Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Coor Service Management Q4 Report 2020. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards there will be a question and answer section. Today, I am pleased to present President and CEO AnnaCarin Grandin. Please go ahead with your meeting.
Thank you, good morning and welcome to this presentation of Coor's report for the fourth quarter 2020. I hope you all are healthy and safe in these times. With the report released earlier this morning and today's presentation, we conclude our 2020 that turned out to be something very different than all of us expected a year ago. Given the special circumstances, I'm proud to see that we, in 2020, have really shown the strength of the Coor business model and the Coor organization. Most of you probably know Coor quite well by now, but for those of you listening to us for the first time, I will give you a very short overview of our company. Coor is the Nordic market leader in integrated facility management, delivering a broad range of services within workplace services, property services, and strategic advisory services.
We have a turnover of SEK 9.6 billion over the last 12 months, generating an EBITA level of SEK 556 million, taking us to an EBITDA margin of 5.8% over the last 12 months. We have around 11,200 employees, which translates into approximately 9,000 FTEs. Sweden is by far our largest market, accounting for 51% of our turnover. Norway is second largest with 22%, followed very closely by Denmark with 20%, and Finland with 7%. When splitting Coor by contract type, you can see that 58% of our turnover is generated from integrated facility management contracts and 42% is single service, mainly related to cleaning and property service. The IFM share of the total turnover has been over 60% when you look back. The main reason why that level is now below 60 is related to the drop in food and beverage volume that we have seen during the pandemic.
Most of our food and beverage volumes are part of our IFM contracts. In the previous reports during 2020, we have provided a summary of how COVID-19 has impacted Coor and how we have handled the situation. I continue with a similar summary also for Q4. Our number one priority is always the health and safety for our employees as well as for our customers' employees. We follow the recommendations from the authorities in the respective countries to support the effort in reducing the spread of the virus. We are proud to see how our services contribute to maintaining critical functions in our community as well as supporting our customers in their efforts to handle the COVID-19 situation. COVID-19 has had a negative impact on variable volumes at Coor, mainly within food and beverage, but also within property-related projects.
On the other hand, we have seen an increased demand for cleaning, yet the net effect is still negative. Our subscription volumes, accounting for some 70%, 75% of our total turnover, remain strong, which is creating stability for us. We have a close partnership with customers to find suitable solutions, both from a short-term as well as a long-term perspective. Since the early days of the pandemic, we have prioritized cash flow and strong cost control to minimize the negative impact of COVID-19. From a cost perspective, we have been addressing all types of costs, including subcontractors, purchased goods, and internal costs. We have utilized furlough schemes in the different countries, the level of people affected by furlough schemes is now down to 2% of our employees by the end of Q4, compared to 20% by the end of Q1.
By the end of Q4, most of the people on furlough schemes are employed in our Norwegian operations. In Sweden, Coor left the furlough program and no furlough support has been received in Q4. Cash flow remains strong without negative changes in payment patterns from corporate customers. The deferred taxes and fees in Denmark and Norway that impacted Q2 and Q3 were paid in Q4. Our balance sheet is strong with a high level of unutilized credit lines. 2020 has been a challenging year in many aspects, but I'm very pleased with our performance. We have once again showed strength in our ability and capacity to rapidly adapt to the changing situations. Our customer-centric business model and a well-managed decentralized organization has really delivered during 2020. This is evident when looking at both earnings and cash flow.
Because of COVID-19, we have a negative organic growth, both in the fourth quarter as well as for the full year by -7%. We have negative organic growth in Sweden and Norway, while both Denmark and Finland shows organic growth in the quarter. The positive acquired growth of 1% in the quarter and 2% for the full year is fully related to the acquisition of Norrlands Miljövård in Sweden that we did in November 2019. Continuing with the EBITDA margin, we see the results of the strong focus and adaptability across the entire organization on costs and efficiency. The group EBITA margin is 6.2% compared to 5.6% in Q4 last year. Three out of four countries improved their EBITDA margins in the quarter while Norway is on par with last year. Klas will take you through the individual countries in a couple of slides.
The EBITDA margin for the full year is 5.8% compared to 5.3% last year. Cash conversion is an LTM number, and by the end of Q4, it was 108%, which is above our target of 90% and somewhat better than last year. Leverage is also an LTM number, and during the quarter, we have continued to reduce our utilization of the RCF financing. This takes leverage down to 1.6 and well below the target of staying below three. We are happy to reinstate the dividend after withdrawing it last year. The dividend proposed by the board is SEK 4.4 per share, where SEK 2 is ordinary dividend and SEK 2.4 is extraordinary dividend, and to be paid in two installments, the first in May and the second in October. If we then looking at highlights from Q4 and significant events after the end of the period.
In December, we launched an organizational change to increase focus and speed on service development, innovation, digitalization, and sustainability. The overarching principle of highly decentralized organizational model remains, but giving some of our group functions a strengthening mandate and responsibility. Each country also strengthened their center of excellence functions and will work in closer cooperation with the group functions. During a challenging year, we are particularly proud of that we succeeded in increasing both our customer and employee satisfaction index. Customer satisfaction increased from 68- 70 and is a good indicator of healthy customer relations. We are also delighted to achieve an increase in employee satisfaction index for the sixth year in a row, up from 77 - 78 in the 2020 employee survey. The contract portfolio has developed in a positive way, both in H1 and in H2, and you will see the details around that shortly.
Retention rate continued to be on high level also in 2020 at 92%, and 92% is also the average when looking at the last three years. Just like we mentioned in the Q3 report, the sales pipeline looks very strong, especially in Sweden and Denmark, but there are opportunities also in Norway and Finland, and there are several large processes ongoing as we speak. From an M&A perspective, the activity level is high within Coor, and we also see activity in the market in terms of incoming calls to us. I continue with major events for the beginning of 2021 and start with the loss of the Equinor office sites. Equinor has been and will still be a large and important customer to Coor. Equinor has decided to move into the final phase of the selection process with another service provider, not prolonging the office contract with Coor.
The contract with Coor continues until the end of October 2021. It is disappointing that we did not win the new contract for the office sites, but it is also the name of the game in the FM industry. You will sometimes lose a contract, and over the years, Coor has been successful in winning new contracts and keeping large contracts for a long period of time. By learning from the process with Equinor and continue developing our offers and solutions to the market, we are confident that we will still stand strong going forward. Just before the release of this Q4 report, we signed the deal of acquiring R & K Service in Norway. R & K Service is a well-run family company that provides cleaning and food and beverage services in the Stavanger area.
The company generates annual sales of approximately NOK 80 million and is an important acquisition that strengthens our position in Norway, both in single service as well as in geography. 2020 has been a very special year, and there is still uncertainty around development of COVID-19, but also positive development in terms of vaccine. We believe Coor is well-positioned for the future. We are market leader in a geographical market where there are growth opportunities going forward. Based on our experience, a crisis tends to lead to increased outsourcing. We saw this after the financial crisis, as well as when the Norwegian oil and gas industry experienced a challenging time. Business and public sectors will look for efficiency, and Coor sells and deliver efficiency, and as mentioned, there will be opportunities for M&As, especially when looking at the fragmented single service sector of the Nordic FM market.
The trend of remote working started well before COVID-19, but has been accelerated by the pandemic. We expect that the remote working will increase from approximately a half-day per week pre-COVID-19 to one and a half days per week. There will be variations depending on industry or sector. There will also be difference between manufacturing sites, including white-collar work close to manufacturing site, compared to pure office sites. We also expect difference between urban areas and rural areas. If you have a long commute to the office, you are more likely to work from home compared to a situation where you only have a very short drive.
We believe there will be likely a trial and error phase for one to two years, where companies or organizations test out ideas and solutions to find the right balance between remote working and working at office. We also expect companies and organizations to develop their offices, and with our service and expertise, we are supporting our customers in their ambitions to create attractive offices where people can interact and be creative together in a safe way. When making the office more attractive, the service level tends to increase. The demand for digital and technological solutions has increased previous years and will continue to increase. With our strong position and ecosystem of innovation partners, we are well-positioned to engage with customers to make the workplace and service pandemic safe through smart technology.
Food and beverage, that accounted for 15% of turnover prior to COVID-19, is expected to be negatively impacted also going forward when it comes to food and beverage deliveries in the urban areas or at pure office sites. Less or no negative impact is expected, for example, industrial sites and hospitals. Property services, accounting for close to 30% of turnover, is expected to remain relatively stable over time. We expect increased demand for professional cleaning also in the future, and cleaning is Coor's largest service line, with accounting for 30% of turnover. With that, I will hand over to Klas to take you through each country and the financial details for our fourth quarter.
Thank you very much, AnnaCarin. If we look into the country-by-country details, we see, as mentioned by AnnaCarin, that we have a negative organic growth in Sweden and Norway, while on the positive side, we see that both Denmark and Finland is showing a positive organic growth in the fourth quarter. From a margin perspective, Q4 is very strong, and we're very happy to see that Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are all improving their margins compared to Q4 2019. Norway is on par with last year at 6.2%. In Sweden, we see a similar pattern as we did in Q3 and also in Q2, that we are dropping the variable volumes in terms of food and beverage, and also some of the property-related projects.
The demand for cleaning continues to be high, and we still have a positive impact of the large IFM deal we did with ICA and started in November 2019. The same goes for Norrlands Miljövård that also came in our books in November 2019. From a margin perspective, we continue to see the positive effects from the strong organization focusing on cost control, efficiency, and we also have a positive impact from a more favorable volume mix in the quarter compared to Q4 2019. In Norway, the situation is also similar to Q3 with a drop in food and beverage volume. Cleaning continues to be strong. In Norway, we actually had a quite good quarter when it comes to property-related projects, despite the general restraint that we have experienced in the oil and gas industry.
Denmark, the positive organic growth is related to the extended and expanded contract with the Danish Police, the PGA contract, and also the increased demand for cleaning across Denmark. That actually makes up for the losses in food and beverage volume, and also some drop in property volumes in Q4. As in the other countries, the Danish organization has continued the strong cost focus and efficiencies, and we see an improvement both in terms of margin, but also profit in absolute numbers in Q4. Finland made another strong quarter with positive organic growth, mainly related to the new OP contract started in May and additional cleaning volumes. Both profit and margin improves compared to Q4 2019.
If we then move on and look at the contract portfolio development in 2020, we had a positive effect in H1 that we presented in the Q2 report, that we had a positive net effect of around SEK 60 million. In H2, we won new contracts to a value of approximately SEK 150 million, and that gave us a net impact in H2 of around SEK 100 million. That takes us to a full year net of roughly SEK 160 million. If we then continue with the P&L and look at some numbers in more detail, we see that net sales is down by approximately SEK 250 million, and that takes us to a total level at just below SEK 2.5 billion for the quarter.
The organic growth, as AnnaCarin mentioned, is -7%, acquired growth +1%, and then we have some small negative FX effects of approximately 3%, mainly related to the Norwegian NOK. EBITDA is SEK 153 million compared to SEK 152 in Q4 2019, and that takes us to a very strong EBITDA margin for the quarter of 6.2%. With a lower level of IAC and more or less unchanged levels when it comes to the financial net taxes and amortization, the adjusted net income for the quarter ends up at SEK 97 million compared to SEK 90 in Q4 2019. Looking then at the full year numbers, you see that net sales totals up at SEK 9.6 billion. Organic growth also for the full year is -7%, while the acquired growth is +2% and FX effect was -2%.
EBITDA improved by SEK 7 million- SEK 556 million for the full year. That gives us an EBITDA margin of 5.8%. The adjusted net income for the full year improved from SEK 355 million- SEK 384 million. We'll take a look at the cash flow and the sources and usage of cash in 2020. We started off with an ingoing cash balance of SEK 497 million. Operations have contributed with a +SEK 781 million, very strong contribution. If we look at the financing flows that is reflecting interest loans and leasing, that adds up to -SEK 821 million. The largest part of that is actually related to us reducing our debt level by lowering the utilization of the RCF financing.
Taxes paid is SEK 46 million and cash out from M&A is SEK 12 million. That reflects the last part of the cash payment related to the acquisition of Norrlands Miljövård. That takes us to an outgoing cash balance for 2020 at SEK 396 million. Looking very quickly at some of the details from the cash flow. You see that cash conversion is 108%, slightly better than the level that we had in last year. That's driven by the strong result, CapEx discipline, and continued focus on working capital across the organization. There are also some positive impact on working capital from a somewhat more favorable calendar in the last week of 2020, with more continuous working days compared to the year before.
A lower level of property project also reduces the levels of capital tied up. Continuing with some of the details from the balance sheet. See that net working capital is negative with SEK 881 million, and that equals minus 9.2% of net sales. Net debt is SEK 1.2 billion. Leverage is down to 1.6, well below our own target and also the covenant level of 375. As you can see, we still have a very large part of unutilized credits in the RCF financing, now totaling slightly over SEK 1.2 billion. With that, I'll just hand over to AnnaCarin to sum up before Q&A.
Thank you, Klas. As I mentioned before, we are very proud of what we have done during 2020 and show the strength of the Coor business model and the Coor organization. We have a negative organic growth in the quarter by -7%, as well as for the full year, driven by lower variable volumes, even though our subscription volumes remain strong. The successful acquisition of Norrlands Miljövård contributes positive with 1% acquired growth in the quarter. We deliver an EBITA margin of 6.2% in Q4 and a full-year margin of 5.8%.
Cash conversion and leverage are both on strong levels. The LTM value for cash conversion is 108%, and leverage is at 1.6. We are very happy to reinstate the dividend after withdrawing it last year. The dividend proposed by the board of directors is 4.4 SEK per share, where 2 SEK is ordinary dividend and 2.4 SEK is extraordinary dividend. We remain positive for the future, and there are interesting opportunities in the Nordic region and a strong pipeline ahead. With that, we will open up for questions.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you do wish to withdraw your question, you can do so by pressing zero two on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Erik Pedersen from Nordea. Please go ahead. The line is open.
Yes. Hi, it's Erik. First of all, can you please outline the contract opportunities that are coming up here during 2021 that you bid on, et cetera, the larger ones?
Yeah, thank you, Erik. As we mentioned, we have a very strong pipeline, and we can see a mix of both large cases as well as medium and small cases in the pipeline. We can also see a mix between private companies as well as public companies.
Okay. Is it possible to give some more granularity around that and timing, et cetera?
Well, what we saw during 2020, there was quite a large pipeline as well, but some of the large cases were postponed or delayed, and I think we see that coming now during 2021.
Okay. Talking about contract endings, you had that Equinor contracts or parts of that. How does it look like regarding that in the coming quarters here now? Contract endings and risks relating to that in overall.
The largest contract that we're up for renegotiation is the Equinor contract. We communicated the part on the office sites. As we also mentioned, the production sites is being handled in a separate process, which we are taking part in right now. It's a different team from the Equinor side. It's a different type of process and so on. We remain positive in terms of keeping the production sites. The process is ongoing. Apart from that, there are no major prolongations in the near future.
Okay, great. A final one, you touched upon it here regarding office spaces, et cetera, potentially if we're seeing in the underlying market decreasing the amount of square meters, et cetera. You mentioned here going from potentially 0.5 days working from home up to, I think you said 1.5 days. What do you see the time horizon here going forward? What's the risk for you in this? Can you actually utilize it in a better way for you as a business opportunity going forward?
Well, as we mentioned, we think during the coming years, one, two years ahead, we will see a trial and error phase. I think we will see that different kinds of customers in different kinds of industry, they will go back to their office in different phases. I think so. What we can see is that we need to stay very close to our customers and make sure that we can provide them with actually new kind of services when we are in that trial and error phase. Actually what we have seen so far is that also the level of services increases during that phase as well.
Just maybe a follow-up finally there. Can you just tell us what the share of white collar and the blue collar is respectively for you in total?
We haven't disclosed that split because we don't think that that is, first of all, quite difficult because you do have a lot of white collar people working at manufacturing sites and so on. It's not completely relevant to do a split in white collar versus blue collar. It's more interesting to look at how the different industries and so on develop over time.
All right. If I rephrase it then, if you could give a breakdown regarding types of works where you can actually work from home and workplaces where you cannot really do that.
If you look at our customer base and where we do see that a lot of people have been working from home during the pandemic, it's very much concentrated to business services in the main cities in the Nordic region. That's not our largest customer base, so to say, if you think about banks, insurance companies, and so on.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Erik.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Art Hager from Haug Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. The first one comes to the top line. Given that the office contract with Equinor runs off pretty late in the year and your comments on the pipeline, it seems to me that you are very confident in organic growth in 2021. Is that correct?
The loss of the office sites for Equinor will have a limited impact in 2021. Then, of course, it all depends on the win rate and so on. Given the history and our normal win rate, we do think that we have a good possibility of reaching organic growth in 2021.
Thanks. The second question relates to the gross margin, and pardon my ignorance here, but if it's 10% to 10.5% or 11%, it matters a lot on the EBITDA level. Could you just provide some color on to what factors are going to affect the gross margin and to which extent you can control those factors from quarter-to-quarter?
I'm not sure I fully understood your question, Art. You mentioned the gross margin and how that develops from quarter-to-quarter, or?
Yes. It has a pretty big impact on the bottom line, whether it's 10% or 10.5% or 10.8%, right? What factors do affect the gross margin, and to which extent can you control those factors? Is it just arbitrary, so to speak, from quarter-to-quarter?
Looking at the gross margin and looking back at that has been around 12.5% for Coor. What really impact the gross margin is the work that is being done out in the organization in all the different contracts. As AnnaCarin mentioned before, our ability to adjust to changing needs and every day looking for the small efficiency or cost control and so on, that's really what drives the gross margin, in combination with, of course, being clever in utilizing your resources when you have some extra demand for certain services and so on. Basically, it comes down to hard work in the organization.
Okay. The final question from me. On the working capital, it's a pretty good ratio you announced this time. What should we consider a reasonable ratio? I think it was 9.2%, if I talk correctly. What's a reasonable level there over time for the business?
I think it's better to look back at history and see that we have been more consistent at around -7 or something like that. I think -9 is a very low number. As we say, with the lower level of property-related progress, we tie up less capital as well. You shouldn't expect -9 going forward.
Okay, thanks.
Thanks, Art.
Thank you. We have one more question from the line. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on the telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, congratulations to good development in a challenging year with a lot of moving parts. A couple of questions, if I may. First of all, coming back to Erik's questions around the on-site service opportunity that you show on slide 16 your material. AnnaCarin, when you look at this, it sounds like, say, you're in waiting something that you've now seen in 2020 as a variable volumes going deep cleaning into offices and so on, maybe becoming more of a regular service and that potentially then balancing, I guess, the work from home utilization or smaller office spaces. Is that a way to describe it, or?
Hi, good morning, Karl-Johan. Yes, I think you described that in a very good way. I think we have seen increased cleaning during the pandemic, and we think that increased volume will stay even after the pandemic. We actually expect a return of volumes, for example, food and beverage, when we can see the effects of the vaccine and people start to go back at work, we can see that our food and beverage volumes will increase, as well as for the property-related projects. Many of our customers have postponed a lot of projects, and they will most probably be back in a couple of months.
Excellent. If I split that up, if you're looking at food and beverage, I think you mentioned that when you look at rural sites and hospitals and so on, you wouldn't expect a lot of change now when volumes come back compared to what you saw historically, and maybe more of a challenge in urban areas. How is your split looking at food and beverage in those two parts in a normal year?
We have a larger part of our food and beverage service related to larger IFM contracts, actually outside of the pure white collar offices. There are, of course, some food and beverage deliveries also to the pure white collar offices, but the majority is actually outside of that area.
Majority would be, what you could say, they're unaffected at the end of the day when you get back to some sort of normality.
A little less affected, at least.
Less affected. That's probably a good way of putting it. Looking at the on-site service part of this, if you then try to play this out, say, over a two-three-year perspective with the extra cleaning services becoming the normality, so to say, and then maybe slightly smaller office spaces, how do you think the net-net of that would affect your business? Is it a positive or negative?
I think that's very difficult to have a firm view on that. Given the fact that cleaning is our largest service line, that increased in importance during 2020, I think that is a big positive part of it. There are so many other things that could impact that going forward. Hard to have a really firm view on that. It's good for us that cleaning becomes more than a commodity.
I notice you mentioned volume mix as being a margin contributor in the quarter. What's the underlying impact there?
The volume mix is related to us losing the volumes primarily in food and beverage, where we have had a lower margin, and then we've been able to sell additional cleaning projects at a higher margin. It has, of course, a positive impact, but we haven't quantified it and will not quantify it either.
That's interesting, because when I look at, say, Compass, Sodexo, and so on, obviously they have higher margins in their food and beverage business than they have in other verticals. Why do you see that you haven't been able, say, to deliver on that in the food and beverage space? Why is that not a margin enhancer for you, so to say?
Food and beverage compared to Compass, I think that's a lot related to size. I think the purchasing power and so on that you have when you buy really large volumes, and even though we are a fairly large player when it comes to food and beverage, we're much smaller than a Compass or a Sodexo in that aspect.
Just if you could also, on the Equinor situation, if you could give some more color. Do you have any idea why they didn't, say, renew the contract with you? Is it price, quality, scope of the contract, or have you got any more granularity on what really happened?
Actually, so far, we don't have that detailed information. What we know is that we deliver a good service to Equinor today, and there are no complaints. We have a very good cooperation together with Equinor. I think the future will show what's happening.
Excellent. When you look at the ongoing discussion for the production sites, is that an unchanged contract, or is there some sort of component like the Danish police that it might become a larger contract involving more sites?
No, when it comes to the scope of the production sites, they are more or less the same as we see today.
Finally, on Equinor. Obviously you can plan quite a long way now into the future knowing that you need to ramp down these contracts. What kind of, say, margin challenge or extra cost do you see maybe hitting your accounts, so to say, during this year due to the ramp down?
Again, somewhat difficult to have a firm view on that. What is happening right now is, of course, that the Norwegian operation are taking a really close look at the organization and so on in order to find the mitigating actions in order to defend the margins, of course. But I will not provide any individual guidance for Norwegian margins going forward.
That's fine. If you look at it, you should be able to handle this in a good way, even though the large scope of it.
I think history has shown that we are quite good in handling changing situations. Of course, this is a large part of the contract that is now lost, but we will do everything we can in order to mitigate that in the best possible way.
Also notice a small change of wording when you talk about the pipeline going from strong to very strong. Is that just semantics, or is that how you also feel for looking at it at the present?
We actually think it is very strong, and we actually think it looks a little bit stronger than it did three, four months ago because there are several large opportunities, as AnnaCarin mentioned, especially in Sweden and Denmark.
You found this acquisition target in Western Norway yesterday. If you could detail a little how you see that fitting into the Norwegian structure, and it seems to be a very profitable little operation you found there.
Yeah, absolutely. It's a well-managed family-owned company in Stavanger. Stavanger, first of all, that's a very important area to be present and be strong within. It strengthened our geographical footprint in Stavanger, and also they have a very good track record within food and beverage, but in cleaning. They work as single service providers, and we think that will also benefit our Norwegian organization in strengthening our single services within cleaning and food and beverage.
Excellent. Do you still feel that there's a good pipeline of these kinds of opportunities across the Nordics as well?
Yes, as we mentioned, I think we can position it like this, that we have started an M&A engine at Coor. Of course, we are looking for potential targets. As we used to say, we are quite picky when it comes to acquisitions. Our number one priority is to have focus on organic growth. We know there are opportunities in the market, and we try to find them, and work with them, of course.
Excellent. One final one for me. I noticed your headline of organizational changes and focus on new service development, digitalization, and so on. AnnaCarin, I know that during this year, you have postponed a lot of things due to COVID-19. Is this a re-acceleration of old programs, or is it something new here, and what's really the end ambition with these changes?
I think it's a mix between starting up some old initiatives that we postponed, but also some new initiatives. Many thing of this is actually connected to a new office situation. We really need to speed up in technological solution, innovation, and digitalization. We have a strong pipeline of startups that we are working together with. Make sure that we can provide our customers with a very good support and service.
When you look at digitalization opportunities within your space, is that more of a top-line driver or a margin driver, efficiency driver? Where do you find the opportunities?
I don't think you should expect the digital solutions to be really a top-line driver. The value is more related to the customer experience, the customer value, but it also creates a stickiness, and of course, in some aspects, also an efficiency impact from us. For example, using sensor technology and so on, rather than making rounds with people in the buildings and so on.
Have you been able to do any studies showing the advantage for a client that are, say, using digital solution to a larger extent? How much that can increase the efficiency in a contract or something like that?
We have several good examples from different customer sites where we've been working with sensor technologies in order to help them optimize their office layout and office size and so on. There are some really good examples, and I think as sensor technology becomes less and less expensive, the sensors are now not that expensive. We see an opportunity to actually implement similar types of solutions for other customers as well.
Just the final one for me. Looking at the dividend and capital allocation policy of the company and so on, you're obviously having a super strong balance sheet after this year. As you say, hopefully, there's a lot of acquisition opportunities out there. Even in that perspective, the dividend obviously is a good return, but you will, even after that, have a super strong balance sheet way below the 3x net debt to EBITDA. How is the board reasoning here when they come with this kind of dividend decision and say, balancing it against the financial target of just being below three times net debt to EBITDA?
I think the board, first of all, it was really important for us returning to dividend as soon as possible, as we said in the Q3 report. We are returning to a level that is at the same level as we proposed this time last year, that was then withdrawn. We think that creates a good balance of actually returning a good dividend to the shareholders, but still leaving enough firepower in the organizations to continue to look for acquisitions. Yeah.
Excellent. That sounds promising. Good luck in 2021.
Thanks, KJ.
Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up question from Erik Pedersen from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Just a follow-up regarding, I was thinking about cleaning services, and I have seen examples here in Stockholm, for instance, where employee organizations or workplaces give their employees opportunities to have cleaning services at home, including in their employee agreement. Is this something that you can work on and is actually working on, or is it too much of a geographic hassle around that?
Yeah. It is a good question, Erik, and of course, this is something we really try to deep into right now, actually. We do have respect for our business model. We have on-site service. That is our business model today, and if we should go over to bring our service into the homes, that is another kind of model. If we should go that way, we need to be quite cautious and know what we are doing. We analyze that for the moment.
Do you think it could be a decent margin in it if you have the scale, et cetera, in it, despite the people are actually living quite vast geographical locations, I would say?
As AnnaCarin mentioned, it's a completely different business model, more of a route-based model and so on. I think it's too early for us to assess the margin opportunities in that. We are, first of all, an on-site organization, and that is our strategic focus. Of course, we will analyze and look if there is an opportunity or not, and also the risks associated with it.
Yes. All right. Thank you.
Thanks, Erik.
Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up question from Art Hager from Haug Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Sorry if you already touched on this, in terms of the uncertainty among clients and work from home and all these things that you've already touched on, are clients asking for more flexibility in contracts? If so, does that make it harder for you to price them correctly?
That is an interesting question. If we look at the ongoing bids right now in the pipeline, we haven't seen any major changes around that. There is, of course, a lot of discussions going on, but not that has materialized at this stage. I think going back to what AnnaCarin mentioned, that we are probably moving into a trial-and-error phase in many different aspects, both in terms of working from home, but perhaps also a little bit around the business model. Ongoing discussions, many thoughts, but nothing that has really been seen in the ongoing processes as of today.
Okay. I guess one might infer that it would be easier for the larger players, rather than the mom-and-pop shops to allow for such flexibility in contracts. Anyway, thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. We have no more questions from the line. I will hand it back to our speakers. Please go ahead with your closing comments.
All right. Thank you very much from our side, and we'll make sure that we'll keep in touch, and some of you we will talk to in the coming days. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you for listening in, and take care.