Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming along. I'm David Wells. I'm going to I have pleasure giving our Q4 results for 2019 and also talk a little bit about 2019 as a whole. So I'll be giving a talk mainly on the operations and give some color on some of the things we've been doing with some high end numbers.
And I'll be joined by my colleague, Kim Bowman, who will our CFO, who will be giving some more detail on the financial numbers. So a forward looking statement to start with. Let's talk about 2019 to begin with. It's really been a defining year for the company, and I really truly mean that. During the course of the year, we have really grown the size of the company.
We've more than doubled it to in size, not in terms of numbers of staff, in terms of numbers of offices, in terms of revenues. And we've made great strides forward in bringing these two companies together. We're offering more service lines to the industries. We're closer to the insurance companies we were. We've had great response from clients to approve this coming together of two companies.
And of course, with that, there's been an awful lot of internal looking and aligning two quite different organizations, I guess, into under one umbrella. So I think we made great strides on that. We have now ended the year with all offices working together, all in the same buildings. We're working as a single company. We've aligned everybody going forward.
And with that, there's an awful lot of internal company management focus on that and a little bit less focus on the external markets as we bring ourselves together. But pleasing to say that the revenues end the year, pro form a revenues are more or less identical from the previous year. So we haven't had the normal dip that sometimes you get after bringing two companies together. And we ended the year with a pro form a positive EBIT. A standout start of the year has been our renewables arm.
Revenues up from organic growth by about 46% over the course of the year. So that's a really, really stunning piece of work from those guys. And looking forward, it's looking quite exciting for them as well. If we move forward to Q4, revenue is US18.8 million dollars up slightly on the previous quarter. Normally, we'll be looking back on the previous quarter of the year behind.
We've actually found this quite difficult after the merger because Braemar Technical Services had a different reporting timeline and pulling numbers out was quite difficult. So the first two or three quarters up until Q2 of this year, we'll be looking back quarter by quarter until we can have a direct comparison on the previous year's quarter. So as I say, we're slightly up on the previous quarter, which is good. Billing ratios have been maintained. Integration process on the way, cost synergies, no reason to change numbers.
Everything is looking quite good on that particular front. We've got a slightly improved cash position that we had in the previous quarter. And I'm very pleased to say that we are proposing to make a dividend of NOK 0.2 per share moving to a semiannual dividend schedule. So I hope that's pleasing. It's certainly a reward from our side for the support that shareholders have given us and we are very keen to be looking forward to making continued dividends.
For those of you who don't accompany that well, I just give a little bit of detail about what we do and our core services. We are a high end consultancy focused on the offshore markets, global energy shipping and insurance industries. We have three main sort of types of work that we do, the project consulting, accident prevention and incident management, mainly associated with risk. Everything we do is really about minimizing risk for our clients, minimizing risk for the insurance companies and trying and when accidents have happened and we're assessing those damages is really to minimize the consequences of those damages. So it is a risk focused company.
We have four main business streams, the renewable side, which I'll go into more detail shortly, but it's all to offshore wind. The offshore oil and gas side shipping is the blue water shipping, the bulk carriers, container ships, tankers, those type of large vessels and then the adjusting arm, which is focusing on the energy markets and an expert with this work that we do for insurance companies and for high end clients.
Our global
footprint is extensive. There's none of our arrivals can possibly match this 48 locations in 31 countries as we stand. We do have intentions in 2020 to extend that footprint. We will be opening up more offices and we're just going through the process at the moment of just doing business plans to get those approved and put forward. But I say this is we are definitely the largest independent global consultancy in the type of work that we do.
If we break that down to business streams, the offshore side is just under half. Marine is about a quarter of our business. Renewables is over an eighth now increasing quite large quite fast. We started when we brought the two companies together, it was around about 10% of our revenues over the last six months. We've increased to 13%.
We expect further increases going forward in 2020 and adjusting is perhaps the smallest arm at the moment. And it's an area we've had some weakness. When we bought the two companies together, we did lose a few staff. I think some of our competitors saw this as an opportune we're opportunistic to try and get some of our staff. So we did lose a few at the beginning, which caused a little bit of a dip in our revenues, but we have now rearranged our personnel around the world, promoted from within and we're recruiting quite heavily in that arm.
And I'll give you some more details about loss adjusting later on, but that has been the one area perhaps of weakness since the merger. If you break down the segments, about a quarter of our business comes from Asia Pacific, about a quarter comes from Middle East, slightly Europe and Americas around about the same size and renewables about, let's say, one eighth of the business, 13% of the business with a total revenue of just under US74 million dollars So we talk about renewables. This is a very exciting business line at the moment. The project pipeline is really, really ramping up at the moment. There's so many projects coming online at the second.
As you can see, numbers twenty nineteen has started from quite a low point on this chart. The 2020, 2021, 2022, there's an enormous ramp up of projects coming online and this excludes China. China is quite a difficult market for us to service. So we're looking outside of that country as we look at numbers. And what's really quite interesting is that the market share from the top three suppliers, which is very, very dominant, see in 2013 to have 68% of the market.
As we move forward, that market share is coming down quite dramatically. There's many more players coming into the market, more investors, more utility companies, more new players moving in. And most of those companies do not have the infrastructure of, say, the likes of Orsted. So they need consultants. They need people like us to assist them to get their show on the road.
So we think that's quite exciting. And we're certainly seeing signs of that coming forward the moment. And we have some quite exciting new projects, which are just about to come to fruition, I hope. And hopefully, this time next quarter, I can tell you some more details about them. Some of the work we've done.
So in 2019, we worked on 27 different wind farms, total capacity of 19 gigawatts, which is a fairly sizable chunk of the global remit there, 46% revenue growth during the course of the year. And our geotechnical department, which sits our renewable section undertook six twenty sole boring analyses, which gives an indication of the amount of work that's coming through. Interesting little work that we did here in North Korea is really focused on the pre investment of a wind farm and approving use of a floating LiDAR system for assessing data to make decisions on whether the wind farm is viable or not viable. So quite interesting, quite a breakaway from what we have done traditionally, which is good because we're trying to change ourselves more into consulting away from providing people for our clients. Another piece of work, which is quite interesting as well, working for mainstream in Vietnam is a new area of work for us.
It has been the putting together the specifications for the ITT for the wind turbine package and putting all those documents together for going out to tender into the market. So another piece of high end consulting right at the start of wind farm and we hope that will lead on to other things going forward. So as you can see from there, Vietnam, South Korea, those Asia Pacific countries are really showing quite a lot of promise for us and quite a of promise for the renewables industry. If we go to the offshore side, I think we're still seeing signs of uptick in that market. If we look at these two graphs here, what interesting is that in the last couple of years, there's been an awful lot of extra spend on the onshore side of the market.
That seems to be tailing off at the moment and there seems to be more and more spend coming on to the offshore side. And the offshore side is where we're totally focused and that gives us quite a lot of confidence moving forward. We also watch jackups in particular because we do a lot of jackup attendances and jackup is shallow water, the areas where we work and we can see a general uptick in the market there. So the number of jackups working at the moment is around about three fifty. It's been generally trending upwards now for the last eighteen months and that's a good sign for us.
And the same for floaters, we don't do much work on floaters, but floaters have stabilized and are ticking along on a fairly uniform basis at the moment. So where do we stand on the offshore side? We attended on board over 600 rig moves during the course of 2019. As you just mentioned, are about three fifty rigs that are working. So most rigs move around about four times a year.
You can see the size of market share that we have around the world. We're very dominant in that area, attending not only from a marine warranty aspect, but also from a provision of Towmasters and rig movers. We carried out over 300 marine warranty projects during the course of the year and work for over 200 different clients. So it gives an idea of the extent of our footprint and the extent of the work that we carry out for our clients. The project I put up here as just a typical example is just to show that we do get to the other end of the spectrum.
And this was the decommissioning of a jacket in Thailand. The first one that was done there, a jacket on topside was taken out and taken back to a local shipyard for dismantling. Interesting thing about Thailand is they have quite strong remit there that as soon as a platform falls out of use, it has to be dismantled within three years. And that gives quite a lot of potential in that part of the world for further work on this particular area. On the Marine side, Marine side is ticking along quite nicely.
It's not going up or down spectacular in either direction, but it's still a very strong business line for us. But within that, in 2019, we received about 1,900 instructions from over 600 clients during the course of the year, looking at damages worth over $500,000,000 If we put that in these numbers, that's around about five claims that they are coming through to us on the hull and machinery side and the P and I side, which we're trying to drive at the moment. We've also won six contracts very recently in the second half of the year, providing technical due diligence to banks, ship owners associated with mergers, refinancing, where we're going to look at the whole fleet of ships to see how their operational status is, see their efficiencies, see how they're operating, see if the viability of the assets themselves. And that's an interesting area for us because there's a big chunk of work that comes through when we get these jobs and keeps us quite busy. It's an area we've been looking at for many years, but really haven't got into it, but suddenly we seem to be making good progress in that area.
Loss adjusting, again, this is the area where we had a little bit of difficulty after merger. We lost a number of good staff and some of whom come back again afterwards, I have to say, but we had been refocused on that. But we received we still received two seventy five instructions during the course of the year. And we worked on all five of the largest casualties in the Lloyd's market in 2019. So we still got a very good name in that market.
And as I say, we're recruiting quite hard at the moment. And I think in 2020, we will get that business line back up and running and performing properly. Still very strong at Asia Pacific, still very strong in Americas. Europe is the area where we've had a little bit of difficulty. I put up one example here of some typhoon damage in China in the Bohai Bay Area.
Typhoon called Ling Ling came along in Q3, Q4, did a lot of damage to 16 platforms and we're working quite hard on that one there with our clients CNOOC to assess the damages that have been associated with that cyclone. ESG, since the merger, we've been really focusing on to formally come to grips with how we're going to move forward. And so we put together a strategy, which we've called internally Aquadeus Bremer 02/1930. I'm pleased to say that last night, we were accepted by the UN Global Compact to do our ESG reporting through that for a zero carbon emission company. I think our minds have really been focused in 2019 by the effects of the Australian bushfires and also the mild winter we've had in the northern latitudes this year and is really excited to I think the world is aware of our responsibilities.
That bottom part there, quote, NGOceans are the center of our business. They very much are the center of our business and the sustainability of both is hugely vital to us. So we will really be focused on that. And as we make the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, we want to be right in there and part of that process. So going back to metrics, Q4 backlog, we have measured this improvement in the last quarter up to EUR 13,800,000.0, almost a 10% increase on the previous quarter.
This covers actually just the offshore section and the renewable section. We can't measure very easily the marine and the loss adjusting side because that tends to be claims as they come through and tends to be quite hard to realize in terms of backlog. But numbers are increasing. That's another indication to us that the market is improving. Quite a lot of that's driven by renewables, but also in the oil and gas side, we have made some pretty good 've had some pretty good successes recently and we've had some more successes going into Q1, which has been good.
Staff development, we have maintained a number of staff from end of Q3 to end of Q4 at around about four twenty people. Our subcontractor basis has slightly improved in Q4, which is always the aim of the company to have more subcontractors working because it gives us a more flexible cost base. But the fact that we've maintained number of staff, in fact, we're increasing number of staff going forward from now is good. And I would like to think at the end of Q1 that we'll be in a better position even again. Bidding ratio obviously is an important metric.
We've had to slightly change the way we report this going forward because the methodology used by Braemar Technical Services is different to the one we had in the Carnas Offshore previously. 69% is where we stand at the moment. 69% is good. We will be aiming to achieve better as we move forward. But if you put this back in perspective between the period of March and December 2018 in Braemar Technical Services, the average utilization was 53.
I think you can see here that we've made moves forward in terms of bringing that utilization up and improving numbers. So with that, I would like to pass on to Kim Bowman to give you a little bit more detail about finances.
Thanks, David. To make the financial performance more meaningful, we have included pro form a combined figures for revenues and for adjusted EBIT. BTS was fully consolidated into our figures from Q3 twenty nineteen. Our adjusted revenues increased from last quarter with 5% and it's a decrease of 4% from Q4 twenty eighteen. If you look on our performance versus Q4 twenty eighteen, Aqalis the part revenues were slightly up, while BTS was slightly down.
The main driver for the revenue increase within AQUALIS was within Renewables and the reduction for BTS was mainly due to a reduction in revenues for adjusting. The adjusted EBIT has increased from 2% to 4% from Q3. The margin improvement that we are seeing is driven by the synergies that we have been able to realize and the increased cooperation between offices. The synergies we estimate or the synergy target remains the same as from last quarter, dollars 2,500,000.0, and we have realized $1,900,000 in run rate synergies as of Q4. The remaining synergies, we expect to realize mainly during 2020 once we have one joint ERP system across the group.
It's been a challenge to operate our business from a back office view and reporting view with different ERP systems and some part of the ERP system not very fit for our business. And we have taken steps to move over to the Aqualis ERP systems for Enlarged Group. So for our offshore business, we have mainly now moved over to our current ERP systems in former Qualys, while for the marine and adjusting business, we plan to do that by the summer this year. The process to move over to our new ERP system will commence in Q2 twenty twenty. And we are very excited about the opportunities that this will allow us to improve operations, improve processes, reduce admin time.
It will also allow us to reduce the working capital, which I will revert to on a later slide. We have also worked on developing a new analytical tool that is built on our existing ERP system, which will make it more easy for management to get a grasp of our business. Within large group, it's a challenge to have control, and we are very excited with the new tools we will now implement at the end of this quarter. This will allow our management to have information quicker, better information, and it will be easy to deploy across the group. So this will allow our management team to make quicker and hopefully better decisions and thereby driving our business.
We are investing in technology and systems. We really believe that this is key. We don't believe we want to automate. We want to have information at hand. And this we see this as a competitive benefit versus some in the market.
This is the first quarter where we have split out renewables as a separate segment. So we have now four regions as separate segments plus our renewables business, which is set by or led by all the offshore wind consultants. The Q4 figures in the graphs excludes BTS figures, while the Q3 and Q4 figures for 2019 is for Enlarged Group. If you look on the performance in Q4, the improvements are driven mainly by Middle East and Americas. The performance in Europe has been weak.
We expect that to turn into 2020, and we see positive steps being taken. Our key regions remains Middle East and APAC. We also see, as David pointed out in terms of the integration and what we have been through, we are seeing increased cooperation across the offices. So we see increased and you see that in the figures, you see increased intercompany revenues. So for us, that's it's a complexity in terms of managing the business, but there is a real benefit in terms of realizing the opportunities that we see globally.
So the sharing of opportunities is a key factor for us to be successful in this business. Moving to the income statement. I'll just point out a few of the items on the P and L. There's a negative finance income of million, which is mainly related to reversal of income accruals that we have taken over the past quarters, which are related to warranty claims from the BTS transaction. These claims have been adjusted by reducing the purchase consideration as a final fair value adjustment in the purchase consideration.
The finance expense of €600,000 relates to revaluation of warrants given to Bremar in connection with the transaction. So this is a noncash effect. We are maintaining a solid financial position. The cash is slightly up from Q3, now at $10,900,000 The balance sheet includes a capital at least of $2,400,000 which is related to our property leases. The working capital has decreased from €26,300,000 to €25,800,000 However, this is mainly related to an accounting provision.
So in underlying, the working capital is roughly at the same level in Q4 as Q3. We are not pleased with the speed we are able to improve the working capital in the group and is a high focus area for us. So as we have we commenced a process in Q3 to improve the working capital. So we have seen some positive steps or positive results, but they have been countered by some negative effects in other areas. We are confident that we will be able to improve in 2020 and reduce our working capital ratios.
The first phase of the program is focused on information flow, work processes and culture, and that's an ongoing process. The second phase is related to the implementation of a new ERP system, which will be which is targeted to be in place by this summer. The implementation of Phase two of the program will enable us to do quicker invoicing, have better information, have more easy processes. Right now, it's a bit of a challenge with information flows. With the ERP systems we have now in place are not optimal for our business, which means that we need to use a lot of time to get information and analyze information and digest information, and this slows down our ability to follow-up outstanding receivables and also invoice.
So we are not now in we are not yet there where we should be, but we will be there this summer. As David mentioned, our Board has proposed a dividend of NOK0.2 per share, roughly $1,500,000 We are very pleased that we're able to start to repay back to our shareholders. And our integration is now well on track. We have a liquidity buffer, and we will repay part of that cash now back to shareholders. And our intention or the Board's intention is to have another dividend in the 2020.
We will also or the Board is also proposing to move to a semiannual dividend schedule. This will allow us to improve the capital efficiency by returning cash quicker to shareholders. We have also included our group targets. They remain largely the same as in Q3 with a revenue growth of 5% and an EBITDA margin of 10%. The dividend policy have been amended to reflect semiannual payments.
With that, I'll leave the word over to David.
Thank you, Kim. So just I conclude the summary and outlook as we see things at the moment. I do think that we are in a good place. I do think the market has improved across most of our business lines. I do think there's a lot of opportunities out there.
And with the benefit of having the merger behind us, particularly in the front office, we are in a good place to move forward. What's been quite pleasing is that January and February over the last three or four years has actually been quite a difficult period for trading. We've started well in 2020, started better than perhaps we expected and this gives us more feeling of positivity. And we see that elsewhere as well. We see increased number of jackups working.
We see the offshore wind market improving and we see our loss adjusting side will be developing as recruit more people. The negative we do have is the effects of the coronavirus. We don't quite know what that means to us yet. We do know that in China, where we had quite a good month in January, we are expecting February to be a bit more difficult because of the inability of our staff to move up and down the coast. Whether that migrates out further, we just have to wait and see.
We're not quite sure. When you look at news at moment, the number of new cases in China is reducing, yet it's increasing in other parts of the world. So I think we just have to wait and see what that brings. But we do expect some negative effects, particularly in Asia Pacific in Q1. As Kim said, we are very focused at the moment of improving our cash efficiency and with the ultimate aim of returning cash to shareholders.
Actually, think we've made a lot of achievements. We've made a lot progress. There's been a lot of distraction on ERP systems, but I think the education and the understanding of our staff now exactly what we're trying to achieve has finally got through. And I do expect that we'll start seeing some results in 2020. So that is quite pleasing.
And I think that will actually close out the loop with the merger that we have done and we'll be a much more efficient company going forward. Yes, we spoke just briefly about dividends and getting those going again. And I think that perhaps the bottom line there as well is also quite important. We will be on the lookout for further consolidation opportunities. The market does need still further consolidation.
There will be opportunities out there. And if we can grasp at a good value for our shareholders, we'll certainly be looking at that. So thank you, everybody. Thanks for coming along and appreciate your attention.