Okay, I think we're ready to go.
Yeah.
Welcome all to the Q4 Report for the 4C Group. I am Magnus Bergqvist, and I'm the CEO.
I am Anders Nordgren, Group CFO here at 4C, and I will be presenting our Q4 and full-year figures later on in the presentation. Before we kick off, just to highlight, we will end with a Q&A session, so please feel free to add or submit your questions in the chat, and we will pick them up when we move into that section. By that, we're ready.
Okay, let's go to the next slide, and the next one. I'd like to start by giving some key highlights of Q4, and the full-year. We're very pleased with the performance in Q4 and the full-year. If we look at the full-year net sales, we have achieved the growth of 18% with an EBIT of 13%, and non-currency adjusted, our growth is 27% for the full-year. If we break this down into verticals, and Anders will come back with more details here, we achieved 50% growth in our corporate segment over the year, which is aligned with our strategy and ambitions. A key achievement has been our ability to increase the proportion of software revenue that is so instrumental for us.
In 2022, this is 64%, compared to last year of 61%. A significant highlight are the investments made into our products, sales, brand awareness, and geographical expansion. During H2, we have invested over SEK 14 million above our budgeted investment plans to accelerate growth, we'll come back to more details on this later on in the presentation. We believe this will be instrumental in safeguarding future high growth. Anders will later on come back with more financial details, worth highlighting in Q4 is our ability to extend existing software contracts for longer terms. In the corporate sector, we have extended several historic customers in +3-year contracts, in the military segment, we have also extended several customers. Noticeable in Nordic is one key customer for a new five-year contract.
The reason for this, we're very proud of our new software platform, Exonaut Next Generation. During 2022, we have continued the rollout and have upgraded several customers. We also receive feedback that this is the main reason for our customers committing long- term, which makes us really excited about the future. Before I hand over to Anders for the Q4 financial details, I'd like to highlight some examples of the solution we provide, but also the societal impact they have. As presented in our Q3 report, we started 22 years ago with the idea to digitalize training with the Swedish Armed Forces. It's always with a purpose to collect, analyze data, reuse information to achieve process improvements, increase efficiency, and to lower cost. When I now look back at 2022, as we all know, it's been a very special year.
A year ago, standing here, we were looking back at COVID-19's impact on the world and internally, how we as a company changed and adapted to the situation. We started the planning for taking 4C Group public to strengthen our growth journey. A year later now, it is mind-blowing what has happened. Since February, we're faced with the horrors of war, impacting all of us. We're mitigating the consequences as much as we can, and we support our customers to manage this new situation. One year ago, very few of us could have imagined that Sweden and Finland had applied for NATO membership, and as a company supporting NATO and these countries, we need to adapt. Also, when we look around us and the financial uncertainties with the inflation, interest rates, supply chain, and energy disturbances, they impact all of us.
Luckily, we have solutions and services to manage this impact for organizations. The effect on 4C as a company is clearly immense, and based on the nature of our business, we need to be agile, we need to evolve and support our customers in this ever-changing and turbulent environment. Our solution offering has never been more relevant, we need to adopt, we need to collaborate with our customers in this changing situation. I'll give you some practical examples, Anders. We can move to the next slide. As mentioned in my intro, we have during the year signed longer contracts to support our defense customers, recruiting former military personnel, and we embed these resources in long-term customer support engagements. By doing this, we create a trusted long-term partnership, it's very important for 4C and our customers.
A second example is that we will provide our incident and crisis management solution to universities to enable them to be more prepared and resilient. 4C has supported the education sector for over 10 years. In especially exercising and training to be able to manage unwanted situations like active shooter scenarios that we unfortunately read about and hear about on a daily basis. Last but not least, another more operational example of managing a large-scale crisis. The European Union, as we speak, is coordinating its response in our solutions, Exonaut, to support Turkey and Syria in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake. Clearly, our hearts and minds goes out to all the families in these regions, but we're really proud of making a difference in enabling European Union to manage this situation.
Our view is clearly that the offering of 4C has never been more relevant or important. I'll come back later on with some more details. By that, Anders.
Yes. Over to some financials and having a look at our financial performance in 2022. We can see that we delivered a solid organic growth in 2022. Net sales for the full-year amounts to SEK 331 million, something that equals a 27% growth. FX adjusted, the net sales growth was 18%. If we look at the last quarter of the year, a quarter that is usually a strong quarter where 2022 was no exception, net sales for the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 91 million, which makes it the strongest quarter of 2022. Compared to the comparative quarter, we did not reach last year's quarterly sales, a quarter that is so far our strongest since the company was founded and consisted of several significant software deals.
Important to note this in this comparison is that last year's quarter included license call-offs connected to the ongoing U.S. Army contract, a call-off that this year occurred in Q3. When comparing these two quarters, this need to be considered. We are pleased with our performance. During the quarter, important software deals were closed, both through new and expanding contracts. The service business was solid and the overall activity in the market was high. Software sales for the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 54 million, equaling 60% of total sales. For the full-year, software sales amounted to SEK 212 million, corresponding to a 33% increase compared to last year and equaling 64% in relation to total sales. Up 3% from last year, indicating a positive development and in line with our strategic direction.
If we take a closer look at our net sales figure and breaking it down by segment, the left part of this slide, we can see that all segments are growing and that North America and the Nordics have the strongest growth in net sales during 2022. Growth in North America amounted to 27%, reaching SEK 127 million for the full-year. The growth in this segment was primarily driven by the expansion within the U.S. military branch. The Nordic segment reached SEK 117 million in 2022, representing a 48% growth, a growth driven by both a solid service business, but especially an improved software sales, something that we are very pleased to see. As an example, as Magnus mentioned earlier, during the fourth quarter, we renewed the five-year service and support agreement with one of the armed forces in the Nordics.
The international segment reached SEK 87 million net sales, a modest increase of 6% and slightly below expectations, mainly due to delayed software deals in the last quarter, deals that we expect to realize in coming quarters. Worth highlighting is that we are investing heavily in this specific segment and where we now also can see improved pipelines of opportunities, something that is, of course, promising for future sales. One example of this is the APAC region, where we see growing interest and improved pipelines. If we have a look at the right part of the slide, you see our customer groups or verticals. We see strengthened positions in all of them. As mentioned earlier as well, we are very pleased with the development within the corporate customer group, a group which grew by 50% for the full-year to SEK 48 million net sales.
We have worked hard to expand in this specific vertical during 2022 through brand awareness, but also through refining and improving our offering. We are happy to see that the effort is giving result and hope that our continued investments within the resilience offering will continue to support the growth in this specific vertical when we move forward. Looking at profitability, we reached an adjusted EBIT margin of 13% for the full-year of 2022. Our adjusted EBIT in the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 10 million, which means that our adjusted EBIT margin reached 11% for the last quarter.
The profitability is according to our expectations as we're moving forward with investments and initiatives that we expect will support and drive future growth. During second half of this year, or also mentioned earlier, investments or costs expansion OpEx, which means that is costs on top of our initial budgeted investments amounted to SEK 14 million. The majority of these 14 is generated in the fourth quarter. Worth also highlighting, analyzing our profitability is what we announced during the Q3 web call relating to a bad debt provision connected to the Middle East region. During Q4, a full provision for this specific contract has been made, resulting in a full-year negative impact of SEK 9 million.
Taking a look at some important KPIs, I have mentioned the majority of them already, but what we can see is that we have maintained a balanced financial position throughout 2022, something that gives us confidence during this expansion phase we are in. Both cash position and net debt are strong or on healthy levels. Net working capital amounts to SEK 38 million at year-end. During the last quarter of the year, we have seen the cash conversion increase, having positive impact on both net debt and net working capital levels. The annual recurring revenue amounts to SEK 107 million at year-end. The software part of the annual recurring revenue accounted for SEK 71 million, showing a 16% increase compared to last year, which is in line with our ambition and also in line with the positive development of software sales in general during 2022.
Thank you, Anders. From my side to summarize Q4 and full-year 2022, as mentioned earlier, we're pleased to see the continued growth in all segments and especially in the corporate business. We're very pleased with the growth of 18% FX adjusted, and especially seeing 64% being software, as mentioned. We're extending contracts on longer terms, this is instrumental for securing future growth and high customer satisfaction. As we have invested heavily into our product transformation over the last couple of years and are satisfied with the feedback we get from customers when they upgrade, but also when new customers are onboarded. We are focused on growth and are excited really about the investments made. I've seen some questions come in here. We're gonna go to those pretty soon.
In 2023, a lot of the focus will be to increase brand awareness, business development, and sales to continue global growth. In North America, for example, we're currently establishing a new non-defense sales team to accelerate our corporate business. Exciting times ahead.
Yeah, we have a couple of questions.
that we have, if you scroll down there. ... I will start with one on the bottom here. Thanks for all these questions. It's gonna be a long day.
Yeah.
Both the software revenue and revenue from corporate sector were down year- on- year. Any specific reasons for this? First of all, as we presented full-year, the corporate revenue is up by 50%. It's always difficult to compare the fourth quarter, as the fourth quarter of 2021 was the highest in 4C history. When we look at rolling 12 months, the corporate segment is the one we see growing the most.
Not-
Wanna-
fully certain if he meant, quarter- by- quarter.
Yeah
... that it was down in Q4, but I think your response was correct.
Thank you. Have you started to see any effects from higher military budgets? If not, do you expect this will materialize? Yes, we are seeing effects of that on a daily basis. The military budgets, based on Ukraine, but also based on the pre-pressure within the NATO family up towards 2% is impacting. We are seeing more and more investments, and I think the biggest effect we as a company see is clearly that there are less budget cuts that you had in the past. There are, there is easier potential to get funding for very interesting projects. To answer your question, we need to be agile to be out there.
I think the big, the only challenge that exists is, of course, the attention span of decision-makers within the military segment as they are very, very busy nowadays. We are optimistic and are seeing that increase. Next question here. How much recurring revenue is coming out from the North America defense contracts? Currently, we are not counting any recurring revenue out of North America, but we expect both our major contracts to convert into recurring revenue in 2023. The reason for this is that they will then move into deployment from development, and this is scheduled in 2023. More to come in this year on that topic. Next question. You have mentioned, this is for you, Anders. You have mentioned a provision for the Middle East client during H2. Do you 4C any further provisions for this contract?
No, I can take that. I think I mentioned it earlier, but the provision of the contract with our customers in the Middle East has now been fully written off. We do not 4C any additional or more downsides or additional provision for this specific project. It's fully written down.
Yes. I can see. Sorry, stay there on the slide. Could you comment on any completed deals so far in Q1? How has the year started? We are not in the position to comment on new contracts. In that case, we will announce them. We are very optimistic of how our continuous growth looks in 2023, I can say. Yes, leave it at that.
Yeah.
Next question, how much have you invested in R&D during the year? Without being very over the last two years, we have grown our R&D staff with over 60%, which has been a massive investment. One of the main reason why taking 4C public. This is clearly to embrace our growth ambitions. It's instrumental to achieve further growth and improve our product offering. It's also been the result of launching development hubs in U.K., but especially in Orlando, in North America. Let me see on that question. What should we expect in terms of growth OpEx in 2023? Is SEK 14 million per half- year a good proxy?
I would say that it's a bit hard to estimate. We will move forward with, as we said, further investments, whether or not it will be close to 14 or not, that's a guess at the moment I would say. We will generate more OpEx during 2023 as well.
Yeah. We take the next question, and once again, thank you for all these questions. You mentioned SEK 14 million in additional investments expansion OpEx on top of our ordinary budget. Could you elaborate?
You wanna take that?
Yeah, I can take that.
Yeah.
Three areas. We have initiated new internal software development projects to add new products, and we earlier this year, for example, mentioned MyMIMIR or MyExonaut for individual training. We can take new products to the market, and we will launch a number of new initiatives during 2023. In-product development has been, and mentioned also to the last question on the 60% growth in R&D personnel. Secondly, we have also increased the sales staff, and the number of events we have attended to drive sales, but even more important, to increase brand awareness. Third, as we have previously communicated, we are accelerating the geographical expansion. For example, Australia, where we are now growing a team, where we have also established a new hub, and as Anders mentioned, seeing a positive pipeline.
There's another one. Okay, this fits into the last question. Are you planning to expand into further locations in the upcoming years? I can say we are continuously planning and evaluating new locations. At the moment, we have not decided on any specific locations, but as also mentioned in previous communication, we will invest more into US non-defense market in 2023, and we're also evaluating expansions in the Nordic region and in continental Europe. I think I'll stay at that comment.
That's correct. What else do I have? Can we scroll down a bit?
Yeah.
That one is answered. It's the same. Could we expect lower capitalization going forward as the new generation of Exonaut is launched? I would say that we, as we said, we will continue to invest in our software. The short answer to that would be no.
Okay. A question relating also to what I mentioned about the European Union. What exactly is your Exonaut software doing in connection to the EU response? Without going into all the details that I'm not allowed to, I can say that Exonaut, when it comes to incident and crisis management, is a collaboration tool where people share information and to be able to act having the same information available. It's making sure that all European Union nations can join in collaboration and acting and making sure of what decisions are taken. That's how far I can go in that comment. Thank you for good questions.
Yeah.
I think that is pretty much it right now.
Yeah.
Really good questions. Thanks a lot. We're looking forward to detailed meetings.
Later on today.
... later on today. By that, I think we close this communication.
Yes.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.