Okay, good morning, and welcome to the Clas Ohlson Q4 and year-end result. My name is Kristofer Tonström, and I'm the President and Chief Executive Officer of Clas Ohlson. With me today, I have Pär Christiansen, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll do a short presentation before we move into Q&A. I'll start by doing a brief business update, and then Pär will cover the financial development, including events after the reporting period. I will conclude, and give a little bit of an outlook, and then we will move into the Q&A. As we go into the business update, I just wanted to take a step back, and think about the year that we're actually closing.
If we would've gone back 18 months in time and asked ourselves and made a simulation of all the challenges that could potentially hit us from a macro point of view, I don't think we would've been able to come up with the list of things that actually have materialized over the year. This has been a year for the full Clas Ohlson organization to very much focus on the things that we can influence. Looking at the macro environment, we have obviously seen complete shutdowns of markets. We've seen traffic going down in physical stores with governments recommending consumers not to visit stores. We've also seen fluctuations in terms of both raw materials, exchange rates, and in terms of the global shipping. It's been a very special year that we're now concluding.
Looking at our results as we're concluding year 2021, we have delivered very stable results. First of all, we've been able to grow our operating profit. We have delivered 19% operating profit growth, which puts our EBIT margin within our range, and we deliver 6.5%, which is within the range of 6%-8%, which is our target. That is an increase from 5.2% the year before. We also have a strong cash position as we close the year, and we have a Net Debt to EBITDA ratio that is actually negative right now. We've seen our online business growing with 60% over the year. Now the online business accounts for a little bit more than 10% of our total turnover.
Net-net, I would say that we have shown again that we have a very resilient and flexible business model, also under these very difficult market conditions. That we have an organization that is very proactive and spends time within the things that we can actually influence. On top of that, despite the challenges that we will talk a little bit more about in Norway in the recent quarter, we have actually delivered full-year organic growth in Norway, which again shows the strength of the brand and our position. Moving a little bit more into the fourth quarter and the top lines. This obviously has been a quarter very much influenced by the events in Norway. During the period, almost half of our physical stores have been closed in large parts of the quarter, which has resulted in a net sales decline.
Norway is the single biggest driver of the decline in the fourth quarter. Also, traffic in the other two countries to the physical stores has been a challenge. At the same time, our online sales has grown 89% in the quarter, and our gross margin has been unchanged, whereas our EBIT margin declines a little bit. Pär will come back to more details on the fourth quarter in a moment. In terms of the COVID-19 effects, I've already mentioned a few of the effects in terms of market restrictions, et cetera. Obviously, our number one priority as an organization is to secure the safety of our coworkers and the safety of our customers, and that has been the case also throughout this quarter. As said, online sales gone up. We've seen traffic decline, but also closed stores in Norway.
Also looking at across our markets, the locations that usually are a strength for us as a company with city centers and shopping malls with high traffic obviously has been more impacted than other locations during this period. We've also seen recently imbalances in global supply chains, with both a shortfall of containers on a global basis, but also the challenges following the event in the Suez Canal a few weeks ago. Looking at the development and our execution versus our strategy. Obviously, we keep focusing on the three key areas of smartness and simplicity, our unique customer offer, and outstanding customer service. A couple of examples from the quarter that we're closing. On the smartness and simplicity, we have now completed the first stage of our e-commerce automation in our distribution center up in Insjön.
I was just there the other day, it was great to see orders that had been placed in the morning just a couple of hours later, leaving the distribution center. That's obviously a milestone, but it will take a bit of time before that's fully up and running across the full assortment. We've also continued building digital capabilities. We've opened the office and our new store in Malmö as our digital hub. We have also announced the opening of an office in Vietnam, as part of our sourcing strategy, to have more breadth and options moving forward.
When it comes to the unique customer offer, one thing we have talked about a little bit and which is becoming more and more of a focus, is very much lifting our focus on our destination categories and going beyond selling products and categories to really solving very concrete and tangible customer problems and delivering on customer needs. Two good examples of those are, first of all, our Organize, which is organize your home, no matter what part of your home. The second one that we have focused on has been the Modern Do It Yourself. We're helping customers to repair, renovate, instead of buying new all the time. Those are two examples of us trying to lift beyond the product and category and solve customer problems. We have learned and are getting a good playbook in place that now can be applied to more categories moving forward.
During the quarter, we've seen good development with our platform partners as part of their growing business as well. Last but not least, in terms of our customer service, we have seen continuous strong growth in terms of our Club Clas membership. We've actually added 250,000 new members into Club Clas, that is key priority for us moving forward. Gaining new members and driving value per member is a critical focus. On top of that, our organization in Norway has been extremely agile and flexible, within hours been able to rebuild and restructure our stores from stores to actually distribution centers. Seven out of 10 e-commerce customers in Norway have now bought and picked up products outside of our stores. Those are some examples of what we're doing versus our strategy. When it comes to our ambitious sustainability agenda, we have made progress.
In terms of offering a sustainable offer to our customers, we have a range of products that we define as driving a more sustainable lifestyle. That is now approaching a quarter of our total sales, that's going in the right direction. We've also been able to now secure 100% eco-labeling on our alkaline batteries. We have also seen growth and given more accessibility to our spare parts assortment, both online and in store. This is an area that customers are more and more interested in. Last but not least, we've also been closing in on our ambition to be more gender-balanced across all our employees. With that short update, I'll hand over to Pär Christiansen to go through a little bit more details in terms of the financial development in the quarter and the year.
Thank you, Kristofer. Good morning, everyone. Looking at the financial development, starting with the sales development in the fourth quarter, we saw a decline of 6% to SEK 1,538 million. Organic sales was down 6%, and like-for-like sales was down 6%. We saw a decline in all markets. On the positive side, we saw a very strong growth on online sales, up 89% to SEK 274 million, and it was corresponding to 18% of the sales in the quarter. Looking at sales development for the full year, total sales was down 5% to SEK 8,284 million. Organic sales was down 1%, and like-for-like sales down 1%. We saw a decline in Sweden and Finland, but quite good growth in Norway for the full year. Online sales was up 60%, and the network of stores was unchanged during the year.
Looking at the gross margin in the fourth quarter, the gross margin was unchanged at 39.9%. On the positive side, we saw improved product mix, lower campaign intensity, as well as a weaker purchasing currency, U.S. dollar, contributing to the margin. On the negative side, we saw effects of the currency hedging on the NOK, as well as some exchange rates effect going through our inventory. Looking at the share of selling expenses, we saw a small increase of the share of selling expenses by 1.6% to 40.9%. Main factor was the decline in sales, as well as some increased cost due the increased click and collect offering in Norway because of the closed stores. Our administrative expenses in the fourth quarter declined by SEK 3 million compared to the same quarter last year.
This is the effect of our focus on cost, as well as finding better ways to optimize the way we work and find more efficient working methods. Looking at the operating profit in the fourth quarter, the operating profit decreased to SEK 64 million negative, compared to SEK -41 million in the previous year. Looking at the EBIT margin, it was - 4.2%. Earnings per share was SEK - 1.02. Looking at the full year, we ended the full year with the EBIT margin excluding IFRS of 6.5%, which was in line with our target to have EBIT margin of 6%-8%. Looking at operating profit itself, it improved to SEK 608 million compared to SEK 549 million previous year. EBIT margin including IFRS 16 effect was 7.3%. For the year, earnings per share was SEK 6.65.
Looking at the full year investments, they were in line with the previous year, ending at SEK 228 million. We invested mainly in new stores and refurbishments, IT systems, and also investments in our distribution system. Inventory level increased somewhat to SEK 1,832 million, compared to SEK 1,811 previous year. We also improved inventory rates to 5.9x compared to 5.6x previous year. We also ended the year with a strong cash flow, SEK 749 million, compared to SEK 1,817 previous year. Then as Kristofer said earlier, we have a net cash position with a Net Debt to EBITDA to - 0.7x . We also have approved credit facilities of SEK 1.1 billion. Today, we also received a proposal from the board, they proposed a dividend of SEK 6 per share to be distributed in two separate payments, equally distributed of SEK 3.125.
This is in line with the previous communicated dividend policy and guidance. Moving on, looking at events after the reporting period. Today, we also announced the May sales. May sales was down 3% to SEK 610 million. Organic sales was down 5%, like-for-like sales was down 5%. In the month, we had a negative calendar effect of 4%. Online sales was up 21%, we have increased one store compared to the end of May last year. Handing back to Kristofer Tonström for a summary.
Thank you, Pär. Looking forward, before we move into the Q&A, obviously, having a clear direction is crucial, and our base strategy remains. We believe that the year that we're closing shows that we have the base stability and the strong position to continue forward. As we move forward, we want to really build on our strengths as an organization and as a company. As a starting point, we are playing in a very attractive market. The home improvement market across Sweden, Norway, and Finland as the main markets amount to SEK 90 billion in terms of total market value, which means that we have a little bit less than 10% market share as a company. There is definitely room for growth within the existing categories.
We have also shown that we have been able to deliver a strong financial track record based on especially looking at the last 12 months, we've been able to be both resilient and flexible. We are investing our both time and effort to really become the industry leader in terms of sustainability across our categories. We also have a very strong brand and therefore a strong market position. Our Clas Ohlson brand has close to 90% awareness, very high household penetration, high preference, high likability. We have a strong base and a strong position from a brand point of view to continue leveraging. Also looking forward, we do have compelling growth opportunities within the markets where we mainly operate and within the categories where we mainly operate. Our ambition is to take market share within this category of home improvement.
We also believe that we're equipped with relevant competence for the future. We keep building both in terms of competence, but also structures to become stronger and more adapted for the future market. We're guided by our strategy, and our key focus is on our team, building a winning team with our coworkers and driving high customer satisfaction. We're guided by our purpose to make a difference to people in all kinds of homes. As a result, we aim to deliver on our financial targets of the 6%-8% EBIT margin and the growth of 5%. Obviously, focus forward needs to be to really deliver on the growth as well as profitability.
Looking at the focus areas now as we have kicked off our new fiscal year here on May 1st, we're very much focusing in on some core parts of our business, with the first one being really taking the next stage in terms of strengthening our key product categories. I gave some examples earlier in terms of Organize your home, Modern Do It Yourself. We believe we have the recipe to really continue to lift from product category to broader solutions and to really capitalize on the importance of the home. Even though we plan for restrictions to ease up after the summer, we believe that the home is a very attractive place to continue operating. The key thing is solving customers' real problems and understanding what the customer's real problems are. The second thing is to really capture and start driving traffic.
As said, we have a very strong brand, we have a strong position, and we believe, or we hypothesize that with loosened restrictions, that there is an opportunity to start driving traffic again come this fall. We have obviously been careful over the last year to drive traffic to physical store given the situation with the pandemic. Assuming that restrictions start to lift off and that we're entering more of a vaccinated society this fall, we also want to start driving traffic again back to our stores. We do that by optimizing our marketing and by ensuring we have the right relevant offer with the right product at the right time. Last but not least, in terms of the traffic and brand work, continuously evolving and developing our Club Clas membership program and driving more members and value per member will be even more crucial moving forward.
Owning that customer data is going to be crucial. Last but not least, as I said initially, our e-commerce and online business now is a little bit more than 10% of our total revenue. We believe that there is still room to grow. We see that our customers are engaging with us online, and we believe we can do more to expand that channel. It's about shortening lead times. It's about really continuously developing our customer meeting online. That's why we have made investments in our distribution center as one example. Also, as society starts opening up more, we believe that the integration of our physical channel, the personal customer meeting, and the personal service in our physical stores, in combination with a more efficient online business, is very much a differentiator and something to focus on.
The customer satisfaction in our physical stores is very high, and our coworkers meeting customers in our stores are knowledgeable and they can give service. Getting those two channels closer together and thinking customer and not only channel is going to be crucial. To close out, again, we've been tested in the last year to ensure that we spend time, energy, and effort on things we can influence, and we're going to continue doing that. It's really about executing on the strategy and delivering on our financial targets. I've shared a few focus areas in terms of the key areas we believe will help us start driving growth again. We meanwhile need to ensure that we stay efficient and continuously become more efficient as an organization to be able to balance growth with also a solid operating margin moving forward.
As said, it's hard to predict anything in these uncertain times. At least we're preparing ourselves for more of a reopened society after summer, while staying very agile and flexible, trying to adapt to things that could change on short notice. That's it for the presentation part. We now want to move into Q&A. Niklas Carlsson?
Thank you. I'll start by handing over to the teleconference and see if we have any questions in line there.
Thank you. Just as a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. We have a question from the line of Niklas Ekman from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yes, just a couple questions, if I may. Firstly, if you can elaborate a little bit here on the strength that you saw last summer, if you can give some background to why sales were particularly strong and if you think there's any chance that you could see a similar strong trend this summer, considering that the vacations are likely to continue this year, or could that not be a similar positive factor in the coming months? That's my first question.
Sorry. No, the line was breaking up a little bit, but if I heard your question correctly, it referred to last year's base and the growth that we saw last summer. Was that correct? How we look at this summer. Was that correct?
Yes, exactly.
Okay. As you say, and as you can see in the report, obviously, the first quarter last year was a very strong quarter. Obviously, Clas Ohlson, together with the rest of society, was preparing for a summer of lockdown in terms of both being very cost-focused, cutting anything that wasn't crucial, while also prepping for a downturn in terms of consumption. Obviously, what we saw last summer was an increase in sales and traffic, especially in Norway. We saw it across, but looking at our growth numbers in Norway, they were more than a double-digit growth.
We do see, looking at, as Pär talked about, our main numbers, May was still impacted by the restrictions in Norway, and we have seen traffic in world markets actually being below last year, May. Again, it's impossible to predict, but we are planning for more of a return again, maybe starting as of September. That's a little bit the status as we look at the closed May numbers.
You're not expecting any impact implementing again of that restrictions that have already started now and that nations are progressing quickly. You're not anticipating any opening up effect here during the summer this year?
Obviously, we're doing what we can in terms of in a responsible way, driving traffic. Again, we see traffic at least now at the May numbers that we just released. We see traffic still being down versus last year. Of course, it will depend on the speed of ease of restrictions. If we do see restrictions easing earlier and if we do see traffic return, obviously, we're going to capture that earlier. At least our hypothesis is that the bigger trend will come this fall.
If I may ask you on the general retail environment, because you have not closed that many stores, but looking at many malls today, you see a lot of vacancies and many stores that are closing that will likely push down footfall even as markets reopen. Do you see that as a problem? Has that impacted your view on your store portfolio? Are you looking at maybe closing more stores than you had initially planned maybe one, two years ago?
Obviously that's a very relevant question and looking across the whole market of retail, obviously stores that used to be the biggest strength one and a half years ago now might be more of a problem, whereas the stores that used to be a problem are now high traffic area stores. I think what we can conclude is that it's been very unpredictable. As you say, there are some shopping malls obviously more impacted than others. For us, it's really about balancing here in terms of not making too rushed decisions because I don't think anyone knows what will happen as society starts to ease restrictions. As an example, will people go back more to their offices or not? Will the city centers and the shopping malls regain? We simply don't know.
For us, it's really crucial to continue being disciplined as we are today, to look at store by store and ask ourselves, does this store serve a purpose both when it comes to financial development and financial attribution to the rest of the business, but also in terms of the customer journey? We've done a good job of sending products directly from stores to customers, doing pick up in store, click and collect, et cetera. It is really about looking at the full customer journey. It's really about having a bit of patience, but if we do see big trends that are long-term shifting, obviously we will react on that. We believe it's important not to make rushed decisions in this time, but still scrutinize every decision and every store independently.
That's very clear. Thank you. You mentioned some changes here in your assortment. Are you looking at a change in number of stock keeping units as well, or is it merely a fine-tuning and a shift from one category to another?
Obviously we do have a very broad range, and we're not specifically planning to significantly increase the total range. It's really about having depth in the right areas to really allow customers to find full solutions to their problems. It's more that focus than significantly expanding. That said, obviously we need to be flexible and agile, and that's what we're trying to build into our value chain as well if we do come across new areas where we're currently not present. At least, looking at it right now, it's about the relevance of each offer than making enormous SKU expansions.
Very clear. Thank you so much for taking my question.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Carl Deijenberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, Pär and Kristofer. My first question is related to online sales made up roughly 20% of sales here in March and April and around 12% here in May. I understand that is a lot related to click and collect and primarily in Norway. Could you say anything sort of where you're aiming to be a bit more long term in online share of sales and maybe also how that is affecting your margin on group levels and maybe also how the average order values differ in between physical and retail? Because I assume also that you have some more costs compared to retail or physical retail given fulfillment costs.
Maybe I'll give an overall perspective and then maybe, Pär, if you want to comment on the margin between channels. Overall, as you say, we've seen 89% growth on our online business in the fourth quarter, 60% in the full year, and obviously part of that has been driven by the situation in the last 12 months. We believe again that there is further upside and potential, and that obviously relates into the category question of ensuring the right offers in the right time to the right customers. By trimming and improving our customer satisfaction in e-commerce, we believe there is more upside. Of course, it's about being responsible and balance that also from a margin point of view. There are some differences in patterns in terms of what and how much you buy online versus what and how much you buy in the physical stores.
It's really about having the ability to optimize the online channel for that customer experience, whereas we optimize it for our physical stores. We believe there's more sales upside. I don't want to give specific numbers in terms of percent of total sales, because of course, that has a lot of different variables and factors. Again, I think the key thing for us is to move even more from how we sell things and ensuring that is great, but then really to what we sell across channels. I hope that gives a bit of perspective, but maybe, Pär, you want to comment on the margin?
If you see online as something that actually converts online, it of course could divide into things that are delivered to the home, to a pickup point, or delivered through a store. By dividing the online sales into that, of course, there are different pockets of profitability. As we have seen now in Norway, where there's a pick in store increase, there is a positive movement in both average ticket value because people are buying more. They don't want to go there twice. On the other hand, in the physical store visits, we see a different change in the frequency. Looking forward, I think we should see it as more combination on omni offering, where they contribute. Looking at pure eCom, of course, there's some more sales of known brands, which has a lower margin, there's more price pressure on that.
When you look at the omni offering online converting, the margins are starting to meet each other because it's the same type of customer, the same type of customer journey. I think that over time, we'll convert into a better margin in total and more sales. Just separating all the type of online and all type of store, there's a big of a difference between what we call online and store. There you're right.
If I can just add one thing on top of that. The reason we also talk a lot about our Club Clas and our membership program is, of course, that we want to drive the overall value of our different customer groups. Obviously, some high-value customers can make some low value, low margin transactions here and there, but it's really about thinking about the longer-term value impact on the customer level. That's why it's such an asset for us to have the relationships with millions of customers and also their data. That's also a little bit what I mean with going beyond channel to customer value focus.
Thank you. That's very clear. On that topic a bit, the traffic in Norway here, we talk about temporary store closures here in March and April, and maybe a bit more of a restoration here in May. Still that footfall, of course, is lower than May last year. Could you give a bit color sort of the situation where you are right now in May? Maybe you already said it before, are all the stores in Norway allowed to be open today, or what is the situation there now?
Obviously, there has been almost a daily, but certainly weekly changes with the situation in Norway, given that the regions make up their own decisions. Looking at the fourth quarter, in a large part of that quarter, up to half of the stores were closed. Also, the first week of May, we also had multiple stores closed. Everything opened again, and then there were, again, some local restrictions forcing us to close one store again or another store here and there. Right now, we are allowed to be open across Norway. Again, there are a lot of local differences in restrictions, and it might be that when we're leaving this meeting, something new has happened. We need to stay very close to the development on a daily basis.
I think the good news is, we have shared a lot of imagery internally in terms of what our stores now across Norway have looked like during this period. Again, I think the flexibility of our colleagues operating these stores to more or less rebuild the store to a warehouse and then have a pickup point outside. I think, even though it's frustrating with these big swings, I think the team has shown that even when it happens, we can do what we can to drive customer satisfaction. Obviously, still a big part of sales is always going to be impulse driven, and obviously, that is making it difficult to always cover the full drop with our online business. That's a little bit what the situation looks like right now in Norway.
Okay, perfect. Then a question maybe a bit more to Pär, and that's related to the currency hedges here in the quarter. It has a quite large negative impact, if I understand it correctly. Looking at the gross margin here sequentially, it drops quite significantly, although it's flat year-on-year. You're writing here in the report also that's related to both the Norwegian krone and, of course, the US dollar, and that it differs than the contracts between the three to nine-month basis. Could you sort of elaborate a bit the dynamic here? I'm trying to understand it for modeling purposes later during this year how this is going to affect you, because right now the dollar should be quite favorable for you also going forward. Is there more or something we should be particularly aware of here going into Q1?
In the report, we show as of end of April, the valuation of the current hedges. Looking at that, you can see that since the Norwegian krone has recovered a little bit, there will be a negative impact in the beginning from the Norwegian hedges and the same for the dollar that has been weakening towards the krona. Looking at the last months here, the Norwegian krona has stabilized around one, been a little bit above, a little bit below. I guess given that the hedges will, over time, be less impacting. Of course, we hope for increase going back to historical levels and then take the hit, of course, of the hedges. But right now, we have some negative impact coming, if everything stays the same from the NOK.
Looking at the U.S. dollar, we will have, of course, positive effect from purchasing in dollar, with a somewhat negative effect from the hedges. Also there is an inventory delay, dependent on which kind of product you look at, that will go through the inventory and then hit the P&L. We have a moving average valuation of our inventory, which means that over time everything will, of course, be smoothing out. Right now we will significantly see a positive effect on the U.S. dollar effects for the sales coming.
Okay, thank you very much. Final question is on the dividend here. It's restored here then after the cancel from last year. Even though, looking at your balance sheet today, maybe there's also a bit more for a question to the board, is there any sort of investments that you're planning to take during the coming year? Is there any sort of particular reason why the distribution is not higher here, given that you are at a net cash position and also that the cash flows has been very strong in the year despite COVID-19?
Maybe I can start. As you rightly say, the dividend decision obviously is recommended by the board. I don't want to comment that in too much detail. That said, obviously we are in a good position. Obviously we're happy that the board can recommend that. That's the overall and then I don't know whether you want to comment on the investments forward, Pär.
Well, looking at investments in the business as such, I guess we expect to have them on a similar level that we have had in the past here, between SEK 200 million and SEK 250 million a year. If you're a little bit asking for whether we will do any other activities in the M&A or something like that's nothing we want to comment about right now.
Okay, I understand. That was everything from my side. Thank you very much.
As there are no further questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers.
Thank you. We have three questions from Stefan Stjernholm, Nordea, from the webcast. The first one is: Clear slowdown in online growth in May. Any particular reason behind that? Looking at May last year, the business online grew almost 70%. Obviously we have to look at the growth level this May on top of that base. That's one of the explanations in terms of the number. A SEK 74 million sales number is still good. Again, as said before, we keep focusing on this channel together with other channels to drive total customer value. We have to look at the growth rate in light of also what happened in May last year. That's the general comment. We also have two questions about sourcing then. Supply constraints and how concerned should we be? Stefan asks.
Do you expect any substantial impact on sales in the coming months? If I give a general sales perspective, and then maybe you want to comment a little bit more, Pär. Of course, as with a lot of other things, the sourcing, shipping market has been very unpredictable and things have happened. We're doing everything that we can to be proactive, which means to ensure that we get products home earlier and ensure we have the products as we start crucial seasons, et cetera. The other thing is obviously that we need to be very agile in terms of what categories and what products to push, depending on availability. We have had shortages a little bit here and there, not full categories, but on a product-by-product level.
It's about having agility in the sales and marketing organization to ensure that we push things where we also have enough stock. Obviously our job is to ensure minimum impact of this, but there are also, of course, both cost and other things we can't influence in the short term. I don't know, Pär, whether you have any more comments on that.
Of course, there might be an increase of cost because of the transportation, but as we discussed a little bit earlier questions, there might be positive effects from the dollar. There will be many factors that will, at the end, determine what kind of gross margin we'll have moving forward, including pricing to the customers. It's still pretty early to say where everything will end up. Of course, there will be increase if you specifically look at the sea freight cost for the coming months.
Lastly, sourcing prices, all external factors combined, what's the expected impact on gross margin for the coming quarters? Positive, negative?
I think there will be a balance. As I said, the purchasing currency US dollar will, of course, be a contributing factor on the positive side. We see increased pricings from oil-related products, from metals. There will, of course, be some pressure on that. We have discussions with all our suppliers to, of course, try to offset that in many ways. I think it's still pretty early to say the net effect of everything on the gross margin. Thank you. We have no further questions from the webcast viewers, but I hear that we have additional questions from the telephone conference, so I'll hand back to the telephone conference.
The next question comes from the line of Niclas Ekholm from Aktiespararna. Please go ahead.
Hello. I have a question about online sales. What is the goal for the future for Clas Ohlson to reach how high % of the revenue in online sales?
As I said before, it's obviously a lot of different factors impacting, especially that number. Of course, we don't want to only optimize total % online. We want to grow total revenue. Again, we're closing a year where we have taken a big step and grown 60%. We're a bit above 10%. Looking at the general market, we believe that there is still further upside to grow that channel specifically. Again, in terms of focus for us, rather than optimizing that number, the focus is to drive total growth. Driving total growth then obviously links into the categories, but also as I referred to before, value per member, value per customer, no matter what channel the customer converts in. Honestly, I don't think there is a golden number exactly what that ratio should be.
I think the key thing for us is to deliver on the 5% total growth while maintaining our operating margin between 6% and 8%. I think that's the thought on that.
Also, you can see the last 10 years, you can see the big discussion is about online sales, but if you can check and compare the companies in the business, you can see that the most profitable companies are still focusing on retail, and they don't reach more than 10%-15% sales online. Because when they reach too high, they have problems with profitability and margins, and some get bankrupt because they unbalance the customer in the wrong way. It sounds that you have a good strategy, I think.
Good. Thank you. No, that's obviously the balance act, and again, really driving the totality and not looking at only that number. Very good.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Any more questions?
One question from the line of Nicklas Skogman from Handelsbanken.
Good morning. Hello. Yes, your financial targets are obviously unchanged, i.e., 5% organic growth and 6%-8% EBIT margin. Would you want to highlight any changes in the way you aim to achieve this compared to the previous strategy of Clas Ohlson?
It's going to be a combination of the factors that we talked about. As I referred to before, for us, it's really about capturing traffic again back to our stores. We've seen decline over the last year. Recapturing some of that traffic is obviously going to contribute to the overall growth. The other aspect, continuously growing e-commerce on top of that growth. Channel-wise, we plan for and focus on driving growth across both channels. Back to also what I referred to earlier, the other question is also when it comes to categories, in terms of identifying the categories where there's market share potential to grow. Thirdly, in terms of customer, gaining more members, driving value per member.
The 5% target for the year that we've just started is a little bit distributed across some of these areas.
All right. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions.
Okay. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. As I said, we are closing a year, we're closing a quarter. We have a solid foundation to stand on, but we need to focus on executing on our strategy to deliver our targets, and we have a very committed Clas Ohlson team looking forward to continue this journey forward. Thank you very much, and have a good day.