Welcome to Investor’s annual accounts 2021 presentation. We are glad that you are joining us here today, and you can join us over the phone or over the web on our website, investorab.com. We will soon hear our CEO, Johan Forssell, and CFO, Helena Saxon, present the annual accounts. After that, we will have a Q&A session, and you can pose your questions then over the phone as usual, or also in the chat on the web. Warm welcome. By that, I hand over to you, Johan.
Thank you, Viveka, and welcome to this quarterly results presentation. If we start on the first page, I think Despite all the challenges that we had during the past year, we did in fact see a gradual improvement of the global economy during the year. Of course, that in combination with the low interest rate environment also supported the stock market. The strong equity market, of course, benefited Investor. Even adjusting for that, I think it's fair to say that 2021 was a very strong year for Investor. During the year, our net asset value grew by more than 40%, and our total shareholder return was up 55%, and that can be compared with the stock market in Sweden being up 39%.
If we look on the corresponding figure for the fourth quarter, our net asset value was up 12%, and our total shareholder return was up 21%, and that can be compared with the stock market being up 12%. Importantly, I think that overall our companies are delivering good operational performance. They have been able to really manage the challenges out there, not least the pandemic and the supply chain related challenges. On the listed companies, a number of the companies have made important strategic acquisitions and investments during the year. Within Patricia, a number of the companies have made sizable add-on acquisition, and I will come back to that later on.
The investment in EQT developed strongly during the year and was up more than 100%, and the cash flow at SEK 4.8 billion was the second best in the history. We sharpen our climate targets, and we are continuously putting high effort in sustainability, putting in our value creation plans, and especially, of course, an extra focus is on the energy transitions that affect a number of our companies. Due to the strong performance during the year and also the strong financial position that we have, with the leverage of less than 2%, the board decided to increase the dividend per share from SEK 3.50 - SEK 4, which is an increase of 14%. A few words about the listed companies.
The total shareholder return was up 44% in 2021, and it was up 11% in the fourth quarter. The priority areas for these companies are sustainability, including the energy transition, innovation, technology development, and then talent management and succession planning. We are spending a lot of time, of course, on making sure we have the right people on the boards, in the management teams, in our companies. I mentioned that there has been a number of important acquisitions in the listed companies. A few examples are Ericsson's acquisition of Vonage, expanding the business into the enterprise segment. We have the Electrolux Professional that did an important acquisition in the U.S. We also had the Husqvarna that made the acquisition of Orbit Irrigation.
Together with the Gardena division, they will be a clear leader in that area globally. We had the bid on Sobi that was withdrawn. We supported the bid in line with the board of Sobi. The fact is that the bidder came up to 87% and not 90%, so it did not go through. Now our focus is just to work close with the company and really make sure that we maximize the long-term value creation of this fine company. We should not forget that Sobi has a very strong position within rare diseases, and we will be fully behind to develop the company. During the quarter, we invested SEK 1 billion in Ericsson, and we basically took an opportunity after the announcement of the Vonage acquisition.
The stock took a hit, and we saw good value and invested in Ericsson. Moving then over to Patricia, the total return was 3% during the year. It was down 1% in the fourth quarter, and Helena will come back to that later on. Atlas Antibodies became a new subsidiary for us in connection with the acquisition of Evitria. It's great to see that the start has been excellent, and Evitria that was acquired has delivered a very good performance after the acquisition. During the year, we divested Grand Hôtel and several of the subsidiaries made important add-on acquisitions that I will comment a little bit on the next page.
We have Advanced Instruments that you have seen since we acquired the company, roughly a year ago, have actually performed extremely well ahead of our expectations when we made the acquisition. They recently acquired Solentim, which has a very strong leading position in the niche of cell line development. This company has had a very strong quarter, and the beauty here is that they boost the old Advanced Instruments with the osmolality testing instruments and Solentim, they have a significant exposure to the biopharma industry. We see good opportunities to sell these to the same customers. In addition, we see significant potential to develop on the R&D side even stronger products for the future. Atlas Antibodies, I mentioned the acquisition of Evitria, has built a very strong position within antibodies.
Sarnova acquired Allied 100, which is active within AEDs or heart starters. BraunAbility acquired Q'Straint. They have a very strong market share when it comes to securement of wheelchairs in different kind of vehicles. In total, Patricia has invested SEK 6 billion in add-on acquisitions. There are, of course, a couple of the other companies that have also made acquisitions, smaller ones during the year. In the fourth quarter, we announced that Piab, for example, acquired AIRBEST in China. With that acquisition, they will significantly improve the market position in the Chinese market. If we then move to the operational performance of the company during the quarter, the organic sales for the subsidiaries was down 10% and the profit was down 23%.
If we exclude Mölnlycke that I will come back to, the major subsidiaries had a very good development with an organic sales growth of 8% and a profit growth of 24%. Saying a few words about, then, Mölnlycke. I think it's fair to say that the development in the quarter was in line with our expectations and also in line with what we tried to communicate in connection with the third quarter report. We have a situation where on the one hand, Wound Care, which represents a little bit more than 50% of revenues in the quarter, they continue to develop really well with an organic growth of 8% and a strong profitability. On the other hand, we have more challenges during the quarter in Surgical that was down 48%.
That figure is heavily distorted by the PPE contracts that we have talked about many times. As you can see on the chart, the PPE contracts really peaked in the fourth quarter of 2020, and in this quarter, it was basically zero. That loss explains most of the sales loss during the quarter compared to last year. The other challenge was gloves. That is related to the fact that we previously had to close our plant in Malaysia that produces these gloves. That has also affected the fourth quarter of last year. This is a highly profitable product, so this also had a significant impact on the profitability in the quarter.
If we then look forward, we can split the different parts, I think, and comment one by one. Wound Care, I mentioned, good development, and we hope and expect that it will continue to develop well in the future. When it comes to gloves, the plant is now up and running at 100% capacity, but there are still transportation challenges, especially when it comes to transporting these gloves from the plant in Malaysia to the important market in the U.S. You have different kind of supply chain challenges in ports, in transportation, and so forth. Overall, we expect now that gloves gradually during the year will improve. There is a very strong backlog and strong demand for the products, and Mölnlycke have very strong products in this area.
Hopefully, this should gradually improve during the year. When it comes to the PPE contract, as I mentioned, the peak was clearly in the fourth quarter of 2020. We also had some PPE sales in the first quarter 2021, so that will affect the next quarter, but not to the same extent as in the fourth quarter. Then there is a very little small part remaining in the second quarter of 2021. After that, it has been zero. Gradually, this year-over-year effect should diminish. Saying then a few words about the other subsidiaries, Atlas Antibodies had a very good organic growth of 19%. Evitria grew faster than the old Atlas Antibodies, but both were growing in the quarter.
You can see the profitability was at a very high level and improved slightly compared to last year. Advanced Instruments had a very strong development with an organic growth of 18%. The acquisition that I mentioned previously, Solentim, they are of course not part of the organic growth, but they grew significantly faster than the 18%. The underlying profit margin is down about 3% year-over-year, and the main reason is that Solentim has a lower margin than the old Advanced Instruments. Roughly on an EBITDA level, you can say that the old Advanced Instruments were running at, call it a 50% margin, while Solentim is running at a roughly 30% margin. Laborie, strong development, organic growth of 14%, and as you can see, also very sharp profitability improvement.
Here we did see good growth in all areas, both urology, GI, and also maternal and child business. BraunAbility continued to recover and grew by 14% in the quarter. Here we did see that the margin was actually slightly below last year, and that is mainly related to supply chain challenges that is affecting BraunAbility. This was partly mitigated by price increases. Piab grew 8% in the quarter, and the profitability was down, as you can see, but that is mainly impacted by a write-down of a discontinued product line and the transaction cost related to the Chinese acquisition, AIRBEST, that I mentioned previously. The underlying development in Piab is strong. Permobil grew 6% organically in the quarter, and in this quarter it was mainly driven by Europe and the U.S. while Asia was flat.
Here we did see that the margin was down. In Permobil this was impacted by investment in a strategic product development product that the company is driving, and that was the key reason for the margin fall. Even if we exclude that part, the margin was actually down somewhat year-over-year, and that is mainly related to increased cost for supply and logistic challenges. Sarnova was flat in the quarter, and there are two key reasons for that. Number one, emergency preparedness business was very strong in the fourth quarter 2020 due to COVID-19. That was not repeated to the same level this year. Secondly, in this quarter, the AED or HeartStart business had significant supply chain challenges since they actually have chips in them. That is the reason.
The revenue cycle management business and the acute business both grows in the quarter. You can see the profitability is solid. Sarnova is also continuing to develop well underlying. EQT, of course, fantastic return, up more than 100% during the year and 30% in the quarter. Of course, to a large extent driven by the strong share price increase in the listed company, EQT AB. As you can see, also the funds developed very strong returns during the year, up 70%. SEK 4.8 billion in cash flow to Investor. As I mentioned before, that's the second highest ever. There has been a very high fund activity within EQT during the year. During the year, they made two strategic acquisition.
The biggest one was Exeter within the real estate market, adding about EUR 9 billion to assets under management. Then they also did an acquisition in Europe, Life Sciences Partners, which is a healthcare venture capital business with about EUR 2 billion assets under management. Looking forward, I think that we are well-positioned to continue to deliver good returns. If we try to frame it a little bit, of course, we know that the tailwind that we had in 2021 with an improved economy, low interest rates, that is, of course, feeding through now into the start of the year. We are also seeing, of course, a number of challenges and uncertainties, not the least the spiraling inflation that we have seen.
It's very clear that Fed now has indicated that they will increase the interest rates. In addition to that, the supply chain challenges remain, and they will remain in the first quarter. Hopefully, they will then gradually be easing out. Let's see how it develops, but we can see that it will continue to be supply chain challenges in the first quarter. We are in addition to that, of course, also seeing the geopolitical tensions increasing. We have talked about China and the U.S. before, and then of course, we have the situation around Ukraine. All in all, it is not unlikely, I think, that we will see some increased volatility entering 2022. For us at Investor, I think we have a strong position.
We have a portfolio of very strong companies in attractive markets with strong market shares. We have a very strong financial position at Investor. If there will be volatility, there will also be opportunities, and I think that we are ready to act. Our strategy remains firm. We will have the focus on our prioritized areas that I talked about before, technology development, sustainability, people questions, to mention the key areas.
Even though we have a clear strategy and clear focus areas, I think it's important to highlight that we understand that we need to work very hard every quarter on efficiency because of course the long term consists of many short terms, so execution, not the least with all the supply chain challenges, will be top on the mind during the year. With that, I hand over to Helena.
Thank you, Johan. Okay. Let's first have a look at the adjusted net asset value, and this graph shows the development for the last five years. We can see that the year ended at SEK 761 billion in adjusted net asset value. We can also see that the average annual growth with dividend added back for this five-year period amounts to 20%. Looking at the total return by business area, we can also see that it's quite a mixed picture. The smallest business area, EQT, delivered a total return of 30% in the fourth quarter, as much as 111% in the year, as Johan already mentioned. The listed companies, which is 2/3 of the portfolio, had a strong year as well with 11% in the quarter and 44% for the full year.
While at the same time, Patricia had a tougher quarter, the value development -1%, and for the year, the total return was 3%. Looking a little closer at listed companies, we can see that the total amount of listed companies amounted to SEK 515 billion at the end of the quarter. While Q4 TSR was just below SIXRX, the return for the year, the total shareholder return of 44% beat SIXRX of 39%. Of course, there was a mix of performances in that portfolio as well. While the Ericsson and Saab share prices development was flat, we saw several companies, not the least Nasdaq, SEB, ABB, Atlas Copco, and Epiroc, performing over 50% or more in the year.
Going over to Patricia Industries and the sequential development of the estimated market values in the quarter. Well, we already said that here was more of a flat development, but still there were several companies' values that developed well and increased, while Permobil and Mölnlycke weighed on performance in this quarter. On the next slide, we can see the major drivers. Mölnlycke's estimated market value declined by SEK 2.2 billion in the quarter. This was due to lower multiples, lower earnings, partly mitigated by cash flow. There was also a distribution in the quarter of EUR 50 million to Patricia Industries. Permobil's value declined SEK 1.7 billion due to lower multiples and earnings. Laborie on the other hand was up SEK half a billion due to higher earnings and currency effects that were also positive, but also here multiples contracted.
Vectura's value increased by SEK 0.7 billion, and this was due to an increase of the value of the property portfolio. Our financial position at the end of the year was very strong, and the leverage declined to below 2%. On the next slide, I will show that we are also maintaining our financial flexibility. I know you have seen these graphs before, but they are now updated with a sixth year. You can see that the sources of cash flow are several, or actually all business areas contribute to the cash flow. Together, they delivered SEK 122 billion for the last six years. Then you might wonder, what do we use this cash flow for? Well, half of it is distributed to shareholders through dividends.
Almost a third has been used to develop the Patricia portfolio, and during this period, 6 new subsidiaries have been acquired. We've also invested in the listed companies, and during this period, we've also reduced net debt by SEK 6 billion, and leverage is down from in the beginning of the period to just below 2%, as I mentioned earlier, from 7% - 2%. As you know, our goal is to pay a steadily rising dividend, and the Investor board has decided, based on an overall strong 2021 and our financial position to propose a dividend of SEK 4 per share to the AGM in May.
This dividend will be paid out in two installments, three plus one during the year, May and November. We will end on my favorite slide, which shows the average annual total return to shareholders. You can see that in all these periods, we have managed to achieve our internal return requirement, but we have also managed to outperform SIXRX both in the short and the long term. That concludes my part of the presentation, and with that, I hand over to you, Viveka.
Thank you. Thank you, Johan, and thank you Helena. We will now move over to our Q&A session. I know we have a few questions that have come in over the chat, on the web. But I thought we would start out with the, if we have any questions over the phone, and by that, I would like to hand over to our operator.
Our first question comes from Derek Laliberté with ABG. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, and good afternoon. I was wondering on the dividend decision if you could just provide a bit more clarity on the background of the decision. I know that you strive to pay a steadily rising dividend, but this was actually the largest percentage increase in quite some time if we adjust for the sort of pandemic cost lower dividend. I was wondering could you just sort of consider the factors of the cash flows related to dividends and transactions in the portfolio, how you view the investment pipeline and obviously the low net gearing situation? Probably everything played in, but I think you only mentioned the leverage comment in the report.
Any additional favor that would be helpful? Thank you.
Yeah, I think that the reasoning in the Board regarding the dividend level was made on a holistic view. We had a very strong year and we believe that even though, as I mentioned, there are a lot of challenges and uncertainty out there, but I think that our companies are generally in good shape. We have a strong year behind us, and we have a very strong financial position, both when it comes to the leverage, but we also have a very strong gross cash position of about SEK 24 billion. All in all, the Board concluded that this is the level that we believe is justified.
Gotcha. I was wondering on Mölnlycke if you can say something about the margin outlook here that was down quite a bit in the quarter, considering all these factors with the increased raw materials prices and supply chain related issues, et cetera?
No, I mean, you know that we don't give forecasts in areas that we don't know because we don't want to guess. If I try to say a few words about what we do believe, what we see right now, and then of course, what will happen in the coming months and the coming year is always difficult to predict. I think it's fair to say that if you look on the things that really put the weight on the margin in the quarter, and starting with gloves, over the year, we clearly expect to see a clear improvement on both on the sales level and profitability on gloves.
In the first quarter, there will remain challenges, because there are still, even though the factory is up and running in Malaysia, there are still challenges to get it out to the customers. Sometimes you will have to take more expensive routes to reach the customers. After that, from the second quarter onward, we expect to see clear improvements, of course, as long as the demand level stays firm. There is a good backlog when it comes to gloves.
If you take away the PPE business, or the contract, the big PPE contracts within Surgical, and you look on the remaining parts of what we call the ORS business, clothes, drapes, trays, and so forth, I think it's fair to say that this business has been a little bit more than average or clearly more than average hit by the logistics challenges. That is something that the management team is working on, working with efficiency, finding new solutions, and also in a number of cases, actually working on the pricing to adjust for the increased cost levels we are seeing. There are clear plans in place to address not only the top line, but also the profitability.
That is what we see and the management is working on all these areas.
Okay. Thank you. That was really helpful. Just finally on that, on the Surgical business, adjusted for PPE, how did that grow in the quarter? Apologies if this is mentioned somewhere.
No, it is not. If you take the ORS business excluding the PPE contracts, it was down slightly in the quarter, year -over -year. If you look at the gloves year -over -year, it was down significantly compared to last year in terms of revenues.
Thank you. Yeah, that was all for me at this point.
Our next question comes from Joachim Gunell with DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. To follow up on Derek's initial question, can the raised dividend now be seen slightly in the light of that, the fact that you guys laid out, I mean, in the Q3 report made a slight nuance shift to the dividend policy, because, I mean, obviously this will be not volatile, but it will shift from year -to -year your upstream cash flow generation. But I mean, it is still, I mean, you're still only, so to say, paying like roughly 50% of received cash flows now. Can we expect more, call it a flexible dividend policy going forward that should follow the cash flow trajectory more?
You should not read that there is any connection with the slightly higher dividend increase this year to the change we did in the wording of the dividend policy. The changed wording on the dividend policy was mainly related to the fact that we now more and more, as you know, we focus on the adjusted net asset value, while the previous dividend policy referred to book values. That was the key reason for the change. The increase of 14% this year was more related to holistic judgment that I mentioned earlier that the board did based on our financial position and the overall performance.
Worth a shot. Well, okay, now that's clear. With regards to, I mean, obviously very, I mean, well capitalized and have a solid financial position here, but in regards to the withdrawn bid for Sobi, does this in any way have any implications for your capital allocation framework or investment priorities going into this year?
Sorry, I didn't hear. You mean that the situation that the fact that Sobi was not divested, if that will affect our investments?
Yes.
No, I don't think it will materially affect it. Of course, if Sobi would have been divested over a number of years, we would have needed to step up the investment pace. Given the strong financial position we have with the gross cash of SEK 24 billion and the leverage below 2%, we have ample flexibility to act on the opportunities we see both in Patricia listed and also opportunities within EQT.
Understood. The final one for me, with regards to the fact that you bought Ericsson shares here in Q4, can you just talk a bit about, I mean, the call it the investment process for those decisions? I mean, looking at the historical levels where you have built your positions in core holdings, it have proven to be in a quite call it lucrative timing. So, I mean, how does that call it framework work and also with regards to that, how does, I mean, how do your perceived intrinsic value of your holdings shift?
Thank you. If you take, of course, we have invested in a number of companies over the last couple of years and we have actually been able to generate a very good return, well above 20% on those investments. If you take Ericsson as one example, where we have increased our ownership from 5% - 8% now over some five, six, seven years, the initial purchases we did at very attractive levels. I don't have the exact figures, but it was probably in the SEK 50-SEK 55 per share a number of years back. The second phase was actually in March or so 2020 when we had a big setback in connection with the outbreak of corona.
At that time, we probably bought at something like SEK 65-SEK 70. In this case, we have acquired shares for slightly below SEK 94 per share. In this case, we did it after the announcement of the Vonage acquisition. The stock took a hit, and we saw an opportunity, and we saw good value, so we took it. The reason why we see good value is that we think that management has done a good job over a number of years to improve the market position, taking a lead on 5G, also improving profitability, and now with the latest acquisition, also expanding into new growth areas within the enterprise segment. We basically saw good value, and we can be rather flexible to act on that.
Thank you. That's all from me.
Our next question comes from Oskar Lindström with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. A couple of questions from me. The first one is touching on, I think, you know, what the previous two questions were about as well, and that's rising input costs and logistics troubles and costs that were evident in Q4. And following up on that, I mean, to what extent and when do you expect to compensate or have compensated for this through price increases? And in what companies do you see this taking longer time to achieve that compensation? And I'm talking about your Patricia companies.
It of course depends on both the lengths of the contracts in and out, and it depends on the customers and the competitive situation, how much you can act when it comes to pricing. But I think it's fair to say that all our companies are working on this at the moment. In some cases, of course, it's easier to raise prices, and in some cases it's more tough. In some cases you might have stronger, bigger buyers, and it might also be the fact that you have longer time remaining on existing contracts. If you have that, of course, you will have to eat the cost increases in the short term while it will take some time to get the price increases flow through.
In other cases, you can act very quickly, and you can raise prices to do the compensation for it. It differs between companies, based on these two aspects. I do not want to comment on the pricing initiatives in the individual companies. It's price management is high on our agenda and the company's agendas.
Yeah. Just a follow-up and see if I mean, are we going to see that you in Q1 have raised prices so that there's sort of a, you know, a couple of the companies in your portfolio where we'll see the sort of step change in pricing or price mix, if you will, in Q1 versus Q4?
Yeah, for sure there will be a number of our companies that will raise prices in the first quarter. If I should guess how it will play out, I would rather say that supply chain challenges will for sure exist during the first quarter, and some of the price increases will not filter through as early as first quarter. I think from a timing perspective, first quarter, we still need to work very hard on these issues. Gradually over the year, we should hopefully see an improvement when it comes to pricing out and the cost side.
All right. Thank you. A second question from me is on acquisitions. You've signaled, when we listened to you, last year or end of last year that you were very interested in making acquisitions, as you know, the COVID pandemic was nearing its end and you have a greater ability to visit potential targets, et cetera. Has that interest in making acquisitions shifted in any way given what we've seen since then with, you know, more worries about higher interest rates, increased geopolitical risk? Has that shifted or impacted in any way your appetite for acquisitions?
Of course we need to follow the macro environment and how that can affect the overall situation. But I would say basically no, because we have a very strong pipeline when it comes to the potential add-on acquisitions in our subsidiaries and we have a continued strong pipeline. As I mentioned in this quarter, they have executed on the AIRBEST acquisition, and they have also executed just the other day a smaller company in lifting automation in France. We have a Permobil that have acquired Panthera with the manual wheelchairs, which are the world leader on light manual wheelchairs. Those kind of opportunities, we have a rather big pipeline for many of our companies, and also some larger ones. We will continue to work.
If we believe they work in attractive niches, that they are a leading player in these niches or can strengthen the position of our companies, and that we can acquire the company at a reasonable price, then we will hit it.
All right. Thank you. Good to hear. Those were my questions.
As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Daniel Swärd with Sword Invest. Please go ahead.
Yes, I would like to congratulate you on a great year, and I only have one question. Can you count on a dividend increase of half a krona is the new normal for the years to come? Or will you go back to raising the dividend by a quarter of a krona like in previous years? There was a lost krona, so to say, during the Corona in 2020. Is that related to this increase now or is it the new normal, this rise? Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel. I cannot answer the question because what will happen, of course, is that when we are here a year from now, the board will once again make a holistic view and determine what they believe is the right level on the dividend. Our policy is to have a steadily rising dividend over time. Exactly how many percent that corresponds to might vary over time. I do believe that we have a strong underlying portfolio, both on the listed side and on the private side that generate significant cash flow because normally we have capital-light or we actually have very capital-light companies. That's, of course, a strategic benefit that we have that should support our dividend policy. Exact levels we will have to see where we are in a year from now.
Thank you.
Thank you.
At this time there's no further questions. I hand back over to our speakers.
Thank you. I know we have a few questions over the web. Magnus, why don't you come and you read them out?
Thank you. Sorry. The first one is from Samarth Agrawal of Citi. Thanks for taking my questions. Two from me. How much flexibility do you have to pass on input costs to customers if inflation and supply chain challenges persist? That one is already answered I think. There were several add-on investments with Patricia portfolio this year. Do you expect the same pace during 2022 or any step change or anything in that aspect?
I can only say that we have a good pipeline when it comes to potential add-on acquisitions. Then it is as always, it takes two to tang-
Mm-hmm
... and the price needs to be the right one. It's actually impossible to give an answer on that one.
Thank you.
No more questions?
No.
Okay. Thank you. By that, we would like to thank you for joining us here today and we will report our Q1 results on the 21st of April. See you then, if not before. Thank you so much.
Thank you.