Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of the Q4 and full year 2021. I have our CFO, Åsa Källenius, is with me, and we will guide you through the results. 2021 have been the most profitable year so far in the history for the group. The fourth quarter confirms our strong position with good growth and profitability. We have strengthened our position further and continue to invest for future growth. Our size and strong relation with our suppliers have been crucial for our success. We have been able to offer high availability on parts and service despite the global challenges with deliveries and raw materials the past year. This has led to increased customer loyalty and a good development for us. Throughout the year, we have had a large focus on the electric car transition, making us well-positioned for the future.
I will come back to our progress in this area in a few minutes. Foremost, we have a good solid financial position with favorable conditions for future investments. As previously stated, we aim to use our strong financial position to invest in our core business and potential larger acquisitions ahead. On top of this, I'm pleased to announce that the board of directors has proposed a dividend to the shareholders of SEK 3 . Looking forward, I have confidence in that we'll keep up the pace of our profitable growth journey. Åsa, please take us through the results.
Yes. Thank you, Pehr. For 2021, we reached a new milestone for the group with net sales exceeding SEK 12 billion. With an EBIT of SEK 894 million, 2021 is the most profitable year ever in the group's history. We also report an adjusted EBIT over SEK 1 billion for the first time in the history. The Q4 was the second best ever, only beaten by 2020. We have a lower result than previous year, primarily due to the insurance compensation in comparable quarter in 2020 as well as higher transportation cost. We have also made market investments such as marketing a new establishment in foremost Mekonomen to ensure our future growth.
All in all, we are improving and taking solid steps towards our long-term financial goals. As stated, Q4 2021 is Mekonomen's second-best quarter ever, only beaten by Q4 2020. Both 2020 and 2021 have been years affected by COVID-19 with different impact, different quarters in different markets. Therefore, it gives a more relevant picture to look at 2021 and compared to 2020 on a yearly basis. I move over to page five and the overview of the full year EBIT. We can conclude that we had a successful 2021. With an EBIT of SEK 894 million, 2021 is the most profitable year in the group's history.
For the full year, we have improved EBIT by more than SEK 150 million, an improvement of 20%. All our business areas, as you see, have large increases in EBIT, and the majority of the business areas have their best sales and EBIT ever in the history. We are to some extent affected by the consequences of the pandemic, for example, the product availability and higher transportation cost. So far, though, as you can see, we have managed to parry a significant impact. Going forward, we will guard our position and our margins in order to stay on track to reach our long-term financial target. If necessary, we have the ability to adjust our costs and also our prices to the market in order to compensate for a continued increased inflation pressure. Efficiency is something we work with continuously.
On page six, we see that our gross margin increased further during 2021 from already high levels. We ended by 45.5%. Our position is stable, and as we stated, we have the possibility to compensate further for inflation pressure. Moving on to our business areas. First, we look at Denmark and FTZ. We had a continued good and impressive high EBIT margin of 10% for the full year and increased sales. In local currency, the EBIT in the quarter is higher than last year. For the full year, FTZ has record sales and record EBIT ever. We estimate an increased customer loyalty and further increased market position. We will continue to develop this going forward.
Next page in Poland and Inter-Team will continue to improve EBIT margin for the full year to 5% compared to 4% last year. This is a successful development from the 0% margin we had back in 2018. We have positive growth domestically in Poland and are also in our export business. Going forward, we will continue to guard our margins and now that we face higher transportation cost and inflation. On page 10, Mekonomen, we increased our EBIT margin and delivered an EBIT margin of 7% for the full year. As stated earlier, the lower margin in Q4 is due to the insurance compensation in Q4 2020, as well as investments in marketing and re-establishment in Norway in order to strengthen our future position.
We will be able to compensate for increasing costs from inflation pressure by lowering our cost and conduct price adjustment if necessary. Still, in absolute numbers, we report the highest EBIT since 2017 in Mekonomen for the full year, which shows that we are on the right track in Sweden and Norway. On page 11, Sørensen og Balchen, we continue to deliver strongly from very high levels previous year. The EBIT margin is impressive, 21% for the full year and with record sales and EBIT ever for Sørensen og Balchen. We are pleased to see that we maintain our long-term strong position as a sharp mixed player and one of the strongest players in this industry in Norway. That was the business areas. I now hand over to you, Pehr.
Thank you, Åsa. Again, it's a fantastic year for Mekonomen Group. Let's look at the footprint of the group. The number of workshops and branches differ slightly between the quarters. The size of the workshop matters more than the number of workshops and foremost number of mechanics per workshop. Apart from a continued large focus on our affiliated workshops, we have non-branded concepts in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The business cooperation with these workshops is very much like the affiliated workshop, except for the branding. From next report to get the clean full year comparison, we will include also these non-branded concept workshops in these numbers. Over to page 14, looking at the underlying factors, number of cars and driven kilometers, we see an unchanged solid development.
There is a continued rapid development towards the electric transition, why it's important to continue to increase our focus in that area. In line with the development, a large share of our business development is naturally focusing on electric car services. On page 16, we summarize the progress within this area. We have continued to train our workshops in EV technology. We now have 2,000 workshops meeting the requirements of our E+ standard. This is level one training, which enables workshop to do the majority of work on the EVs driving on the roads today. We now increase our ambition and conduct training on a more advanced level. Among other initiatives, we offer a more advanced level in our mobile training tour that's ongoing in Sweden. On this level, we'll meet the demands on older electric cars that needs more advanced work done around the batteries.
We're also widening our training offer in order to prepare for the electric transition, for example, within, tires for electric cars. Due to that EVs often are heavier than other cars, the tires is important to ensure safety of the EV, owner. Here we have introduced a training course for our workshops to increase their expertise. We now have a relevant spare part coverage for most common electric cars in the Nordic region. Within this area, we will continue to expand the coverage in order to be the number one to go to, for the EV owners. Over to page 17. Electrification and closely related technique is something we largely focus on within our academies in all markets.
We have had high frequency in all academies, and apart from a large number of e-learning courses, we also conducted more than 1,000 physical training days in the group. In Denmark, we are developing the first master technician program in order to further develop our training offer. This is something that we will be able to adapt to other markets when launched in accordance with our best practice strategy for the group. Moving on to slide 18, where we describe the great development within digitalization towards B2C. While we and a large part of the industry have nearly complete digital business when it comes to B2B customer journey, the B2C journey has been less developed digitally.
For the past years, we have had an increased focus on this. With the result that digital bookings or workshop services have increased with over 20% in 2021 compared to the year before. In our recently conducted customer survey, we noticed that a doubled interest for digital bookings compared to the same survey a few years ago. We expect that this development to continue to grow, and it's positive trend for us. Apart from the additional sales opportunities that the digital channels creates, we also get closer relation with the end customer in order for us to improve our offers. Our e-commerce sales B2C increased with over 40% in 2021, and this is from low levels, but it's as well a large improvement also in this area.
Moving on to page 19, we see an overview of proof of concept we have received from the recognized awards and ESG raters in 2021. We have the Logistics Initiative of the Year in Sweden, Supplier of the Year, Workshop Chain of the Year, and Marketing Campaign of the Year in Denmark. We rated AA in MSCI's ESG rating, as well as top-rated ESG performer in Sustainalytics ESG rating for both industry and regional. Over to page 20. Our vision is clear. We enable mobility today, tomorrow, and in the future, and we delivered the most profitable year ever in the group's history with a great development in all business areas. We have reached a milestone of SEK 12 billion in sales and an adjusted EBIT over SEK 1 billion.
Looking back, since we made large acquisitions in 2018, I'm proud that we now have doubled our size, but not only in sales but also in profit. We are well equipped for the future electric car fleet, and we have a good financial position to continue our journey of expansion and also reinstate the dividend. This concludes our report for the Q4 and the full year 2021, and we now look forward to your questions. You will now be able to unmute your microphone, but please raise your hand, and we will take the questions one by one. First question is from Mats Liss. Welcome.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah.
New ways of working. Yes, report there, but I had a question here about something, I guess. You mentioned that electrification is a large opportunity for you, and I guess that's you have been sort of preparing for this for quite some time now and have a good comparison in Norway, I guess. Again, I mean, the service need for electric vehicle, some say it's lower. Could you sort of make some comments there about the difference compared to, well, the diesel engine car compared to electric ones? What's your experience there?
Yes. So far the experience is that it's a little bit different kind of products for electric vehicle. Of course, there's no oil and filters, but there's other parts that needs to be changed. We see that it's some of the brake parts is actually used more. Then we have all the other trends with more cars on the streets and more kilometers driving. Even in Norway, where we have a very large portion of EVs, we don't see that it's so far at least have any significant impact on our sales in total. As we said, we need to develop our assortment because it's somewhat a little bit different products.
It's also new brands, of course, coming into the market, which we need to find the products for. I would say compared to competitors, we are definitely best in class in that area. We have the availability and yeah. There's no big drama.
Yeah. Good. If you look at the business areas, I feel that, well, Mekonomen maybe was sort of at a quite big difference compared to the comparison quarter, even if you sort of, yeah, you received the insurance compensation there. I guess you have had some supply chain issues there, and shortage of some components. Could you sort of give some flavor about the impact, year-over-year?
You also have in Mekonomen, we have made some with increased marketing. We opened two new stores in Norway, and when we open a store, it takes 12 months-18 months before it starts to be profitable. When you look at the Q4 result, there is, except for the insurance, it's also, I would say, investments in the market. When it comes to supply and then I would say that MECA, Mekonomen is no difference compared to the other business areas. Pretty much the same situation.
Okay, great. Yeah. Now we have had. Well, you mentioned the winter condition in December, and I guess, is there anything to add about the start of the year there? I guess we have had a quite mild conditions here in Stockholm, but...
I would say when we ended December and beginning of the year, we could see that there was impact due to actually lack of mechanics, because there was in the beginning of January there was a lot of sick people, and we also had these quarantine rules that made if someone in the family was sick, then everybody stayed home. That impacted the start of the year. When it comes to winter and cold, I would say that yeah last year was extremely cold, so that had a positive effect. Now we got that positive effect in December instead. But it's difficult to say. It's very early indications in the quarter.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We have Andreas Lundberg.
Yeah. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Good morning.
Great. Can I ask about the organic growth in the Q4 ? How much was, let's say, driven by price versus volumes?
We don't have that exact analysis, but a guess would be that maybe 1/3 comes from price, and the rest is volume. We don't have the exact numbers because I mean, we have price increases, but we also have changes in the assortment. If we sell more of a brake disc that costs SEK 400 for one car except for another cheaper brake disc, that's also. It's still one one, but it could be, so that's also price effect. It's difficult. I would guess that 1/3 comes from inflation, so to say.
How do you view that now into 2022? Is there a need to further hike prices?
Yeah. If this trend continue, yes. We actually what we have seen and what's discussed in the market is that most people believe that it will be continued inflation and continued price increases, higher transport costs, and so on. As well as a lot of other industry, I guess it will be the same for us.
You talked about rather good availability on your side. What would you say about the industry, and do you think that is one reason you have gained the market share?
Yeah, definitely think so. We do suffer, and we have a somewhat lower availability. We also have, due to real good relations with the suppliers and, of course, also the purchase power which we stands for, managed to get some priority. You can also see that we have increased our inventory compared to last year, and that's also active actions in order to make sure that we have the availability.
Mm-hmm. On the marketing, increased marketing investments, anything sort of new there, or what kind of activities have you been focusing on?
No. When it comes to the concrete marketing, it's a couple of things. It's a little bit more media spend, but we also had during the Q4 a little bit more possibilities to have customer events and so on, which was not possible the year before. That's, in our book, also called marketing when we have gathered workshops for smaller events and so on. It's also market investments when we, as I said before, we open some new stores, and that's typically a minus business the first 12 months- 18 months, but an enabler for future growth.
Lastly, on the growth strategy here, how do you view the organic opportunities versus, well, acquisitions basically? Where do you put most focus?
I would say that it's kind of 50/50. When it comes to acquisitions, we only do the good ones, so that's where how we work with that. Of course, more operational, it's the large focus on efficiency and to grow the core business.
What kind of acquisition will be the most interesting? Is it from a product point of view, or is it more geographically?
I would say that both is interesting, but we focus more at the moment on geographical expansion, and we're looking for little bit on the eastern side. It's Finland, it's Baltics, and it's Poland where we believe that there should be possibilities to do some good acquisitions. In the other markets, we have so high market share, so it's a little difficult. That's one priority. Of course we also look on the, let's say, on the sideways if it pops up interesting acquisition possibilities.
Cool. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Any further questions? Doesn't seem to be. Thank you everybody for listening, and wish you a great day and a great weekend. Thank you.
Thank you.