Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the interim report for the 2nd quarter for Itera. We have the same agenda that as previous quarters. So I will start with the highlights of the quarter and the business review section. Then Ben Thamm, Chief financial officer will walk through the financial review and the outlook, and we have also a question and answer section at the end.
So if you have any questions during the session, just post in the chat, and we will follow-up at the end of this presentation. Okay, let's start with the highlights for the first for the Q2. I'm very happy to say that we managed to reach growth rates, which is all time high for Itera in our core digital business, which is actually 94% of our total business. So it's a huge growth rate of 20 4%, and we also managed to have an operating margin, EBIT margin of 15%. So what we see in the market, just in brief in the beginning is actually that the digital adoption curves are really actuating.
We've seen that for the last 6, 7 months across every industries and every business function driven by COVID-nineteen. And the market for our services are very positive in all locations. We have invested during the first half year about NOK 15,000,000 into a world class cloud center of excellence because everything is about cloud. So we managed to do this investment and we completed that project by the end of Q2 according to plan. What I think also important to mention in this presentation is also that we are also establishing new offerings in terms of anti money laundering solution based on artificial intelligence in partnership with IBM.
If I look to the Biktar bill ratio, it was 1.0 in the second quarter and it's 1.2 in the last 12 months, more or less according to the growth rate that they were showing. Number of employees increased by 76% 76 people the last 12 months. And we also have a good strong operational cash flow over NOK 77,000,000 in the last 12 months. And we also paid an ordinary dividend of NOK SEK0.25 per share in the Q2. If I just look at the high level number, Ben will go into more details later.
But again, 25 percent organic growth, that's all time high, 50% EBIT margin and also still percent growth in number of employees. And you see that it's both sequential growth, good sequential growth rate and also the market is quite well established at 15% for the core digital business. Okay, let's go into the business review section. And we'll start with some figures about what's really happening in the market because of the COVID-nineteen, we have seen extreme acceleration of digitalization and sustainability. If I referred to McKinsey.
They're saying that adoption of technology, digital technology has increased by 7 years the last 12 months. That's a global number. So in average, maybe 2x in the Nordics and maybe 10x in the eastern part of the world. So that is because everyone is talking about comes into the cloud, but it's not only talking about 1 cloud, it's talking about multi cloud and also not at least also combining what you have on your own premises and also make sure that this really scale out into the cloud. But the cloud is not only the centralized cloud is going into distributed cloud.
And we're also seeing new devices we called at the edge, where all kind of IoT is actually also having a more intelligent computing power. So you need to really look at the full value chain. And in that case, we can't use the old stuff, the value in the past. We need to also used the new technology, the new computing architecture that is actually built for this future. And this future has become today actually.
So that is what we have seen the adoption curves. And that we can also look at if you look at, for example, the number of connected devices based on some analysis by Gartner and Markus is saying that in 2023, there will be 2,000,000,000 devices that will be connected per year. So that's an increase of 50% what we had in 2020. And also if you look at the edge where the data the growth of the data in the 2021 to 2025, the average growth rate will be about 33% on edge data. And as you see at the curve, it's actually more or less at the same growth rate that we have seen at the cloud data.
So the data at the edge and combining with data in the cloud is really actuating because what we see is actually that the whole society need to be more sustainable. And digitalization is really a key tool in order to manage to build a more sustainable and digital businesses going forward. So it's a combined combination of looking at the full value chain from the consumer that has been using this kind of technology into indices that haven't used this kind of technology at the same level of maturity that we have seen in the consumer space. So now this the fastest growth is actually in the indices because there's a lot of technology, but the data are locked into silos. So we need to unlock the data, liberate the data and make sure that this data are really available for building new solution and new processes and turn industry into a more green sustainable future.
So Itera is actually having this position. We have established a platform first strategy for 3 years ago. So we have put a lot of steps going forward. And now in Norway, for example, this is to show you just some event we established in terms of Industry 4.0, where we establish trying to set the agenda for Norway in terms of our green transition from oil and gas dependent economy into more greener. We were transforming oil and gas into more offshore wind because according to European Green Deal, 40% of the energy mix in 2,040 will be on offshore wind.
And you know that Norway has a very strong position in the offshore. So now we will turn that industry into more offshore wind, which is a huge potential of global position for Norway in terms of the existing industry, but also not at least the need to have this kind of data in order to manage through this kind of transition. This is just to show you one example ITERA is taking a strong position. What is also important that ITERA through COVID-nineteen or the pandemic in general really take new step into manage to be able to take a full stack to transform businesses, to transform industries, working from the new business models or the new products, digital enabled products and make sure that we are working from the strategy and make sure that we define the new products that are user friendly, that the consumer are integrated, and we have also managed to build the solution and manage the solution with a secure that is needed to make sure that this is really Fling in a safe and secure and controlled way. So that is what we have established during this COVID pandemic, we are really taking new steps to be able to transform companies and transform industries into the future, which is termed like the or named as the 4th Industrial Revolution.
And that's why I think it's so good to be based in the Nordics because the Nordic region is really a digital front runner and a sustainable front runner. So building this solution for these 1st movers in the market can also have a global scalability of Itera. So today, we are delivering services about 20 countries around the world. So we are not dependent on location in the long way. We can actually deliver to all over the place and have shown that we're delivering services to the east and to the west and to the west, but delivering our services actually to any places.
And that has been a part of the design of the operating model at Itera. So we're building a delivery factor at scale, what we say, for data driven businesses. So when we engage the customer, we will provide innovation. We will provide speed and agility, the cost efficiency and also the control including the security, which is extremely important when every asset are dependent on data. So you need to be have high quality data that needs to be secured, etcetera, according to the requirements.
And we're also working very closely with partners, but core partners are also important part of ITERA that we managed to scale and use and extend the value on every kind of technology that is available from global players like Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, Cognite, whatever. So I think the beautness of Itera's business model has been this kind of distributed model that we established for more than 10 years ago to have one culture, one Itera that managed to move work multidiscipline across borders, across location. So that is the we have the demand side that can be from anywhere, but we also have the supply side that could be from anywhere. So that is where Itera has building our position to make the scalability in terms of clients and also in terms of supply chain of it. In order to build this kind of new solutions, you need to also refactor or reimagination your own delivery model because we need to have a delivery model that is shaped for the future.
And that's why we have made this investment in the second quarter and actually in the first half year, and we completed that project successfully in the second quarter. So in this way, in our cloud center, actually, everything is managed as a code. So everything is automated, not only the infrastructure but also, of course, the application layer. And we are thinking about how should we maintain, how do you continuously develop and how do you continuously maintain your application into one cycle. So that is what we have established.
It's kind of landing zone where we have any kind of workload that we put together the needed services that enable this workload to really have the best functionality and in the protected environment to make sure that when we start on some kind of new engagement, maybe we can have 50% functionality in place because we have the skill set about the services in the cloud platforms and other partners that we really managed to combine these services and then extend the value on top of it. So that has been a really important part of the Tainmold that of Itera that we have worked on very hard in the last, I will say, 3 to 5 years. And finally, we are we're really ready to make this kind of factory scale for any customer in any place. And one of the customers we have talked about, and you might have seen and heard about this, this is a very interesting start as a part of the Aker Group, we have we are the largest partner to Cognite, we are the largest partner to slicing data or unlock the data or liberate the data across the full value chain in industry for heavy asset industries, and then they are building new solutions on top of it.
So Itera is actually part of the team fully integrated, the largest provider of services, 2 A's in this case, where we are really building digital twin solution, access into digital twin and make sure that we redefine processes and make sure that maybe the vendor space or maybe 3,000 vendors that are a part of this value chain that really can share information and optimize the solution across, make it more greener, more efficient, make things that has been impossible in the past that is really possible when you have the data, more smart maintenance, more production optimization, etcetera, more safety, whatever. So that is really interesting part a very interesting customer. This is just to mention one. We have all the customers that are also going in that direction. I think this is really what we see is factory thinking, this kind of capability was established.
So they are looking for partners that have this global scalability in the company because these startups really are setting a global ambition for the company when they start this company establish the company. I just also want to mention one example also of solution in our banking and insurance industry, which has been our main sector. But this is in terms of anti money laundering, the financial crime space. There's a lot of stuff coming in there. It's a very complex environment to really manage all kind of failures or transaction that might be in some kind of a criminal action.
So in terms of anti money laundering, it's really you need to have another approach in order to manage to identify systematically, with more intelligence, to know where this kind of mistrust transaction is actually going is happening. So we really believe that artificial intelligence is the only tool that can manage to reduce the money laundering and also reduce the financial crime that you see when everything is getting more digitized all over the place. So we are making a very strong partnership with IBM and Red Hat is acquired by IBM. We will have this multi cloud, multi hybrid cloud solutions using the official intention is to really address this kind of global challenge for the whole financial indices. So I have good quite high expectation together with IBM to take a strong position in the financial industry in Norway because IBHEM have acquired companies for 3, 4, 5 years ago that are really having very niche application based on state of the art artificial intelligence platform.
So this is just to show you another sample. We are using technology to address a new challenge that is impossible to solve in the traditional way. I also want to mention that we also in the second quarter managed to establish and win new frame agreements in the public sector. That is also important. We have mentioned 3 big buyer or services in Norway, Narskottetatten and Stottetenzveiffeisen, where we in the vendor, Allens, has actually established agreements for the next 4 years is 2 plus 1 plus 1, where we have almost the full range of services in place.
I think this is also important to make some kind of sustainable demand side because and also working for the public sectors. We haven't kind of share in that space, but we because we are waiting for the more distributed model. And I think there's some kind of changes also going into the public authority because they also learn to use distributed model when people were working from home. As I mentioned also, the order intake, this is show with just some logos, but we have a good book to bill ratio in average, 1.2 in the last 12 months. And in this in quarter, it was 1.1%, but this has some kind of different from quarter to quarter.
So I'm always looking at the last 12 months. I think that is more or less according to the growth rate of 40 percent 24%. But what I think is quite interesting to look at the customer development itself is actually that about 15%, 14.5% are actually new customer. That means customer that we managed to close for about 12 months ago. So it's a revenue, which is generated, provided from customer that is new from Atera the last 12 months.
So that represents, as you can see on the blue color, had some kind of reduced reduction during the COVID-nineteen 2020. But now we see it's coming back to 15%, which I think is a very good KPI that we are also focused on new logos to have the growth capacity or the growth on the demand side in order to scale out to new customer. And also, if you're looking at the share of revenue from top 30 customers is 74%, down by 2% from 76% last year, but that is okay for me because that's a part of the we try to get more customer and that also have influence who is the amount, the share from the top 30. So that is it has been very high, 76%, extremely high, I will say. So taking a little down, it has been a good change because we would like to also build established a relationship with new clients, so we will also increase the number of business from new clients.
And also, it's very interesting to look at the transformation of their own data center. As you can see, it was 90% at the Q4 of 2020. In the second quarter, it was 6%. And we believe that by the end of this year, it will be close to 0. So that is how we have presented these figures the last in 2020, we started to make a split between the core digital business and the transformation of their own data center into their cloud because that will reduce their revenue and also increase reduce the profitability.
But that's a part of strategy because we really believe that it will be a pent up demand when we are ready to approach all the customer that's also doing the same process that we are doing with our data center, move their workloads into the cloud. In terms of employees, I think that's also showing a good progress because as I said in the beginning, we increased the number of employees in the cordial business by SEK 76 FT feet feet
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feet feet Es the last 12 months. And we really believe, as you see, the curve is really showing that we are increasing the speed of this. And I really believe we can maybe also double that to reach 150 growth rate of 150 FT feet
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feet feet Es net on top each year because we have the supply in Malen and we have the demand, so we're really now trying to get more even more focus on this part because the demand is in place, and we really like to scale up the recruitment from more locations in order to manage to onboard more people into quite structure way, we do not want to we have established a lot of structuring the company. So it's really more easy to onboard a lot of people into Itera and don't have any kind of bottlenecks of weakness in the processes. So we managed to build a company that really can increase also the supply side of Itera. So that was actually what I would like to mention about the business review. Ben maybe Bent will or not maybe, but I know that Bent also have very good and strong message about the financial review.
So please, Ben, take us further.
Thank you, Arne, and good morning to you all. Obviously, you already spoiled the main messages, but I'll The financial reporting on the core digital business, which represent now 94% of the total business, and it's the business going forward. So we believe that gives you a better view on how the company is really performing. So let's dig into that. 24% top line growth, very happy with that.
We saw very strong growth even for our largest customers, which goes to show that we are building an even stronger position at those big multinational companies and that we were able to compete with the big players in the IT consulting space. We also attracted some new logos, which have developed quite rapidly, a few of them. So we're also able to scale fast with new clients with our distributed delivery model. And yes, quarter 2 also showed better utilization of our consultants and we also had to do a more systematic approach to using third party subcontractors to help out fill demand from our customers. So the latter part also shows up in the cost of sales, which is up almost NOK 4,000,000 or 46.8 percent from last year.
Personnel expenses up approximately the same as our top line and that well, obviously, the dominant reason is the number of employees increasing, but we also saw salary pressure as well as some costs related to the enhanced employee share purchase program, which we launched in June. We had some more bonus accruals. And lastly, we had some COVID relief measures from government last year that we didn't have this year. Other operating expenses growing not as fast as the number of employees. We are still seeing some abnormal, I would say, low spending levels on things like travel and social events, external courses, etcetera, particularly on-site courses that is.
So we believe that this will eventually grow again, maybe not as much as back to historical levels, but nonetheless. Depreciation is down $1,500,000 in the quarter. That has to do with us subleasing some of the space in Kyiv because we have people working more from home at the moment, but also we see that that's probably going to be the case for the next year as well. So we subleased it for that period. This will also pick up again next few quarters as we have now are in the process of relocating to a bigger space in Bratislava in Slovakia due to the growth there.
And we also will see the depreciation charges coming from the big investment we've done in the Cloud Center of Excellence the last 6 months. So we ended up with EBITDA of NOK 28,700,000, up from $23,500,000 last year and an EBIT of $22,300,000 which was up a full $6,700,000 or 43%, giving us an EBIT margin of 14.8%, which is 2 points above last year. Very happy about the growth in number of employees, adding 76 people in this business from last year. And we see that the recruitment is still very strong. Q3 is also traditionally a good recruitment quarter in Norway at least where we do a lot of graduates coming out of the universities at that point in time.
Looking at the sequential development, we see that we have now for consecutive quarters of growth. Obviously, Q3 will fall back again because of all the vacations taken in that quarter. But nonetheless, we're on a good trajectory for the growth. And we also see that we are growing profitably. So we've managed to keep an EBIT margin of 10% or more for all these quarters showing back to Q2 of 2019 here.
And the last couple of quarters, we've also managed to be around the 15% mark, which is very good for our line of business, I would say. Some a small portion of that margin, I should say, does come from the COVID related activities that are lower at this point in time, for example, travel costs. So that will take a little bit of toll on the next few quarters as we open up the economy again, I hope. Subscription revenue from the data center operations, as we also communicated last quarter, this took a huge hit as of January 1, when we exited the biggest customer on that and also some other smaller ones. We'll continue to see a drop in this revenue and intend to bring it down to close to 0 at the end of the year as we complete this migration.
In the meantime, of course, this puts a toll on our earnings. The revenue from the data center operations were down SEK 8,000,000 or 64 percent to SEK 10,300,000 in the quarter. And as we build down the revenue stream, there will be a lag in terms of building down the cost base or shifting also the employees over to the new business. Next phase now in H2 will be actually doing the migration projects. So that will give some service revenue for that, but not kind of full revenues as we do this in a semi forced way with our customers or at least the speed of it is faster they might have dictated themselves.
So we had a loss in this data center operations of NOK 5,700,000 in the quarter compared to marginal Positive result of SEK300,000 in 2020. Yes. But nevertheless, even considering this, we had a positive growth on the total business of 7.5 present and we actually increased the EBIT marginally, almost keeping the EBIT margin in line at 10.3% versus 10.6% of last year. Moving to the cash flow. We had cash flow from operations of NOK 24,000,000.
This was down close to SEK 16,000,000 compared to last year, but that's entirely due to the Norwegian government's grant Danish government as well, granting extensions on payment of tax and social security. So that was postponed till Q3 last year. So that has had a positive effect in Q2 in 2020. Cash flow from investment activities we're high at $11,700,000 as we did this investment in the Cloud Center of Excellence. Last year, we also had fairly high investments due to the implementation of a new ERP system.
The cash flow from financing activities were high this quarter as it was in the Q2 of last year, as we both acquired a lot of own shares, we did sell out some of it to employees as part of our incentive programs, but nevertheless, approximately NOK 15,000,000 in net spend on that as well as paying out a dividend of NOK0.25 per share. So that gave a negative cash flow of NOK 38,000,000. So that leaves us with NOK 15,000,000 at the end of the period. This will then gradually build up again during the next couple of quarters. Q4 traditionally being the quarter where we generate mostly most of the cash from operations during the year.
So yes, dollars 77,000,000 has been generated from operations over the past 12 months. But again, that was with the postponed of last year into Q3, so that it's kind of artificially low in that sense. Looking at the dividend payments, we or the Annual General Meeting confirmed the board's proposal to pay out a dividend of NOK0.25 per share based on the 2020 results. And also received an authorization to pay out a supplemental dividend later in this year if they feel that the financials are right for doing so. So this is a type of authorization that they have had for the past several years, and we usually have used that one.
So probably alongside the Q3 earnings presentation, the board will communicate something around that. The share price ended June 30 at NOK 14 per share, which was about 21% from same period over last year, 27% if you also include the dividends paid in the meantime. We have 1,600,000 own shares in treasury, which at that point was valued at NOK 22,900,000. So that's up by some 10% or whatever asset share price has risen since then. So we continue to pay out dividends as fast as we can, so to speak, because we don't use a lot of cash to finance the growth, a little bit, of course, in increased working capital, but not a whole lot.
The balance sheet statement shows a net reduction of €15,000,000 in total. The liability side is more or less unchanged year over year, whereas we have then paid out more dividends and repurchased more shares to decrease the equity and also the cash position. But again, this will improve during the second half of the year. So I think I'll leave it with that. Quick comment on the outlook for the foreseeable future.
We see kind of an unchanged outlook from what we reported last quarter, very strong demand in all our business areas really and all our different markets. We have, as Arne I mentioned also secured 3 large framework agreements in the public sector, which are kind of is waiting to be fulfilled with the resources and we have very strong growth in our existing customers. So there's a lot of demand out there to digitize businesses. And no wonder because the benefits are so great for doing so. So there's a very good return on investment on the services that we provide.
So quite optimistic about about the near future. So I don't know if there have been any questions posted online. No, that's fine. Arren and myself are always available for any investors that want to have a private conversation on Itera and learn more about our company. So feel free to contact either one of us.
You can contact me, actually. I'll be the secretary.
Yes, okay.
Yes. And we'll find time for you. Arne is spending most of his time out in the marketplace, both developing customers, but So at the partner site. So he's busy, but he'll find some time if I'm not Capable of fully servicing you.
Okay. That's close-up and I'll see you soon. Looking forward to the next quarter. So and also thank you to all the employees. I also listened to Itera.
I think it's very nice to that more and more people at Itera also invest in the share. That's a good sign. Yes. Okay. See you soon.
Thank you.