Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter Interim Report for Itera. My name is Arne Mjøs, and as you know, we have the same agenda. We always start with the highlights of the quarter, and then we go into the business review section. I will take that, and then, Bent Hammer, the CFO of the company, will take us through the financial review and also some comments about the outlook. At the session, at the end of the session, we have a Q&A session, so if you have any questions, so please use the chat, and we'll pick all the questions at the end and also discuss it online. So, and also, if you have any specific questions or would like to have a presentation, deep dive into the company, please also reach out to Bent or myself.
We will always be available for you guys to try to answer your questions. Okay, let's start with the highlights for the fourth quarter. Q4 in brief, if you look at the growth of the company, we show quite strong organic growth of 8%. If I compare to our peers in the market, I know that 8% is quite good. Yeah, of course, if you look at the market environment, of course, we are already impacted about some kind of macro uncertainties, but anyway, the fundamentals of using digital technologies has not changed.
Because we also see if you look at some of the sector, like the energy sector, or also in the banking insurance, there are still a lot of investment going on in the in areas like cloud migration and modernization, use of data, and AI. So there's a lot of spots in these markets that we need to focus on in order to continue the growth. If you look at the the order intake in this quarter, it was very high. It was 1.5 1.7 in the fourth quarter. So that is very good. So I think also we have seen some kind of development of the order intake at the end of 2023, and I think also it's quite good going forward.
Our operation in Ukraine, as you know, we are quite well established in Ukraine, and despite the missiles and the drones attacks that you can read in the newspaper, we have the normal life of employees is more or less as it were before the war. So they are delivering the services as usual with the same kind of utilization. So we don't have any kind of impact because we are adapted to any kind of situation in Ukraine. If you look at the profitability, which shows 9.5% adjusted EBIT margin, so it's impacted by a lower utilization, some fewer working days that Bent will look into, take you through later, and also still some investment in the cloud and application service, directly connected to what we see as a very strong market opportunity.
We have also seen some effects from the business optimization program, so that's on track. So it's always, that has also have some, improved, positive impact on the, margin that we delivered this quarter. What I think is quite interesting for you guys is also the, not at least, the cash flow showing quite a high improved cash flow, 80% higher in this quarter compared to the same quarter last year, 55 million, 57 million in this quarter, and also for in, for the full year, 25% higher. And that means that we also managed to, pay out a supplementary, supplementary dividend at NOK 0.40 per, share, in November, and also the board have proposed an ordinary dividend for 2023 of NOK 0.40 per share.
As you know, we pay, we have historically used to pay out the dividend twice a year, and the board will also ask for the same, you know, setup for 2024 when we go to the annual meeting. If you look at the deploy, the supply side, the last 12 months, the number of employees has increased by 60. So it's flattening out for the time being, but we also have the capacity to really continue to grow when we see that the demand is in place. So here are the figures all in all. We will go into details in the financial sector, but if you look at the high, at a high level, we show average growth for the growth at 2023 in total, 18%.
Everything is organic, as you see, and the growth in number of employees is 9%, and the EBIT in the fourth quarter is 9.5%, and for the full year, 9.3%. So that was the highlights for the quarter. Let's go into the business review section. I will start with some perspectives of the market. As I say, the pace of spending has changed, but the fundamentals have not. I think that's extremely important to take into consideration because if you look at the driver for the market, you, of course, the digital transformation is there. There's a lot of cloud opportunities. Everything will be in the cloud, and there's a different kind of cloud coming into the market, like industry cloud specifics and also more geo-local cloud, operational local and national clouds.
So all kind of increasing the value by using cloud is actually really developing very fast. And the second one is actually AI, that really is coming everywhere. So that's also a major part of the digital transformation coming in, and that also have some impact on the business model, also from our industry. So we are not only kind of delivering consulting services, but it's coming into some kind of SaaS or everything as a service. That will also be a really a big part of the business from the IT side or from the IT industry, that we are also transforming into new kind of model that is more based on managed services and subscription, than only some kind of staff augmentation or some kind of services.
Also, not at least in terms of looking at what is a customer, the customer that buy and sell services can also be machines by themselves. For example, a car can buy services and sell services, autonomous. So that is also when you're talking about what is the customer coming in the future, using the AI machine, customer will also be a part of that front, I will say. So in general, if you look at some of the indicators here, the growth in Europe, IT, European IT market is estimated to 9.3%, so it's a growth market. If you look at the digital transformation, it shows, in the next four years, in average, it shows 20% in the Nordics, 16% in Europe, and globally.
If you look at the cloud spending, of course, it's increasing 27% in Europe, and also the more using AI, I will come back to that, 70% re-reduction in modernization cost in 2027. So of course, it's a big, big, you know, drivers for this change, so we, we shouldn't forget that the digitalization is really a key part of every industry. So I think what we are seeing is flattening out. This is quite only temporary, it's really coming back, and I think it will come even faster back because IT is really the measures that the customer can use to reduce the cost, but not at least also grow the business. Okay, so as you know from the past, we have talked about the-- our position. We are a specialist in sustainable digital transformation.
We have this 14 location. Everything is working as One Itera, so everywhere, wherever you're onboarding to Itera, you're onboarding to One Itera. So we manage to deliver following customer, or often based in the Nordics, but we can follow this customer along everywhere in Europe, but also to U.S. or, or eastern part of the world. So that is what we have managed to build this kind of delivery model, that can deliver service to anywhere, because we have the same model, in Itera. So we don't have the silos, you know, we have One Itera, the same incentives, whatever. That means that we can also level out the utilization, because we can utilize the resources that we have from everywhere into any kind of engagement for any customer around the world.
If you look at the company itself, we are very organic-driven company, so everything is about growth. So we are talking about the growth for the people, growth for the customer, and growth for the company. So the inner circle is that, I will say, the more classical consultancy model, which is customer-centric within some selected industries. The scalability is always in terms of number of customers and number of talents, and we let make sure that everyone is growing. If you go to the outer circle, it's actually about how do we industrialize our services? How can we package our offerings to make sure that we deliver a service not connected to the specific people, but is connected to the value we provide?
These kind of services can be delivered from every kind of location from Itera. So if you look at the existing model, the price that the customer see is actually based on the mix of resources, where onshore or the Nordics, and from Central and Eastern Europe. So normally, we make a price based on the cost level, but when you deliver these kind of services, you are independent of the cost level, where you deliver the services. So there's really a margin opportunity when we turn into service, that we can deliver with a more higher value when we have the resources from a lower cost location. So that is what we believe is really the really big opportunity for Itera.
So we do not scale only because of the number of people, but we scale because we have managed services that can scale, because we automate more how we deliver these kind of services, and we do not need to utilize or base the calculation on the different kind of cost levels. We can really increase the margin of the value we provide from other location, really. That, I think, is a really big potential in terms of margin development of the company. If you look at the strategy for going forward into 2024, we have four main topics, prioritization. The one is actually turning from a supply-oriented company, because that has been in the past, we need to build a lot of location into a demand-driven organization.
So we have established what we call a customer squad, where we really make sure that the large part of the organization is, you know, in the front line, talking with the customer. So and that is also based on that Itera as a company is also more strategic in the relationship. So we define more about what is the challenge, what are the needs, how what should we solve, how do we solve it? And then we set up a team to deliver this value for the customer.
Then is, of course, everything about the Digital Factory, how it, how we deliver this kind of services in the outer circle, as I talked about, and also all kind of customer that will move into the cloud, because that's where you have all kind of innovation in terms of utilizing or building the digital core for the customer. The third one is actually how do we also capitalize on the highest growth opportunities in the IT industry, which is utilizing the data, the low code, and also AI. And the fourth priority is actually how do we build our strong position outside Norway? We have a strong, full end-to-end position in Norway. Now we also focus on going into Sweden with a full-fledged services. In Denmark, we have always been there for a long, long time.
Then we also expand into new customer, new services, and not at least also Iceland, where we also have a very strong footprint. How do you expand into new kind of services? Because these kind of services can deliver from different kind of locations. At the bottom, of course, we need to continue having smart on cost discipline, so we need to have focus on the business optimization - that will continue. We need to also look at how we build our services, what we call practice, and develop our people, and not at least also in general, operational excellence. How do we optimize the structure of Itera? How we deliver even higher value, the higher quality, whatever. So these are some kind of horizontal that we always need to focus on. So but...
So this is actually the strategy for 2024, and if I turn into AI as one of the main topics, as you see, everyone talks about topic, and I think there's been a lot of talks in 2023. Now in 2024, it will be more put into value. We have already seen cases in 2023, but it's actually given, having even higher speed, in 2024, and beyond. So this is a model from Gartner. It's called Gartner AI Opportunity Radar. I think that's quite good because it's a divide between, on the left side, on the green side, showing Everyday AI, what is really easy to implement today. It's about productivity, how do you increase the speed and do you think faster or better, whatever.
So that's how we have some kind of potential of 5%-20%. That might be Generative AI that that they're using in the frontline or from the HR or from our side, in terms of the IT, how do we develop the solutions that have some kind of productivity opportunity. If you go to the right side, what they call the Game-Changing AI, it could be in the customer-facing, or it could be in the internal operation. That's about building complete new products or new services, or taking a new business model into place or a new industry by using AI and the capabilities from AI, that where you really have the scalability in terms of a large number of data that we haven't been able to process and understand by using the existing, you know, technology.
So using this kind of AI will have quite disruptive impact on services and products, and we see already some good examples on that already. But I think you know the blue one will really be a part of focus for many industries, for many for many you know needs that we haven't been able to solve specifically on the traditional way of using AI technology. So AI is really this have some kind of transformative or disruptive way in many aspects. So we are assisting a lot of a lot of customer how should they position themselves for using AI? So this is some kind of framework we are using when we're talking with the customer.
How do we look at the opportunities, at what time, and make some kind of roadmap for the customer? Itera is also doing a lot within Itera globally. From all locations, we have established a Center of Excellence or a practice, global practice, where we are working every day. We are build our own AI toolbox that really increase the efficiency internally, but also have some impacts on the customer. So it's some kind of toolbox we are using towards the customer, but also, not least, internally. So you will see more about this kind of toolbox going forward, but of course, this is also have a big impact of Itera.
So I'm very glad to see that we are also enhancing the using AI into some more proprietary tools or toolbox that we can really bring to the company or the customer to really make some kind of competitive advantage. This is just to show you an example of a customer. This is BAHR, which is one of Norway's tier-one law firms that is engaged Itera to explore how technologies such as large language model can be used to increase value creation, improve operational efficiency, et cetera, to get some kind of competitive advantage. So you know, these kind of tools that we bring in is really streamlining every kind of document processing, facilitate information retrieval, and handle complex legal questions by processing internal data. So of course, they have massive data.
In this case, we are utilizing this kind of technology through the large language model and the deep learning mechanism in order to look at how they could really improve the efficiency of this company and also start to play within, I think, in the first with AI everywhere, everywhere, but it might also have some impact on the some kind of game change, because also this industry will really be heavily impacted. I think it's good to see, like, BAHR really using looking at what that mean, what this kind of technology can mean for the competitive advantage for BAHR going forward. This is a very good example on utilizing generative AI. If you look at another example, this is from Iceland. This is where we also attending a lot of conferences.
In this case, we are talking about the AI advantage for the Icelandic fintech operation, company, or community. So in this case, I just show you how we are working as One Itera. We are bringing people from other location into Iceland to discuss this important topic, and also through these conferences, we also get some kind of new leads to make sure that we also can expand our services into Iceland. So this is very interesting, that also drive interest and also provide new leads for Itera. Another example, again, from Iceland, we have been quite successful in Iceland for a long time. So this is actually Laki Power.
It's an Icelandic company that we have assisted in order to use AI to enhance their ice monitoring services by using the cutting-edge AI technology. So this has a really impact of the energy sector for all the net companies that has you know this kind of responsibility for the grid. So in this case, we are utilizing AI and machine learning to power grid monitoring industry. So they have very interesting software sold to different kind of customer, existing customer for Itera already, but also new potential customers. So being a part of delivering services to this product company is very interesting because it's really utilizing the cutting-edge AI in order to build these kind of products.
I will again say it's some kind of AI everywhere, but it also have some kind of potential game changes impact on, on, on the, how the, the grid operator are utilizing data. Okay, if you go to our industry, I just want to show you one example. This from, from Gartner, saying that, "In the next four years, generative AI tools will be used to explain legacy business application and create a, a, appropriate replacement, reducing modernization costs by 70%." Think about that. A lot of legacies there in the market already been, they have a lot of depth, they call it, technical depth.
Now, this debt can really be transformed into a new way of utilizing the cloud, so it you can cut the cost of the, or reduce the burden of this debt by 70% in the next four years. So that means a lot of the business cases around: How could they reduce the debt, transforming into a new environment, utilizing AI to take the language model, which is a programming language model, that you can convert from COBOL, for example, to a new modern architecture? So that has been a really big step to make this happening. Utilizing AI is extremely important to reduce the burden by taking this step to a new fashion, modernized, so that you can utilize the system in a complete new way.
And that has also been very important for Itera when we are building our capabilities. We have talked about this Digital Factory at Scale, do more with less. We promised the customer that we can deliver 20%-30% increased productivity in terms of faster, better, or more innovative, whatever, and we are also infusing AI into this factory. So it's not only about the team or the CV and the staff augmentation, it's really about bringing capabilities. This outer circle I talked about, this is really the setup, the capability that we bring in. We call it a factory, where we have all the capability in place, different kind of teams. You don't need to have the specific team only for the customer.
You can really scale across customer because we have organized this into what we call a factory. So this is really a important investment Itera done in this, cloud application services to enable this kind of, outer sync, circle, business model of Itera. Okay, as you know, we have been quite, involved in Ukraine, also not at least the, the, attending a lot of conferences. This is from, from Bergen Chamber of Commerce annual conference in November. We were, attending a very big, conference, where the western part of Norway is really attending. It's really the, the big spot in, in, in this region once a year.
So in this showing some kind of panel debate, we have a meeting the Minister of Trade and Industry on the left side, and also the head of Bergen Næringsråd, Monica Mæland. We were discussing how could Ukraine really be an important part for Europe? Because this region, part of Norway, is really based on export. They have a very strong tradition for exporting services, products to other markets around the world. So this region is also not least very strong in the green energy sector. So there's a lot of competencies that we are looking at, how could that fit into the green transition of Ukraine?
So in this case, we are discussing how this region could really already now start on this kind of helping out with Ukraine during the war. They can utilize resources in terms of IT, whatever. We are lacking a lot of resources in Norway, so this is one of the opportunity that we discussed. They can already support Ukraine more than the donation, what you already have done, but it's really important to really buy, continue to buy product and services for Ukraine, to from Ukraine, to keep the economy running. Another important topic was actually that the Itera was represented at the COP 28 by our Group COO, Jon Erik Høgberg.
He was especially invited by the Ukrainian government to be a part of this conference, and also the attending panel debates, whatever, to look at how Ukraine can really become the new green energy and digital hub in Europe, with a total of 360 GW renewables in 2020, 2050. Of course, it will be after the war, but we are talking quite long term, and Ukraine are already, together with EU and G7, looking at what could be the strategy to make this region as a really green and energy hub for Europe. Because we need more, more and more green energy to make sure that we, as Europe, manage to reach the target on the climate targets.
So this is just to show you one example, and I also take another one, because we also had a visit by President Zelenskyy in Oslo. So President Zelenskyy were asking the business societies. We were 14 businesses from Norway that was meeting President Zelenskyy. The big players from the energy, from the defense, from the banking, and some other sector were attending. And he, President Zelenskyy, was asking because he knows that the private capital can be... is needed, actually, but the private sector also have important impact over Ukraine to keep the economy running. So we're talking about what we can do during the war, but not at least, how could Norwegian businesses help Ukraine in the reconstruction after the war?
And also looking at how Ukraine can be a really big asset for Europe in terms of the green transition. And we have also, from Itera perspective, we have also been depending on attending a lot of conferences. We have built a new brochure that we bring in utilities and energy. So digitalization is a key to rebuilding Ukraine. So this is also how we are connected into more and more businesses that would look at Ukraine, also during the war, as their social responsibility to buy more products and services. And of course, IT service is one of the asset that is very easy to deliver during the war. Okay, let me finish my part with looking at some specifics about the order intake.
I said in the beginning, the book-to-bill ratio was 1.7 in the fourth quarter. So we have both some new customer, but also not least expansion or continuation of existing customer. And also, if you look at the customer development, in almost 94% of the revenue in the fourth quarter was from the existing customer. And also, if you look at the share of revenue for top thirty customer, it was increased by 2%, and now to 84%, so a very strong visibility. And I think also when you look at the growth for Itera, having this 8%, it also not least based on we have, I would call this some kind of recurring revenue.
Because the visibility of this customer, that has become quite large for Itera, is really strong, because we are really as a core part of the business. So that's why we also—that is also some kind of important aspect when you, when you look at the company, what kind of customer do they have, and how have the... what is the, you know, the productivity or the visibility, I will say, of the revenue going forward? So that's why I think it's also, when we look at this kind of more uncertain market, it's extremely important that we have already a very strong customer base....
and also if you look at the number of employees, we are 762 employees at the end of this quarter, is 60 people, increased, net increase during the year. And you also see 65% of the net increase has been in the Nordics. So because we are building more demand side closer to new markets, new customer in the Nordics, and we also seen from the past. So we can also look at the scalability now is down to 60 people. It was the highest just before the invasion, 122. And we really believe that we have a scalability in the company from the supply side, from 250- 300 people FTEs per year.
So the scalability through these eight, 14 offices, based on 1 Itera is really high. So we do not need to acquire company for the growth. We have the capacity, we have the procedure, we have everything in place. So the most important thing for Itera is really looking at the demand side, building more and more clients, keeping the existing clients and also growing them, but also looking for new clients that really can contribute on the demand side going forward. So I think that was everything from my side. So let's have a deep dive into the financial section, Bent.
Thank you, Arne, and good morning to you all. So, we delivered a healthy growth of 8% in the quarter, albeit down from the trajectory we've been on in the last several quarters. For the year as a whole, we delivered 18% growth, which is very satisfying. On the personnel expense side, we had a growth of 12% in the quarter, and that also includes a one-off provision for about NOK 3 million , and also some negative exchange rates effects. So if you adjust for those, the personnel expense per FTE was down 4% in the quarter.
The other OpEx was also down as a consequence of the cost reduction program we've implemented in the last several months. So that gave an adjusted EBITDA of NOK 29.5 million, which is up by 5% from the year before. And also the adjusted EBIT was up to NOK 21.1 million, which is a growth of 8%, in line with the top line growth. So therefore, an unchanged margin of 9.5%. For the year as a whole, we had EBIT of NOK 81.4 million versus NOK 77.2 million the year before.
We're very happy with the cash generation in this quarter of NOK 57 million. Some of this was, like, a spillover from Q3, but nonetheless, we had a full year cash generation from operations of close to NOK 96 million, which was up 26% from 2022. And if you look at the, like, a cash conversion from EBITDA, that was a full 86%, which is very satisfying for a CFO. Number of employees were more or less stable in Q4 as we adapted to a slightly softer demand. But we have added a net 60 people in the year as a whole.
Looking at the sequential growth, like I said, a strong growth over several quarters, and the average growth rate over the last couple of years has been 21%. And we've maintained an EBIT margin on average of just south of 10%. So the red bars here shows the rolling 12 months, lagging 12 months of revenue. So we see that there's a very nice development in the revenue side. The blue line representing the last four months of EBIT margin dropped quite a bit in Q2 2022 as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
It's more or less stabilized over the last couple of quarters. And we have a number of potential opportunities to increase this back again. One is, as mentioned, the utilization, the billability of our people is somewhat lower at the moment, due to the softness in demand. So that, you know, a normalization of that again, will certainly bring back some more margins. Secondly, we are still not at the critical business volume for the cloud and application services part of the business.
But we do see a much healthier pipeline going into 2024, so we expect that also to positively contribute to the accretion of margins going forward. Or the thirdly, the expansion in Sweden is progressing well. We've installed a very good first set of people there, management capacity and sales, and also some very good consultants. And we see that the new business is being generated by this team now, both for onshore, but also nearshore or hybrid deliveries. So there's-- that's also an area where we can expect some positive contributions.
Maybe not in the next couple of quarters, but thereafter, when we reach some more business volume. And as mentioned, we have a business optimization program in place. So the full year effect of that will also contribute to the 12-month margin as well. And a big positive swing item could be, you know, the recovery of Ukraine. We are very well positioned to be part of that. So that will be exciting for us. Let's see... Back to the cash flow, like I said, very strong generation from our operating activities.
On the investment side, we had just normal levels of investment in the quarter. Somewhat more in the year as a whole, as we had some investments related to the move to our new headquarters in Oslo. So NOK 19.4 million versus NOK 15.2 million in 2022 for investments. On the financing side, a major cash outflow, as we both had a share repurchase program in December, and we also paid out a supplementary dividend of NOK 0.4 per share in November. So all in all, NOK 46 million outflow from financing activities and NOK 70 million for the year.
So we repaid to our shareholders close to NOK 60 million during 2023. And we will continue to do that, as Arne mentioned, the board has proposed a NOK 0.4 per share in an ordinary dividend to be decided by the General Assembly in May. And we will also ask for another authorization to pay a supplementary dividend in the autumn, again, as we have been accustomed to over the last several years. The share price development was not as good as we would have hoped. A - 3%, including the dividend payments we made.
But that is, I would say, on the strong side, if we compare to the peers in the Nordic marketplace. Some of those have been hit quite hard in the past year. So we've been quite resilient in terms of our share price development. And we used this lower share price to repurchase some shares, as I mentioned, and we now have 1.65 million own shares in stock. The balance sheet I reported last quarter as well had increased quite a bit as a result of this new seven-year lease agreement for the new headquarters in Oslo.
The IFRS 16 standard requires us to capitalize the whole value of this agreement. So whenever we are in an initial phase of a large lease agreement, that will increase the balance sheet. So these so-called right of use assets contributed to an increase of NOK 46 million on the balance sheet. Both sides of it, obviously. But that diluted our equity share, which was at 16% at the year-end, versus 21% the year before. Adjusting for this IFRS 16, it would have been 21%, but still down 3%, as we have repaid to the shareholders, as mentioned.
Looking ahead, we haven't made any major changes to our outlook. We don't guide specifically on our financial targets per se, but we do feel that there is still a very strong underlying demand for our services. We think that now that both the uncertainty about interest rates as well as inflation rates are coming down, we expect spending to pick up again from our clients. We will continue to grow in the Nordic marketplace.
In Norway, of course, but also, not the least in the other Nordic markets that we are present in, in Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. And we will continue this business optimization effort to also improve margins over time. So that focus is still on growing and growing organically and more so than most of our peers, that is our target, and we also want to focus on this growth being profitable. So that was it for me.
We are always, you know, welcoming any one-to-one meetings you might want to set up with us to dig more into our company and to understand our investment case. You can also go into our investor relations page. We have added a section there on why invest in Itera that you might find interesting. And you will also, of course, find all the historical reports, et cetera, on this page. So, feel free to be in touch with me and set up any meetings if you like. If not, we welcome you back again on May 3rd to present our Q1 figures. Thanks a lot, and have a nice afternoon!