Thank you very much, Akwasi. Welcome to the fourth quarter of 2020 report. As mentioned, my name is Johan Nordström. Together with me here today is our CFO, Carl-Fredrik Meijer. With this short introduction, I suggest we dive into our report. Next slide, please. A short introduction to Green Landscaping. Green Landscaping is the leading Nordic landscaping provider. We consist today of 27 subsidiaries located both in Norway as well as in Sweden. We firmly believe in our decentralized operating structure. This enables us to be close to our customers and have a local decision-making process. We have a large and extensive customer portfolio with very diversified contracts. We have become the leading consolidator in the Nordic landscaping market, and we have save seven acquisitions in the year of 2020. Next slide, please.
For the key financial, for the last 12 months of the year of 2020, we have a net sales of SEK 2.1 billion . We landed an EBITDA of SEK 101 million , and that gives us an EBITDA margin of 4.7%. Order backlog have grown significantly and amounts to SEK 4.4 billion . Last year's acquired company has together an annual sales volume of SEK 650 million , and today we are 1,357 employees. Next slide, please. For the fourth quarter alone, our sales grew by 29%, so that's a very high growth. The organic growth was a negative 0.5%, and as we mentioned previously, we had a discontinued unit in the Stockholm area, and as we adjust for that one, the organic growth amounted to 1% for the fourth quarter. EBITDA amounted to SEK 33.3 million compared to SEK 15 million previous year, and that amounts to an increase of 120.4%.
That gives us an EBITDA margin of the fourth quarter to 5.1% compared to 3%. We had a very strong cash flow in the quarter of SEK 100 million, and net debt grew from SEK 690 million to SEK 796 million, and that is primarily due to that we are acquiring businesses. Subsequently, three companies were acquired during the quarter, and that was Oveland Utemiljø in Norway, Bengtssons Trädgårdsanläggningar in southern part of Sweden, as well as Thormans Entreprenad in the mid of Sweden. Next slide, please. If we take a somewhat longer view on what's going on here with the revenue as well as the profitability, we can see that we have a very positive development of both revenue and margin over the years. For the year of 2020, I'm not overly happy with the financial development. It was a very challenging year.
We had in the first quarter a very mild winter that to some extent hampered the development. We have also had some integration costs during the year, and as we all know, COVID-19 has been slow for the business and had a negative impact. Taking those challenges into account, I still believe that we had a very strong performance given the challenges. Next slide, please. The order backlog amounted to SEK 4.4 billion end of 2020, which is up 24% compared to Q4 last year or 2019, when it was SEK 3.5 billion. This is primarily driven by the orders or the contracts stemming from the acquired companies, especially the companies operating in ground maintenance, which typically have long contracts.
This is a reminder again that this is a quite diverse customer base, and our 27 business units each have many contracts, up to 100 contracts each building up to this total order backlog. Next slide, please. Just to give you a flavor of what type of work we are doing and how it looks in our business. We have one example here from the city of Linköping, where we have previously one company, Green Östergötland, and then we acquired Thormans in the same city, and they have a municipality with Lejonfastigheter, and they had a tender process with three contracts, and we were able to win two out of three. What was significant in this tender process, that's the evaluation was a focus or lean towards the quality aspect of it.
If we look upon the competition compared to our companies, we saw clearly that out of 200 possible points that the bidders could achieve, we had 161 and 154, while the average was 89. When it comes to quality and the companies we have, we see that we have an advantage over the competition. Also that's how we operate, that we have two companies in one area, and they are bidding for the contracts in competition, both with other competitors, but also among themselves. That was a good example of how we operate on a local basis. Next slide, please. Another example we would like to show that's the JE Mark in Stockholm, and it's a typical stone-laying business where you have natural stone in, I would say, a high-profile building, and it's a quality work.
That's the type of work we are doing, and this is the end result you can see on the picture. Next slide, please. The following example is from Norway, where we have GAST Entreprenør who is doing the work, and it's an upgrade of a preschool area of 2,000 sq m. We basically do anything from surface water drainage to the different equipment for the playgrounds and bicycle paths and that type of thing. That's a great example of the type of work that we perform, and in this case, it was GAST Entreprenør in Oslo who done the work here. Next slide, please.
The fourth example is something that is close to our hearts, and this is to increase the biodiversity in our cities. This is our subsidiary, Jacksons Trädvård , who have created something called Malm Boxes, which is basically a hotel for insects. You can see you place these in the nature, and these are also used as seating benches, but they're quite beautiful and looks nice in our opinion. Next slide, please. When we look at our segments, it's more or less the same story that we had last quarter, which is that if you look at the year-to-date or 2020 numbers, you can see that the margins are quite healthy in four out of five regions. We have North in the top, followed by the others. Like Johan said, we are not happy with these margins, and we have had some headwind during 2020.
What happens from the 1st of January 2020 is that Norway will become its own region or segment, and Region Mid and North will merge into one. Then we will make some small adjustments to the names of the regions as well. We will come back to that when we start reporting 2021. Next slide, please. Financial position. The net debt in relation to EBITDA was 2.8, and we believe that there is room for continued acquisitions with this leverage. We had a very strong cash flow from operations after leasing payments of SEK 82 million in the quarter and SEK 116 million in the year. It's worth to mention that 48 of these came from reducing working capital in the quarter, which is something that we always work very hard to do. Like we mentioned before, we did a rights issue to, let's say, fuel the acquisition pace.
I think we delivered definitely on that, which Johan will come back to in a minute. We used SEK 364 million for acquisitions during 2020 for acquiring these seven companies. Next slide, please. Over to you, Johan.
We talk about acquisition here, and acquisition is a vital part of our strategy. Really it's about buying profitable companies led by great entrepreneurs. In the last year, I would say, we have been able to acquire seven companies. It started out with GAST Entreprenør in Norway, I believe it was in February, together with Park i Syd AB in Malmö, also in February, and that's two quality companies that joined our group. Right before the summer, we had TH Anlegg who came aboard and had become a part of GAST Entreprenør. After the summer, we made another company who came aboard, that was Hadeland Maskindrift in Norway. It's a fairly big company with annual revenue of SEK 240 million.
That was followed then by Bengtsson, which is a well-established company in the southern part of Sweden, subsequently followed by Oveland and Thormans Entreprenad by the end of the year. The grand total was SEK 650 million annual revenue, and seven companies. Focusing in on the last acquisitions we made, that was Bengtssons Trädgårdsanläggningar. It's a very well-known company in the southern part of Sweden. It's managed by Bo Bengtsson, and he has been in the business for 35 years. This is truly a high-quality company with, I would say, an extremely strong company culture. It was a great fit to our decentralized model, and they really know what they are doing, and they are quite profitable. It was a very nice addition to the group. This was followed by Oveland Utemiljø.
Sorry, Johan. This is at page 15 now. Page 15. Flip slides in the presentation to 15.
Okay.
Yeah. I'm just telling the operator. Go on, Johan. Sorry.
Okay. Are we talking about Oveland now?
Yes.
Okay, great. Oveland is located in the southern part of Norway and came aboard by the end of the year and is managed by two very skilled entrepreneurs. We are quite happy with them coming aboard as a part of Green Landscaping. They have an annual sales of about SEK 50 million. They are making profit, and they have 50 employees. The last one was Thormans Entreprenad, who was founded back in 2003, also led by, I would say, two skilled entrepreneurs. It's a quite big company. They have an annual sales of SEK 100 million with 100 employees, and we are happy to have them aboard as well. We are moving to next slide since we have some disconnected financial targets. Page 17, right?
Yeah.
Okay, good. For our financial targets, we have a target of growing by 10%, and for the year 2020, we managed 7.1%, that's slightly below our target. However, we have a CAGR of 23% in growth in 2015, we are still a fast-growing company, even though 2020 was a bit of slow year. We have the goal of EBITDA margin of 8%, right now we are at 4.7%. As we mentioned, we are not that happy with the financial performance of the year 2020, even though it was a challenging year. We have several companies who have done extremely well. The winter was tough, both in the first quarter as well as in the fourth quarter of 2020.
We had the headwinds in the COVID-19, we have had some integration costs which we have taken out of the result and not adjusted for. Overall, the financial level, so to say, could have been better, but the performance of the entities was quite strong given the circumstances. In terms of leverage, we have a goal of not exceeding 2.5, right now we are in 2.8. We are actively acquiring companies, that is, I would say, hugely value creative for the shareholders. We are a little bit on the high side, as we move on into the future here, I believe that we will stay at this level and subsequently come down. We have a goal of dividend that is at 40%.
As we are building up the market and building up the company, we have not historically had any dividend at this point of time. Next slide, please. To sum it up then, we had a quarter with, I would say, very strong growth of 29%. We improved the EBITDA margin by 2.1 units of a percent to 5.1%, and we completed seven acquisitions during the full year. All in all, we are on track with the company, and I believe we have a very strong performance, and in particular, it's looking very good into the future. I believe that was the end of the presentation here, and by that, we hand it over to Akwasi for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask an audio question, please press zero, one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw from your question, please do so by pressing zero, two to cancel. Once again, please press zero, one on your telephone keypad if you wish to ask an audio question. There'll be a brief pause as we wait for questions to be registered. Our first question comes from Fredrik Mokvist from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you, operator. First off, a question on M&A, because obviously you've had a very busy year, especially towards the end of 2020, with several acquisitions coming on board, several of those with strong full-year margins. I was hoping you could give us some indication of how much acquired companies contributed to EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter.
Sorry, Johan here. We are not disclosing those numbers at this point in time.
Is it possible to say something about how those margins compare to, so to speak, the organic margins that you have within the group?
Yes. That we can disclose. They are at or above average, so that's a key part of our strategy, that we buy profitable companies and not turnaround cases or companies that have issues. We actively seek companies who are making money, and that's a part of our strategy. Typically, a company that we acquire has a margin that is on the group average or better. For some of the companies that are located in Sweden, those numbers are available, as you well know.
Sure. That's true for the fourth quarter as well then?
I would say yes.
Okay, perfect. Also on the EBITDA development, because you write in the report that you had a product write-down in the South region, but you didn't disclose any amount on that in the report. Could you give us some figure or quantify that in any way?
What we have been quantifying is that if we combine the winter effect, I know it makes it hard for you, but we are talking about 1.5%-2% of the profit margin that is a part of both the winter effect in the year 2020 as well as, I would say, the effect of the integration of Svensk Markservice, because those costs are still linked to the integration of Svensk Markservice. We are not adjusting the EBITDA any longer, and that's why we take it over the result, and then we don't disclose it. Had we chosen to adjust for it, then we would have disclosed the integration cost.
I think, Fredrik, as you can see in the segment reporting, the quarter, you have an indication of the write-down in the report.
Okay. Looking at the earnings that you have in region South, that should give a pretty good indication of the size of the write-down then?
Yes.
Exactly. Okay, perfect. I was thinking about some projects perhaps having been delayed here in 2020. You continue to state that you are seeing some negative impact from COVID. I was just thinking, how do you see the possibility of there being a catch-up effect in the project business in 2021? If that should materialize, say customers trying to catch up on projects having been postponed, how agile are you in being able to deliver on that boost in demand?
Good question. The effect of the COVID-19 is there. It's been very hard to quantify it for us. In some cases, of course, it's easier to quantify it because you can see that in some businesses that was impacted immediately, like Jordelit, who's in the golf segment, and that basically went away for one or two months, and then it recovered and came back again. For the other companies who are more project driven, some of those projects are being postponed into 2021. Should we see a pickup to some extent? Yes, we will be able to increase our production capacity in order to meet the increase. This is huge speculation on whether or not that should be an upside in the year 2021.
Sure. That remains to be seen, but you're confident.
Yeah.
That if that materializes, you have the opportunity to address that.
Yes.
Built on employees or so.
Yes. Should we see an uptake in the project-based business? Yes, for sure. We will be capable of harvesting if there is an upside.
Okay. Looking at the East region, you've made quite a significant year-over-year improvement when it comes to margins. Could you perhaps discuss that as to how much is an effect of you being better prepared for less snow in Q4 compared to where you were in 2019, and how much of that might be related to underlying improvements that you made to some of the troubled units you have in the Eastern region?
Well, I wouldn't contribute too much to the snow in this discussion here. It's more of continued operation and continued focus on improving the performance of those entities. Of course, it's been a busy year, both in 2019 and 2020. Svensk Markservice was a fairly big company that had revenue of about SEK 850 million which we integrated into the old legacy Green Landscaping units. That's work that has been going on for the full year of 2019 and 2020. We made, I would say, some changes during the course of 2020, and we are still in the process of improving the performance of those entities which really do not deliver up to the expectations we have. There's room for improvement. That's the positive side of it, that we see that we are moving in the right direction with most of our entities.
There are a few entities that are still lagging behind. We adjust what's going on there and make sure that we are on the right track with most of our entities.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you for the questions.
Our next question comes from Dan Johansson from SEB. Please go ahead. Apologies. It appears that Dan's disconnected. Please hold whilst I try to reconnect him back into this question.
Okay.
Dan, please go ahead. Apologies. It appears Dan does not wish to ask a question. There appears to be no further questions, and I will hand back to the speakers for any other remarks.
Okay. Thank you very much. As we concluded, it was a busy year. I believe we made quite a number of significant changes for the year 2020, and we're moving on. Thank you very much for listening, and this concludes the fourth quarter report of the year 2020 from Green Landscaping. Thank you for listening.
Thank you. This now concludes our conference call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.