Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Jan 29, 2021

Thank you very much. And hello, everyone, and welcome to this Q4 call or year end call. With me here today, I have our CEO, Berke Ekholm and our CFO, Karl Melander. Before we start the call, I would like to make this statement. During the call today, we will be making forward looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and certain planning assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. The press release or the actual results may differ materially due to factors mentioned in today's press release and discussed in this conference. So we can encourage you all to read about these risks and uncertainties in our earnings report as well as in our annual report. With those words, I would like to start this call by handing over the word to our CEO, Borje Korn. Please, Borje? Thank you, Peter. So good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. Before I go into the year end performance in greater detail, I would like to recognize our people. And a company is always about the people, and I think 2020 more than ever. We as The company migrated to work remotely in March last year, and our people really stepped up and delivered to all our customers with minimal to actually no disruptions. We have also seen some good progress in our business for quite some time. But with the financial performance for 2020, we can now say that we're through the turnaround phase. And of course, this turnaround is also attributable to the engagement and commitment from all of our people. We have now reached a return on capital employed at 17%, which is above the cost of capital. So we can now focus Our attention on growth as a key value driver, of course, while maintaining a financial discipline. But let me now go through some overall conclusions of our performance during 2020. The increased R and D has made our portfolio very competitive and cost efficient, and this has allowed us to gain market share in many markets. And we actually see market share gains from all competitors today. We exceeded our year end financial targets for 2020 as well as our targets for 2022, about 2 years early. We have delivered a strong free cash flow before M and A. And actually, if we look at our history, we see that this is the strongest free cash flow we have ever had as a company. We also completed the acquisition of Cradlepoint during Q4, and that's an important step, as you all know, for establishing our enterprise offering, especially targeting the rapidly growing demand for wireless WANs. In addition, we started to invest in increasing our resiliency and flexibility of our supply chain, and we really started that several years ago. We did that for other reasons. So no crystal ball on predicting a pandemic, but that have been critical in managing on our commitments during 2020. And we've been able to do that despite working from home and in the middle of a pandemic. The health and well-being of our people has been at the front and center in how we have made decisions during 2020. So one example is that we decided very early on to migrate to remote working. Across the year, About 80% of our workforce have operated virtually. Of course, the impact and the Toll on our people cannot be ignored from working remotely, but we are doing as a company what we can to support those of us who are most affected by the pandemic. In addition, we took a decision in early March Not to apply for any government pandemic related support programs as we wanted to make sure that we drive the business out of its fundamentals and take the right decisions for the long term future of the business, not impacted by any government support programs. With our performance and solid long term outlook, the Board of Ericsson has decided to recommend the shareholders to increase the dividend to SEK 2 per share, and that's an increase of SEK 50, I should say, in, I guess, English. So before going into each market area, just wanted to make some overall comments about the market. It's now clear that 5 gs is increasingly gaining momentum around the world. And we're seeing front runner countries to rapidly build out the 5 gs networks as it is a platform to digitalize their economies. But I think it's even more encouraging to see that operators who has built out a good coverage are seeing an increasing ARPU and thus a reversal of the decline over the last few years. For frontrunners, 5 gs can be a source of additional revenues as well as to establish the operator as a market leader. This is actually not surprising as it was very similar to what happened when 4 gs was rolled out, where front runners saw higher ARPU, greater market share and lower churn. We have also seen many wins in across the market areas for our private networks for enterprises, which actually start to strengthen our enterprise presence. So some comments on each market area. We saw strong growth for the Northeast Asia market area. This was naturally driven by China. That is now the largest 5 gs market in the world with clearly more than 100,000,000 subscribers, but we also saw gains in many of the other markets in the market area. Continued strong momentum in 5 gs drove a good performance in North America. This was partly offset by The downward pressure of the loss of the managed services contract due to the operator consolidation earlier in 2020. We have seen market share gains in the U. S, but we have also seen break in deals in Canada that will support long term growth for us. In Southeast Asia, Oceania and India, we saw growth driven by several countries, but most noticeable Australia and India. Europe and Latin America had a bit of a mixed picture. We saw overall a positive growth in the market area, But and that was driven by the growth in Europe, which was partly offset by a decline in Latin America. Europe the growth in Europe was driven by market share gains. And Latin America, the decline really caused by the macroeconomic uncertainty due to the pandemic. We also see that we so far have had limited 5 gs rollouts in Europe, And we are a bit concerned that Europe is falling behind the front runners in China, Australia, North America and the Middle East. Finally, in Africa, we saw in the market area, Africa and Middle East, we saw sales declines. That was really in Africa related to effects of the COVID-nineteen and the macroeconomic uncertainties. And in the Middle East, due to timing of customer investment decisions, actually in 2019, that ended 2019 on a strong note. However, we see increasing traction from our efforts to increase market share in the market area, and we expect that to be visible in the next few years. Moving on to the business segments. For Networks, sales grew organically by 20%, driven by 5 gs rollouts and market share gains. Gross margin was 43.5 percent in Q4, up from 41.1% year before. For the whole 2020, operating margin was 19%, which is well ahead of our targets of 15% to 17%. I would say Networks performance reflect our increasing technology leadership and strong 5 gs portfolio. Grew to 41% from 38.1% from a year before. From 2017, at the start of our turnaround to today, if you do a like for like comparison, our gross margin has increased from 29% to 42%. The turnaround where we continue to execute on the turnaround plan, And our operating income for Q4 was positive, and that actually is the best result we've seen to date, which we view as an indication that our turnaround is on track. Our cloud native 5 gs core portfolio a very high win ratio and we'll start to generate revenues in the next 12 to 18 months ahead. So far, we've only seen R and D costs with this new portfolio. So we are encouraged by the traction we have and expect to see revenues coming here during the gradually during the year. Sales in managed services continue to decline, which is this year a result of the U. S. Or the consolidation in the U. S. Market, but also some contract exits in Europe. However, gross margin grew to 17.7% from 15.8% a year earlier, And full year operating margin ended at 8.1%, ahead of our range of 5% to 8%. We continue to invest in R and D, in managed services to drive automation Sales grew in enterprise offerings such as the IoT platforms, complemented by the acquisition of Cradlepoint that was announced in Q3 and closed in Q4. Gross margin improved to 33.8%, driven by operational leverage from growth and lower costs. Cradlepoint's underlying business develops in line with plans, And we continue to be encouraged by the customer reception and see good long term growth opportunities. However, reported sales and costs for Cradlepoint are impacted by purchase price allocations. And we have also said that, that will have a negative effect on operating income with about 1 percentage in 2021, mostly coming from amortizations, but also from investments in growing the business until we start to see earnings improve. With that, I give the word over to Karl. Thank you, Borja, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone here from Stockholm. And let's then start to look at the P and L for the full year 2020. And here you see that with an organic FX adjusted growth of 5% year over year, net sales reached SEK 232,400,000,000, which is then within the target range of between SEK 230,000,000,000 to SEK240,000,000,000 And mainly driven by continued high demand for our 5 gs portfolio in the networks business that grew by 10%. Especially, the hardware revenue grew strongly, and this is a welcome result of the growing footprint that we see currently. Northeast Asia grew by 30%, FX adjusted, and North America as well as Southeast Asia, Oceania and India also contributed to the growth in the year. Gross margin, as you see, improved 310 basis points year over year to 40.6 And good to say that we have improvements in all segments and thereby also clearly beating the gross margin ambition range we set up in 2017. Operating income, SEK 29,100,000,000 as you see excluding restructuring, an improvement of SEK 7,000,000,000 or 32% over last year. And this is if we adjust for the SEK 10,700,000,000 charge related to SSE BOJ in 2019. So this operating income then leads to an operating margin of 12.5 Target of operating margin over 10%, that's where you said. And again, the main contributor to the improvement here we see is, again, the networks side of the business with a 19% operating margin for the fiscal year. An absolute key metric for Obviously, for me, but for all of us in the company is the free cash flow before M and A, and this came out at SEK 22,300,000,000 This is a level we have not seen before. And earnings per share, we also listed this here, diluted, came out at SEK 5 SEK 0.26, also that's a level that we haven't seen at least during the last 10 years, perhaps longer. Return on capital employed for the full year was 17%. That's an increase from 6.7%. Both these numbers include the cash position. But if we and this might be more appropriate actually if we exclude the cash, the retirement capital employed would even have been but 2% in the full year. But let's have a closer look at Q4. Next slide please here. So in the Q4, net sales reached the SEK 69,600,000,000. This is an organic growth of 13%, again driven by networks that grew 20% based on this continued high demand for the 5 gs portfolio. The largest growth, as Berri saw before, in Northeast Asia, but also North America contributing with the double digit growth in Aste in South with Asia, Oceania and India. Gross margin here, 350 basis points improvement to 14.6 percent also for the quarter. And again, also looking at the quarter, encouraging to see that all segments improve year over year with the main contribution from Networks. Operating income then SEK 11,000,000,000 excluding restructuring and an operating margin SEK 15.8 Again, repeating myself, but Networks also here the main driver with the 21.5% operating margin that Networks segment delivered. But I also want a special mention here again of digital services that actually delivered the best operating income to date, the profit of SEK 500,000,000. Cash flow SEK 12,800,000,000. We'll come back to that a bit later. But let's have a look at Trend on gross margin, if we take this slide here, and you can really see the result of execution of the focused strategy here in this graph. You see here the gross margin development over the years in distinct quarters but also rolling. And we have said this many times, but of course, it is really the increased R and D investments that has been the main driver here for technology and cost leadership and also competitive advantage and gross margin improvement. So here, if we break this down a little bit, Networks gross margin improved 200 basis points Following even better operational leverage, digital services improved during the year 4 20 bps to 42% with more software sales. Managed services improved efficiency achievements improvement of 3.10 bps here. And lastly, emerging business and out there with a gross margin that improved actually 8 40 basis points to 28%. And Cradlepoint contributes here. And maybe just a side note, being somewhat personally involved In Cradlepoint as well, I must say I'm quite impressed by the Cradlepoint leadership. And now we are full speed there with excellent collaborations with other parts of Ericsson also to create value. Okay. Let's look at SG and A and R and D. R and D came out at SEK 10,500,000,000. It's a slight decrease year over year, mainly following positive FX. And here, of course, we have added now Cradlepoint since November, so 2 months of Cradlepoint, both in R and D and also in SG and A, which is next year, that came up SEK 7,400,000,000 as you see that, a reduction of SEK 800,000,000 year over year. And this reduction is mainly explained by less traveling, less trials cost and other external spend, but also some provision release. We have a provision release for customer financing and also some FX support that supported this number. And all of this more than offset than the added SG and A from the acquired Cradlepoint. We also show impairment losses trade receivables here just to illustrate that, that can really swing between quarters. In Q4, we had a positive impact, SEK 300,000,000 And this follows collection of high risk receivables from customers. As you see last quarter, this number was a negative 0 point SEK 2,000,000,000. And this is really to illustrate that this item will fluctuate over quarters based on our updated risk assessments and changes in exposure collection from high risk receivables and so on. Let's move over to cash flow and the financial position. As mentioned then, free cash flow before M and A in the quarter was SEK 12,800,000,000. And it's really a result of a combination here, of course, increased profit levels, but also then in combination with working capital efficiency. Working capital days now is down to 65 from 75 days a year ago. And I must say, I believe we have rather impressive focus now among the colleagues across market areas, business areas on cash flow generation. So this brought full year cash flow before M and A to 22 point 3, and as I think we mentioned several times already on this call, although free cash flow definitions may have changed over time, this seems to be the strongest or is the strongest cash flow in the history of the company. So this led to a net Cash at the end of the year then SEK 41,900,000,000 up from SEK 34,500,000,000 and gross cash landed rather flat at SEK 72,000,000,000 and this and in spite of acquisitions, dividends, pension trust contributions and loan repayments during the year. We continue to execute here on our Capital structure strategy for flexibility and resilience, as we described before. And in that context also, I'd like to highlight that We were, of course, very pleased with the rating upgrade we got in November from Standard and Poor's to Investment grade, BBB- stable outlook. And the key trigger for the upgrade there in rating was really free cash flow, in turn a result of growth, reduced cost and improved capital efficiency. So now we have investment grade ratings both from Standard and Poor's and Fitch. Well, we mentioned the board's dividend proposal already. Just to add that this means SEK 6,700,000,000 took a pay it out and in 2 equal installments just like 2020 in April October, respectively. Okay. I will round off now. Just a few words on planning assumptions, and I'm just I'm just going to highlight a few of them. But as usual, please refer to the report for the full set. First of all, on the market we operate in then, we We usually fight Del Oro, and we will do that now. As well, Del Oro expects the land market to grow by 3% in 2021, up from 2% previously, all with China, up 4% North America, 2% and Europe, up 3%. And regarding top line then, historically, Q1 is our weakest sales quarter. And if we look at the last 3 years, Normal seasonality or average seasonality has been minus 24% from Q4 to Q1. And this Q1, we expect that this seasonal effect might be somewhat less pronounced due to the 5 gs investments and and some rollouts that are ongoing. IPR, importantly, as you know from the press release in December, with ongoing renewal negotiations Other factors that we mentioned in the release, we may see an impact on operating income by between SEK 1,000,000,000 and SEK 1,500,000,000 per quarter. For Q1 specifically, we expect that impact to be at the higher end of this range. Networks segment, we expect a similar mix Q1 to Q4. FX typically decreased from Q1 to Q4 to Q1 due to seasonality. And I want to point out again with large variations between the years. Also want to remind about the FX rule of thumb. And then finally, a reminder that we expect Cradlepoint, as Borje mentioned, to negatively impact group operating margin in 2021 2022 by around 1 percentage point. With that, thank you so much. And back to you, our CEO, Mr. Borje Ekholm. Thank you, Mr. Carmelander. We are proud of our performance during 2020. But I would also say we're not happy at all as we see a lot of improvement areas in the business. And we run the business focusing on driving the long term margin improvements and growth. And we really see the targets for 2022 as a milestone simply on the way to reaching the long term targets of 15% to 18% EBITA margin. 2021 will, however, be an investment year with investments that will underpin our long term growth as well as our long term margins. And this includes such areas as IPR, Cradlepoint, but also continued investments in the business. And as we have gone through already, in December, we announced that We have important IPR negotiations and renewals ongoing that will impact or that will defer revenues for a period of time. But we see that we are through focusing Sumizing the long term value of our portfolio can actually significantly improve our IPO and revenues. We will also continue to invest in R and D to broaden the product portfolio and maintaining a strong customer offering, but also driving a further improved cost position. We do note that Cradlepoint will have a negative effect in 20 21, primarily due to amortizations, but also investments in growth. And we also see that in order to further strengthen our platform, We continue to increase our investments in compliance, but also security. What we have also seen during the last few years that the value of increased footprint is clearly paying off in expanded gross margin, and that's something we intend to do to capitalize on our very competitive portfolio and the current market conditions. The effects from COVID and continued geopolitical uncertainty, they, of course, remain. But we believe we're well positioned to manage Any potential effects with the improved flexibility and resiliency in our operation, and we continue to invest for further improving the flexibility and resiliency. 5 gs is now a reality, and we are a global leader with 100 27 contracts as well as 79 live networks. Our continued presence in the largest as Fastest growing markets around the world are critical to support technology leadership and thus supporting our long term financial targets. I want to also say that from an industry point of view, it's critical that we hold together the global standard and not fragment that, because the global standard had actually allowed the world to connect 8,000,000,000 subscriber onto 1 uniform standard. We are Increasingly seeing that many countries are accelerating the investments in the 5 gs network as they see the innovation on top of the network can easily create value that's 5 to 10 times the network investments and allow them to transform and digitalize their companies to leverage this new platform. We hope that Europe will see this value as well before we fall too far behind the more aggressive countries Frontrunner Countries. We are committed to the targets for 2022. But as we have said, we see 2021 as an investment year that creates a very strong platform for future growth and for reaching the long term targets of 15% to 18% EBITA margin. We're confident in our ability to do so based on a strong underlying Thank you again for listening in. And with that, I hand back to Peter for all your questions. Thank you, Borje. So operator, we can now open for the Q and A session, and we will continue that to around 10 Central European Time. So please, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and session. Detailed information is provided in our report and Ericsson's Investor Relations and Media Relations team will be happy to take additional questions and discuss further details with you after the call. Thank you, operator. So the first question we will have here from Alexander Petek from Societe Generale. So Alexander, please. Yes, good morning. I hope you can hear me well. Yes, perfect. Great. Thank you. So I just have one question on your 2022 targets and then a very quick Follow-up, if I may. So the first question is, given the strong network margins that you have now, can you explain why we should more cautiously model In model 22, obviously, at midpoint of your targeted margin, that's 200 basis points below what you achieved in 2020. So You could tell us what would drag these margins down. Do you have strong market share ambitions and if you could quantify them? Or are you enjoying particular tailwinds now that will disappear? And if you could quantify that as well. And then the quick follow-up would be just on IPR. I see a lot of disparity in how we model this. So maybe a good like kind of a guidance on how many quarters we should take the missing IPR out of Your bottom line, and that would achieve a more consistent consensus for 2021 in particular. Maybe you would like to give us a bit firmer guidance in the sense that, that can change as and when litigation is resolved? Thanks very much. If we comment on target for 2022, we run the company not focused on 2022, but much rather on the long term. So we have a clean result for Q4, there's not really any specific tailwinds in any way. So it's not that we think that is going to change. It's just that we see that we will continue to invest in the business in order to drive the long term margin target of 15% to 18%. That's what we are focused on. So 2022 is merely a milestone on that journey. And we have not spent a lot of time looking through the details of 2022. So view that only as a stepping stone to a much higher margin target. And on the IPR, I appreciate your question and I understand the difficulty. But I would encourage you to think how long is a rope. It's very unclear when you look at just that pile. So it's very hard for us to say that how many quarters this will go on. We have given you the guidance that it's about SEK 1,000,000,000 to SEK 1,500,000,000 per quarter. And we will update you as we move along on that journey. But rest assured, our focus is again not on closing a deal specific quarter, but much rather on maximizing the net present value of our patent portfolio. And that's what we will focus on, not on an individual quarter. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alexander. We will move to the next question, Daniel Juber from sorry, Daniel Juber from Handelsbanken. So please, Daniel. Thank you very much and a big congratulations for this strong report. I have a question on your near term planning assumptions. You expect less visible seasonality quarter on quarter on back of the strong 5 gs momentum. I was wondering if we should expect this when it comes also to the North American market? If you can comment on that would be great. Thank you. North America thanks, Daniel. The momentum continues in North America. It's been Strong throughout this year. And now of course, we also see maybe for a bit More long term that the field band auctions have been completed, as you know, and that will lead to investments in that spectrum band as well. But that's more towards the end of the year. Short term, we see that the momentum will continue in North America. And We are a big part of the rollouts of Xeno for all the Tier 1s there. So that will continue. Perfect. Thank you so much. And then we'll go back to the queue. Okay. I knew that on it. Thank you. And we will move to the next question, This is from Alex Duval from Goldman Sachs. Hi, Alex. Yes. Good morning, everyone, and congrats on the robust results. I had a couple of quick questions. Firstly, you've talked about market share gains from all competitors. I wondered to what extent can that continue this year and what are the key functions or attributes to your product that are allowing this. In the past, you've talked about ease of rollout and things like dynamic spectrum sharing. I wondered if you could talk about what will be the key factors and the extent to which you can maintain or extend your lead as presumably others will want to catch up. Also it looks like North America and China have been key drivers of growth this year. But as we go into 2021, it seems like you're talking about market growth for the European market. I wondered what you're seeing in Europe that gives you that confidence given your comment just now that there could be a risk that Europe could be lagging behind others. What are Telco saying to you? And to what extent do you see 5 gs helping to underpin the digital economy in Europe? Many thanks. If we start with the market share gains, I would say what we see now is the Deployments, our deployments in the field, when we can make comparisons, we clearly have a very strong performance, which I think is the key driver why we see this attractiveness for our customers. The other things we have invested over the past few years in improving our, Call it cost TCO costs, so the total cost of ownership for our customers. And that, of course, is an important aspect when they look at our product compared to competitors. And of course, we have over the last few years shown that we deliver on the roadmap commitments we have made, which made the customers also appreciate the road map we show, but also, of course, our ability to execute on that. So I would say we're seeing this or these gains now happening in several markets around the world. And I think it shows the investments we made for a long Time in R and D, and we increased in 2017. If you look at Europe, why we're You hear us be a bit more upbeat. It's really that we see the market share gains. It's more driven by the market share gains than the general market growth for our outlook in Europe. What we're hoping for is, of course, that we will start to see some more 5 gs rollouts on a bigger scale in Europe during 2021, but that would further underpin growth in Europe. So most of what we're seeing so far is really attributable to share gains. And of course, share gains that you cannot expect to continue forever, right? So it is really important that we start to see the market come back to an underlying growth for the long term. But we think the migration to 5 gs is inevitable. It's attractive for the consumer, kind of generates value for the end user, but it also addresses the cost position from growing data traffic in the networks. So this is a migration that will happen. It's more and we see that in all other markets. So we believe it's likely to happen in Europe as well. Okay, Alex. Thanks. Thank you. And then we'll move to the next question, which comes from Sebastian Stavowicz from Kepler Cheuvreux. Hi, Sebastian. Yes, hello and thanks for taking the question. One question in China. Could you please make an update on this market? Do you have any 5 gs tender ongoing there? And if yes, when do you expect the results from those 5 gs tenders? And a quick one on The component shortage that is affecting the semiconductor industry, have you seen any impact so far? And how do you see the situation evolving For your specific supply chain and sourcing. Thank you. So your second question was about the supply chain development of the Component shortage for the big team industry. Yes, component shortage. Yes. What if we start in China, there are Continuous ongoing tenders there. So far, we've seen some we read the press like everyone else, so we see what goes on there. But in addition, we've possibly seen some hesitation and uncertainties among our customers. But so far, No significant impact at all. And we continue to drive the business forward. And we believe our customers would like us in the network. And we see that kind of overall moving along in a quite good way. And as I said before, China is aggressively rolling out 5 gs. So we are it's an important market for us to be present in for more from a technology leadership point of view than possibly the volume. But we are continuing to invest and see see no reason to not do that. If we look at the supply chain, And you're right. The semiconductor market is rather tight. But you may also remember that we took decisions already in 2018 to, in a way, deconstruct our whatever you want to call it, remove as much restrictions in our supply chain and actually create more supply chain flexibility. So we are not seeing any effects now. We can continue to supply our customers with what they demand. And if the current conditions continue for years, of course, we're going to have issues as well. But right now, we feel very comfortable about our delivery capabilities. Okay, Sebastian. Thank you. We will move to the next question, which comes from Peter Rabbit at Swedish Television. So please, Peter, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you very much. Mr. Bojercom, I would like to ask you about China. You are gaining market share there. You are widening the scope there on the full year. But what happened after 20th October last year when the Swedish authorities decided to close out and why? Yes. As we said, we continue to See a demand in China. We read the press like you do, but we continue to invest in the business. And we have so far not seen any material effects on the business. Okay, Peter? Yes. But are you can I do another question? Sure. Yes. Greg, have you taken any other steps In China, because of what happened in Sweden? We are continuing what we have done and I we just went through that is that we have invested in flexibility and resiliency in our business. That's something we have continued to do during 2020. And that allows us to be flexible to manage different type of implications that we can see in the business, Being this question, being other questions. So that is something we are continuously doing. But otherwise, Our business continues and we'll continue to invest in the business like we always have. Okay, Peter. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move to the next question. And the next question is from Achal Sotani At Credit Suisse, Alain, can you hear us? Yes. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. A couple of questions. First, on the competitive landscape, when we think about Huawei getting restricted from a number of countries, ZTE still falling behind on 5 gs. What is the situation when it comes to telco operators Trying to find alternative suppliers, be it Samsung. Have you seen Samsung when you go for these 5 gs bids in Europe, Are you seeing Samsung coming up as a credible competitor in the long term? And then secondly, on the Open RAN situation, Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about Open RAN, especially in Europe. A number of telcos have come together and formed an alliance. So how well positioned Ericsson is in that open world environment Open RAN environment in the future? And how should we think about the change in your business model if and when Open RAN starts to get massively adopted? Thank you. On your first question, I think it's Fair, from our point of view, we're focusing on Ericsson. We're focusing on that business. And you know the how the market looks and our Customer looks at different vendors. I think that's a question better asked to them than to us. So that is, I think a little bit hard for me to address. What I can say is that it continues to be a competitive market around the world. And we've seen some vendors be Aggressive on price, driving price discussions, etcetera. But I think overall, it's no change compared to how it's been in 2018, 2019 2020. So that kind of is a general, call it, background to the whole industry. So I think you can rest assured that the market will continue to be competitive going forward. I know the discussion on Open RAN and you all know that we have also championed and pioneered increased openness and cross industry collaboration as a way to speed up innovation. So for us, we're involved in Open RAN. We're one of the key contributors in the work in that forum. But at the same time, we see right now that speed to market as well as Price performance results, the integrated solutions will continue to be a majority of the network deployments for the coming years. And this is in reality driven by the 2 large areas in North America as well as in China, where they are pushing ahead on deploying 5 gs now. So the discussion when kind of open RAN is and that architecture is going to be truly competitive. I think it's a bit hard to address right now, But it's not the near term question. We don't see it really ready for prime time, except for some low performance applications or segments in the market. I think instead here the discussion ought to be especially here in Europe should be Shouldn't we drive forward on 5 gs networks now? And otherwise, if we don't do that, we supposed the whole industry in Europe to fall behind due to the disruption that actually happened in the consumer market On 4 gs, that will now happen in the enterprise market with 5 gs. And I think that's a more healthy debate to be had in Europe. What can we do to speed up that deployment? Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Achal. Then we'll move to the next question. And the next question is from Jan Harqvist from SEB. Good morning, Jan. Good morning. Two questions, if I may. The first one, tag along on previous questions on competition. But do you see, I mean, 2 of your competitors, they are struggling a bit on the product side. So do you see any irrational pricing behavior in the market as of now due to that? And the second question relates to OpEx, which was quite low in The quarter, as you say, partly related to less traveling due to the pandemic. But when do you when you plan for 2021 on your OpEx, Do you assume some sort of traveling resuming and things going back to normal that OpEx will come up a bit, leaving all patent disputes and FX aside? Or how should we look upon OpEx in 2021? Thank you. Thanks, Johan. When it comes to OpEx going forward, what we can say in general and you know We don't really guide specifically on individual lines and so on in the P and L. But if you look at 2021 OpEx, we don't expect any massive moves compared with 2020. But of course, we have talked about a certain number of items that Cradlepoint, of course, is added. We only have 2 months of Cradlepoint in 2020 and, of course, the full year 2021. And then we have talked about litigation costs as well in relation to the IPR negotiations for renewals and so on. So there are certain items like that. But overall, I would say 2020 is probably a fairly good guide for 2021 as well. When traveling will resume and to what extent? Very hard to say. I guess That's something everyone in the world thinks about. I suppose a reasonable estimate is that we will not go back to Pre COVID travel levels that it's likely to increase a bit from 2020 Whenever we can say that we are out of the pandemic. We can even say on travel that some parts of the world have traveled as normal Yes. Also this last quarter. So don't think travel has gone to 0? No, it's not. And of course, we are still rolling out networks in the world and some Yes, definitely have come out of lockdown situations and so on. So there has been travel, but of course, on a very different level than pre COVID. If you look at the question on competition, I would say the pricing environment is not that different. It's been the same pretty much throughout 2020. So we've been able to work in that environment and still, as you have seen, increased gross margins. So there are some, what I would label, aggressive and Possibly rational pricing behaviors in the market, but that's been throughout the year. So it's nothing that has really changed in the end of the year. It's been there. I don't know what to say. We've been able to work in that environment, Thanks to a competitive product portfolio, but also a very good cost position with that we achieved by investing in R and D again to drive down the cost of the products. So I feel I don't expect any dramatic changes in the market behavior going forward. But it, of course, has elements of aggressiveness, but that it always has. Okay, Janna. Thank you. Thank you, Janna. We'll move to the next one. And the next question is from I can hear you. Good morning. Good morning to all And thank you for taking my questions. Again, on the market share gains here, you mentioned you take some from all competitors. Could you elaborate a bit on the regions where you see the highest share gains? And also if you can mention something on order inquiries overall, which has not Yes, led to an order win, so to speak, as of the beginning of this year as well. And a follow-up on another discussion on the software part. I see it's 22% in 2020, up 1% from last year and has risen steadily. Can you talk about what you expect here in the coming 5 years? It's 30% realistic here. Thank you. If we start with the latter part, one of our strategies have been to increase the software content. So that is actually one of our focus areas. So we continue to do that. And where that is going to take us at the end of the day, except that it's going to be an increasing portion, as you have seen in the past, and that will continue to increase. We're consistently working on that. And that's is one of the key parts which allows us to say that our target for a long term margin is going to be 15% to 18%. That will be underpinned by growing software content. The first question. Market share gains. Yes, market share gains. And it's actually It's clear that we see market share gains in Europe. That is what has allowed us to get back to growth in Europe. The underlying market, we don't see really growing. So Europe is a clear market share gain. We've also seen strong gains in North America, where we have it is a part of the Strong growth profile we've seen in the U. S. And we have share gains there with a couple of operators in both the U. S. As well as Canada. We also and it's well publicized, we have a market share gain in China as well. So we have a larger share of 5 gs than we had of 4 gs. So that is also driving our growth. We're seeing increased market share as well in Australia. We're seeing it in other parts of Asia as well. So the market share gains, it's not that it's really isolated to one market or one segment. It's actually across the board. What makes us comfortable is also that we're seeing or we're comfortable with believing at least that we can strengthen our business is what we see on the What I would say would be preorder, I. E, discussions with customers on deployment plans, chances to win additional market share. So we see actually a very robust development there. And that makes us believe that we have a very strong position right now, and we want to capitalize on that. But don't leave the question thinking that we're it's an isolated market share gain that drove all of this. No, it's actually much more widespread. Okay, Fredrik. We'll move to Frjeryk Huttel at Danske Bank. Frjeryk, can you hear me? Hi, Fredrik. You disappeared there. Then we'll move to the next one, Frank Maurer at DNB. Hello, Frank. Good morning. Good morning. So yes, I think most of my questions have been partially answered at least. So but If you could help me a little bit about how to think about gross margins for 2021. Are you I think you indicated that you are comfortable in general with your ability to meet price pressure, for instance, in North America and elsewhere with due to your investments in R and D that allows you to continue to reduce hardware costs and so on. Do you expect that to continue this year? And the second point or question relating to this is whether or not you expect a similar commodity mix And business mix this year as you had in 2020. Thank you. Good. Okay. Yes. Thanks, Frank. Yes. So on the gross margin side, of course, there are, as usual, puts and takes. And you mentioned some of them yourselves, including Constantly taking out cost out of the portfolio and that will continue. That's a relentless effort, of course, in R and D to accomplish that. And you have seen the historical development of gross margin. It's really supported to a very large extent by that, the fact that we are cost to have a cost structure that is more and more competitive. And that will continue, of course. And then We have flagged, as you know, for certain things that will impact the next year, including the IPR, of course, which is also impacting gross margin. So we have to take that into account. But otherwise, I think We are proud of the gross margin development so far, and we will certainly fight to continue in this direction as well in 2021 and beyond. Thanks, Frank. We'll move to the last question. Yes, thank you, Frank. Sorry, there was a second. Commodity mix for full year 2021, that was the question, right? Yes. But I think what we saw in the Q4 when it The commodity mix is also that the hardware portion was large. And that's as I think I said before, that's actually a very good sign because it's an evidence or a result of gaining footprint. And that we expect to continue now as 5 Deployments continue. So at least in the beginning of the first half or so, twenty twenty one, we will see large hardware volumes being delivered, and that's a good thing. And then coming back to the last question there on software, of course, that's the overall ambition to continue to increase the software share in our offering. And that goes both for networks and digital services business as well as emerging business and other, of course. Okay then. Thank you, Frank. We'll then move to the last question for this session. That is then we have Fjerdik Littell back here, Galsky Bank. Peter, can you hear us now? Yes. I can hear you clearly. I hope you can hear me as well. Perfect. Yes. Just a follow-up on the market share gains. Sorry for pushing one more of those questions. But Outside of Europe and North America, where it is probably so that some operators also leaning more towards you and maybe Nokia, instead of the Chinese, can you see market share gains in more neutral aspects? Are you sort of on Technology aspects and total cost of ownership in other regions would be interesting to hear sort of where you stand towards maybe your toughest competitor? Thank you. Thank you. As I said, we see market share gains across the board, right? It's not isolated to individual countries where there have been restrictions. So I would say when you look, There are a number of countries around the world where we have strengthened our position. And that makes us see that we gained that footprint based on the technology we can offer. And it's still a competitive market, so it's no way granted that everything will go to us. But we can see that we are having a disproportionate win ratio. So that's why I feel very about our competitiveness of the portfolio, not only from a product feature and road map point of view, but also from a cost point of view. And that's equally important in a competitive market. So you see our market share gains That may not be visible in numbers yet, but it is in Africa, it's in Asia, it's in Latin America as well. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you very much for that. Thank you, Fredrik. So thank you for all good questions today. But Before we close the call, I know that Borje wants to have some final remarks. So please go ahead. Well, one thing, Peter, it's different from you telling me that I have to. So I just want to end by saying we're Proud of the delivery in a solid 2020. We're not happy. That's because we see a lot of improvement areas, And we are continuing to invest in those improvement areas. So we are committed on the target for 2022 as a milestone to reaching the long term EBITDA margin target of 15% to 18%, where we're really investing and spending the effort to make sure that we deliver. With that, thank you all for listening in, and I wish you a great rest of the Friday and a happy weekend. Thank you.