Welcome to today's webcast with Checkin.com, where CEO Kristopher Cassel and CFO Martin Bäuml will present the report for the fourth quarter. After the presentation, a Q&A will be held. With that said, I hand over the word to you, Christopher.
Thank you, Ludwig. Yeah, my name is Kristoffer Cassel. As Ludwig said, I think the format of today is similar to the format we've had at previous quarterly presentations, where I highlight some of the parts from the CEO letter and sort of a general update on the business. Where Martin Bäuml, who is our CFO, will dig into some of the numbers as well. We expect that all of you have read the report in full and also have some knowledge of us as a company since previously. I think we'll cut straight to the chase. Big thing this quarter is that we have a positive bottom line for the first time ever.
I think that's a big milestone for us, both because it's the first time we show profit in that sense, and also because it's a proof, I think, of our business model, that it is scalable, that the margins increases with scale, and that the good numbers we're showing on the top line translates into bottom line as we grow as a company. We're, we're proud of that, and we're happy to be in profit for the first time. Actually the whole quarter is really clearly about profitability. We continue to improve the profitability throughout the different metrics. Our growth is coming back.
We have a growth of 16% compared to quarter three, which corresponds to an annualized rate of 80%, which is also in line with the full year 2022. Our gross profit increased by 85% for the full year, and the EBITDA margins continue to increase. For quarter four, we report 20% EBITDA margin. Also worth noticing is that our cash position is basically unchanged. We're able to do R&D and investments in the future growth with cash that we generate from the business. As we said, it's first time with a positive bottom line as well. I think this positive momentum is quite clearly visible if you stack the quarters like this.
It's a chart we have previously shown, where we now ended this quarter on SEK 19.8 million in revenue, up from SEK 17.1 million in quarter three. As we said in the last quarterly report, quarter three was a bit weaker in terms of growth. It was actually one of the first or it was the first quarter where we didn't grow. It's really nice to return to strong momentum. Also worth noting is that we haven't done any M&As for the last 12 months or so. In Q3 2021 and Q4, that shift is also partly due to M&A. We feel the momentum is back.
What has shifted in the other direction, I think in the report, is the net revenue retention, and that's a last 12 month measurement for us, so rolling measurement. This is now 116%, which is still a decent figure, but it's a lot lower than previously during 2022. The loss of revenue that we had during Q3, from clients in Germany, is included in this measurement. Since it's a rolling 12 months, it will push down the NRR figure for the coming 2 quarters, basically. So this is mainly in the rearview mirror, but, of course, it's sort of a lower starting point growth-wise.
Net revenue retention, so how our existing customers develops with us, if they are growing their usage or if they are churning, et cetera, is a really, really important measurement. It makes us not have to chase the same revenue again and then again as we start a new period. Thanks to the fact that we have a NRR above 100%, it means that we're starting each quarter with the revenue we had previous quarter, so to speak. I think this is something to of course keep your eyes on for the coming periods. We hope and we work hard to increase the NRR back to the high levels we have had before as well.
Because we see a lot of potential in existing customer relationships, both in general, but I'm also highlighting in the CEO letter ongoing discussions related to an increase of usage from one of Europe's largest airlines. This is an evaluation which is planned within the coming months. There is no minimum commitments yet. Short term, it's mainly increased investments in capacity and so on, and it will lead to somewhat higher costs. In a best case, it also has a significant revenue potential. We really keep our fingers crossed and work very hard on this throughout the organization. The fact that we have a positive cash flow from the operations means that we can make investments. We can make forward-looking investments into growth.
We are now financing this with our own operating activities. I think partly it's because we have sharpened the efficiency in our investments. Marketing levels has also flattened out somewhat. We are guiding here of a marketing and sales spend of 25% of the revenue long term. I think this quarter we were slightly under that, but I think around 25% is what to expect. We will also continue to invest in R&D. This is what will drive our growth in the coming years, and we keep investing. Of course, as we grow the top line in a relative sense, the R&D investments might also flatten off a bit.
This means that scale should lead to gradually improved EBITDA, and I think we have shown that for a couple of quarters now and our expectation is to continue on that track. It's worth noting that profitability is not the financial target for us. I think if we see that there is good opportunities and the correct opportunities, we might increase the investment further, and EBITDA margins or EBITDA is not a target long term. Another big focus where we spend a lot of money right now is North America. We push for this very hard, and we believe that the North American market is part of our future.
We have hired the first sales guy on the ground, and we're starting to see some revenue. The ARR from North America surpassed 1 million SEK in Q4, so it's still very low numbers. It means that the sales and marketing activities are starting to pay back and finance themselves. Also, in our experience, the hardest part is probably to go from zero revenue to $1 in revenue, so to speak. This is something to really look out for in 2023 and we hope that North America will develop similarly to how other markets have developed in the past. We are also looking for new acquisitions. We did the two M&A, so two mergers about a year ago.
I think we see the benefit of those. We have realized a lot of the synergies, both on the commercial side, but also efficiency-wise. We have strengthened our technology leadership and we have seen good results from that. Me, and especially Martin, who is on the call, is working very actively on this. Unfortunately, the market and you guys only see the acquisitions we follow through on. We see a lot of interesting targets out there, and we believe that as the macroeconomy stabilizes a bit, it will be easier to follow through on some acquisitions. Actually, whether the multiples are low or high doesn't really matter for us that much. I think the problem has been when the valuations moves very rapidly.
What we see when we speak to potential sellers is that they say, "Okay, the valuations might have come down, we prefer to wait a bit before selling," so to speak. Hopefully now with some stabilization, we hope to come back. This is an important part of the 2025 target. We're looking for leading technology. We're looking for excellence in areas to strengthen our innovation for the coming years as well. We are looking for product-driven companies that adds to our future growth, not only in the quarter where we do the acquisition, so to speak. The 2025 target we have spoken about before, it's to grow 86% annually, organically and through acquisitions.
If we do this, we will reach a full year net revenue, 2025 of half a billion SEK. As I said, 2022, we finished with 80% annual growth. We haven't done acquisitions in a while now. Hopefully we can return to the M&A agenda, and we feel quite comfortable with these targets. With that, I leave to Martin.
Thank you, ristoffer. The whole report is filled with a lot of numbers. I thought I'd just go through the financial highlights in this slide, and then we can open up for some questions in the end. Net sales increased by 48% compared to the same quarter last year to SEK 19.8 million. Organic growth was 31%, which corresponds to almost exactly two-thirds of the total growth. Gross margin was 87% in a quarter, which is in line or even slightly higher than recent quarters. We continue to invest heavily in the business, but scale and synergies mean that profitability continues to improve. For you who have followed us a bit, we reached break even on EBITDA level in Q2.
We had an EBITDA margin of 14% in Q3. Now we reach an EBITDA margin of 20% for Q4. The cash flow from operating activities also keeps up with the profitability improvements and landed at +SEK 4.3 million. We ended the quarter with cash of SEK 47.4 million and an equity ratio of 83%. If we go into the net revenue details, you recognize the slides from previous presentations where we once again add the largest building block to this column, which is SEK 19.8 million then, as I said. Up 48% compared to last year.
If you co-compare the full year columns, we closed 2022 with a turnover just over SEK 70 million, which is up around 80% compared to 2021. Gross profit in the quarter grew by 50% to SEK 17.2 million krona, which corresponded to a margin of 87%, which is in line with where we've been historically, or maybe even a little bit higher. We had 85% gross margin for the full year 2022. I think we stressed it a few times, it's these high gross margins that we have that enables us to invest heavily in the growth-generating activities, which is foremost, product development and sales and marketing.
If we go to the next slide and look at sales and marketing, we have continued with these investments, but we also see improved efficiency, and as a percentage of net revenues, we landed at 19% for the quarter and 22%, so far, or during the full year 2022, which is also in line with our previous guidance, that sales and marketing should be somewhere around 25% of net revenues. Going to EBITDA, we've had a few quarters of large investments and negative cash flows, which can quite easily be seen in the, in the chart to the right, especially for 2021.
We are continuing to invest heavily, but with scalability and improved efficiency, we have been able to deliver high growth without comparable cost increases, which of course leads to strong margin improvements. We had an EBITDA margin of 20% for the quarter and +8% for the full year 2022. As Christopher mentioned, the operational improvements or the operational profitability has also led to our bottom line for the first time being positive, for the first time in the company's history, which is also kind of a milestone. As we said, I think we continue to guide that we will see continued improvements on the EBITDA level as we grow and as we scale, also going forward.
The last slide here, we ended the quarter with a cash position of 47.4 million krona and an equity ratio of 83%. Looking at this chart, comparing it to Q4 last year, we've used a lot of that cash to pay for the Datacorp OÜ acquisition, which we did about a year ago. Therefore, it may be it's most relevant to compare the cash position with what we had in Q3, i.e., a quarter ago. Then we had 47.5 million krona, which is pretty much exactly the same as our current cash position, which implies pretty much zero burn in the quarter. With that, I'll hand it back to Christopher for some concluding remarks.
Thank you, Martin. Just from my side, to sum up what Martin said, we have returned to growth. We have a strong momentum when it comes to the revenue right now. We also show scalability that allows for gradual EBITDA improvements, which also trickles down into the profitability and cash flows. This means we start the year with a very strong financial position. We have the ability to do forward-looking investments, and we have the ability to do M&A activities if we choose to. We look forward for the year ahead, and with that, I think we can take some questions.
Thanks so much for the presentation. First question, the EBITDA margin is greatly improved. What are the driving forces and what can be expected going forward?
I think the fundamental driving force, and Martin talked a bit about this, is the fact that we have a very high gross margin. The gross margin allows us to keep a lot of the added revenue lower down in the P&L statement, so to speak. As the revenues grows, we scale and become more profitable inherently. There's also some synergies from the M&A activities we did, where we are now fully sort of realized those synergies, both on the commercial side, but also on the sort of efficiency side. The main driver is scale, I would say.
The loss in Germany during Q3 affects your NRR. How long can we expect you to see that effect remain?
Exactly. I think I might have mentioned it already, but the loss of revenue we had from Germany-centric customers that reduced their activity on that market, and thus we got lower revenues from them, that stays with the NRR metric for another 2 quarters because it's a last 12-month measurement. I think NRR will suffer from that, but hopefully we can offset it with other customer groups growing. Should also say that the German situation has stabilized, and we hope that in the future that Germany will turn from a negative growth factor to a positive growth factor again.
Growth is strong in Q4 compared to Q3, but lower compared to the last year at the same time. Why is that?
I think it's always what you do comparisons against. I think if you look at the short perspective, we have a strong momentum now from Q3. If you look at the longer perspective, sort of full year, we also have 80% growth. If you compare Q4 against Q4 last year, it's slightly weaker. I think that's because we did a phenomenal Q4 last year, and we also did the acquisitions in those numbers, so to speak. I mean, we see this long term, our goal is to grow 86% year-on-year. I think to reach that, we also need to do acquisitions.
You refer in the report to the fact that it's difficult to buy companies given large fluctuations in the market. Does this risk affect your 2025 goal?
We don't see it really as a risk. I think it is favorable if the market stabilizes. We are very, very picky. We have done two phenomenal acquisitions, and I think we want to make sure the third one and the fourth one is as good and as additive. We're not we're not stressed about that. We want it to take its time, and we want to make sure that when we do the next acquisition, that it really adds shareholder value in a clear in a clear way.
Can you describe the talks that have taken place with one of the Europe's largest airlines companies?
Yes. I can't really comment further than that, for different reasons. I can maybe say in general that what I try to reflect in the CEO letter is the overall state of the business and the things that are that we are focusing on internally and so on. If we could mention more details, we would have done it. Yeah, I'll leave it at that.
Yes. Previous guidance on marketing costs has been around 25% of net sales. Now you have gone below that. Does that show increased efficiency or something else?
Yeah, we believe so. it's when you increase the marketing spend like we did last year, you try a lot of different channels and you try a lot of different ways to sell, and then you see over time what works well and what doesn't. What we have removed is sort of channels that are not returning on those investments in the way we want, which means that I think we get more bang for the buck, so to speak now. So that's the main driver. I think long term, we will return to around 25%. It's the important thing is that we don't burn money, that we actually use the money in a smart way and get return on those marketing and sales investments.
That's the way we create shareholder value. That's the way we make sure that the revenue per share increases as well.
You mentioned it, a little bit in the presentation, but how has the development been in the U.S.A.?
Yeah. I said that we passed SEK 1 million in ARR during Q4, which is of course quite a low number compared to the group's full revenue. We feel that the pipe is quite strong. We are talking and working on really big enterprise clients, and those deals usually takes time. For us, it's more important to get really some clear cases, customer cases on the North American market and then work from that. Focus right now is on that. I think the small organization we have focusing on North America is the right organization, and we're doing it in the right way, and hopefully that market can contribute to this year's growth in a material way.
Moving on to the last question. What does the new customer intake look like?
I think we talked about the net revenue retention of 116% for this period, that means our existing client base the last 12 months have grown with sort of 16%. The delta between that and our growth, which we report, which is higher, is of course new customers that's added. We have quite a good pipe and good results and good acquisition, I think, of new customers. We're all the time tweaking the sales and marketing organization. We're trying to be even more efficient and land bigger deals. I would also just add that the number of clients for us is perhaps not what's important here. We want to win the biggest enterprise deals.
Actually, for our absolute smallest clients, we have increased the pricing quite a bit, which means that that group as a whole has been more profitable, but, in number of clients, we have reduced the number of small clients. I think we are focusing over time more and more into the enterprise segment, and those deals take some time but are well worth the effort.