Welcome everyone to our Q1 update. Andreas and I are doing our call today from Stockholm. We are at an exciting time, and we're creating a unique position in the Security Services industry, shaping a security solutions company which is at the forefront with world-leading technology and expertise. Looking at a few highlights of the quarter, the growth momentum is good, and we recorded an organic sales growth of 12% in the quarter. We had double-digit organic growth in Technology with a healthy backlog, and the Solutions growth was even stronger. We call that strong double digits. Those two combined, generate a 13% real sales growth also when excluding the impact from STANLEY.
The growth in North America was bolstered by strong commercial activity in general and one more significant contract win and expansion as we have previously announced. Of course, as in previous quarters, the high price increases contribute strongly to the growth. The operating margin improved to 5.8% versus 5.1% a year earlier. The margin accretion from STANLEY acquisition is significant, but also good contribution from the growth of our legacy technology and solutions business. As important as ever, we are balancing price wage in an inflationary environment. We do have some challenges in Europe, primarily related to labor scarcity and some temporary factors, and I come back to those in a while. Looking from a cash flow perspective, Q1 is normally a lower quarter, but we recorded some improvement versus 2022.
Another very important message at a high level before we go into numbers is that the integration of STANLEY is progressing well. Turning to the next page, we are now enhancing the visibility of performance across the different business lines in the business. We feel that this is an important step in facilitating enhanced visibility of our performance and in the journey to 8% operating profit margin by the end of 2025. We have outlined the business now in three different categories. The first one we call Security Services, essentially includes our onsite, our mobile guarding services, as well as the aviation business. The second category is Technology and Solutions, and the last category includes our advanced risk management business together with costs for group functions.
Let me share a few comments related to these numbers and to the performance. When you're looking at the performance, we have real sales growth of Security Services where the main driver is price increases. From a profitability perspective, the development in North America was positive in the quarter, and at the same time, we were below expectations in Europe due to continued challenges related to labor shortages, some startup costs, and also negative cost leverage. Looking at the Technology and Solutions business, the growth number at 77% is obviously very high. When you exclude the impact of Stanley, the real sales growth was a strong 13% in the quarter. The profitability in this part of the business came in at 10.1%.
The strong integration progress with synergy realization is progressing at a good pace, particularly in North America, which has been and is according to plan, and this contributes to the operating profit margin. We will share this information on a quarterly basis going forward. I believe this will enhance the understanding of the current performance, but also how we are actively shaping the business now with an increasing emphasis on technology and solutions and enhancing profitability in Security Services. With that, let us shift to the performance in our different geographies. Starting, as always, with North America, and our momentum continues to grow. We had good momentum going into 2023, and this was further bolstered by the expansion and win of a significant client contract, price increases, and generally speaking, good commercial activity.
Installations business grew at a good pace with a continued healthy backlog. It's also important to point out here that we are growing at a good pace while we're driving extensive integration work and good progress together with STANLEY. Our technology and solutions offering is now stronger than ever to our clients, and these sales now represent 31% of total sales in North America. The client retention rate is generally good, but when you look at the 85%, this number is negatively impacted by active portfolio management. That means when we are terminating lower margin contracts if we are not able to renegotiate them or convert them into solutions. This is fully in line with the strategy, and we are winning new business at better margins.
This is the real highlight because here we recorded the highest Q1 margin ever at 7.6%. The Guarding business unit improved with positive impact from active portfolio management and leverage. The main driver of the margin improvement is the technology business. We're progressing well, as I said, with integration work, and we're ahead of plan in terms of cost synergy realization. Looking at the underlying business, the performance in STANLEY has improved significantly versus a weak start last year. We also recorded solid development of our legacy technology business. Corporate Risk Management business is also contributing to the improved profitability in North America. Looking at North America, very good regain momentum on the top line, and another record quarter in terms of operating margin.
Let us then shift to Europe where we recorded a very high 13% real sales growth. As I mentioned before, high level of price increases is the most important driver behind the growth, but we also have solid portfolio growth in solutions, which is contributing to the growth along with good growth in the technology business. As in the previous quarters, a few % of the growth number is related to hyperinflationary environment in Turkey. Due to labor shortages, we are still in a situation where we have to decline work, which obviously has a negative impact from a growth but also profitability perspective. Looking at the margin, we had a slightly improved margin versus last year at 5.1%.
Having said that, when you consider the positive impact from Technology and strong Solutions growth, this margin is below our expectations in the quarter. Our team has done a really good job balancing historically high wage increases with price increases. There are a few factors that negatively impact the margin. As in previous quarters, various effects related to the labor shortage negatively impacted the margin in Europe, and this is very much related to higher costs for subcontracting and reduced capacity for high margin extra sales. That is all related to the fact that if we don't find people, we cannot take on more of the higher margin extra sales type of business. We also had startup costs related to a larger aviation contract that also impacted the margins.
If you then look at what are we doing to improve performance in Europe, well, there is a few different actions. First one, increase in the margin requirements for new contracts. We also need to step up how we are working actively to renegotiate or terminate low margin contracts. Tighter cost measures have also been put in place to ensure positive leverage. We've also made some leadership changes with a new leader in Europe and a number of important additions and changes in the last couple of months, and I expect to see improvement from these measures going forward. From a client perspective, we are stepping up solutions efforts, leveraging our strong technology and presence. To conclude Europe, some margin improvement, really good growth in terms of Solutions and Technology, which is fully in line with the strategy.
Security Services part and the onsite guarding business hurting, and here we need to take strong actions now to make sure that we improve the performance. Moving then to Ibero-America, where we recorded 22% organic sales growth in the quarter. The inflation-driven increase in Argentina is the main driver of the high growth number. Spain, as you all know, is a very important market in our Ibero-America division, and here we recorded 6% organic sales growth. As in the previous quarter, our team in Spain is doing a good job driving active portfolio management, and that has some negative impact on the growth. Technology and solutions are a critical part of our offering, and these sales represent 31% of sales in the quarter.
Shifting then to the profitability in Ibero-America, where our team delivered a stable margin of 5.8%. We have good margin, or good momentum I should say, with higher margin technology and solution sales that supported the operating margin as did active portfolio management. On the negative side, increased wage pressure in Spain is burdening the margin at the beginning of the year, but we expect to improve the balance during the coming quarters. That concludes the overview on a group level in the different segments, and then handing over to you, Andreas, for quite a lot of details today regarding the financials.
Thank you, Magnus. Starting by having a look at the income statement, where the growth continued to accelerate in the quarter, as Magnus mentioned, with 12% organic sales growth, and our operating margin was 5.8%, where the STANLEY acquisition was a strong contributor to the result and also delivered a healthy margin. Looking below operating results, the amortization of acquisition-related intangibles was SEK 154 million in the quarter on the same level basically as in Q4, but higher than last year due to the SEK 5.5 billion allocated to intangibles in the PPA related to STANLEY . This also leads to approximately SEK 375 million per year in amortization. Items Affecting Comparability was SEK 281 million in the quarter.
SEK 115 million of this is related to the STANLEY acquisition. SEK 166 million is related to the ongoing Europe and Ibero-America transformation program. As usual, I will come back with more details on IAC shortly. Moving to the financial net. Here, the cost came in within the range we guided for in the last quarter at SEK 428 million in Q1. The main reason for the material increase compared to last year is the financing of STANLEY acquisition, where we had SEK 310 million of cost in Q1. We had positive impact of SEK 51 million from IAS 29 hyperinflation in Turkey and Argentina, which is an increase of SEK 39 million compared to last year. The remaining difference to last year of SEK 62 million is then mainly related to increased interest costs related to our legacy pre-STANLEY debt.
Going to tax, here the forecasted full year tax rate is 26.8%, which is then back to normal levels after 2022, where we had a positive 2.6% non-recurring impact from the tax cases won in Spain in the Q4 last year. Before moving on, I just wanted to highlight again here that the number of shares used for calculating earnings per share are adjusted for the bonus element of the rights issue in line with IAS 33, as I've also mentioned in previous quarters. You find more information on page 19 in the report. If we are moving on to the next slide, we have some additional information related to the different programs under IAC.
The two remaining ongoing programs are the Europe and Ibero-America Transformation Program and the Integration, Restructuring, and Transaction Cost Program related to STANLEY acquisition. Looking at the Europe and Ibero-America Transformation Program, here, the Ibero-America part is running well on track, and so are also most of the activities in the Europe transformation program. As we have mentioned earlier, we are temporarily executing with a slightly lower pace related to the core IT platform activities to ensure that we calibrate the program with the standard integration and also to ensure that we're maximizing benefit realization and cost efficiency. At the program start, we announced SEK 1.4 billion in items affecting comparability and SEK 1.1 billion in CapEx over 2021-2023.
We then updated the numbers based on the new cloud computing accounting regulations that was announced in 2022, which meant CapEx was reduced to SEK 250 million and IAC increased to SEK 250 million. In other words, the full IAC program budget is SEK 1.65 billion and CapEx SEK 850 million. In the Q1 now in 2023, the IAC cost was SEK 166 million. Over 2021 and 2022, we have invested a bit more than SEK 1 billion in IAC, and we estimate for the full year of 2023, the number to be between SEK 600 million-SEK 700 million.
On the CapEx side, we have seen lower CapEx need compared to our original plans, and we estimate to land north of SEK 500 million total CapEx investments by the end of 2023. All in all, we are estimating to be below the total budget by the end of the year. While there may be some residual costs going into 2024 from the temporary slower pace that we are running at, that I also mentioned earlier, and here we will come back with further details the coming quarters. Moving on to the IAC related to STANLEY transaction. Here we announced total costs of approximately $135 million, and the integration continues to progress well, where we are ahead of plans with our synergy takeout in North America, which is also impacting our margins in a positive way.
We saw good progress also in Europe in the Q1. We expect accelerated synergy progress also there going forward. In the Q4, we had SEK 150 million of cost in this program. Since the announcement, we have invested SEK 630 million in IAC. We estimate the 2023 spend to be between SEK 500 million-SEK 600 million. All in all, looking at the totality for the Q1 on the left-hand side, we have a total of SEK 281 million of IAC in the operating income. Moving to an overview of the FX impact on the income statement.
Here we have continued positive impact from currencies, although less than in previous quarters. That's mainly as the US dollar comparable rates from last year increased. This trend will continue throughout 2023 for the US dollar, but also for the euro. The total impacts, FX impact on sales was 6%. When looking at operating results, the FX impact was slightly higher at 8% due to higher profitability in the North American business with similar effects also on EPS. The EPS real change, excluding items affecting comparability, was -12% in Q1, with negative impact from the adjusted numbers of shares by IAS 33.
Looking at it on a constant share basis, the real change, excluding IAC, was 15% positive in the quarter. This is derived from the real change on operating income being strong at 42%, including Stanley, while the increase of amortization of intangibles and financial net impacted negatively leading to the 15%. We then move on to cash flow. Cash flow continues to be a prioritized area for us due to the increased macroeconomic uncertainty, and of course, as we have strong focus on deleveraging our balance sheet after the Stanley transaction. The Q1 is coming in at SEK 187 million operating cash flow or 9% of the operating income, which is an improvement compared to the negative operating cash flow we had last year in the Q1. The Q1 is from a seasonality perspective, the weakest cash flow quarter for us.
The reason for that is that we are making larger annual prepayments and payout incentives in the beginning of the year. Our DSO also increases somewhat of the year end as we normally see strong end of the year collections. If we go into some details here and start with CapEx, here we spent around SEK 950 million or 2.5% of sales, which is at the same level as in Q1 last year. We continue to see an increase in our investments into solution contracts, confirming the positive momentum we have in that part of the business, and we also see continued investments into our existing transformation programs as we have previously announced. Looking at the full year, we continue to expect to land below 3% of sales in CapEx.
Just to be clear, that includes Stanley and IFRS 16. The strong growth that we are seeing in the business now also with increasing organic growth also in North America continue to have negative impact on the account receivables in the quarter. While the DSO for the, for the whole group was flat compared to Q1 last year, which is good, considering the current environment. The negative development in other operating capital employed is mainly derived from increased annually prepaid costs such as cost of risk in IT, together with the reduced account payable position by the end of the quarter. I should say here that there was no significant payroll timing differences in the quarter, so very much neutral from that perspective comparing year-over-year.
All in all, an okay start to the year, and we continue to target to deliver cash flow within our target range of 70%-80% also in 2023. Important, just as a reminder that we this year have no further payments related to corona government relief measures in North America, which hampered the full year operating cash flow with SEK 700 million in 2022. We have a look at our net debt, and our net debt increased around SEK 800 million from the beginning of the year until the end of the quarter. In essence, this is related to the negative free cash flow and also the IAC payments we have made of around SEK 340 million in Q1.
The translation impact had major negative impact last year. Here we now see a stabilization in the Q1 due to more stable FX environment. The stabilization of the Swedish krona in combination with good EBITDA growth from higher margins and also from price increases, is supporting the net debt to EBITDA ratio and development where we landed at 3.6 times in Q1 compared to 3.7 times in Q4. Here we are slightly ahead of our planned deleveraging to be below 3 times in 2024. Please note that the 3.6 times I refer to here is including 12 months of Stanley EBITDA, while the reported number is 3.8 times. As you may remember, Stanley had a weak H1 of the year in 2022.
If we continue to perform well in the STANLEY business also in Q2 this year, that will have a positive effect to our net debt to EBITDA development in the Q2. If we further adjust for the items affecting comparability, the net debt to EBITDA is 3.3 times, which gives a good indication of the deleverage effect we will see after the IC programs are being finalized. It should be noted that with this year, we'll make the dividend payment twice in Q2 and Q4 compared to one time previous years, which will also have a positive timing impact on our net debt throughout the year. We then move on and have a look at our financial position and the debt maturity chart. We continue to have a solid financial position.
None of our facilities have any financial covenants and the liquidity position continued to be strong in the quarter at SEK 5.4 billion. We also have our RCF of more than EUR 1 billion in place until 2027, and it was continued also fully undrawn as per quarter end. We then look at the $3.3 billion bridge facilities related to the Stanley transaction, here after the successful rights issue last year, we had the remaining bridge to debt facility of $2.4 billion with maturity in July 2024 still to be refinanced. As we communicated already in October, our strategy was to diversify the sources of debt financing in the takeout, while also ensuring we remain with good flexibility in the debt portfolio if market conditions would improve.
The main reason behind the strategy was that the bond market pricing back in October last year was not very attractive to us at that point in time. At the same time, we were also in no rush as we had a 24-month bridge in place with good pricing. The first major step for us in the takeout was to execute a EUR 1.1 billion term loan in the beginning of the year. The facility is four years, where the banks and us together can agree to extend for one more year. In the beginning of March, we entered the Schuldschein market for the first time, opening up for us a new source of funding that will also be available for us going forward. Here we raised approximately EUR 300 million, where the majority of the funding have maturity of five years.
This left us at quarter end in a position where we had refinanced the majority of the bridge to debt facility and secured long-term funding, where the term loan and the majority of the Schuldschein can be refinanced in advance if we would prefer. Meanwhile, the bond market pricing has improved, which is why we decided to issue a four-year EUR 600 million bond in the euro market in the beginning of April. The bond was oversubscribed more than three times, and the margin was 120 basis points with a very small new issue premium paid. This puts us in a good position today where most of the bridge to debt facility has been taken out.
Only $160 million is remaining, and we have no need from a liquidity point of view to do any further refinancing the coming quarters. You may see further activity in the bond market to take out the remaining bridge and possibly refinance part of the other facilities if the pricing differential is attractive. We are remaining with floating interest rates for now related to the term loan, also related to the new bond, and the vast majority of the Schuldschein, while the remaining legacy debt portfolio is a mix of fixed and floating. We do so to have the flexibility to refinance early. We may also look into increase our fixed part of the portfolio if yield curves are becoming attractive going forward.
With the existing refinancing in place, we will see a somewhat increased financial net when you're comparing to Q1 over the coming quarters. Of course, subject to the interest rate movements, currencies, and so on. Looking at the right-hand side of the chart, of the maturity chart, you see a maturity peak of over 30 billion now in 2027. Here it's important to note that the RCF backup facility that matures that year will be refinanced earlier, and the term loan could either be extended into 2028 or refinanced in advance. This is very much a manageable position going forward. Moving to our rating. Here, S&P confirmed our existing rating at BBB- with stable outlook again in Q1.
Overall, I would say the dialogues with S&P are positive, where they recognize we have taken good actions according to our plans post STANLEY acquisition. We continue in an unchanged way to focus on our deleverage strategy after the acquisition and remain fully committed to our investment grade rating. With that, I hand over back to you, Magnus.
Very good, thanks a lot, Andreas, for a good overview and a number of important milestones achieved in the quarter. We are at an exciting time now in Securitas, and a number of actions that we have initiated during the last few years starting to contribute to building a leading solutions offering to our clients based on world-leading technology and expertise. The shift in offering is also starting to translate into improving margins. I just wanted to make a few comments related to the new financial targets that we announced in August last year to reflect a bit on the strategic direction and how we are shaping the new Securitas. Technology solutions momentum is good, as we highlighted with 13% real sales growth when excluding the positive contribution from STANLEY.
The margin improvement from 5.1% to 5.8% in Q1 is a clear step in the right direction towards our 8% target by the end of 2025. This is really about shaping Securitas to be future-ready, clearly differentiated position, and offering in our industry. How do we achieve this? Well, we have four main focus areas in our strategy. A unique position to deliver integrated solutions now to our clients. The differentiation enhanced value to our clients will generate significant margin improvement over time.
We firmly believe that the four focus areas to take the lead in technology, bringing quality guarding services, we focus on profitability, integrating solutions to our clients, and leveraging modern platforms and connectivity and data that we generate to drive innovation will help and transform the company and enable us to reach the targets. All of this is based on our view of what it would take to be the winner in the Security Services industry in the future. This is a future which is very much about leading presence, connected technology, and intelligent use of data. Looking at the company that we're creating, we have a unique position now with significant capability in each area and the ability to leverage combination of these capabilities to deliver the strongest solutions to our clients.
As we've highlighted here during the call, we still have a lot of Stanley integration work ahead of us over the next six to 12 months. Many clients that our team members and I have been in dialogue with myself during the last few months are now starting to get really excited about the capabilities that we are able to bring and the partnership opportunities as we go forward. This will obviously translate to increase in commercial opportunities in attractive business areas over time. To sum up the quarter, we are executing on the strategy, delivering an improvement in the margin to 5.8%, good commercial momentum, growth with Technology and Solutions. We have solid development across the business, but with one weakness now, and that is in security services in Europe.
A known issue, and we are also addressing that with clear actions. Importantly, as we highlighted, we're also progressing very well with the STANLEY integration. I think with that, now happy to open up for the Q&A.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. I got three questions. The first is really if you can give a bit more detail on the price volume split, and what was the impact of hyperinflation numbers in Europe and Ibero-America at a group level that would be, that would be great. The second question is really around your long-term margin target and it's helpful to see sort of guarding and technology margins in the release. If you take the, let's say, the guarding margin close to 5% and technology margin close to 11%, really your business mix needs to be 50/50 to get to 8% margin. You need to kind of improve your margin quite drastically in guarding. Wondering how you're going to achieve that. Any more color on that would be useful.
Finally, has the requirement for working capital for the group has gone up structurally with the integration of Stanley and sort of obviously the start of costs you have on some of these installation contracts?
Yeah. Thank you, Anvesh. We struggled to hear you very well on the first question, so can you please repeat the first question related to pricing in Europe?
Yes. I just really like what's the price volume spread of the 12% organic, also if you can give details around the hyperinflation in Europe and Ibero-America, what was the benefit?
I mean, when you look at the growth of 12%, there is a few percent on a global level, first of all, if we start in there, which is related to hyperinflationary environment in Argentina and in Turkey. Essentially saying then around 1/3 of the growth. If you're looking then. That obviously means that when you think about the growth, which are the main drivers, well, price increase is by far the most significant. Here we are doing a good job in terms of managing the balance between wage and price. We also have really strong growth in terms of technology and solutions. There I would say that is less inflation driven.
That is more kind of real volume growth on integrated solutions and also on the technology business. That is a positive one. If you're looking at Europe, and the growth rate of 13%, and I don't know if you've mentioned that specifically, but I'll address the question regardless. We estimate around 3% of the growth in Europe related to Turkey. That is the inflationary impact. If you come then to the next or to the second question in terms of the long-term margin targets, and I'm glad you bring that up, and that's also the reason that we have decided to be more transparent as well in terms of the sales growth, in terms of the operating result and also the profitability of the two main lines of the business, if you will.
Your, your assumption is correct, in the sense that 8%, we will get there, when we are driving really good growth in Technology and Solutions, with a significantly higher margin profile. That's gonna be fundamentally important driver together then obviously with synergy realization, cost synergies in the near term, more commercial synergies, in the mid-term leading up to the end of 2025. That is number one. If you then look at the, at the margin of the, of the Security Services, which include onsite, it includes mobile and also the aviation business.
When you look at that margin of 4%, a little bit more than 4%, 4.3%, goes without saying that that margin has to come up quite significantly as well to be able to get to the 8% number. That is the reason that we're saying we take a really firm stance in terms of active portfolio management. Where I would like to see, frankly speaking, stronger and faster actions as well within the business with our clients, because that's the only way that we're also then helping and shaping a guarding business which is more healthy from a profitability standpoint. What I should highlight is that there are some significant differences between the different divisions and the 4.3%. It's a significantly higher margin profile in North America.
As we highlighted, and I also commented on before, our margin generation in Europe, which is the other big part in terms of on-site guarding, underperforming in the Q1 in this environment. That's obviously further granularity just to give some further understanding in terms of the 4.3%. Third question, Andreas, on working capital.
Yes. Would you mind repeating that? It was a bad line. Could you repeat the third question, please?
I'm sorry for that. My question was like, has your working capital requirement structurally has gone up with the integration of Stanley and probably the start of cost on the installation contract and everything build kind of there if you assume the growth will be strong in the technology solution? I know like there is some impact of the inflation, but like has it structurally gone up now?
Yeah, I mean, Stanley's coming in, I would say, as expected, and as we also explained in the investor day the last year. I mean, from a CapEx perspective, if you're looking at Stanley, very much similar to ourself, less than 3% CapEx to sales, more maintenance CapEx in that business. When it comes then to the working capital profile of Stanley, it requires higher working capital compared to a guarding business. And there around 20% working capital was the guidance.
Like you rightfully say there as well, if you dig in a bit deeper into the Stanley and overall technology business overall, you can say that the installation side of the business, which is around 60% in Stanley's case, that has a higher working capital requirement compared to the other 40%, which is more monitoring and maintenance, where clients normally pay in advance or with shorter payment terms. On the installation side, it's all about really solid project management, really important to make sure that you contractually make sure that you can invoice throughout milestones, throughout the projects, rather at the end of the contract as well. Where with those two components, you can really improve working capital.
All in all, yes, the technology business requires higher working capital, and we've said around 20% of sales.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Stefan Knutsson from ABG. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, Magnus and Andreas. Just a question regarding the margin in Europe here. Can you give some more flavor on how much the increased cost that you have there weigh on margins, and how much of that is attributable to the startup cost in aviation?
Yeah. Thank you, Stefan. Maybe start with the easiest one, and that is... I mean, we wouldn't really mention a cost unless it's an impact on, of 0.1, or higher on the margin. I think that is important to highlight. When you're looking at... Maybe to give some further flavor on this because when Yeah, there is essentially two sides. Solutions and technology business in Europe is really progressing well, and we have good momentum. When you're looking then at the more the on-site guarding part of the business, there are a few key factors. The labor shortage, maybe to elaborate on that a little bit, it essentially means...
I mean, when you look at some of the key markets in Europe, like Germany, broadly speaking also at averages, I mean, the unemployment rate is at historic lows in the Q1. We've seen some improvement on that, I should say, in recent weeks and months. It's only some improvement coming from very low levels. That means that it's been a challenge to find people. What that means, it means that we need to resort for existing business to leverage more of subcontractors. That obviously has a margin impact because then margin is shared between ourselves and the subcontractor and that has a negative negative impact.
That's obviously something that we try to minimize to the greatest extent possible as soon as we can as well to make sure that we improve. We also have a negative impact from reduced extra sales. When you're looking at the extra sales in Europe are also now running at significantly lower level 'cause we just cannot take on what is normally more lucrative business, due to the nature of extra sales in that type of labor environment. The startup cost related to aviation, that is quite normal. And there we had some startup cost at the end of last year, but the vast majority was in the Q1, and that is coming down quite significantly in Q2, which is normal when we are starting a larger contract, along those lines.
Those are some of the main points in terms of what are the dynamics here. I think also given that I mean, I express myself that we are below expectations. I think it's also important to talk about the actions in terms of what are we actually doing. We are increasing the margin requirements for new contracts. In this type of environment, that's the only rational thing to do. We also need to step up now and accelerate the work that we do in terms of addressing, renegotiating, or actively terminating lower margin contracts. That work, we have some progress, but I would like to see more within the business and from our leaders.
Obviously we also had a negative cost leverage when we look at the indirect cost. That is something that with the 13% growth, we need to make sure that we have a positive cost leverage as well because these are very high numbers. You can argue then, well, what are the reasons? Well, some of that is related to an inflationary environment where there is a number of other indirect costs where there is pressure upwards. That we are addressing with significantly tighter cost management as we go forward, and that is also something which, yeah, our team needs to take a stronger and a firmer grip, essentially, which should be normal part of the business.
That is important in a few markets, especially where we have negative cost leverage, which is not acceptable given the type of growth that we have. I hope, Stefan, that that gives some further flavor to the dynamics, but also what we are doing in Europe to address the situation.
It is important to mention also in the aviation business we see strong growth as we are saying. We also have natural seasonality just complementing, the startup cost here as well. There is a natural seasonality where we normally the Q1 is also weaker from a volume from sort of a volume and profitability perspective there. We expect improvements in the aviation business going forward based on that as well.
Thank you very much for the comprehensive answer.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Victor from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. A couple of questions from my side. Maybe starting off from your cost savings you announced in conjunction to the Stanley acquisition being about $50 million. Could you give us a number where you are now in terms of run rate? Maybe what we should expect for the year as such. Second question, looking at Stanley last year, it had a weaker margin performance in the H1. How are you now progressing year-over-year when trying to look like for like in that context? Thirdly, looking at actually your annual report data and looking at bad debt provisions, it seems you increased the bad debt provision losses quite a lot last year.
From 5% of accounts receivables in 2021 to about 7%. Quite a conservative view there. Just to see how your reasoning behind that and if that is something that has continued now going into 2023 and thereby actually holding back your margin performance a bit there. Starting off there. Thank you.
Thank you, Victor. On the first question in terms of Stanley, we are progressing very well on the totality in terms of the cost synergies. In terms of timing, significant progress in North America, which has always been the first priority given the size of the business. There I would say that we are ahead of plan. Now a lot of the focus is in Europe over the coming months, essentially. If you want a number, out of the $50 million, roughly 1/3 is what we have achieved to date. A lot to achieve now in the next six to 12 months, essentially.
It's just important to highlight as well that the growth is improving quite a lot, coming a little bit into your second question. That's on the legacy side. What we had in technology in Securitas before, but it's also in the acquired Stanley business. That is improving very significantly compared to a very weak H1 of 2022 before we owned the business. That I think is really positive, because that was obviously a concern also for us when we looked at the numbers in the spring and summer of last year. Clear improvement. I should also highlight that that improvement is also happening with a good focus on our clients, on driving commercial engagement, while at the same time driving a very extensive integration work.
Because this is integration across 12 markets. As you know, three in North America and 9 in Europe. Stanley, when you look at this underlying business also before then the cost synergies, there is significant improvement in the Q1. It's also a healthy order book as well when you're looking in terms of the business ahead.
Agree there. When it comes to the bad debt provisioning overall, I mean, we have our sort of rules around bad debt provisioning, which are absolutely as a business, we are fairly prudent there. As you know, we also took a few, a few years back, some larger bad debt provisioning as well. So we feel that we are prudent on the bad debt side overall. Then like you rightfully say, there is an increase there in the annual report as well. Some part of that is also relating to the opening balance from Stanley coming in as well.
All right. Thank you. It sounds just maybe just understand you correctly here that the synergies are actually running quite well according to at least my own estimates. Stanley seems to be sort of back on track as well. Maybe that is implicitly also testifying that your margins in Europe are actually quite implicitly quite hampered now by costs running high. When you, A, is that correct?
B, when looking at this, maybe thinking about the crystal ball going forward, do you believe that you will be when we enter the H2 of this year, when looking maybe not price wage, but price cost adjusted, so taking also indirect and subcontractor cost into account, do you really believe that you will be on par, going into the H2, given the actions taken today, and also price adjustments?
Yeah. On your question A, Victor, yes, correct. With the addition there that we are tracking well on the cost synergy side. It is mainly so far coming into North America. That's where we see the positive impact there is from the synergy takeout. In Europe, we had good progress now in the Q1. Here we expect more synergies to come out, and that's really where we are focusing in even more now. As planned, Europe was supposed to come after North America as well. Yes, more impact from the synergies in North America.
Maybe I can comment on the second question. I mean, we don't give guidance, as you know, but if you look at, okay, how do we influence the labor scarcity? Well, what we can do and what we have to do is to be extremely disciplined in terms of existing contracts. That's where we talk about active portfolio management. It's about also making sure that we are increasing the requirements in terms of new business to make sure that what we bring in is also accretive to the margin journey and the targets that we have set until end of 2025. I think that's an important one. When you look at price wage, there we are balancing, we also sometimes refer also to price production cost as well.
When you take a broader perspective in terms of price versus production cost here, I think there is more work that needs to be done because there has also been co-upwards cost pressure in Europe on a number of other categories that are more than indirect type of categories. There, frankly speaking, we need to do much better. That we need to take a significantly stronger grip on those as well to make sure that we are improving. Because this performance, like I said, on the totality, when I look at the results overall, we're on a really good path. Europe on that part of the business in Europe, not performing well enough or in line with expectations.
Here we also have a clear action plan in terms of how we drive that, to get also necessary margin improvements in the next couple of quarters.
Clear. Thanks, guys.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Raymond Ke from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Two questions from me. First one regarding factoring. Just curious, do you include the use of factoring in your own cash flow forecast? How much have you used factoring historically, if any? Second one, what level of cash do you need in your bank to run your operations, basically?
Question number one, simple answer. No, we do not use factoring. We have not used it in history neither. Just to give a direct answer on that. Then I think you can say the current liquidity levels where we are right now, SEK 5 billion-6 billion, that is working well for us overall from a liquidity perspective. I mean, what we're trying to do is of course we are centralizing cash management as much as possible, reducing local cash position to the maximum extent possible to make sure of course that we are not given we're in a debt position where we are paying interest rates otherwise.
I think we are on a fairly good level. We should remember of course, that we have the RCF fully undrawn as well, which is more than EUR 1 billion from a liquidity perspective as well. We also have a commercial paper program of SEK 5 billion as well. I would say liquidity position very strong. Then we try to minimize basically the cash in operations as much as possible on a daily basis, but with these backup facilities in place.
Great. Thanks.
The next question comes from Karl- Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, Magnus and Andreas. Appreciated all the color on the European operation, but it would good to hear your comments on how you see your actions within the contract portfolio management going and what kind of opportunities do you foresee step up? I guess most of that step up is probably related to Europe, if I understand it right, given the struggle you have for matching contract cost and opportunities.
Yeah. Thank you, Karl- Johan. I think what you can probably sense from my comments is we need to do more. We need to be more active and that is something that I've commented on before as well. It is somewhat of a cultural change as well for a lot of leaders. We need to be firmer. We decided that before there was labor scarcity, it's the only responsible thing for us to do in terms of shaping a Securitas which is more high quality, more technology, more solutions, higher client value, and in the end, also more satisfied clients. All of this is linked. I think that is one that when we talk about that, this has been a change that we started initiating in the aviation space with really good results.
That was somewhat triggered a few years ago because of the COVID pandemic and the crisis that we had there in terms of rapidly falling demand. We have learned from that what we need to do now is we need to roll this out and we need to drive this at scale. That has to happen in every major contract and client engagement that we have. There I would say some leaders, they do that really well. They take responsibility, they understand it, and they drive it. Some we also need to really help and get on that journey.
Part of what we're doing there is also improving financial visibility with increased benchmarking so that we can also see on a global, on a divisional, on a country, on an area, on a branch level exactly what is the state of the profitability in every contract. Because we deliver really good value. We are by far the company with the best, more future-oriented offering in terms of technology and solutions offering, and we need to charge reasonable price for the services and the value that we bring. I think this is not something that is going to change as a strategy. It's just a matter of intensifying the execution of this important work. It's even more important when you look at the labor market, which is the way it is right now.
I cannot take for granted or expect that it's gonna, you know, become significantly softer labor market ahead. I mean, there are many indications that it might, and that is normal if there is more kind of recession tendencies coming. This is, you know, regardless of the external environment, we know what our targets are. We know what type of company profile that we want to shape. Now we need to make sure that everyone is going in that same direction. That's the view, Karl- Johan, from our side. We have, like I said, taken a lot of measures that also give us better visibility through transparency as well to now really put these actions firmly in place.
When you look at the transparency that you have now done, as you say, on contract level, basically in your system through your, you know, the audit structure, I remember you described this as a traffic light system with green, yellow, and red. How have you seen the yellow and red components of this, say, developing now when you increase the hurdle rates, as I understand it as well on contracts of what you're looking for?
Yeah. There is a fairly significant part which is red, and red obviously means it's not good. That is the highest priority in terms of addressing. We've also, coming into how we are shaping this, then we also have a yellow category, where we've essentially set the benchmark in line with what we want to achieve by end of 2025 in terms of achieving 8%, that everyone also knows exactly what does good look like. Not only am I driving some incremental positive change compared to last year, but rather through the lens of, okay, looking at the targets that I have in terms of end of 2025, how do I need now to improve and to shape my business to be able to support that?
So I believe this has been a historic Securitas strength. We have re-energized and refocused effort on this kind of transparency and benchmarking. There I should also highlight that, I mean, in some parts of the business, like in North America, where we have come much further in terms of the transformation program and new modern systems, there it's more automated, it's easier, better transparency. Europe, we still have quite some work to be done here. The important thing as well is that good business management, I mean regardless of what system we have, this is a responsibility to track that and also to take actions continuously to make sure that we are improving the overall health of the portfolio.
When you compare the transformation program that seems to delivering so well in North America and compared to where you now are in the, in the European Ibero-America similar programs, what is the big difference compared to what you were managed to say, deliver in the early part of the U.S. program compared to what you see in Europe?
I mean, one thing is an important point is the timing. We kicked off the work in North America a few years before we kicked that off in Europe. That was also according to plan because we also needed to face some of this heavy lifting, but also to make sure that we can learn from the work that we did in North America going into Europe. One important difference is the starting point. North America, 90% roughly is the U.S. It's essentially one market, one country. In Europe, we have a much more diverse starting point, which we have been clear about from the beginning. I think that is one.
That obviously also means that there is a scale benefit in North America as well in terms of the investments that we are making and how we can then also leverage each invested dollar in North America to benefit all the business at scale. I think that is what, why you also see more of a phased approach looking at Europe. We're designing now, and I mean the European program, I should also highlight one of the important parts there was also to stand up more of a solutions-focused organizational leaders. That we have done, and the European team is delivering really good growth and momentum also in terms of solutions. That part of the program I am happy with.
If you look at the systems and the modernization and transformation here, as we communicated before, we have some delay in that work. That is partly because of how we are building the kind of the common core and the engine for the first countries. It's also that we have paused somewhat the pace because we also need now to make sure that priority number one is the integration work we do with Stanley. When we are building and migrating to new systems, that we don't do that work twice. That will over a three or a four-year timeframe then mean excessive cost essentially.
That's why we're also doing a bit of a, yeah, somewhat of a retake, I would say, to make sure that we now lock down the delivery plan in terms of the European transformation program, driving the progress over the next six, 12, 18 months. Also at the same time integrating the Stanley integration planning into that work. That is something as well, when we know that when we have strong systems with a market relevance and also then the commercial, pull and demand that we also see happening now together with Stanley. There's a number of really positive discussions where I think we have also once and for all changed the perception of Securitas as well. People know that we have really credible technology capability now.
We need also for the mid and the long term, make sure that we're operating on modern systems, on the same systems as well. There is some, quite some complexity in that work, but we work based on our conviction about the value that we generate when we get all of that in place.
Should remember also that the STANLEY acquisition was a carve-out. That also creates complexity as we need to stand up a lot of the indirect services ourself, and that is what we are in the middle of right now. It's progressing well, but it's also creating complexity in that integration work.
Excellent. Thanks for that color. Just one final question from me. Thank you very much for the breakdown also on profitability, on technology, and the guarding operation is obviously a key business driver for you. If you look at the 4.3% coming out of the guarding operation, would you say that if you compare it to last year, I know you don't give us that number, but the feel, how would that be for the margin progression in the guarding operation year-on-year?
To give you a feel, we are very satisfied with the progress we are making in North America in the guarding business and overall, as we've said. I think it's fairly clear based on also Magnus' comments here, we are not satisfied with the progress on the guarding side in Europe. There you have it.
And, and I think-
If I could do my own interpretation part of that is that maybe still guarding margin would have been up to 10 to 20 basis bips year-over-year, still even in Q1. Would that be a fair assumption?
Can you repeat that, Karl-Johan? What did you say in terms of the number?
Yeah, no. When I tried to break down the historical performance on the same kind of profitability line that you're now starting to report, my take on Q1 last year would have been the margin closer to 4% rather than 4.3%-4.5%. Is that the feel that you are already in a positive margin progression? Maybe mostly helped by the U.S., to be fair, at this stage, but even having that impact on group level.
I think it's important. I mean, the reason why we are not giving last year's, right, because we've done serious work here to make sure we have really good quality on the business line reporting right now. We have not gone back for fully last year to restate it because it's complex work. That is why we're not giving a number here. North America, good progress. Europe is not good progress, but also remember there you have the aviation business that we have commented upon with the startup cost as well, taking sort of the Security Services business line down further. Trying to give you a bit of color here, but do not want to give an exact number given the work that we have done here.
What is clear though, Karl-Johan.
Thanks for the extra color.
No. I mean, what is clear is that the ambition is clearly higher-
Yes.
than this 4.3.
I fully agree.
Yeah.
Are we satisfied with what we're reporting in Q1 on the Security Services side? No, we're not.
No.
Excellent. We look forward to follow the progression and all the best out there.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to Magnus Ahlqvist, President and CEO, for any closing comments.
Many thanks, everyone. As I said at the beginning, on the totality, we are driving progress in line with our strategy. We have a number of highlights. We have one area that we discussed quite a lot now, the kind of the guarding related business in Europe. On the totality, we are increasingly strengthening our position in the market and executing according to the plan. Many thanks everyone for your engagement today. See you soon