Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this presentation of the fourth quarter and the full year of 2021 for the NCC Group. My name is Tomas Carlsson, CEO, and with me here today, I have Susanne Lithander, our CFO. Let's jump straight into it with a summary of this quarter and this year. The highlights goes like this. Earnings improved for the quarter a lot, but more importantly, for the full year, EBIT up 34%. Property development contributing with two office projects in the quarter. We have had a strong cash flow for the full year and for the quarter, and we have a strong financial position. Strong orders received 9% up for the full year, and we have good demand in all countries and all business areas.
We're still working with activities to improve the earnings in Industry, and we took an important step towards our goal of EPS with ending the year with 14 SEK EPS. The board proposes a dividend of 6 SEK. That was the summary of the quarter. Let's talk about some details of this. A couple of examples of projects. This is all from Building Nordics, two hospitals, one in Denmark, one in Finland, and then an office building in Trondheim, Norway. Orders received full year 9% up, a good quarter in Q4, but also any quarter overall, good orders received.
Orders received, as a detail, in residential and offices, on a really good level, residential on levels that we haven't seen in a very long time, and office demand good throughout the company. This is almost exclusively external orders for offices. Order backlog as a consequence of that, building. We have a book-to-bill for the full year of more than one, and that's a good KPI to look at. We can see that the net sales, excluding PD, is now flattening out, and we have business areas increasing sales in the quarter. Net sales overall growing, including PD, and it's PD and Building Sweden driving this mostly and a little bit Building Nordics.
Earnings in the quarter up from below SEK 400 to SEK 605, 3.8%. I think what I'm most happy about is the overall development of the year, 3.4% for the full year and 34% improvement of the earnings to SEK 1,825 EBIT, in line with what we have been working with for a couple of years now. The drivers behind this in the quarter, it's PD contributing a lot. Other than eliminations, things relating to the businesses, but accounted for in other than eliminations. Susanne would go into that in more detail in a little while.
If we look at the full year for the earnings, 34% up again, contracting contributing a lot, PD contributing, and then industry, lots of things happening in industry, lots of one-offs, but also a disappointment in the overall asset business. Just to put this into perspective, how much is, what's the contribution from every business area? Infrastructure, Building Sweden, Building Nordics, around or above SEK 400 million with improvements in all business areas. Industry lower, due to a lot of things happening in the business area, and Property Development up 10%, and then a small negative impact from other than eliminations. 1,825 EBIT. What are the drivers behind this? Let's start with the contracting units, and that's margin improvements.
We see several consecutive quarters of margin improvements, Building Nordics, and Building Sweden around our internal target of 3.5%, after several quarters of improvements. Infrastructure, as we've mentioned many times before, the margin is diluted by a number of large projects that will have an impact on the foreseeable future going forward. We have 10 consecutive quarters of improvement from Infrastructure. Industry, lots of things happening. First of all, stone materials delivering a stable and strong earnings, so that business is doing good. Asphalt in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway clearly unsatisfactory. We've taken more actions to improve profitability in the remaining asphalt business. Asphalt Finland divested. We have a substantial negative impact in the quarter, both from operational results in Asphalt Finland, but also from the divestment.
That divestment negative impact from the divestment is more or less neutralized by a land sale that we did in the quarter. That's neutral. To give you some understanding on the underlying remaining business, look at the graph. The light blue graph, that's NCC Industry pro forma excluding operations in Denmark, and so it's the remaining business. Then you have the one-offs, both positive and negatives, roughly eliminating each other. You have an idea on what kind of performance we have in the quarter. Then finally, profit recognition from PD. We have two projects recognized profit in quarter four. Frederiks Plads 2 in Denmark, and Next in Finland, contributing a lot in the quarter.
We have now 11 ongoing projects in PD. We have so far announced or pre-announced the sales of Våltorp that will be recognized in quarter. That's a relatively small project, so it will have a small impact. Maybe more importantly, Fredriksberg D in Finland and Kineum in Gothenburg. We have a number of unsold projects ongoing, and we will get back to you with that as soon as we have something to tell you. Finally on PD, we're exploring the possibility to extend the scope to business-to-business residential. I want to be really clear on this, couple of things here. One is that we're exploring the opportunity. We haven't done anything yet.
We think that there's a good combination with our skill set on overall property development and also our skill set for building residential homes. We're starting with Sweden and Finland, but just to make sure no consumer business, but it's business to business. Really important, offices remain our main product. Finally, there's a couple of risks that we get a lot of questions on and that are relevant for the investment community. First of all, price increases and shortages and disturbances to the supply chain is evident to us. We are managing it so far, so we don't have any significant impact on the group. Second thing that we've been talking about for a couple of quarters now is the supply of cement in Sweden.
We're monitoring the situation, and we're working hard with our suppliers to find alternative sources, but we will still have a lot of uncertainty over the foreseeable future or the short and medium term. Finally, still COVID-19. In the quarter, the situation was better. It's really after the period and in the first quarter where we've seen more cases of COVID, but we're handling that in the start of the year, so far in the same good way that we've been able to handle it throughout the pandemic. With that, I will hand over to Susanne.
Thank you. Okay. First slide, we have three more of our many orders from Q4. You have the Stormwater Tunnel in Copenhagen to the right, Bromstensstaden, and the port in Hammerfest in the very northern part of Norway. The business split in 2021 in our company. To the left, we can start noting that Denmark has increased its share as a country of net sales. When it comes to net sales per business area, Infrastructure has decreased its share, and PD has increased it. Earnings have, when we look at the earnings share, we can also see the reflection of the poor performance in the Industry area. Infrastructure continued to improve earnings and margins.
Orders received was SEK 3.2 billion in the quarter, and for the year, SEK 18.4 billion, which is over 30% increase in orders received, primarily driven by Norway, but also the Swedish operations contributes to growth in orders. The backlog is SEK 18.9 billion when we end the year, and the book-to-bill was 1.1. Net sales decreased to SEK 4.9 billion in the quarter, SEK 16.3 billion for the year. That's driven also by Norway that had a lack of order intake in 2020 and the beginning of 2021. Also due to the fact that we are having, we haven't really gotten the pace up in the big new orders that we have received yet. So we are lagging a bit there timing-wise. Also some of the mega projects are in the later phases, and also they don't have a high pace at that phase.
When it comes to earnings, continued improvement, SEK 115 million in the quarter, and 10% up for the year, SEK 391 million. Margin in the quarter was 2.3%, and 2% in Sweden. Orders received were SEK 4.2 billion. Here also that offices and residentials are increasing as share of orders, sorry. Backlog increased to SEK 18 billion, and the book-to-bill was one. Net sales SEK 4.1 billion and an increase in the quarter, but also an increase for the full year with 4%. Earnings in the quarter was SEK 137 million and SEK 457 million for the full year. Margins were at 3.3% for the year and for the quarter. What drives the improvement, both in Building Sweden and in Infrastructure, is a more stable product portfolio with higher margins.
This slide shows the residential orders for Building Sweden, and as you can see, it varies a lot. In the fourth quarter last year, we had an exceptionally high level of SEK 2.5 billion in order intake for residential. 48% of that was for rentals. Building Nordics had a strong order intake in the quarter, SEK 6.5 billion, and SEK 13.3 billion for the full year, primarily driven by Norway. Several major projects in Norway that has been in the early phase has been registered in the quarter. The backlog increased to SEK 17.3 billion, and the book-to-bill was 1.2. Net sales, SEK 3.4 billion, slight increase in the quarter, but for the year, a decrease to SEK 11.3 billion. There are some variations in the area, in the business area between the countries.
Building Denmark has grown on revenue side, both in the quarter and for the year. Meanwhile, both Finland and Norway has declined for the year. Earnings, 172, is actually up compared to previous year if we exclude the capital gain from the divestment of Optiplan that we did in the fourth quarter of last year. For the full year, earnings grew actually over 30% if we also exclude the divestment. Margin was 5% in the quarter and 3.6% for the full year. Denmark continues to increase its share of net sales in this business area. Moving over to Industry and the volumes, we can conclude that the volumes are on par with previous years, both when it comes to stone and asphalt.
This slide we've added to give some guidance on the size when it comes to volume for Asphalt Finland, and the volumes were approximately 15% if we do it in tons. Continuing on, Asphalt Finland had negative impact in the quarter with the divestment, but it was, as Tomas said, pretty much compensated for by land sales. Orders received down in the quarter and in the year, and that's driven by the Finnish operations. We can also comment that stone material has had a good order intake both in the quarter and for the year. Net sales are basically on par with previous levels, and also here, stone materials are very stable and increasing both in Sweden and in Denmark while asphalt, and primarily then, Asphalt Finland, is declining.
Earnings was SEK 2 in the quarter and SEK 220 for the year. In this two number, we have one hundred and sixty-one million of losses in Finland. As Tomas said, the remaining parts of Asphalt did not perform well, and the reason for that is primarily driven by higher cost that we've not been able to compensate for in our pricing. Property Development, two projects recognized in sales, giving us SEK 1.5 billion in revenue, SEK 4.8 billion for the year. Earnings was 179 compared to 54 last year. We had two projects recognized in sales, as Tomas said, Frederiks Plads and Next. Last year, we also had two projects, but they were really small. For the year, we've recognized seven projects, and last year, or 2020, we recognized five.
We've also had two land sales in Denmark, and we've also had resolutions of provisions from earlier sales in the earnings. We have 11 ongoing projects, which is about 200,000 sq m, and 74% of that is in Sweden. We sold one project in the quarter, Fredriksberg D. We have signed 23 letting contracts in the quarter. That corresponds to 14,000 sq m, which is significantly lower than last year when it was around 30,000. Many contracts, but with smaller. This is the letting and completion ratios. The status is that our letting ratio is 58% and our completion ratio is 57%. That was the business areas. Now moving over to other and elimination that had significant impact on earnings this quarter.
Starting with the first line item, NCC headquarters and subsidiaries containing our headquarters costs and our subsidiaries that don't belong in a business area. As you can see, we have a positive number here, SEK 33 in revenue for the quarter. That is due to the fact that we've booked SEK 124 million in sickness insurance that we got repaid in October. That explains the deviation on the first line item. Internal gains is also positive due to the fact that we've sold two large projects and we're not building as much. This is the line where we eliminate the profits in our building when we build our PD project.
As you can see also for the full year, the deviation is quite large, and that's due to the fact that we're not investing as much in PD as we're selling. Other group adjustments contains accounting adjustments, and the big difference here is for the full year, when we in 2020 had to make a reservation for the sales leaseback, according to IFRS 16 of our headquarters here in Solna on about SEK 120 million. Then also road services is only this year, including Road Services Norway that has not been divested. Okay. Moving over then to the financial items. We have a lower financial net due to lower net interest on average corporate debt.
Our tax rate is quite low, 15% for the year, due to the fact that we have a large portion of PD projects in our earnings. Cash flow. We have a very strong cash flow. First of all, our earnings have contributed significantly, of course, SEK 2.8 billion in the year and SEK 975 million in the quarter. Property projects has a positive effect, and here you can see that we are investing. Our level of investment is on a lower level right now as we have a positive net here. Other working capital, -SEK 626 million in the quarter is explained by prepayments, lower prepayments from customers. Investing activities is positive. This is where we have our CapEx usually.
The positive here is explained by the cash flow from the divestment of the Finnish asphalt business. All in all, SEK 1.9 billion strong cash flow for the year. Our net debt has decreased to SEK 2.9 billion compared to SEK 4.8 billion last year. Our corporate cash is SEK 766 million at year-end. Both pension liabilities and leasing liabilities has decreased substantially, and pension liability is due to actuarial changes. Our net debt target is to be below 2.5 times compared to EBITDA. Since we have net cash, we are negative. Moving back to you, Tomas.
Thank you very much. Thank you.