Hi, good morning, welcome to the ABL Q4 Presentation. My name is Reuben Segal. I'm the ABL Group CEO, I'm delighted today to be joined by our new CFO, Stuart Jackson, who will be presenting the financial figures during later part of the presentation. For people that are joining us online, good morning, if you would like to ask any questions, please do so in the chat, we will get to them at the end of the presentation. As always, the company disclaimer, draw your attention to the disclaimer, feel free to read this in your own time. I'm gonna jump straight into our operational performance, a summary of our figures for 2022. 2022 was a transformational year for ABL Group.
It was an excellent year, both in terms of revenues, in EBIT, in performance, in cash, and every other aspect of the organization and the business. We concluded the year with a record $168 million of revenues with an EBIT of $15.5 million. This EBIT margin and the revenues were generated predominantly through our Longitude Engineering business and our OWC consulting business, predominantly in the renewables industry. This was an excellent performance for the whole operation. It showed an 11% growth year-on-year, which is in line with our expectations moving forward. We also had a record-breaking EBIT margin for the year as well, just over 9%, which is a huge increase over previous years. A lot of hard work went in to achieve that performance.
In particular, we bring our attention later on in the presentation to the operational excellence that the company achieved and the performance that it achieved to withdraw these numbers, and later on, you'll see our cash position as well. During the course of the year, we paid out a semi-annual dividend of of NOK 0.6. We will come back to that later on in the presentation for our intentions for 2023. In addition to that, we sold our loss adjusting business across to Steege Kingston. We also concluded the acquisition of Add Energy into the organization in the back end of or the start of Q3. It was an excellent transformational year.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff for the hard work that they did, and all the time that they put into achieving these fantastic results. It was a really excellent year for the ABL Group in all respects, and I think all the people within the organization should be very proud of what they achieved during 2022. Talking about Q4. Again, this was the best performing Q4 in the history of the organization. We achieved revenues of $42.8 million, which is an increase of 13% year-on-year. Again, an excellent performance throughout the organization. We also had a record-breaking EBIT of $3.5 million, which is 40% increase year-on-year over 2022, and an EBIT of $2.5 million, which again is an increase of over 30% year-on-year.
Again, an excellent performance overall for the organization. The revenues were predominantly driven by OWC, again, our consulting, renewables arm of the organization and our first-party engineering through Longitude. Both performed extremely well, not only during Q4, but for the whole of 2022. The rest of the organization obviously also contributed to those revenues and EBIT margin. We also had an excellent cash position. Driving this business is not only about achieving revenues and EBIT margin, but it's also about getting the cash into the bank. We ended the year with $17.6 million of free cash, or sorry, of net cash and record operational cash of $6.7 million.
This was a lot of hard work that was done to produce this at the end of the year, and it left us in an excellent standing for the end of the year. That also includes the payout of the NOK 0.3 semi-annual dividend, which we did at the back end of Q4. Excellent quarter all in all. In addition to that, the board, through discussions, have agreed that we will look at a further semi-annual dividend for 2023 of NOK 0.35 , an increase of NOK 0.05 over 2022. Overall, Q4 was yet another excellent quarter for this organization. I suggested during our last presentation that would I be standing here again talking about record after record after record, and yet again, I'm able to do that.
It was a truly excellent year and a truly excellent quarter for ABL Group, and we should be very proud of those results. Taking you through the organization for people that don't know the organization yet, we predominantly work in three business segments or sectors. These are Renewables, Oil & Gas, and Maritime. I'm gonna take you through some of the business lines that we do in each of those sectors. If you take first our consulting engineering arm, there's many different activities. I'm not gonna go through all the activities, but a lot of focus is given particularly on our engineering and our first-party consultancy business and also Owner's Engineering. We try to go after some of the sectors that are better in terms of margin and better growth opportunities for the organization.
We're able to drive more into these areas during 2022. That focus will continue going into 2023. On the loss prevention side, we continue to be the market leader in marine warranty. The marine warranty is the backbone of this organization. We continue to drive marine warranty in both Renewables and Oil & G as. We are a market leader in that sector. We continue to maintain that position. If you go to the loss management side, again, we are a market leader. We have maintained our position as the number one in the Hull & Machinery sector for survey type of work. We also continue now with well control with the addition of Add Energy. That allows us to expand our portfolio of services across the ABL organization.
In all three sectors of this business, we continue to drive all these various business lines throughout the whole of the organization. Where does this work take place? You've seen this map before. We're sitting just shy of 1,100 employees. This is a little bit down over the quarter, but that is purely due to seasonal variation that we have with the winter months in the North Sea. We continue to operate in 38 different countries, in 62 different offices. That footprint is always being reviewed, always being expanded, and we maintain our position in all those countries and all those offices. In terms of the business, the largest sector of our organization is in Oil & Gas. We maintain our position of just over 50%, whilst our Renewables business continues to be stable at 29%.
In addition to this, we also have Energy Transition related projects which take place in all Maritime, Oil & Gas, and the Renewables sector. That is continuing towards our ambition of 50% of revenues to be coming from Renewables and Energy Transition related projects. We continue that drive across the whole organization, and that is our ambition. In terms of separating where our revenues take place, as I've mentioned previously, it is important for us to be not dependent on one business line or in one location or in one country. You can see not one part of the organization is more than 22% of our revenues, predominantly out of Europe.
The even spread of our revenues across the organization means these humps and troughs and peaks are smoothed out, and again, that can be seen in our revenues and our EBIT during the course of 2022. This is a very stable, nice position to be in. In addition, you will see Add Energy. This is the new acquisition we did in Q3. It now accounts for 6%, but that is on the basis of only six months of revenues. Just keep that in mind as we go into the rest of 2023. It's a very nice stable position for the organization to be in and gives us a good foundation for going forward into 2023. Just a few examples of some of the projects we've won, and in particular, the highlights of 2022.
In the Renewables sector, this is a nice contract that we won with Iberdrola. This is not only a nice contract, but it's with a client that is a repeat client. It's always good to have repeat clients. It means that they value the quality of work that we do. This is two contracts out of Germany for two offshore wind farms. One is a 2 + 2, sorry, a 3 + 1, and the second one is a 3 + 2 -year framework agreement. In particular, though, I draw your attention to the right-hand side. During the course of 2022, we operated in more than 131 different wind farms across the globe. 131. There's an increase of over 30% on 2022's numbers that we presented last year. We also operate in over 26 different countries.
That in itself is a remarkable achievement over the course of 2022. We have started to grow into areas such as Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Romania. New areas for us to focus on. I'll get back to the outlook later on. Another sample project in our Renewables division is the Greenlink interconnector. This is a 190 km long interconnector between the Great Britain and Ireland. In particular, this is also gonna carry green energy from the U.K. across to Europe. This fits in very well with our ambition to go into more renewables, clean energy, and energy transition related projects. It's an excellent project. We'll be handling all the marine warranty services for the installation of these interconnectors. Of course, our Oil & Gas business accounts for 53% of our revenues.
I would like to focus your attention in a moment to the right-hand side, which is one of our strong positions of this organization. Before I do that, though, I'll talk very briefly about the Dos Bocas marine warranty. This was 12 heavy lift operations which were completed successfully, and this is for a plant over in Mexico. We completed all the marine warranty operations for this particular project successfully from across Europe and other parts of the globe. In particular, though, as like I said, I would draw your attention to the right-hand side. We completed over 1,100 rig moves, so on average, close to 100 rig moves a month.
We are by far the market leader for rig move operations across the globe, and as you've seen with the Oil & Gas recently, with the strong growth in OpEx, this is an excellent position for us to be in. We completed over 500 marine warranty projects across the organization with over 1,200 different clients. That is remarkable achievement for this organization and shows you the amount of clients that keep coming back and back and back as repeat customers. It's a fantastic position to be in across our Oil & Gas operation. Of course, we also have the Maritime sector, which is one of the most stable parts of our organization. We continue to drive across the marine industry and in particular the insurance industry. This particular project is a nice project, the USS Texas.
It is the last remaining vessel that was used in the First and Second World War. Here we used Longitude Engineering for engineering works, and we also used ABL for the marine warranty. Again, I draw your attention to the right-hand side. Over 2,900 appointments last year for our Maritime division with over 1,200 different unique clients. It just shows you that our clients come back for repeat business over and over again. Like I said at the very beginning of this presentation, it is commendable to our staff for the hard work that they put in. Last slide before I hand across to Stuart is just to show you the position of our head count. We've made it very clear we want to continue to grow through organic growth.
We want to continue to grow through acquisition. As you can see, our permanent head count staff continues to increase again quarter after quarter after quarter. This quarter, we increased that head count by 4%. The total amount of freelancers was down slightly from 29 - 26. That is purely due to seasonal variation in the North Sea and other parts, and Christmas and New Year and all the other things that take place. It's a very healthy position to be in. The freelancer mix allows us to upscale and downscale as of when needed and gives us a very flexible model. Going forward, we continue to drive the increase in headcount. We will continue to recruit technical staff, non-technical staff, shared services staff across the entire organization, and that is happening as we speak right now.
On that point, I'm gonna hand you across to Stuart, and he will take you through the financials.
Thank you, Reuben. Good morning, everybody. I thought before I dive into the financials, I'm your incoming CFO. Been here a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll just give a bit of a flavor in terms of what I found in the organization. You see my assessment. Clearly, my role as CFO is to support Reuben and the team in terms of delivery of the strategy. I guess underlying that, I see that part of my role is to make sure that we have the right infrastructure in place to continue the growth of the business we have at present, be that in terms of change of the business through Energy Transition or indeed further M&A acquisitions as we go forward.
In terms of the business itself, from a control environment, I think the right investments have been made in the right places. We have systems and processes in place which are used across the organization, and as businesses come in, we introduce those systems and processes to them. There's a consistency across the business you see from a control perspective. I think also we have good management information coming out of the business, so the right information is available for the management and the board making decisions, which is critical for a business that's growing as quickly as we've been growing recently. Overall, in terms of the control environment, I think for a listed business and for a company that's grown in the way we have, we have a reasonable control environment in place.
There are areas where we need to improve, particularly when we have a spread of geographic activities like we do. I think, you know, more learning and more training is distributed across the globe rather than being a centralized finance organization. We need to make sure there's continual contact and coordination amongst the finance group. Overall, I think, you know, I'm very excited to join as the CFO and go on the next journey that ABL is gonna have in terms of its development. If I turn then to the financial numbers and first dealing with the revenue and the EBIT, as Reuben's already highlighted. Revenue growth over the quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, up 13%.
Driven by, I guess, over the year, record billable hours as we've gone through 2022. A slight decrease Q4 - Q3, as you see on the graph on the left-hand side, and that's really the impact of holidays on billable hours as we came into the last part of the year. On the right-hand side, the adjusted EBIT. Adjusted is for share-based compensation, our intangible amortization, our M&A transaction costs, and extraordinary non-cash items. We measure on an adjusted basis. In terms of comparison to the previous quarter in 2021, a growth from NOK 2.5 million up to NOK 3.5 million. Good, solid performance. I would note though, as we took on Add Energy, we took on a loss-making business for the second half of 2022. As a consequence of that, there is a impact on our business in Q4.
The important aspect is that we've been turning around that business through the last few months. Our expectation is that Add Energy will be contributing as we go through 2023. Turning to the segmental analysis. Revenue growth, I guess as Reuben mentioned, the driver really here has been our Renewables consultancy business, OWC, which is up 15% year-on-year. The Longitude business, which is up 18%. Also from a revenue perspective, you'll start to see some contribution from Add Energy. In terms of the EBIT, very strong performance, as Reuben mentioned. The highlights are around APAC, Middle East, Europe, which are all in the mid-teens now in terms of their adjusted EBIT. As I mentioned, you know, Add Energy had an impact on the business.
In overall terms, there was an 11% loss on Add Energy in the quarter. If you took out Add Energy in terms of our overall performance, our 8.2% adjusted EBIT margin would be over 10%. I think, you know, once we start to turn around that business, you'll see a better contribution overall across the group. On the income statement, a couple of items I'd like to highlight here. Firstly, overall terms, our largest cost base is our staff, obviously. We finished the year with our staff costs being 52% of our revenue across the year, compared to 54% in the previous year. A continual progression, even though we're integrating new businesses as we go along. In terms of additional items to highlight, the gain on bargain purchase.
This is in relation to Add Energy, but a positive in that respect. We made provisions for bad debts in the PPA. We've actually been able to collect on those bad debts. You're seeing a contribution of NOK 1.1 million through the quarter and NOK 1.9 million over the full year. In terms of the effective tax rate at the bottom, there are a number of different elements making up our tax rate. I wouldn't look at quarterly numbers. I'd look more at the annual numbers. We're probably running in the region of 40% in terms of our effective tax rate across the group. A number of different elements make that up.
We do have a relatively high level of withholding tax because of the way in which we undertake our work across borders. Therefore we get caught by withholding tax occasionally. We operate in jurisdictions where our profitable businesses are generally in the region of 20%-25% in terms of marginal tax, so we're paying that tax as we go through. Also on the businesses where we've been loss-making in the past, we don't take the benefit of deferred tax assets for those particular regions at this present time. You're not seeing the benefit of that coming through. There might be some latent benefit later on.
Turning to the cash position, as Reuben said, we finished at NOK 17.6 million, a record position made up of NOK 31 million of cash in the business and NOK 13.3 million of bank debt that we had. In overall terms from a cash perspective, NOK 6.7 million of cash generated from the business. The drive in terms of improvement on working capital, you can see in the graph in terms of progressive improvement throughout the quarters, going down to 62% of our working capital over the last two months, two quarters of revenue. A good strong position. Working capital went down from NOK 32.6 million to NOK 26.9 million at the end of the year. Finally, turning to utilization of some of that cash.
We're continuing the policy of progressively returning cash to shareholders when we have cash available. For 2022 we paid a total of NOK 0.6 per share in dividends, made up of two installments. As we're coming into 2023, the recommendation going to the AGM in May will be for increase of the dividend for that half year to NOK 0.35 for the half year, and we expect that we will ask for approval for a payment that we expect a payment to be made in the second half of 2023 as well. Just to make a note in terms of how that will be treated, this will be a repayment of paid in capital, rather than a distribution, for tax purposes.
With that, I'll hand back to Reuben, who will take us through the outlook.
Great. Stuart, thank you. We're gonna end just slightly different than we've done in the past. Rather than me just give you a straight overview of what happened, I'm gonna give you an outlook of where we see the business going forward during 2023. Let's start on the Renewables side of the organization. We have an ambition to be 50% of revenues from Renewables and Energy Transition-related projects. If you look on the graphs, you can see that Renewables for the offshore wind sector in particular is expected to grow by 22% year-over-year. Right now, ABL Group is ahead of that curve. Being ahead of that curve means that we're able to maintain our position and also take more of the market share. That is exactly where we want to be.
In addition to that, if you see from the graphs, we expect offshore wind to progress more and more outside of Europe. ABL Group is very strong within Europe, but we're also very strong in Taiwan, Japan, Brazil, and other regions. As I mentioned earlier, Costa Rica and even Romania, Poland. As offshore wind starts to grow further afield away from Europe, we're in an excellent position to take more market share and keep driving our Renewables related operations. Oil & Gas has had a major recovery and resurgence over the last couple of years. For us, we believe the best is still to come. In the brownfields and the CapEx related projects, we're starting to see an increase during 2022 and 2023, and we would expect that to continue into 2024, 2025, and 2026 as these projects take off and start to gain traction.
In particular as well, we see offshore spending in wells also increasing. ABL is very, very strong in the rig moving sector, so more offshore wells spending, more operations for ABL Group. As you can see in particular Middle East where we have the highest profitability, very, very strong operations, you see that spending significant increase going forward into 2023. The way we see Oil & Gas at the moment, both in brownfield and greenfield, is moving OpEx and CapEx, and we play very nicely in both sides of that operation going throughout the year. We expect ABL to be well positioned going into 2023 in the Oil & Gas side of the operation. A quick summary. As Stuart mentioned, I mentioned earlier, Q4 and the whole of 2022 were record-breaking. Record-breaking quarters, record-breaking year. Revenues, EBIT margin.
It was a very, very strong quarter for the whole operation, very strong year for the whole operation. We see no difference why that shouldn't continue as well. We're very well placed going into 2023, and we hope to continue the good work that we've done during 2022. We have an excellent cash flow position. As Stuart mentioned, it's record-breaking cash flow during Q4, and that will continue as well. That allows us to free up the cash, return to our investors, and also allow us to do M&A transactions, which I will mention at the very end. In addition, as I just mentioned, the Oil & Gas business, the Renewables business, brownfields, greenfields, we are moving in all parts of that business. We're well placed across the globe with our various business lines and our various sectors to take full advantage of that.
Also in our Maritime business, we maintain a very strong foothold in the maritime business across the globe. Nicely positioned going into 2023. We also intend to continue that cash efficiency. There was a huge drive. As I mentioned earlier, it's not always about EBITDA and margin and revenue. You have to generate that EBITDA and transfer it to cash. We've done an excellent job over the last 12 months to generate that cash, and we will continue that cash efficiency going forward into 2023. As Stuart mentioned, that allows us to pay out NOK 0.3, the proposed NOK 0.35 dividend, to be paid out in the second half of Q2. Strong overall performance. Again, as I mentioned earlier, our ambition is to continue our path down Renewables and Energy Transition-related projects.
We're making very good progress right now. That is still our ambition for 2025. Finally, using this cash, we continue our M&A history as well. We continue to look for companies that fit with our organization, fit with the strategic fit of where we want to be and what we want to do and our growth. We will grow organically, and we will grow through M&A if the right transaction comes along, but it has to be the right transaction for this organization. We've been very successful doing it. As Stuart mentioned, Add Energy. It's not our first rodeo with the likes of Add Energy. We will turn that and get the best out of it during 2023. On that note, I will end. Thank you again for everyone and also our staff for their very hard work during 2022.
At that point, we will take any questions from the audience or online, please. Nobody in the audience. Anybody online?
We have no questions online either.
No questions. It must have been perfect presentation. On that point, we will end the presentation. Once again, thank you. Thank you, Stuart, as well, and we look forward to seeing you for the Q1 presentation in a few months' time. Thank you.