Thank you very much. This is Jan Häglund, CEO of Enea, and I have the pleasure of announcing our Q4 results as well as the full-year results for 2020. I'm joined here in our headquarters in Kista by Björn Westberg, our CFO, who will give more details of the numbers. Let me first here on page three of our presentation give the overview of our fourth quarter result. We ended the quarter with a net sales of SEK 248 million, which is 4% down from same period last year, but 1% up currency adjusted. We ended with a strong operating margin of 29.5%, excluding non-recurring items, and a net debt to EBITDA of 0.81. Earnings per share amounted to 2.20, which is a significant improvement compared with last year, also contributed by a lower financing cost.
Operating cash flow was SEK 62 million , and we continue to invest in growth opportunities in telecommunications and cybersecurity. We put back about a quarter of our revenues into R&D, both expensed and capitalized. For the full year, net sales came out at SEK 915 million , and the operating margin, excluding non-recurring items, was 24.2%. That means that we met our target of exceeding 20% for the full year of operating margin. Earnings per share was SEK 6.63 for the full year and operating cash flow SEK 274 million . On the next page, a quick comment on the coronavirus pandemic, which of course still is ongoing and which also is affecting our market and affecting our customers. We continue to see delays in customer investments, so certain projects, including 5G and software upgrades, are postponed by our customers.
This has an impact on our results and on our sales. We also have a smaller piece of the company which is exposed to consultancy services. In particular, we've seen customers in aviation industry in North America that have been heavily impacted by the COVID crisis and therefore a lower demand for our consultancy services. We believe that these obstacles and hinders will persist as long as the pandemic has a significant impact on our key markets. Having said that, Enea is a software company with a high ratio of recurring revenue, which means that the majority of our business remains stable, which we do see in our results. We also continuously take action on cost. We've done that during the year, which is a contribution to the strong operating margin.
Some of the cost reductions that we have also are due to the fact that we have not been able to travel as planned and also that many events have been canceled during the year. These are, of course, effects that are due to the coronavirus pandemic, which hopefully then will, as soon as possible, go back to more normality. On the next page, summarizing some of the key events in the quarter. We did close an important contract, an upgrade contract with a North American service provider in the area of video traffic management, worth in total $4.1 million. In data management, we closed another significant contract worth EUR 1.9 million with the European subsidiary of a U.K.-based Tier 1 service provider.
Our latest acquisition, Aptilo, was closed on October 1st. We did, through that acquisition, take a significant contract for Wi-Fi subscriber management with an EU authority. This contract, we expect it to generate annual revenues of between EUR 0.5 million and EUR 1 million over the next four years, starting 2021. Enea works with a combined go-to-market model of direct and indirect sales. Partnerships is important for us, and during the quarter, we closed another strategic partnership with the American charging solutions specialist, MATRIXX. The ambition here is that our combined solution for policy management and charging will be offered to customers in 4G and 5G. We did also, during the fourth quarter, streamline the Enea organization. We have then selected two business units, one for enterprise, one for telecommunications.
We have a new service provider sales unit with even more customer focus in that area. We have, as communicated before, integrated Aptilo, our latest acquisition, as an additional and separate business unit for continuity for customers and employees. Let me go a little bit more into detail into some of this news. On the next page six, summarize a bit of the traffic management upgrade contract in North America. The whole value that we generate with traffic management is very much about alleviating congestion. With growing traffic in many parts of the world, especially now during the COVID pandemic, it becomes even more important for operators to manage the end-user experience as well as the cost for delivering video services, which is the dominating part of the traffic in mobile networks.
This particular contract then was worth $4.1 million , of which $0.9 million were recognized in the fourth quarter 2020. We expect the rest then to be generating revenues during 2021. The next contract on page seven that I touched on is a cloud data management contract worth EUR 1.9 million. This is with an operator in Europe. The whole value here is about creating flexibility and openness, in particular for open and multi-vendor applications and cloud platforms. This is where Enea takes a unique position with our solutions through open interfaces, through agility, and through cloud-native software. This both brings flexibility to our customers, also efficiency and cost benefits. Out of this contract value of EUR 1.9 million, EUR 0.9 million were revenue recognized in the fourth quarter of 2020. On the next page eight, we summarize a bit of our latest acquisition, Aptilo.
We believe that Aptilo is off to a good start. We integrated this as part of the company from October 1st, and this unit generated revenues of SEK 21.6 million in the quarter, which is slightly above our expectations. We're happy about that. The revenue portion has a high proportion of recurring revenue, and we also see that growing capacity needs with the customer base have also contributed. As mentioned before, Aptilo did close a new frame contract with an EU authority. This is about subscriber management as a service in public Wi-Fi networks in Europe. We're excited about this contract, and it will be interesting to follow and support the development of this contract over the next four years.
Finally, Aptilo drives innovation, in particular in the areas of Internet of Things and smart cities. During the quarter, several awards have been given to Aptilo for its innovation in these areas. On page nine, a few words about the partnership with American charging specialist MATRIXX. Enea has a portfolio for cloud-native applications, including policy control for 4G and 5G. MATRIXX has the same focus with cloud-native software applications, but in the area of charging and charging functions. These functions go together in many cases in operators' networks and also, in fact, in commercial tenders. The ambition with this partnership is that we will be together able to offer leading solutions, software-oriented, to operators across the world. Before I hand over to Björn on page 10, an update on our strategy for 5G.
Enea has the mission to work in 5G and in particular, to act as a challenger and disruptor. There are many trends for us to work on. One is the importance of data in future operators' revenues, and here the Enea disruption of being first to launch a 5G data management portfolio is very important, and we continue to focus on this as a key area for investment and growth. Another trend is operators going away from one-stop shops or silo-based networks into more of a multi-vendor or best-of-breed way of purchasing and building networks. Here, the fact that we focus and specialize in a few areas, and that we've also been able to prove that we can take contracts with large Tier 1 operators like we did during last year in North America and Europe, gives us confidence to continue in this area.
Video is a key area for Enea. We are world-leading in video traffic optimization, video is a growing piece of the network. We continue to see growth, we expect to see growth also with 5G, which gives more capacity in the networks. The fact that we are incumbent with eight out of 10 of the largest operator groups also gives us opportunities going forward. Finally, 5G is designed not only for mobile traffic but in fact as the backbone for several access types, including Wi-Fi and fixed access. The acquisition that we have done now of Aptilo, specializing in Wi-Fi subscriber management, gives us a pretty unique position to be able to offer solutions for Wi-Fi as well as cellular access, both for subscribers and also for Internet of Things.
This is something we intend to explore going forward as a growth opportunity. With that strategic update, I'll hand over to you, Björn, for more details on the financials.
Thank you, Jan. This slide 12 shows net sales for the most recent five quarters. Net sales amounted to SEK 248 million, which was 4% lower than last year. In fixed currencies, sales increased by 1%. Aptilo contributed SEK 21.6 million to the total sales number. There was an effect of the COVID pandemic, as some customers have delayed certain projects, both large investments like in 5G and also upgrade projects. On slide 13, starting at operating systems. As previously communicated, revenue continued to decline. The decline was 28%, mainly due to less sales by two key accounts, Ericsson and Nokia. That decrease is expected as they both are, since a few years, building their solutions based on open source software. Network solutions, by far the largest group, product group now, and representing 70% of total sales, increased by 11%, driven by sales from the newly acquired Aptilo business.
The organic growth, excluding the Aptilo acquisition, was 1% in the quarter in network solutions. Software development services, previously named global services, declined by 15%, mainly due to less sales in the U.S., driven by decline in customer segments being more affected by the pandemic than others. This quarter, it's even more evident than before with Aptilo acquisition that we have transformed the business from a large dependency of operating systems some years back to a company where we have a wide range of high-quality offerings network solutions. We operate in segments where we have a number one or top-tier position. This is also guidance for us when we are exploring non-organic growth opportunities. On slide 14, we present the EBIT development. The EBIT margin was 29.5% in the fourth quarter excluding NRI, which is clearly above 20% being our objective.
Comparing Q4 this year versus last year, the margin was positively affected by lower OpEx and negatively affected by lower gross margin. OpEx excluding NRI of SEK 9 million decreased by SEK 26 million compared to the fourth quarter last year. You see effects of the implemented efficiency programs in combination with a high level of our expensive projects being capitalized. It did also have a positive effect on the cost for the LTIP share program, as there are fewer participants after the organization of our business units. EPS for the quarter was SEK 2.20, positively impacted by the increased EBIT and the lower financing cost. Next slide, 15. We continue to generate good cash flows. The operating cash flow amounts to SEK 81 million, an increase by 17% versus Q4 last year.
We continue to have in place a very efficient financing structure with a low financing cost and a net debt to EBITDA of 0.81. Even after the Aptilo acquisition in October, there is still a significant headroom for potential acquisitions. The strong balance sheet is also reflected in the equity to assets ratio, which is still pretty high even after the Aptilo acquisition. To conclude, we have a very solid financial position, making it possible to invest in both non-organic opportunities and our organic growth projects.
Thank you, Björn. Wrapping up on page 17, summarizing 2020. It's been an eventful year, no doubt, and the market dynamics caused by the pandemic have affected us as well as our customers. We have seen delays in customer investments, and we've seen projects and software upgrades also being postponed. As mentioned before, we expect these effects to continue as long as the pandemic has a significant impact on the market and it does cause uncertainty in the coming quarters. Having said that, we believe that we have, through strong performance, confirmed our strong position in 5G data management, video traffic management, and DPI, deep packet inspection for cybersecurity. We've seen the sustained market interest for our virtualization platforms during the year. Due to this long-term positive market outlook, we also continue to invest in these areas.
We continue to invest in 5G data management, 5G core applications, as well as virtualization platforms. We also took yet another step towards acquiring complementary businesses with the acquisition of Aptilo on 1st of October. Aptilo being a specialist in Wi-Fi and Internet of Things subscriber management. This strengthens our data management portfolio, and it also adds new customers and sales capabilities. Financially, as Björn mentioned, we were able to reach and maintain and exceed our target of an operating margin above 20%. We have seen a negative impact on our sales from the pandemic, as we announced and expected early in the year. We've continued to generate strong cash flows, and we have a relatively low net debt to EBITDA created by a solid position in the period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Going forward and looking into this year, 2021, on the next page.
As mentioned, we believe that the uncertainty in the short to medium term is substantial because of the coronavirus pandemic, its consequences will probably cause further delays in customer projects and other negative effects on our businesses, risking impacting earnings through coming quarters. Having said that, we believe that we can generate a sales growth year-over-year. An operating margin of over 20% for 2021. If we look longer term, on the final page here, we believe that the positive market outlook for data management in 5G virtualization, as well as advanced cybersecurity, means that we're entering an exciting phase, where we as a company can challenge the established competitors and where we can win market shares with innovative products and new business models. Therefore our ambition is to increase revenue robustly through the coming years with an operating margin of over 20%.
We will do that through organic growth in our largest area, network solutions. Plus complementary strategic acquisitions that advance our market position. We translate this ambition to us passing yearly net sales of SEK 1.5 billion by 2023. With that, I thank you for listening and give it back to the operator if there are any questions. Thank you for listening.
Thank you. 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 02 to cancel. We have a question from the line of Frank Maaø from DNB. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for a good report here. I think my question really has to do with cybersecurity now. In the wake of these quite dramatic events in the U.S. that has come out in the media regarding the SolarWinds hack, would you expect your threat detection business based on DPI to thrive from that? Yeah, that's basically the question. If you'll get a boost from what happened there.
Thank you, Frank. Yeah, it's a relevant question. We've during the year done surveys and asked operators and enterprises how they see cybersecurity. No doubt that the threat of cybersecurity is continuing to increase and the latest events in the U.S. unfortunately shows how real that is. What our customers have told us is that the ability to look into traffic, to classify traffic, and to be able to distinguish the friendly traffic from unfriendly traffic is very important. More and more of these advanced cybersecurity applications depend on the kind of technology that we believe that we are leading in, which is traffic intelligence and traffic classification. We continue to work in that area to serve our customers, and we hope that we can be part in also cybersecurities that can beat down these threats.
Thank you.
Just as a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now. Our next question comes from the line of Viktor Westman from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Congrats on a strong report. I'm wondering about the sales target for 2023. If you can say something about the role of M&A here. Should we expect similar M&A trend that before, or will it be smaller acquisitions?
Thank you, Viktor. We have done acquisitions during the recent years. We've done about one per year, they've been varying in size. I think they've all had the characteristics of being established business with a significant but still manageable size of sales that have been and also complementary from a portfolio and customer base point of view. This is typically what we're looking for, we believe that we have the ability not only to carry through acquisitions, but also to do a successful integration where we have a strategy and a method, and a process to do that going forward. Our ambition is to continue to do complementary strategic acquisitions that complement our customer base and that complement our offering. We believe that we have a financial position that allows us to continue to do that.
Having said that, we will continue also to be selective and picky to make sure that the businesses fit well with the company.
Yeah. Okay, good. Can you comment on the sales in Asia that were down 32%? This seems a bit maybe counterintuitive thinking how well they fended off the pandemic. Any comments there would be very helpful.
We have variations between the quarters. Not too much should be read into individual quarters. Of course, Asia is a large part of the world where there are different countries. For example, Enea has relatively low exposure to China, where I think, as you mentioned, perhaps the economy has recovered after the pandemic. There are different markets and different customers, but I would say it's mainly an effect of variations between quarters.
Last one maybe on the network data layer contracts. We have not seen anything more there since the two big contracts you announced last year. Is there any delays in the market there? I remember you mentioned that I think 30%-something of the operators were going to introduce this kind of functionality or how you say. Can you comment on that also?
Well, first I think there are several comments to be made. One is that there are long sales cycles in our business, in our industry, typically 12-18 months. That means that we are involved with several opportunities across the world in all areas where we operate, including 5G. We have seen delays during the year on the market due to the pandemic. We have seen delays in projects and in investments, and that includes 5G investments. That has affected us and our customers also. Having said that, we have a positive outlook still for our markets where we operate, in particular for 5G, where we believe that 5G will help the market operators and also adjacent industries to realize new economic potential. We therefore continue to invest in this area, and we see it as strategic as it has been before.
Okay, great. Thank you.
We have one more question from the line of Ramon Correa from SEB. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Pritti. Morning, guys. Thank you for the presentation. A few questions from my side. Just first off, a clarification here. The net sales ambition for 2023, is that just to deliver at least SEK 1.5 in the full year of 2023, or is it some sort of a run rate at the year end or whatever?
No. We formulate it as a net sales in the full year of 2023.
Okay. Understood. Is it possible to say anything in terms of EBITA margins given presumed amortization levels coming up on the back of what I would expect to be more forward-leaning M&A also moving forward?
We had some impact now. We had this NRI now in this fourth quarter. We also, as mentioned before as well, that we have lower activity in marketing events and also travel expenses, et cetera. Also this quarter, we had quite much lower cost for the share incentive program. In spite of that, we have a good margin. Also of course, looking on the R&D expenses, as we have a very attractive investment portfolio, we are capitalizing more in these big projects as well. Looking ahead, the OpEx of course could be influenced if we come back to the more normal circumstances like travel expense, et cetera, and travel, et cetera, and so on. That will increase.
We don't have a specific target for the EBITDA margin, but we believe that we will be above the EBIT margin that is currently reported as well.
For 2023, is it fair to assume that let's say amortization to sales will increase, if I put it that way? Have you looked into that in more detail or?
Can you please repeat that, Ramon?
Yes. I would assume that a pretty big delta on our current sales estimates for 2023 versus your new ambition stems from us not including unannounced M&A in our numbers. Let's say that a chunk of that delta comes from M&A, and you do M&A in the coming two years, give or take. I would assume that amortizations from acquired customer relationships, et cetera, and other intangibles, of course, to increase as well. You're saying that you're targeting an operating margin of above 20%, but is it possible to narrow that operating margin target down a bit and talk about EBITA margins? Perhaps you can do it offline if you want to.
Maybe we can come back to that either offline or for the next quarter.
Sure. Just a final one on the topic of 2023 ambitions. Is it possible to put any numbers or provide us with any flavor as to how much of M&A one should perhaps expect for you to reach these targets? Conversely, perhaps an easier question, what's the organic growth rate we should expect for network solutions in your view normalized, let's say in 2022, for instance?
We have not published a sort of separation in organic and inorganic growth. We believe then that organic growth in network solutions will be a significant contributor based on the fact that we see growth opportunities. We see markets where parts of the markets that we address are expected by external analysts to have double-digit growth. That will be one contribution. Then on top of that then, we seek to complementary acquisitions. Given our position then we believe that we have the ability and headroom to address acquisitions going forward also like we've done in the past.
That's very clear. Thank you, Jan. Finally, on the OpEx side from my side, Björn, you touched upon it in your first answer, but it's super impressive what you're doing on the OpEx side. I'm sure I've asked this before, but could you just talk a bit about these savings year-over-year? How much stems from reorganizations and structural changes you've done at the company, and how much stems from pandemic-related savings, if you will?
We don't have an exact number of the split here, but I can talk about the different areas here or different P&L lines. Start with sales and marketing. I would say there, we have, of course, sales synergies this year, but even more going forward as we are able to offer more services for the same people, more or less. Of course, we have maybe the largest impact there for the pandemic, that we have less marketing events and less travel expenses. Looking at R&D, that is more the efficiency programs, especially implemented beginning of the year. That main portion. Of course, as mentioned as well early in the call, that we have the best organic portfolio ever for Enea, and therefore we are capitalizing more because we have these very interesting projects.
The impact of pandemic is a bit less there, you can say, compared to sales and marketing. G&A, the bigger we are, we are working with the sort of synergy efficiencies, I would say there's also not much the pandemic impact there. It's more about that we are becoming more effective with the systems we have.
It's very clear. Perfect. Thank you so much, both.
As there are no further questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers for closing remarks.
Thank you very much for listening. We close the year, which has been eventful with pressure on our top line, but with thanks to early actions on the cost base and, of course, working hard with our customers and bringing in new contracts. We've been able then to announce a result with pretty strong operating profit as well as operating margin in the fourth quarter. Of course, we're humble to the uncertainties that we see in coming quarters. The fact that the Corona pandemic is still causing lockdowns in many parts of the world does have an impact on us, on our operations, and on our customers.
Of course, thanks to being a digital and software company, we've been able to adapt in a good way, and so have our customers. Of course, it puts pressure and introduces delay in our business. All in all, we thank you for the interest in our company, and we will work hard to bring us forward. Thank you.