Good morning, and hi everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Bravida's Q3 Report. I think we follow the same procedure as normal. Myself and Åsa will take you through the presentation, and then you have the possibility to ask some questions in the end of this session. To start with, I think it's worth mentioning that I think this is quite a good quarter. If we looked at year-to-date, we have been able to grow the business with 5% and improve the profit with 11% when we pay taxes, et cetera. I think this is, due to the circumstances, a quarter that you can expect from a company like Bravida. If we start on slide 3, as I always do, and I think in these circumstances, I think it's even more important to tell you about the business model and the low risk.
I think this is the reason why we can deliver a very stable sales level and profit, et cetera. We have a diversified end market, low customer concentration, and small average contract size with a mix of slightly larger projects as well, of course. I think this is the reason why the growth in our earnings in the quarter and year to date is as good as we will present to you later on. All the time in this quarter as well in early quarters and quarters ahead of us, we will hire new resources in some geographies, and we will have some other geographies or areas, business units, branches, et cetera, where we need to do layoffs as a tool to adjust our cost base.
I think that's the normal way to handle changes in the local demand, and that's what we will continue to do as well in Bravida. On the next slide 4, I will take you through the highlights in the quarter. I'm very happy to be able to present an organic growth in a quarter like this, even if the service business has been impacted in the way it had. The service business is minus 4%, and still we have an organic growth with 1%. M&A contributed 4%, and then we have some negative currency effects at 3%. All in all, we grew the business with 2% in the quarter. Order momentum and the order backlog is minus 2% year-on-year, and it's divided in zero organic effect, M&A 1%, and currency - 3%.
If we adjust for the currency, we have actually a positive change compared to last year in the order backlog. The order intake was weak in the quarter compared to last year and - 20%. We have some currency impact in that. I will elaborate some later on the order intake and how we look at that. The EBITDA increased by 3% to SEK 284 million. The margin is unchanged at 6%. Worth notice is that the board decided to pay out the dividend. As an effect of that, we decided also to pay back the support we have got in Sweden for the temporary layoffs. That have a negative result effect in the quarter of SEK 8 million. If we adjust for that, we actually have an improvement in the margin in the quarter. That's of course really strong, I think.
The EBITDA margin is improved in Sweden and Finland. Mainly in both Sweden and Finland, it's explained by earlier restructuring actions we have taken, and the margin was lower in Denmark and Norway. Cash flow from operating activities was SEK 10 million compared to SEK 65 last year, but the cash conversion is still very strong, 167%. Working capital, - 6.7% of sales, which is improved compared to last year, and net debt is SEK 1.2 billion or 0.7 x EBITDA on LTM basis. We continue to do acquisitions. The activity on the acquisition side has gone up again. We have earlier said that we have been a bit cautious about the M&A side, but we have done four acquisitions in the quarter, and we still see a good pipeline. Turning to the next slide and some bullets about the impact from COVID-19.
We see some delays in project planning and investment decisions from the customers. This slide says lower demand, but it should be lower service demand in some geographic areas and price pressures. I think it's not that the demand has gone down very much. On the service side, for practical reasons, we have some lower demand, of course, but otherwise, it's more of a price pressure that some, let's say, companies or customers think it's possible to actually buy our services to lower prices. I think that explains, to some extent, the lower order intake we have had in the quarter because we have a strong order situation, and we will not sell our services to too low prices. Of course, negative impact in the service business due to temporary low demand and closed sites.
We also see that just a few installation sites is closed and not a very big thing in our world today. Again, slightly increased sick leave rates in the end of this quarter. The sick leave has gone up and of course that the same in Bravida as in the rest of the society. Said that, we still see a good order backlog. We had the visibility in the order backlog also that makes us in the position to adjust the cost base we're having, because we have low fixed cost and the possibility we have to adjust it, of course, will give us the possibility to defend the margins coming in the next quarters. Then, of course, uncertain market conditions ahead. Said that, we will always focus on margin over volume.
We will defend the margin even if the volume decreases. We will try to not sell our services or the projects too cheap, because that means that we increase our risk profile. That's nothing we want to do. On the next slide six, the group sales and EBITDA development. So far, year-over-year, we have been growing the business with 5% and improved the margin from 5.4%-5.6%. The sales growth in the quarter was 2%, 4% from M&A, 1% from organic growth. Then we had a negative impact from the currency. The sales increased in Sweden and Denmark and in Finland. We definitely have a total different position in Finland.
We have seen a trend that we are improving our business in Finland, and now have a position where we are seen as a more attractive employer and a more attractive supplier, and we are now entering slightly larger project in Finland as well, at the same time as we try to improve the service business. Service is still a low part of the Finnish business. We have seen, with the support of the improved trend in Finland, we think that we are now ready to compete in more complex projects and slightly larger service contracts as well. We think that our position in Finland has improved a lot during 2020. The EBITDA margin is unchanged.
EBITDA is up 3% to SEK 284 million, adjusted for the SEK 8 million, as I mentioned before, we actually improved the margin, and we are actually almost exact on the consensus regarding the EBITDA if we adjust for that cost. I mentioned why we have improved the margin in Finland and Sweden. In Finland, we have been working for a couple of years by increasing the quality throughout the whole organization. Those measures has actually paid off now, and we are improving the Finnish business every quarter now. In Sweden, we mainly see the improvement coming from Stockholm and the actions we took in the end of last year. The margin in Denmark and Norway are lower, and in Denmark, it explains by some write-downs, but also a quite big drop in the service sales.
In Norway, we have a lot lower service sales as well, which improves the margin in Norway. All in all, sales +2% and EBITDA +3% in quarter. If we go to the order situation on the next slide. If we start at the order backlog, it's -2% year-on-year, and actually, 3% is currency effect. If we adjust for the currency, the order backlog compared to last year is improved. When we take the order intake, which is down 20% in the quarter, I will try to explain this. The order intake is actually divided into two parts. One is the order backlog that I just mentioned.
We think we have order situation on the order backlog that is high, which gives us a good visibility, and we are not stressed about trying to win new projects, just because we have to improve the order backlog because our order situation is good. The other side of the order intake is the running service sales in the quarter. That has, of course, gone down a lot in the quarter, and that is to some effect, impacting the order intake in the quarter as well. I think, of course, we are suffering a bit from the pandemic, but I'm not very worried about the order intake because that we have a really strong order backlog. Of course, we have some differences in different geographies.
I've spoken to many branch managers the last weeks, but one example is that one branch manager say that, "Mattias, I have a really strong order situation, and I think the price is too low for the moment in the market. The demand is definitely there, but the prices are too low. And given the order situation I have, I don't want to actually participate to try to win these projects on these prices. So I will wait until I can get the right price." I spoke to another one in another geography who said, "I have struggled for a while to win projects, but I have decided to not try to win to too low prices." Now, the last weeks, I have actually seen that the price has gone up again. It seems like the competitors actually have their order books filled with probably slightly lower prices.
We don't know. He said that the prices has gone up again. I think that is very well explaining the strategy we are having, and actually the strategy we can have because we have a good order situation. Yes, we have a high order backlog definitely in Sweden and Finland. The order intake decreased by 20%, as you can see, and is mainly explained by low demand in service and some price pressure in installation business. Otherwise, it's as always, mainly small and medium-sized orders we have won. All in all, - 2% in the order backlog, and we still have an order backlog at SEK 14.3 billion in our books. Next slide. Acquisitions that contribute with 4% in growth in the quarter. We have so far done 15 acquisitions in 2020. Out of those 15, one is done in Q in the fourth quarter.
Those 15 are adding SEK 776 million in, I'd like to say, 2020. Actually, we have done four acquisitions in the quarter. That adds SEK 129 million. We have done acquisitions in all countries, two in Norway, four in Denmark, eight in Sweden, and one in Finland. We are now ready to continue to do acquisitions in all countries. This is of course a very strong value creator in our business model, and this is something we'll continue to do, and we still see a continued strong pipeline, and acquisitions are still at attractive multiples. Said that, we go over to Åsa, and I think we are on slide nine. Åsa, please.
Thank you, Mattias. Yes, we are on slide nine, we are starting with Sweden. If you look at the bottom of the top line, you can say that despite the pandemic, we had a 4% growth in total in Sweden, where the organic growth was 1%. Year to date, we had an organic growth of 3% with a total growth of 7%. We also have had an improved EBITDA margin, 6.6 % versus 6.3%. This is due to, in general, good performance in all our Swedish geographies. We are, as Mattias said, especially happy that we see a good improvement in our Stockholm division, where we took a lot of actions and some restructurings last year. We had a weaker order intake coming from both service and installation.
Even if the backlog has decreased during the quarter, we come from a high order backlog of plus 5% year-on-year. As Mattias said, we are not too worried about this order intake being a bit lower this quarter. Moving on to Norway. There we see a sales decrease by 5% in local currency, and organic growth was negative on 6%. This is very much due to a weak demand in service. Year to date, the total growth decreased to 2%. Looking at the EBITDA margin, we had a decrease to 5.7%, and this is also explained by lower service sales. You can see that the pandemic has affected Norway and Denmark the most when it comes to a lower service demand. Looking at the order intake, we have actually seen a positive trend in Norway for some time.
The order intake, if you look at it in local currency, it increased +5%, with an order backlog decreasing by 7% in Norwegian kroner. It has been, as I said, positive, and we also see that we have some partnering projects in the pipeline in Norway. Moving on to Denmark. We have had a sales growth of 7%, and this is coming from acquisitions. The organic growth this quarter was negative, -2%, and we have a decrease in sales from service. Denmark has also been impacted a lot from the weaker service demand, as I said. Year to date, we have a growth of 15% with an organic growth of 1%. The EBITDA margin was a bit lower at 4.8% compared to 5.0%.
This is, as Mattias said, this is due to we had a couple of smaller write-downs, but very much a lower stage in service. The order intake was - 28% year-on-year. This is due to a weak service demand, but also that we had strong comparative figures last year. Order backlog was down 7% year-on-year. Moving on to Finland, which is sticking out a little bit this quarter. We had a sales increase by 29%. This is mainly coming from organic growth. We had a 26% growth organically, and the year-to-date increased by 17%. Also very happy to see that the EBITDA margin improved to 3.8% this quarter from 0.5%. This is explained by all the actions that we have taken to improve the business and the operations for some time now.
We can see that we have had a positive trend for the last month quarters, and also the EBITDA year to date increased to 2.4%. A weaker order intake, - 41%, a order backlog that is + 8% year-on-year. Moving on to page 13, looking at our financial situation. We still have a very strong financial position. As you can see on the left-hand side, we had a cash balance of SEK 1.1 billion. We had term loans or RCF commercial papers from using that of SEK 1.5 billion of leasing. Financing comes to SEK 882 million, this leads us to a net debt of SEK 1.2 billion. We had an LTM EBITDA on SEK 1.7 billion. This means that the net debt LTM EBITDA ratio is 0.7, so on a low level and very much within our covenants.
The operating cash flow, in the middle, is continuing to be very strong. This is mainly due to good operations. We have a solid and very strong working capital. On the right-hand side, you can see our financing. We are drawing on our financing RCF on SEK 1.1 billion. We also have some commercial papers issued of SEK 260 million. We have this term loan that we signed in April of SEK 500 million. That was just to secure our financing when the market was a bit uncertain there in the start of the pandemic. Very strong cash conversion, 167%. Slide 14, there we have our financial targets. If we look at our sales targets, we have the target to be above 5% in sales growth. If we look at the year-to-date figures, adjusted for currency, we are on 7%. We have 2% organic growth, 5% acquisition.
We have a negative currency effect, so the total growth is 5%. The EBITDA margin is, if you look at the rolling 12, we have a 6.1% EBITDA margin. Unfortunately, we will probably not reach the 7% this year due to the pandemic, but we are on our way. Our cash targets. We have, as I said, a strong cash conversion target of more than 100%, and we are on 167% now, and we have a target payout ratio, a dividend payout ratio on more than 50%. As we have said, we just decided to pay out dividends for last year, and that was 52% of the net profit. As I said, a very low net debt EBITDA ratio of 0.7, well below our target of less than 2.5. All in all, not such a bad quarter, Mattias.
Thank you, Åsa. If we look at slide 15, I think this is a slide I'm very happy to present for you. The one of you who haven't followed us for a very long time, I think this is worth spending a few seconds looking at. I think the development we have had in Bravida the last years, both on the sales side, but also on the profit side, has been very stable and developed in a very good way. To the right on this slide, you see the cash conversion as well. It's extremely high for the moment, and of course, over time it should be around 100%. We have been extremely good in managing our cash side in many different ways, both improve the invoicing regarding service, payment plans on some projects, et cetera, but also in many other things.
I think this is a slide I show quite often internally, and this is showing how the business model in Bravida actually, what it does with the numbers as well. Normally when I talk to our management or personnel, employees within Bravida, we say that we always work with continuous improvement, and this is what happens when you do that. I usually say that champions is something you have been and can be again. That's nothing you are. This is something we shouldn't be satisfied, but we should be very proud of what we have achieved. Said that, we think that we can continue to do this for many, many years ahead, of course. Turning to slide 16 and some short bullets about the business plan that we started to tell you about last report as well.
In short, we will come back to this. Some bullets to give you some information around it is that we will continue to develop our service platform and continue to focus on the service growth, even if we see that has been impacted in a negative way during the pandemic. Even stronger service platform within Bravida, combined with a already strong installation platform is of course a very good combination. That would strengthen our company in the future as well. A digital transformation or both focus on transformation within the company, also digitalization will of course be very important the coming years. This will require some investment in systems and resources, mainly in 2021.
If we should have been really fair to ourselves, we should actually been able to adjust for some cost already this year, but we have chosen not to do it because we want to have as clear financial presentation as possible. We will think about how we will present this the coming quarters. It's not a very huge investment, but of course, there will be some investment needed to be able to sustain the position we have in the market today. Try to summarize the quarter on slide 17. Impact from COVID-19 in Q3 has of course impacted the order intake . I think you all see some uncertain market conditions ahead, and we think the same of course, but we have shown that our business model and Bravida as a company is very stable. The sales increased with 2%, a combination of acquired growth and organic growth.
We have some negative impact from currency. Service sales decreased by 4%, meaning that the installation part grew quite a lot. The installation order backlog was -2% from a high level, and actually 3% was a currency effect, as I mentioned earlier. +1, if you compare adjusting for the currency. The EBITDA margin is unchanged as we reported. If we would adjust for the provision or for the money we paid back for the support in Sweden, we received it in Q2, and we took it out from the P&L in Q3, then we had a margin that exactly improved to 6.1%. The EBITDA margin was improved in Sweden and Finland. M&A execution is on track. Healthy pipeline. Four acquisition completed in Q3, 15 total in 2020, where one was in Q4.
Net debt continued down to 0.7x EBITDA. It's well below the financial target of 2.5. Cash conversion is, I would say extremely strong at 167%. With that, I think we can open up the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin with the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star and two. Once again, please press star and one if you wish to ask a question, and star and two if you wish to cancel your request. The first question comes from the line of Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Good morning. It's Carl from Nordea. I have a few questions. First of all, you mentioned the price pressure on certain projects. I wonder if you could give some more granularity on that and whether you see more severe price pressure on certain project sizes or project types or end markets perhaps, and also whether you have experienced worse pricing landscape sequentially, or if you are referring to a year-over-year movement in the pricing.
Good morning. Thank you for that one. Why I say that, it's not very easy because, again, we think the demand is okay, it's good. In some areas it's really good. There is a pressure on price. I think it's a bit of psychological reason. I think first we have some peers that are maybe a bit stressed, having a slightly or much lower order backlog than we are having. Maybe think they have to fill up the orders. I don't know how they are thinking. Maybe they think it's going to be worse and try to fill up the order books. We don't have to do it. We don't want to do it. We actually just don't get into that. That's one part.
I think our customers, if you look at the construction companies, the same psychological effect is actually hitting the customers as well. We see more construction companies in the tendering phases competing for their contracts, they try to push some extra pressure on the price to us as a subcontractor. Again, we don't want to go there. We don't have to go there. I think that's the reason. It's not demand-driven. I think it's more psychological driven. Let's see what happens. I have heard, as I said, this is not the same situation in whole Sweden, for example, or in the whole of Norway. It's different geographies, different markets. I have heard that in some areas we have so many requests for prices that we actually aren't able to handle all of them.
In some other areas, they think we have a strong demand, but the prices are too low. In some other areas, as I mentioned, the prices have gone up again because it seems like the other actors in the market have actually filled up the order books so we can start winning projects to a good price level again. I hope that was an answer to your question.
Okay. That's brilliant. If I get you right, the prices in general, you still experience quite price pressure at the end of the quarter. Is that correct?
I think if you should say something about the market, I would say that it's slightly more focused from my side on the price pressure than on the demand side. On the other hand, again, we have a strong order situation, so we don't have to go there.
Okay, perfect. You also mentioned that the margin in Denmark was negatively impacted by lower profitability in some projects. Should we expect it to continue going into Q4 as well? Is it just a Q3 matter?
No, we don't. We don't have that history in Denmark either, so we don't. I think also the mix change in Denmark, earlier we have used subcontractors to some installation projects, and when the demand in service has gone down, we have used service resources to produce installation projects. Of course, that's a really good way to handle our own employees. You are changing the mix a bit to when you have a slightly higher margin on the service compared to installation. We have preferred to use the service employees on the service side to making a higher profit instead, of course. That's nothing we expect to continue.
Okay, perfect. The final one from my side, if I may. In your outlook, you are gradually being more cautious. Is it based on a fear of new lockdowns or what you read in the paper? Is it based on that you actually see sequentially lower quotation levels? How should we look at your view of the market?
I think it's more about that in the Nordics, countries are taking some different measures, but I think they go in the same direction, all of them. Again, it's not demand driven. This is health driven. If our customers aren't at work, they are not able to order in the same way they are usually doing. Some of these sales is postponed. Some of the sales will probably not happen, but I think that we need our customers at work. I think that's same for us and in all other industries. It's depending on that the government is trying to get people to stay at home, and I think that's why. It's not any other things that is the reason behind our more cautious outlook. It's just about the society, what we are doing.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Stefan Andersson from SEB. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Thank you. A few questions from me then. Going back to the demand side and the price pressure. I get the impression that you see the slow demand is temporary. You're willing to wait because you think demand is out there. Are you seeing growth in the market for 2021, or are you seeing flat, or are you seeing the market down for 2021?
Impossible to answer, I think. We think that, again, the demand in the market is okay or good. It's not the tricky part for the moment. The tricky part is that the customers, I guess, are a bit uncertain as well about decisions. People are not meeting in the same way. They are not signing new deals. I think it's more practical reasons to that. Let's see. The demand for our services regarding energy improvements, make sure hospitals, et cetera, is working, infrastructure, make sure you have water in the toilet, lighting at the office or at home. The demand for our service will always be there.
Yeah. Okay. I'll turn the question a little bit around. Going back a few years, you know how it is with us in the stock market, we're always scared about something. A few years back, we were scared about new builds in resi. I know you then said we don't have any material resi exposure at all to the new build. Now, I guess that market is a little bit, put it frankly, it's hot at the moment. We are concerned about hotels, commercial offices, retail space, instead. That's our new scare. How would that look? If you just look at your installation new build side, what kind of portion of exposure would you have to those areas, just to understand the risk here?
No, of course, we have had a low exposure to the residential market, as you say, and that's a market that we don't think is the best market, of course. I usually say the market is the only thing we can't have any impact on. If we are building more residentials, of course, that is a market for us, or at least for our peers, competitors who think that's a good site for them. I think it's personally, it's not as good because the price model is very transparent. There is no aftermarket at all. There are sometimes very tricky contracts, et cetera. Of course, we will probably see a slight increase of residential in our orders. It's not a very high focus. We would rather build logistic halls, continue to support the customers with their sustainability work regarding energy consumption, et cetera.
Also the office. I think you are right that it will not be very high investment in the office areas for the moment. I think all these spaces will need to change the way you are using them in one way or another, and that means renovation, and that's a much better market for us. That's something I'm really looking forward to. That market is something we want to participate in because that is less transparent price models. You need more know-how how to do it, and there is an aftermarket as well. That's more interesting for us, and that will happen in some way or another. When it happens, the timing around it's more difficult to say, I guess.
Yeah. You're not willing to give any percentage of your sales that are in the space of hotel, retail, and office new builds?
No, I think it's impossible to do. Again, we have a strong order backlog. We know what to do the coming six to nine months in many places, or some branches has next year sold out. Again, a good order situation, and we hire new resources in some areas. We are taking out resources in some other areas. That is something we will do in 2020. That's something we will do 2021, and that is something we have done for the last five years as well, and that's part of our business model. Local responsibility, local sale, adjust cost base, depending on the local demand. Yeah.
Okay. On the sales drop, if I understood it correctly. Sorry, I missed the beginning here. I was on another call. The sales drop, I think you have commented before on being difficulties. Well, sorry, sales drop. Sorry, I wouldn't put it that way, but let's say the slightly slower sales then is relating to the service side, if I understood correctly, difficulties with COVID to get into some premises and less usage of that and so on. That's been a negative for you on the revenue side. You don't have sales drop, I know that. Looking then on the order intake, if we were to say that the order intake had some slowness in this quarter, is that also from the service side that it comes through, or is that driven by the installation side, you would say?
I think it's a combination. First of all, when our service sales go down in a quarter, that one-to-one affects the order intake. That's the fact. Of course, when we see the price pressure in the market that I commented to Carl, I think that price pressure in combination with the strong order backlog we're having, and we haven't been willing to take in any project to any prices. It is a mix of price pressure, that we are not stressed to take in new orders. Of course, the order intake and the order backlog will always vary from one quarter to another. Probably, soon there comes another quarter where we have a slightly larger project coming into the books, and then you think the order situation is maybe really strong again. I think it is a combination.
Drop in services and that we haven't been willing or able to win installation projects. We have a strong order book. Yeah.
Yeah. On my last question on acquisitions. I think you had more or less an evenly spread on number of companies you acquired during 2020, but volume-wise, revenue added has been a little bit slower recently. How do you see that going forward with new restrictions and the ability to travel and so on? I know you have the ambition to speed up the acquisition pace. Looking at the pipeline, what do you think?
I think you have a point. We said that we didn't want to continue the same pace when we presented the Q1, I think. We actually took down the activity during the summer months. We started up again, and we have had a definitely much higher pace here in August, September, and October. Let's see what happens. I participated in one management presentation the other day that was on, let's say it was on Teams, I think, or Skype or Zoom. I mentioned them all. It's not the same. I think to be able to do the right acquisition with the right quality too, you also know that we think it's very important about the culture to integrate it, to know the people. Of course, it's better and easier to do acquisitions when we can meet.
Up till now, we have been able to meet unless the example I mentioned. I think you need to be cautious when you are traveling, how you do that. We are willing to sit one person in the car pool, for example. You can make sure you have a large room to meet persons, et cetera. I think we have seen that pace picked up a bit, but let's see what happens. I think you have a fair point. If we are not allowed to meet, then of course we won't. That's something we can actually do anything about. The market and the corona, that's something we need to adjust. Again, we store the backlog, we have adjustable cost base, et cetera. We have done this for many years. I have done this for 2025 soon. Let's see.
I think we will come out from this very stable, and I think surprisingly good. Let's see.
Oh, perfect. Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Stefan.
Thank you. Before taking the next question, may I just remind you, please press star one if you wish to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of KJ Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Good morning, Mattias and Åsa. I appreciate there is many moving parts, and I hear how you discuss around the thing. Just to get your feel, obviously Q3 is a strange quarter normally for seasonal patterns. Also, I guess you add the COVID-19 situation on top of it. When you look at service sales and the way you describe it, how much of it would you say is related to these more strange market issues, and how much is you losing market share in this quarter when you're looking at what's happening in service?
Yeah, I think everything is due to the pandemic. We are not losing market share, definitely not.
It's more a question of timing of projects and your clients being active in the market really than there is something fundamental going strange in the underlyings?
Because I see that if we look at some of the peers that have reported, we are growing organically. They are losing sales organically. We are growing. We are improving the margin, I would say, if you allow me to adjust for the things we have paid back to the government in Sweden. I would say that we are better performing so far than some of the others at least. We are definitely not losing market shares.
Good to know. Also, I remember you mentioned in the Q2 call that you had some delayed tax payments from Q2, making the working capital look a little better there. Have those gone out now in Q3, or is there any more timing effects we should have at the back of our mind looking at the cash flow?
Yeah. Actually, there is SEK 100 million roughly that is postponed to be paid out later than it should have been paid out earlier this year. We also actually have a payout that we have paid back some of this now in the quarter, which we didn't have last year. That is also a positive effect on the cash flow. Adjusted for that, yes, the cash flow in the quarter is better.
Excellent. Just looking at the business plan for 2021. I appreciate you will come back and give us more details, but if you look at the required investment and resources you're looking at, are those of a size that you shouldn't be able to, let's say, meet your financial targets looking at cash conversion and then margins for 2021?
No. I think if we should ask for the numbers for 2020, we are in 2020 now, obviously. I think we have spent around some SEK 15, 20 million this year that is actually used for that. I think it will be maybe slightly more next year, but we haven't decided exactly the timing on what and when, so to say, yet. I think slightly more than this year. I think you see that we have handled the margin and the cost this year quite well. I think we can do that next year as well. It's not a dramatic change, I would say.
Excellent. Thank you very much, and stay safe.
Thank you. The same.
Thank you. This was our last question. Please continue with your closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you very much. Good discussions. I understand that you have some thoughts about the market, et cetera. Of course, we do as well, but we try to, as normal, as always, stay very close to the branches, the local markets, discuss, do the right actions where we can improve the business, and then some other measures when that's needed. Again, that's something we always do in 2021, 2020, and as we have done the last year as well. Good questions, good discussion, and I think KJ said it very well. Take care, be safe, and have a nice day. Thank you.