticed here, we wanted to be very open about the magnitude of impact of the lost customers in 2019, and by nature, that will take a bit of time that we actually win new landscape in the market and return to growth. Those are the factors that impact then fourth quarter.
Okay. How do you see demand picking up next year? What sort of recovery are you currently planning for?
We will of course do our best to offer perspectives then in the CMD, but of course we are thinking and working on the business plans by nature at this point in time. The greatest factor that we try to do the smartest possible estimate is that how will the pandemic impact market behavior. So far what we are reading into this is our impact seems to be very similar as the global peer group is announcing with this type of business mix. We did offer a view, as you noticed in the case of digital consulting, that absolutely we believe in longer term growth, and we wanted to offer a perspective that that would likely be mid-2021. These are some of the drivers and we'll offer some perspective certainly then also in CMD.
Okay, thanks. My final question would be on cloud and infra segment where you're flagging transformation to burden the operations until next summer. Just wanted to understand if third quarter was the low point thinking of margin and top-line pressure and if this should sort of gradually ease going into next year or will the development be something different?
As we did comment, I'm sure you, Sami, noticed in the cloud and infra commentary that the temporarily lower profitability until summer 2021. That perspective we did want to offer. I would like to furthermore just offer a further commentary that we have indeed in the Q2 report and in the May sharing tried to offer views that the cost base increase would be higher as an example in H2 due to this transition, and now we offer the perspective impact by about 2 percentage points from profit. These are the factors. By the way, as you notice, I do not want to offer guidance on cloud and infra profit now. Sami, you will recognize that in the history, the cloud and infra business, specifically from the ex Tieto side, very systemic profit improvement consistently over kind of multiple years.
We expect to be back on that track. I do not wish to speculate how fast.
Sami, I guess it's fair to add to Kimmo's comment that as we have said that the add-on volumes have been impacted and we see it already, and now the uncertainty is that how much of that impact is in Q4, which we obviously as of now don't know.
Okay, thank you very much. I don't have any further questions.
Just as a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Christopher Johnson from DNB. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Kimmo, I think you're a bit away from the mic. The sound is quite bad. If you could move closer, that would be helpful.
Thank you. Good hint.
My first question is on the cloud and infra. Yeah, temporary decline in profitability there. Over time, you can reflect a bit around the margin potential there. Surely it will come back to previous levels, but then ahead, beyond that as well, you have peers that are pure play infrastructure like Rackspace that are doing closer to 20% EBIT margin. Is there any structural reason why you should not be able with your scale to achieve the same EBIT margins towards the 20% over time there. That's my first question. My second question is on industry software, which was great to see that a peak in operating profitability. Is that kind of the new run rate level where you expect to be an improve going forward? Was there any non-recurring tailwinds on the margin there that we should not extrapolate the normal going forward?
Yeah. Thank you, Christopher. Very good point. Let's take first the cloud and infra and kind of the Rackspace. There I would have two first comments. I think that our consideration industrially, which I think we actually should understand this really well as a company and as few of us as individuals, that the longer-term development in cloud and infra is extremely important to aim at standardizing the architectures in order to drive automation, consistency, and quality, really important factors for driving scalable, more profitable growth. So far, historically, we have proven that our type of companies can do that by doubling the profitability of some of our businesses pre-merger. One factor. Second factor, it's now been a while since I looked at in more detail on Rackspace, but it's a very good example, Christopher, I do agree.
The very likely difference is extremely standardized architecture, standardized technologies, standardized tooling, and also extremely standardized set of services that are procured in a more standardized manner. When we simplify the IT infrastructures of enterprises where architectures were invented 12, 15, 18, 20 years ago, it takes time to transform our customers. That is the opportunity we have because it's worth a lot of business and money for our customers, and we think we will be amply rewarded by driving that very important transformation. Second question was.
IS
Yeah, then on the IS, that's the kind of Rackspace and CNI cloud and infra profit, there's a bit of a correlation. I correlated these two perspectives a bit that, yes, we will have a good ambition that we'll be industry-leading in this domain, Johan will share these perspectives then in CMD. On the IS side, nothing surprising. It's been a consistent industrial renewal and upgrading of standardized methodologies in the industry software businesses, this is now getting to be at the levels where we'd like to see the software businesses
Thank you. That's very encouraging, actually. Moving on to restructuring charges. Then final one on CapEx. You maybe tried to touch upon this earlier. The line was a bit choppy. On the financial services side, could you just elaborate a bit on why the one-offs were so significant there and what kind of activities and initiatives they were related to beyond the headcount reductions? My next question, and maybe the last one for now, is on capital expenditure, which was significantly down in Q3. Was there any kind of one-off effect there taking it down due to delays due to COVID-19 or whatever? Should we expect the kind of the current capital expenditure level to be the new run rate for the company?
Thank you for the question. Restructuring EUR 62 million, that was as planned. There was, as I mentioned, nothing particularly in that number. In the FSS side, as I mentioned, the EUR 17.4 million non-cash write-off, which we detected early on in the merger process, this we executed now, and that will deliver the benefits over one to two years from now. Nothing specific on that one either. As planned, as I said before. On the CapEx, of course, in the CapEx, there are, let's say, normal variations in the levels from months to quarters, and now we were on the sort of lower cycle, let's call it that way. The summer period actually impacts slightly as well, but nothing sort of extraordinary there in addition to holiday period and the sort of normal variation in the activity of investments.
Specifically in the data center side, you can see these bigger changes during the quarters.
Thank you, guys. It was very helpful.
Our next question is from Michael Briest from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. Good morning. Just a couple from me. I take on board what you say on the book-to-bill or the bookings being affected by smaller deal sizes. When I look at some of your peers, particularly the Indian vendors, they've talked of remarkably strong booking momentum, Accenture as well. Can you sort of explain why you and they are seeing different trends? Just in terms of the cash flow, I see that the factoring's gone up another EUR 5 million from Q2 to Q3. Can you just remind us what your program for factoring is and why you sell receivables? What's the business reason for that? I assume with interest rates where they are, there's not going to be much of a financial benefit.
Yes. On the order backlog and book-to-bill, as you were referring to, with the EUR 3.2 billion, we're at the same level roughly as last year. Nothing specific. We think it's a strong backlog and brings us the momentum for our revenue numbers for the coming year and years at the normal level as expected. On the factoring, you rightly pointed out there was a EUR 5 million of increase from Q2 to Q3, so only a minor one. We have our standard program, standard principles how we do it. We have the identified number of customers whom receivables we factor, and that typically is when we have a big extended payment terms and very recurring transactions with these customers. We have not changed our policies or principles, therefore there might be variations from quarter to quarter.
You say that you've not changed your policies, but it's gone from, I think, EUR 9 million to EUR 33 million over the course of the year. The historical Tieto business was sort of EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million a quarter. I just don't. What is it within the, I guess, the EVRY heritage business that causes that?
Per the earlier announcement, we had the restated number wrong in the factoring, so you might be looking at that number now. There is not that big increase in the factoring.
Okay. Then just on the capitalization, can you say something about how much of that relates to development work as opposed to normal capital spend?
The division is two-thirds on the software development and one-third on the, let's say, hard CapEx.
Okay. All right. Thanks. That's helpful. Thank you.
Michael, if still questions on this factoring and if restatements have been any lack of clarity that can be gone through also, of course, separately.
Yes, of course.
If there is.
Okay.
Okay. Our next question is from Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Jaakko from SEB. Your digital consulting was down 9%. The general view is that the COVID should actually accelerate the digital transformation. Are you seeing also this trend, and when do you expect the segment to return to growth track? Could you give any kind of indication on the future market growth you are seeing for that segment? Thanks.
Sure. Thank you. Overall, the activity level on digital consulting to drive the type of contactless engagement and interaction in the world, we do very much believe it will accelerate over time. The opportunities are there. The engagement level is good. At this point in time, we do believe that when we look at the aggregate market, it is being impacted most significantly of our software and IT service businesses. What we have reported as the pandemic impact, it's very similar to when we look at the larger peer group with sizable businesses. To the best of our understanding, our view happens to be very consistent as now commented.
Now, our ambition longer term absolutely will be to drive growth, and we wanted to offer the commentary in the service line view that we anticipate to be back to a growth mode by mid-next year in digital consulting. Naturally, there is just a real impact on decision-making, speed of decision-making, and even potential postponement of investments, a bit dependent on which industry sector we talk about. With this in mind, this is exactly what is impacting the total industry view for the consulting side, which is being impacted the most. Yes, there are small consulting companies that can grow when business may have been won nine or 12 months ago. There is just quite a bit of fluctuation in the marketplace.
Okay, great. Thanks. Second question. Could you elaborate more your performance from geographical perspective? I.e., if your kind of a group level performance spread evenly out between the countries or is some country performing better and some country performing or having a more poor performance compared to the other ones?
It is actually such that our consideration is to offer a bit broader perspective than on a full-year level on the countries. Currently, of course, we will comment openly and answer your very fair question that we are seeing very similar type of performance across our main markets, meaning Norway, Sweden, Finland, being impacted at very similar levels due to the pandemic, one factor. To be fair, international businesses outside the Nordics, which have been smaller, we are seeing higher growth than in the Nordic countries at this point in time. Over time, we do believe, as we have reflected upon and will return to when we talk about the longer-term growth ambitions, the opportunities especially of our software businesses, our largest software businesses, we do believe over time we will have interesting opportunities also and more so outside the Nordics.
Would there be a-
Okay, excellent. Thanks. That's all from my side.
for the year and then potentially impact-.
Our next question is from George Webb from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Morning, Kimmo and Tomi. I've got a couple of questions, please. Firstly, on the merger synergies and the costs. Obviously, you revised up the synergies at the second quarter. I think there was a comment at the time that maybe we should expect the implementation cost to be at the higher end of the range, and now that range is being reduced, even from that previous level. Can you firstly discuss what's driving that? Then just quickly, secondly, can you perhaps share the level of utilization you're running at within digital consulting today? Thank you.
If I take the first one. First of all, to be clear, we have always said that we will be at the lower end of or aim to be at the lower end of 120 to 140. This is roughly consistent with that statement. That 120 and 140, we actually did over a year ago, that estimate. We did not want to go and change that before we were mature enough with our full plan for finalizing the integration. Now we are at that stage and happy to say that we will be doing it in lower than originally expected. Nothing specific to comment on what would be the specific driver. It's the overall plan and the maturity.
Maybe then comment on the kind of utilization and billability. If I first give an overall and then I go to your point on consulting. When we look at the utilization performance measures in our first comment, the global delivery centers, whether we think about the big sites in China, in India, in Czech or Poland. Utilization and billability levels continue to be good. I think we have a little bit more than in the Nordics, specifically in the digital consulting, a little bit of fluctuation given what the market dynamics currently are. We have a very extensive view on driving the efficiency, billability, the competitive cost structure, which has enabled us to, even in the era of the pandemic, to improve profitability on the digital consulting side.
When we think about the longer term in the digital consulting, absolutely, we have our norms on billability levels. As we then work through the growth agenda, I think that will actually create the exciting next chapter for that business. In our past, if I may, we've also seen good improvement in the performance of digital consulting, meaning pre-merger. As we get a bit further in the integration, we are able to then start to actually run much more a post-merger business profile in DC.
Thank you. Just to squeeze one further in. When you think about the impact of this pandemic and how you kind of deploy employee resources, are there any structural changes or things you're thinking about today, whether it's levels of offshoring or levels of permanent remote workers? Are there any of those factors that now come into your thinking?
Very good point. We do absolutely think about this very much holistically. Number of elements. First of all, the resource agility based on customer requirements because we have such a big role in keeping the society up and running, and there is an opportunity for really good trust creation, helping our customers to manage their businesses, their processes at this point in time. We are seeing better trust creation and better vote of confidence already in the third quarter based on number of changes we have touched upon. One factor. The resource agility in this sense, very important.
The ways of working, yes, we have a continuous kind of ideation underway on the future of work, how we support our people, how we also drive the type of dynamics that people can be innovative have the type of a balance that they can do their jobs in the best possible way and firm view on company-level productivity and the role of facilities. I do believe that this will be a continuous kind of a process that we'll be tuning until we know more of what would stability mean post-pandemic. Until then, I think we need to be very humbly on our toes, talk extremely openly internally, and drive a very systemic efficiency perspective given that the volume volatility, I do believe, will be prevailing in all industry sectors, not just technology, software, and IT services.
I do believe we can be well resilient through these type of considerations.
Great. Thank you.
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 is from Christopher Johnson from DNB. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for letting me on for a follow-up. Two final questions for me. Within Digital Consulting, there's a lot of different things going on there. For me, it would be very helpful if you kind of could give maybe some additional granularity on the development of the different segments within Digital Consulting or businesses with Technology Advisory, System Integration, Managed Application Services, what are kind of pulling the total of that segment up and what is pulling down?
Okay. Absolutely. In the digital consulting, if I think about the performance of the service practices and also the country dimension, what we are seeing consistently is that the area of cloud advisory analytics data platforms continues to have, even in the era of the pandemic, good volume opportunities and creation. That would be my main consideration on your very fair point. We do see both opportunities in the area like business application side, transforming supply chains, bringing automation into supply chain optimization. There are areas that we see as pockets of opportunities, which we by nature are working and will be working more and more towards our growth agenda.
The challenge for digital consulting, and I do very humbly, firmly believe it's not just the case for TietoEVRY, is that there is a fluctuation in demand in the marketplace, and the COVID impact of about 7% is our perspective. I think there are other companies that are impacted even more than we are being hit, given that we also have the longevity in a number of our application services domains within digital consulting. Those would be some reflections, and Christopher, happy to talk about or continue the sparring and the views. I just want to highlight that the impact of the pandemic is clearly the biggest in the digital consulting side, as well as you noticed, we are not talking about the impact of integration with a big perspective.
It is having some impact on the digital consulting side, given that it is so labor-intensive, and especially the merged environment in Sweden has taken a bit of effort internally to get everything organized and in place. We expect to become a lot more stable and complete by the end of the year.
One last one from me and I'll let you go. There was news out recently that IBM is doing some structural changes to the organization, spinning off basically technology and their services business. Can you talk just a bit about how that affects your business? Will there be less friction with them as a technology vendor and partner for you guys? On the other hand, will there potentially be tougher competition from their services part, as that will be a standalone company that maybe will be more forward-leaning in the market than they've been thus far? I get that there's a long process before they're at that point in time where these are two separate companies, any reflections would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
Sure. First of all, I think it's good to see that both parties feel that we completed a very important and demanding reshaping of something that did not work. What we started in May through that announcement, it's a path that TietoEVRY will become competitive and scalable also in cloud and infra business. I wanted to mention it's a path that both parties believe is a good path and good for both parties. Now, if I offer my perspective on the industrial logic of companies, in this case, IBM, considering the requirements of distinct business logics between dependencies on investments on businesses purely driven by scale and businesses that are more driven by automation, software orientation, software insight, industrially, naturally, it makes sense that they are separated because the business logic deserves different investment levels, different investment cycles, different ROIs, and the whole thing.
Naturally, we have a good view on what we expect to move forward, and then as you commented, it will be quite a lead time before it is complete. Nowadays, we have a good relationship with IBM, and assuming we create better value for our customers, for our shareholders, and improve all of our measures, we'll continue to do fine.
Thank you.
As we currently have no further audio questions, I will hand the word back to the speakers for any final comments.
Thank you. We are ready to end this session. I would like to thank you for participating today, and hopefully we will meet in our Capital Markets Day virtually.
Thank you very much for joining today. Thank you.