Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Q4 presentation from StrongPoint. Today, we're going to go through the Q4 results, and following this session, we're going to have a separate strategy update session that we do every year about this time. That session will start pretty much immediately after the Q4 presentation, so at 9:15 A.M. Central European Time. Hope you're able to join that as well. For this session, it's going to be myself and, as always, Hilde, our CFO, to present the Q4 numbers. I'll do a short introduction of StrongPoint to those of you that are new to the company. We'll go through the financial figures and highlights, and then Hilde will do even more details on the financials.
We've said this in the past, and I would just like to reiterate, the double opportunity that exists for StrongPoint. The grocery retail market is going through big changes, not just big changes, but big megatrends. The megatrends include a lack of staff in store operations and in general, the rise of discounters across Europe and the world, for that matter, and also the continuous demand from end consumers for better customer experiences. We know that all of these challenges or opportunities, if you want, are going to require the grocery retailers to do and take many, many actions. What we also know is that technology is going to be a vital part of that solution. StrongPoint providing exactly that technology, both in store but also to e-commerce operations, is going to be an important part of the solution.
That is the double opportunity for StrongPoint in store and in e-commerce. We are very proud to be serving not only the major grocery retailers in Scandinavia and the Baltics, but also now increasingly across Europe and also U.S. More than 80% of our revenue stems from the grocery retail sector, and maybe in particular in today's environment, that is important to highlight. We are serving the stable and resilient grocery retail market, and as we will see in today's figures, that's absolutely making sense when you look at our figures today. Because we are in the grocery retail space, we have earlier introduced what we call the StrongPoint sandwich to help investors and others to understand what are the bulk of solutions we offer and how does that fit with the financial contributions that we are achieving.
Firstly, when you make a sandwich, you need bread and butter. For StrongPoint, the bread and butter are the in-store solutions. This is the Vensafe solution, the electronic shelf label, the self-checkout, the cash card solution, all the mature solutions that many of you would have seen out in the market. Sorry. Over cycles, we have seen that the profitability levels we are achieving in the bread and butter business is about 10%- 11% EBITDA. Put differently, if StrongPoint only did these in-store solutions, we would have achieved a 10%- 11% EBITDA. That's only part of the double opportunity for StrongPoint. We have the most efficient picking solution for e-commerce. We have helped the Swedish grocery retailers achieve the most efficient last mile delivery through lockers, for instance, and drive-through solutions.
We have also recently started the partnership with AutoStore to deliver automated micro-fulfillment picking facilities through their cubic system. Today, we're not achieving the scale required to yield benefits positively on an EBITDA level, but we will get there. I wanna take the opportunity to highlight that we are expensing all our costs, so there's no hidden secrets, so to speak, in the balance sheet. We are expensing it all and currently the e-commerce volumes are not great enough to yield a profit. But we will get there. Thirdly, on a sandwich, you just don't only want bread and butter and the topping, you also want some sauce on top. So it's important for me to get across the message that we are preparing not just for tomorrow, but also for the future.
Expensing all the investments we're doing in autonomous stores, in robotics, solutions that we know are going to be part of the next frontier grocery stores. That's, I'm saying this with a little bit of a grin around my face. Obviously, the StrongPoint sandwich there to both deliver on today's demands, but also tomorrow's and future demands for our grocery customers. Lastly, before getting into the Q4 numbers, I wanted to take the opportunity to share with you the financial ambition that we set forth at StrongPoint in the beginning of 2020. That was our financial ambitions for 2025 with a turnover or a revenue of NOK 2.5 billion and a EBITDA level of 13%-15%. I'm again reconfirming this financial ambition. We feel confident that we are on the way to achieving those financial ambitions.
We'll talk more about that in the strategy update session following the Q4 results. Let's get to today's figures, so to speak. We have, as always, a three-layered part on this section, the financial figures. I'll also be talking about the customer success and priority areas that we have, and how this all fits into the strategic ambition and strategic platform we need to achieve the financial ambitions. In terms of revenue, it's a bit of a milestone to break through the NOK 400 million revenue in one quarter. We grew by 43% compared to the same quarter last year to NOK 405 million. About NOK 100 million of this stems from ALS, the Irish and U.K. acquisition with it, yielding a 7% organic growth.
7% here is also very strong, considering the fact that last or same quarter last year, we were completing some very big electronic shelf label rollouts in Norway. All in all, a very, very strong performance with regards to revenue growth that I'm very pleased about. Looking at our EBITDA, we are growing our EBITDA by NOK 14 million to NOK 34 million. This represents a EBITDA margin of 8.3%. It's important to get across that about one-third of the EBITDA stems from ALS, meaning two-thirds stems from the existing or other businesses that we have at StrongPoint. This just underlines, number 1, the ALS acquisition has been a highly accretive and value-creating acquisition for our shareholders. Number 2, we're doing really good also on the core business that StrongPoint has.
There's just one geographic area I wanna single out, and that is Spain. The reason for that is we have had to go through a restructuring of our Spanish business. At the beginning of this year, we promised to be achieving break-even run rate when we got to the end of this year. We did not achieve that. We overachieved. We didn't just get a break-even run rate. We're actually yielding a slight profit in Q4 for the Spanish operation. Very pleased about that delivery as well. When we look at the StrongPoint portfolio across the solutions we offer, you would see a very balanced kind of portfolio. I think again, this is good to be serving the grocery retailers, but it's also good to be having a balanced portfolio in terms of solutions that we offer.
You will see our e-commerce business again, growing in percentage. Of course, growing in percentage when the growth overall is 43%, it's very strong. For us and for me, it's important to get across that although in many markets, e-commerce is experiencing a slowdown in growth, we are more pivoting towards serving the major e-commerce markets, where we're not trying to grow with the market, but rather penetrate major clients with our top or world-class solutions. Seemingly, we are achieving exactly that. I'll talk more about that. Want to highlight a couple of other points where we are achieving success. In the quarter, we announced that we were doing or are doing the world's first 3 temperature zoned AutoStore solution with ambient, chilled, and frozen.
We are doing that for a customer in Norway together with AutoStore, delivering on that at the end of Q1, maybe into Q2, but around that. I feel very, very proud that we're doing this. It's not long ago since StrongPoint became a AutoStore distributor, and we promised both AutoStore or others that we would make a difference versus other distributors. I think this example exactly points to the fact that we are able to deliver on very specific grocery demanding projects such as this three temperature zoned AutoStore. Very pleased about that. Secondly, in the quarter, we also announced that we would be delivering a pilot to a U.S.-based grocery retailer, a major U.S.-based grocery retailer. Normally when we talk about a pilot, that could be one, two, perhaps three, four, or five locker installations.
We're talking about 20 locker installations. I hope that also provides a little bit of insight into what kind of potential we might be looking at here. Lastly, it's also good just to reconfirm that we are, in our core markets, the go-to supplier for retail technology, not only in the grocery or for grocery retailers, but also for customers like Maxbo, the famous DIY chain in Norway. Those were just three examples of some of the customer success stories we had. There's a couple of other things I want to highlight before handing over to Hilde, and that is what are the other areas in which we're achieving a progress to, you know, creating a platform to achieve the 2025 financial ambitions.
The first is that following the acquisition of ALS, we were awarded the distribution rights for Pricer electronic shelf labels in UK and Ireland. Whilst also getting that, we were also awarded and expanded rights into Spain. One thing is getting the distribution rights, but I think it's also important, and I'd like to take the opportunity to just highlight the very close and closer cooperation that we have with Pricer now. That cooperation is closer than ever, providing great opportunities for both companies. Another company that also understood the value of StrongPoint going into the UK and Irish market was AutoStore. Going from having the distribution rights in the Nordics and Baltics, which have traditionally been the StrongPoint firmholds, we are also getting or have gotten the right to distribute AutoStore in UK and Ireland.
I'm very, very pleased to see that it's not only StrongPoint that understands and believes in the potential that lies in the UK and Irish market, but also our partners, Pricer and AutoStore, believing in exactly the same kind of value potential. Lastly, I will spend more time on this in the strategy update session where our managing director for Spain will get the chance to talk more about the very exciting cash management project and actually R&D project that we're working for in close collaboration with a major Iberian grocery retailer. Normally, we don't go to that specifics of a certain product development or product expansion. This opportunity is just so vast, have such great potential for StrongPoint in the Iberian market that we wanted U.S. investors to understand what the potential is.
It should also be said, and I'm sure Hilde will touch upon that during the year as a whole, the cash flow has actually been impacted by NOK 40 million because of this very exciting project. With that, Hilde, would you mind taking us through the rest of the presentation?
Absolutely, Jacob. Thank you so much. As normal, I will go through some other key financial figures, trying to give a little bit more information supporting Jacob's presentation. First of all, to summarize the slide that Jacob showed on the quarter, development on revenue, we ended the year on NOK 1.372 billion, close to NOK 1.4 billion, that is. That represents a growth of 40% compared to last year, and a 15% growth if we exclude the ALS acquisition, which is a very good achievement by the organization StrongPoint. If we were to own, if we had owned ALS since the start of the year, the revenue would touch NOK 1.5 billion. Looking at the EBITDA, we ended the year, the total year of NOK 76 million.
That is up NOK 22 million from last year. We are at the same EBITDA margin as last year, 5.5%. 2022 has been a year of turmoil. It's been challenging. We have had component shortage issues, we have experienced inflation, supply chain issues, and so on. Our gross margin has, of course, been affected by those effects. We started in 2022 to share a EBITDA breakdown per quarter just to enlighten you a bit on the development and why the EBITDA is affected as it is. We are not sure we will continue with that. Hopefully, the global situation will calm down a bit. This is the breakdown of Q2. We had a Q4. Q4 EBITDA last year of NOK 20 million.
We had a very good contribution on the gross profit from the increased revenue. We have a gross margin on the same level as in Q3. It takes time to take the cost increase out to the customers. Adding, of course, the ALS cost from which is then deviating from last year. We said in the Q3, we said that we are going to do some reallocations and some changes on the R&D of our e-commerce business. It has actually affected the Q4 EBITDA immediately, and that is due to some consultants that are no longer been hired by StrongPoint. That affected our EBITDA by NOK 4 million. We have increased our R&D in total and had a tax refund of almost NOK 4 million also then in affecting the Q4.
We are continuing to invest in our e-com sales and marketing as normal, but to a slightly lower pace than before. In total, we ended the quarter of NOK 34 and NOK 76 for the full year. This results in an earnings per share of NOK 0.38, adjusted for amortization in the quarter, which is up from last year. Our earnings per share rolling twelve months ended at NOK 0.95. Our cash flow movements has. I think the graph is just extending every time I stand here. We started off with a good cash position following the divestments of Labels in 2021. We add the EBITDA, of course. We received in Q1 2022 an earn-out for the Cash Security business of NOK 20 million.
We do not expect the same in Q1 2023, as very much part of the cash in transit business for our Cash Security that we sold out was sold to Russia. We had the acquisition of ALS of amounting to NOK 89 million. We paid dividends, and we had a change in working capital for the growth of StrongPoint, obviously, but also following the global situation we have had with supply chain issues and component situation. Most of this NOK 45 million is actually linked to receivables, and we can assure the market that we continue to have a very strong customer base, and we have a low risk on the receivables in StrongPoint.
One other point to note in this waterfall is the amount 14 further to the right in the graph, that is represented, that was presented by Jacob as the investments we are doing now in a joint venture together with a technology partner for the large-scale project that we are developing with a major Iberian grocery retailer. This is a loan, and it will be presented in this graph going forward. In Q4, it affected our cash flow with NOK 4 million. NOK 14 was the total of the year. We ended the year with NOK 47 million in cash or cash equivalents. We continue to have a break-even debt position if you look away from the IFRS 16 effects. StrongPoint IFRS 16 is only linked to rent of buildings and rent of cars.
If you take that away, we have a positive cash position of four actually. We continue to have a very strong balance sheet, low risk on the receivables, a highly high turnover on our inventory, and a break-even debt position. In total, that has allowed the board to evaluate the dividend for 2022. They proposed to the general meeting in April a dividend of NOK 0.9 per share. That follows the long trend that we have had for the past 12 years. It also follows the overall ambitions from the board to continue to pay and increase the dividend forward. The financial calendar for 2023 is published. We will meet again on the 27th of April for our Q1 2023 results and also the general meeting for 2023.
With that, I would like to say thank you for following this quarter presentation. We hope that you will join us in the strategy update session that will start at 9:15 CET. Thank you.