Thanks for the fourth quarter and full year presentation. My name is Preben Liltved, and I'm the Interim CEO of Nekkar. Today, we will share some operational updates for fourth quarter and full year 2021, and with the help of my CFO, Kristoffer Lundeland, key financial figures. Please note that you can send questions through the webcast, and there will be a Q&A session after the presentation. Next slide. Please note our disclaimer. Next slide. Let's start with some financial figures related to fourth quarter. We are delivering our best quarter ever since the start of new Nekkar. Growth in top line and with an exceptionally solid bottom line. This quarter reflects delivery and handover of four major ship lift projects executed well and with cost savings compared to project estimates. No major project have been signed or lost in the period.
For the full year, we have increased top line with more than 30% compared to last year, and we have doubled our bottom line. Our increased service focus in Syncrolift starts to pay off with a 35% growth in revenue and a fantastic order intake, giving us tailwind for 2022. As announced in January, we have appointed Ole Falk- Hansen as new CEO starting in July this year. On Ole's arrival, I will move more into a new position as head of operation. We really look forward to reinforce our management team with Ole's competence and attitude. Next slide. Just a short recap. What are we today? Nekkar consists of three business areas: Shipyard Solution with our brand Syncrolift, Aquaculture with our closed cage system, Starfish, and Renewables with our lifting tools, SkyWalker.
At the core of this business model is our digital solution area, Intellilift, which apply its leading digitalization and automation competence across all Nekkar's business area. Nekkar using this competence into disruptive technology within growth sectors such as aquaculture and renewable energy. The unique combination of disruptive technology and digital competence will be our building block for future SaaS offering from Nekkar. Next slide. Let's talk about Shipyard Solutions Syncrolift. We have completed a very busy quarter. We managed to complete handover of four major project in Q4 with commissioning and handover, both in Korea, Singapore, and in two sites in North Africa. Activity this year have been all-time high, and to complete global projects this year has been challenging. However, as you can see from our financial figures, we have managed quite well.
A big thanks to our Syncrolift and Intellilift teams carrying out global commissioning work during these difficult times. Order intake this year has been low, but variation orders, upgrades, and service project have given us some intake, which helps us to maintain a healthy backlog. In 2022, we clearly see light in the tunnel for new projects. In a short time, a number of smaller projects, and later on in the year, some good leads on bigger projects. The lack of projects and project leads in 2021, we have been able to focus fully on execution and also after-sales and service. Next slide. As earlier informed, we started a service project in 2019 to generate growth in this market. During this year, we have seen growth in all aspects of our service business.
The importance to have a solid service business as a base of shiplift business is essential. We have seen in 2021 a lack of new project, and to have a steady growing service business enable us to continue to develop customer relations and prove our long time commitment to the shiplift business. This year, we have also signed several service agreement. These agreements do not generate huge profit or revenue, but it puts us in a very good position for upgrade spare parts business and to maintain the customer relation. Next slide. After sales and service revenue, Syncrolift have traditionally been low, accounting for less than 10% of the revenue. Our target is to grow this to at least 20% short term and most probably more in the years to come.
Number of orders and revenue was up 35% compared to in 2021 compared to 2020, and most important, our order intake was up from NOK 21 million in 2020 to NOK 73 million in 2021. This is a mix of spare parts, service, inspections, and upgrade jobs. Next slide. We are continue into aquaculture. We are still testing in our prototype outside Hidra, and our system have now been in the water for 11 months and have given us important knowledge. We have been through some really heavy weather this winter, and Starfish is handling this as expected. Our initial concept with a more flexible construction seems to handle wind, waves, and current as planned. It is also important for us to have a reliable system before we are applying this technology to farming.
The market for closed system in sea will grow in the beginning for what we call post-smolt production and later on also for fully grown salmon. Starfish is handling both post-smolt production and grow-out in different configurations. Again, our ultimate goal is autonomous solution by use of intelligent control and software solutions. Next slide. A little bit update on the status of the testing. We are continuing testing and, especially on the filtering system and monitor how our solution are handling wear and tear over time. We are also starting now production planning and procurement of our full-size Starfish. As you know, there is issues in the supply chain for the moment, and, we're working hard now to make sure that we are able to get our prototype up and running as soon as possible. We say again, extensive testing without biomass is important.
Next slide. As said before, Nekkar's leap into digital solution is through our company, Intellilift. Intellilift was established five years ago by a group of engineers with background from companies focusing on software solutions for lifting and drilling operations. Nekkar became the main shareholder in 2019, and Intellilift have gradually been integrated as a part of Nekkar. As informed during our Q3 presentation, we have entered into a joint venture with Transocean regarding drilling software. The business model behind InteliWell is to offer oil companies and operators a digital system to enable more automated, efficient, and safe drilling operations. Offering will be based on a platform fee and a SaaS model with daily rates towards operators and oil companies. Despite the short history of the company, we are already working with several leads.
At the same time as our joint developed software are in testing in simulator. Based on tests in simulator, it seems that by using InteliWell software, oil companies can save up to 10 drilling days per year. With drilling market improving and with forecast full recovery, we will be entering into an interesting year ahead. Next slide. As usual, update on renewables. As informed before, our SkyWalker tool are designed for the land market. I believe all of you are following plans and for more and more offshore farms in the future in Europe. First bottom-fixed installation, and thereafter, more bigger floating installations. We are validating SkyWalker for offshore applications as well and see that this can develop into a very interesting market for us.
The risk, time, and cost related to offshore wind installation is even higher and more critical than on land installations. We continue our close cooperation with our wind innovation partners in addition to meeting with several offshore wind park developers. This is a disruptive and high-tech tool based on proven and tested technology in a new setting. We also work with different business models to secure our technology going forward, and this work is progressing. Next slide. For the moment, we are testing on our downscale model. This is a delicate and technically complex machine replacing tons of steel with intelligent solutions. After initial testing, we have worked out now some improvements and modification and are getting ready for the next level of test this week.
We will continue more indoor testing prior to assembling a real model tower outdoors at a height of 8 meter later in the spring. Next slide. Kristoffer, I think you take over and give us some update on the financials.
Yeah. Thanks for that, Preben. You can just move to the next slide, please. Yeah, looking at some key financial figures on a quarter-to-quarter basis, we see that following a more modest first quarter of 2021, we have, as Preben already said, we have experienced very high activity over the last three quarters and also realized strong operational margins. The good performance again is mainly driven by Syncrolift. The company during 2021 has in total delivered five major shiplifting projects that had a combined contract value in the region of NOK 850 million, which again underlines the high activity in the period. As you can see, the EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter was around 34%, which is impacted by the close of four projects and solid project executions.
We also been able to deliver more projects more cost efficiently than what we have previously estimated. We have realized cost reductions in the quarter. If you look at our historical figures, we have normally seen higher activity in the second half of the year compared to the first half. Looking forward, we do believe that the first quarter of this year will be more in line with the first quarter of 2021 rather than the fourth quarter. Move to next slide, please. Looking at the 2021 full year figures, Preben has already been through them, so I'm just gonna have a brief comment. You see that we have solid year-on-year growth both in revenues and operating profits.
The breakdown of the 2021 revenues, it's mainly generated from our new building business in shipyard solutions, where we have revenues from construction contracts amounting to roughly NOK 420 million compared to NOK 309 million in 2020. We have service revenues accounting for NOK 46 million, which is roughly 10% of group revenues with high ambitions to increase that in the periods going forward. In our digital solutions area, Intellilift had a strong year and recorded revenues of NOK 42 million. However, a significant part of these revenues are related to deliveries of control systems in our Syncrolift projects. So the external revenue of this segment was around NOK 10 million in 2021. We can move to next slide, please.
Our order intake in 2020, as you could see, was record high of around NOK 700 million. In this year, 2021, it's been in the low end of NOK 130 million. However, we do see good opportunities in the short to medium term in terms of new contracts. As the chart on the right-hand side shows, our backlog is still solid at the end of the quarter at NOK 840 million, which will help us secure good activity also in the coming periods. We can go to the next slide, please. Some more key financials. Revenues in the quarter ended at NOK 138 million, which is a growth of 5% compared to the same period last year.
The operational EBITDA, which we have, you can see we have highlighted, which excludes gains and losses on foreign exchange hedging contracts, ended at NOK 47 million in the fourth quarter with an EBITDA margin of 34% and also a strong growth compared to the same period last year. Our full year operational EBITDA ended at NOK 143 million, representing an EBITDA margin of close to 30% and more than double the EBITDA figures from 2020. As you can see on the reported EBITDA in the quarter compared to 2020 compared to the operational EBITDA, then we had large effects from gains from hedging contracts. That's why we have been focusing on operational EBITDA, which is a more precise measure to look at the underlying business.
We continue our R&D investments, and in the quarter, we have capitalized development cost of NOK 8 million compared to NOK 6 million in the same period last year and NOK 29 million for the year as a whole. These investments are related to the aquaculture and Starfish development and our renewables in SkyWalker, along with product development in the digital solutions area. During 2021, we have also received soft funding from Innovation Norway and other funding schemes of around NOK 7.5 million, representing roughly 25% of the invested amount. We can go to next slide, please.
A brief look at the balance sheet shows total assets at the end of the year of NOK 452 million, where the main balance sheet items includes intangible assets, working capital items, and cash balance. As you can see, the group is in an overall good position. We have no interest-bearing debt, and equity ratio at the end of the year was 70% compared to 36% in 2020. We can go to next slide, please. The cash flow for the period, you can see we had a negative cash flow for the period of, in total, around NOK 190 million.
What is to add to that is that our cash flow for the year is to a large extent impacted by the fact that we had a payment regarding the settlement of the Cargotec and MacGregor arbitration, which were roughly NOK 98 million, as you can see in the cash flow from investment activities. In addition to that, we received a large part of prepayments from customers at the end of 2020, and those prepayments have to a large extent been converted to revenues in 2021.
As we have commented on previous updates, our revenue recognition and cash generation is normally not being accounted for in the same period as we, to a large extent, receive prepayments from customers in our new building projects in Syncrolift. Normally the cash is received first, and then we have revenue recognitions on the project once the projects are executed and going forward. As you can see at the end, the total cash position was around NOK 180 million at the end of the year. The company is still in a good position liquidity-wise. Now we can go to next slide, please.
Thank you, Kristoffer. Let me wrap up. We are delivering a very strong quarter. As Kristoffer said, our balance sheet remains strong, our backlog are healthy, and we see now that the service focus pays off. Related to outlook, within Shipyard Solution, we see now potential of smaller contracts earlier in this year, and we also expect to fight for bigger leads later on in the year. We see good opportunity to turn around and get some more new business into Syncrolift in 2022 compared to 2021. We also see that revenue recognition in the first half this year probably will be slower than second half. The interest in the market for our aquaculture project are growing, and we are getting closer. Digital Solution business, our Intellilift has established a joint venture, and we are entering into some very interesting quarters ahead.
This should be the start of Nekkar growing SaaS generated revenue. Yes, I thank you for attending the presentation today, and we open for questions. Next slide.
Thank you, Preben. The first question is regarding the growth in service aftersale revenues in 2021. How realistic is it that we will see a similar growth in service aftersale revenue in 2022 and 2023?
Of course, it's hard to say how much we will grow and how fast we will grow, but I think what we have done in 2020 and 2021 by gradually building up organization both here in Norway for back office support, but also globally with offices in U.S., Singapore and Dubai, we will see a growth. Again, we had 35% in 2021. We are entering into 2022 with a quite healthy service backlog, which of course give us a good start of the year. It's hard to say how much we will grow and how fast we will grow. Based on my experience and the good work done in Syncrolift for the time being, I'm sure we will continue. The rate of course is hard to predict.
Hopefully now we are going into a more easy life for global service with less restrictions and COVID that will help us. We have had a big backlog of inspections job due to travel restrictions. We managed to carry out quite a lot in Q4, but we still have a backlog of inspections job, which again help us drive an increase of revenues.
Thank you, Preben. A question to Kristoffer, I guess. Historically, revenues in the first half of the year in Nekkar has been lower than the second half of the year. Do you expect to see similar patterns going forward?
Yeah. That was my comment on initially, that's what we have experienced. Even though the business itself is not
Very exposed to the seasonality effects. Looking forward, I think the first quarter of this year will be more in line with the first quarter of 2021. As Preben also said, during the fourth quarter, we did close on and delivered four major ship lift projects. I think the total contract value was around NOK 600 million. It was really high activity in the fourth quarter.
Thank you. Question to Preben. You have previously said that Syncrolift has approximately 75% market share. How has this market share developed over time? Has the growth in Syncrolift come from increased market share, or is the market growing, the total market growing structurally?
This is a question which is hard to answer. Also how big market share we have is, of course, you have to define the market. I think if you looked at in long-term, it's not right. I don't think I have said that we have had 75% market share. If you look at the last three to five years, we are in the range of 60%, 70%, 75% market share. That's probably correct. This is very few projects we're fighting for every year. Of course, if there are three projects one year and you get two of them, okay, you have 67% market share this year. If it's four and you get three, 75%. It goes up and down.
There are new competitors, but there are a few strong competitors. Now there have not been any contracts to fight for for a year. It will be interesting to see this year. We expect that there will be bids to be closed and how we have developed and how competitors have developed. There are three, four, five competitors a little bit, depending on where in the world we are, where they are strong. Syncrolift is one of the few with a global network and with global projects.
Thank you. Another question on service contracts. In what geographical markets are you seeing strongest demand for service contracts?
As I said before, we are into different market in the commercial docking market. We are into yachts and pleasure boat market, and we are into the military and navy. What we see in the trend is that the navy market is a market where there is more interest for long-term cooperation and service agreements than there is in the commercial market.
Thank you. A question about your balance sheet. Why do you always have so much cash on your balance sheet? Given prepayments, I would believe that you don't need a lot of operating cash. Do customers who prepay demand an amount of cash that you hold on your balance sheet? I guess that's to you, Kristoffer.
Yeah. It's correct. We do have a relatively large portion of cash on our balance sheet. As I said, normally we do receive the cash up front, and then we have obligations towards our subcontractors in the Syncrolift projects. Also that cash is partly prepayments, as you could see from our balance sheet. I think at the year-end, we had recorded roughly NOK 45 million in prepayments, net prepayments. There's also historical profits that's included in the cash balance. We will need the cash, for we have our development projects that we have high beliefs for.
Of course, going forward, we may look at other funding options, but at the time being, we are sitting fine with the cash balance that we have.
Thank you. A question to you, Preben. In the third quarter, you mentioned that you were bidding for possible contracts in Syncrolift. Have you lost any tenders in Syncrolift?
No. As far as we know, we have not lost anything. We see that most probably due to the pandemic and the COVID situation, that lots of investment has been postponed. Basically, we are working with the same contracts now like we did last year. We also see that there is three, four big bids out there which have been out there for a year. I know many of our interested investors know about this contract, and they are still open, and they are going on. We see more activity now, but we also expect that these big tenders will not be closed before second half of this year. There's lots of tendering work now.
In addition to this, we have several small ones now which look to be more fast like projects, which we hope to close now in the first half of this year.
Thank you. Question to you, Kristoffer Lundeland: Could you provide some color on what has been driving the profit margin improvements?
Yeah. If you look at the isolated effect in the quarter there, and I think that we have communicated that also previously. What we've been able to do in the fourth quarter, we have closed out four large projects. During that, we have also realized cost savings, meaning that we had a release of contingencies as we see that we did not use all the cost that was previously estimated on the projects. That effect is recorded in the period where we update the projects, which was in the fourth quarter. I think it's also combined. If you look at our margins, you need to kind of view it over a longer period of time.
Looking at the 2021 figures as a whole with the nearly 30%, large extent of that should be to Syncrolift, which had shown solid project executions and also been able to deliver these projects very cost efficiently in a demanding time.
Thank you. Question to you, Preben. Are you worried about the reduced order book and low order intake in 2021?
No, I'm not worried. Of course, collecting NOK 700 million in one year and NOK 100 million in the year after is not an ideal situation. As long as I know that we have not lost business, and I also know that there is good solid leads coming, I'm not afraid. Luckily, we had a good backlog. I mean, we had a very busy year in Syncrolift despite no intake. But that's why it is so important to grow the service business, so we have a steady backbone when we get years like this, because years like this will come again without intake. If we don't have a full order book like we had this year, it's easy to come into trouble.
Therefore, if you have a solid base of service business at the backbone, it's possible to survive difficult times in the future.
Thank you, Preben. Another question by contrast: When do you expect to see contract possibilities for InteliWell?
That's also hard to say. What we have seen that there is a huge interest among the drilling operators and oil companies for the software we are providing. Of course, this is a new setup. We will need some time, but I expect to see something this year, but how fast is hard to say.
Thank you. Also a question about Starfish. On one of the slides, you write that Nekkar is in discussions with a leading fish farm to identify a suitable site for a full-scale test. Will this test site be in Norway? What are the test site criteria you're looking for?
It's a good question. Let me answer the easy part first. It will be in Norway. That I'm quite sure. The reason why this takes some time and needs some planning is that to put such closed system into sea compared to the systems they have today requires some infrastructure. We also need to have fish of the right size, and we need to follow the cycle they have on the different sites. We need much more power to operate our system than basically the open system today that doesn't require any power at all. We also need to have power to that site. It's many criteria we're discussing now.
It has also related to timing to when we can have our prototype finished. As you know, the supply chain today is quite unpredictable. We are working on different scenarios and different plans for different sites, actually, depending on when we can have our prototype ready. But I hope that we will settle this rather soon so we can have a fixed plan and also can inform the market related to this.
Thank you. Another question to you, Preben. There's a question about clarification surrounding the ongoing discussions about the optimal go-to-market model for the SkyWalker solutions which you mentioned in your stock exchange announcement. You write that Nekkar and the company's innovation partners are also in ongoing discussion about the optimal go-to-market model for the SkyWalker solution. Can you elaborate what you mean by go-to-market model?
Yeah. I cannot say a lot, but basically, entering the market with SkyWalker is, first of all, it's a disruptive technology, but it's also a disruptive logistic solution. Therefore, it's hard to, let's say, find a way with different parties involved in planning installation. Because these have been done in the same way since the beginning, just that everything have been bigger and bigger and bigger. You cannot 100% replace a SkyWalker with a crane or a crane with a SkyWalker because it's two different way of installing. That's why you have to find the right way. This is. As I said, this will be a different way of planning the logistics.
There is many players into this. You have the wind park owners. You have the wind park developers. You have installation companies. You have the turbine makers. There is many players into this. Of course, to change the way of working with so many players involved, it takes some time. That's what we're working on for the time being.
Thank you. Kristoffer, I received quite a few questions about cash flow. Do you expect negative cash flow in the coming quarters if no new orders, including you know associated prepayments, are received?
Well, I think we have commented on that also a bit previously. It is not as straightforward. We may well have positive cash flows also in a period where we don't win substantial new building contracts. However, coming off the large intake in 2020 of NOK 700 million or so, and if you add that we do normally receive somewhere between 10%-30% prepayments on signing, we had a large base of cash going into the year. It's hard to kind of see the cash flow going forward, not necessarily will be in the negatives.
It's also worth to add there, we do receive milestone payments on each project, but the revenue recognition is based on cost-to-cost in terms of percentage of completion in our contracts. The cash flow is not directly tied to our operating revenues in the Symferrit business. Luckily, the cash flow normally comes first and revenue comes later.
Thank you. We also received quite a few questions about, you know, a very specific question about forward guidance on specific financial metrics. I think, Kristoffer, it's fair to say that we don't guide specifically on individual financial metrics.
Yeah, that's correct. We don't have any more to add that we do expect the first quarter of this year to be more in line with the first quarter of 2021.
I think we'll round off with a final question to you, Preben. As you are stepping down as Interim CEO, can you share what your new role entails and how this will be beneficial for the Nekkar organization?
Yeah. I think it's in general I can say something, but of course, we need to get Ole on board, and we will find a way and of course do the adjustment on the final organization as he comes. The thought is that Ole comes in with very strong experience and a financial background involved in M&A business and business strategy. My background is more on the operations side, and also that's what I enjoy to do. My job will be more focused downwards in the organization and to make sure that we establish good supply chain and operation orders now for our development projects in Kristiansand.
Keep an eye on and continue to work with the M&A organization and the service business here.
Okay. Thank you very much, Preben. With that, I think we will