A warm welcome to Skanska's Capital Markets Day 2025, and a warm welcome to Seattle and The Eight. This fantastic office tower is the result of bringing our strong capabilities in project development together with our strong capabilities in construction. The result, the quality that you see here, is a quality that you see in all our buildings and infrastructure projects. That is what our customers choose us for. I'm Antonia Junelind. I'm the Senior Vice President for Skanska's Investor Relations, and I'm very happy to see so many of you here in the U.S. This is a very important market for us, and our operations here have grown significantly over the past few years, now representing a construction order backlog of more than SEK 150 billion and SEK 20 billion worth of investment in properties.
Today, we will provide you with a firsthand view of our operations here in the U.S. You will get a chance to meet the top management team and learn more about our market, the context that we're operating in, and our capabilities here. You will also get the chance to tour this building along with two very interesting construction sites, namely the highway intersection project, the Brickyard, and also the Microsoft campus, where we've been collaborating with them for the past 25 years. Part of the day is also going to be broadcasted live, so I would like to turn to the cameras and say to the online audience that you are most welcome. There will be a chance for you to interact with us here on stage later in the program during the Q&A session.
Our U.S. legacy goes way back in time and across the nation. Here, to give you an overview of our operations in the U.S., I give you our EVP, Member of the Growth Leadership Team, and ultimately responsible for our construction activities in the U.S., Richard Kennedy.
Good morning. Thank you, Antonia. Thank you, everyone in the room. Thank you, everyone online, for joining us for Skanska's Capital Markets Day. We're excited to talk about Skanska today. You're going to hear a lot about us, where we are as a company, where we're going. We thought first it would be good to start with a review of how we became a fantastic company here in the United States. I'll kick us off with that. Okay. Skanska, we have a foundation built on growth in the United States. Skanska's first job in the United States was in 1971. I'll get to that in a second. Between 1971 and 2004, we acquired 17 companies all around the U.S. that laid the foundation for Skanska in the U.S. today. Today, we have a national presence, and we are a national powerhouse of construction and development across the U.S.
The dots on the map represent our offices around the U.S., 25 offices in total. The orange dots represent markets where we have shared business units, one or more business units in the U.S. If you look up at Boston on the right-hand side of the map, we have all three business units there. We're a real powerhouse in the Boston market. Right here in Seattle, across the map is exactly the same thing. The green dots are U.S.A. Building offices. U.S.A. Building has the largest footprint in Skanska, except for the green dot in Los Angeles, Southern California. That's a U.S.A. civil office only today. Where did it all begin? New York. 63rd Street Subway Line extension, that was Skanska's first project in 1971. Since then, we have completed over $38 billion of transportation markets or transportation projects in that market alone.
We have a fantastic Skanska legacy in the New York market. Here are just a few examples. Moving New York forward together. World Trade Center Transportation Hub in the upper right-hand corner, Moynihan Train Hall in the bottom left-hand corner, two of my most favorite projects in Skanska. U.S.A. Building, U.S.A. Civil working together, delivering one Skanska to our market, Seven Line extension, Second Avenue Subway, two great extensions of our subway system in New York, moving passengers around Manhattan efficiently and effectively. Connecting communities, one bridge at a time. We have a great bridge building and bridge repair company in Skanska. You can see up top George Washington Bridge. We've been upgrading that bridge. Kosciuszko Bridge down in the right-hand corner. We built that bridge, that new beautiful cable-stayed bridge. Look in the middle of the panel there. You can see the Bayonne Bridge.
We raised the deck of that bridge 64 feet to accommodate large container ships into the Port of Newark. That's a personal source of pride for me. I grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey. I saw that bridge my whole life, and I was so proud to stand in the center of that bridge when it was opened to the public in February of 2019. Moving up the coast to Massachusetts, again, we are a powerhouse in the Boston market, civil building and commercial development. Commercial development moved into that market in around 2010 and was among the first to reimagine Boston's waterfront, shaping today's innovation district. If you have a chance to get up to Boston, go down to the seaport. When I was a young man, that was an open parking lot. Now it is a beautiful new gleaming part of the city created by Skanska.
If we move down the coast into Washington, D.C., there too, we have all three business units, building, civil, and commercial development. Here's just one example of a school project that U.S.A. Building has built down there, the Brooklyn New Middle School. It's one of our smaller projects, but building spaces to shape the next generation. Skanska truly builds for a better society. Keep moving down the coast into North Carolina. We have very strong U.S.A. Building operations there. We've been working at North Carolina State, James B. Hunt Library, was one of our amazing projects. You can see that in front of you. We hosted some investors there back in September of 2024. That was a fun meeting. We've been working for this customer for over two decades. We work for Duke University. We work for the University of North Carolina.
We have very strong healthcare builders down there, really great U.S.A. Building operation in North Carolina, and we also have a strong civil presence and building civil presence there as well. If you move down into Georgia, that is a U.S.A. Building only market. We're taking advantage of a lot of the data center work that's going on there right now. Tons of data centers right outside of Atlanta. Our teams are on those projects now. We've also been working for Warner Brothers Discovery since 2012. We've completed over 70 projects there, creating spaces to connect people and stories. CNN broadcasts out of this campus. I had the group leadership down there in February of this year. It was super fun to tour that campus, meet the customer, meet our people, see our amazing projects.
Moving down the coast, continuing into Florida, strong, strong building operation in Florida, big healthcare builder. We've built over six projects for Lee Health alone since then. We're healing and innovation meet to build a healthier future. We also have a good civil presence in the Florida market, and I'll talk a little bit about that later today. Moving across into Texas, look at this beautiful library we built for Texas A&M University. Since 2012, we've completed over 70 projects, good strong U.S. building operation in the Texas market, and we also have commercial development in Houston, and we've done some great things there, delivered some amazing offices with tremendous profitability to the market in the past 15 years. Moving across the coast to Arizona, data center facilities, great, great data center work going on there right now.
I walked a few of those jobs with one of our superintendents once, and one of them said to me, "Richard, we are building the matrix. It's incredible. You see acres of data centers in Arizona. We're part of that rush." We also have a very strong building group down there, or a civil group down there as well. We'll talk more about data centers later today. Moving into Southern California, here we have another fantastic project by Skanska, Sixth Street Viaduct replacement. This bridge replaced an old failing bridge. It is built to withstand a 1,000-year seismic event. It was one of the most technically complex, toughest construction projects I've ever seen us build. If you get out to Los Angeles, I always say to people, "Get out there, put your feet on this bridge. You've never seen anything like it.
It is an engineering marvel built by Skanska. Moving up the coast into Oregon, that's a U.S. building only operation. We've been in that market forever. Semiconductor manufacturing since 1990, over 170 projects. We have a great reputation in that market, great experience there. We're bringing that to bear not only in the U.S., but globally. I'll talk about that a little bit more later. Finally, back here in the state of Washington, Boeing has been a fantastic partner of ours for over 50 years, building facilities where innovation takes flight. You can see a paint hangar on the right side of the photo there. We built that for them. It's amazing to see a 777 get painted. I recommend it to you. Check it out on YouTube. Just one of the many types of projects that we've built for them.
Lynnwood Link Extension L300, another fantastic one Skanska U.S.A. Civil, U.S.A. Building light rail facility built just north of Seattle to alleviate traffic. Completed that in 2024. Amazing piece of work to build that over an operating highway, I-5. Amazing construction project by Skanska. Finally, right back here at The Eight, completed in 2024, Landmark Tower, where wellness and creative inspiration meet. This is a fabulous building. It's just one example of what Skanska is capable of doing in this market. Fifty plus years strengthening communities, creating connections, and building impact in the U.S. We have an amazing operation in the U.S. I'm so happy to see you here today. Thank you for coming. All of this is made possible by the amazing culture, values, and people in Skanska. We have an amazing culture in Skanska everywhere I go, either in the U.S., overseas, Nordics, Europe.
It's the same. You can feel it. You're going to feel that today. For those of you who are in the room, you're going to feel it online through our presentations. It's all built and driven by the real values that we have in this company. You feel those everywhere too. Those values are lived every single day by the amazing people we have in Skanska. Every time I get on a stage like this, I love to talk about our amazing people. That's what we're a collection of. You folks in the room, you're going to have an opportunity to meet some of them today. Welcome to Skanska. Welcome to Skanska's Capital Markets Day. I'll turn it back over to Antonia.
Thank you, Richard. Yes, now it has been two years since our last Capital Markets Day. We then met in London in November 2023. A lot has happened since then in the world and inside our company. We are going to use this day to provide you with an update on our strategic priorities, the markets as we see them, the opportunities, and the challenges that we are facing. We are going to talk about our way forward in terms of financial targets and our ambitions. Here is the agenda. We will start with the group perspective, and then we will dive further into our four business streams. We will look at the demand trends and how they are evolving in the sustainability area. Of course, we will dive a little bit deeper into our financials, looking at operational performance, cash flow, balance sheets, and capital allocation strategies.
We will have a couple of breaks throughout the morning program. The broadcasted part of the day will end just before the second break. I will be back with you with more information on the agenda thereafter. Now, to kick off the more formal part of the day, I give you our President and CEO, Anders Danielsson.
Brick by brick, piece by piece, we shape the way people live, work, and connect, leaving behind places that make their mark while helping our customers succeed. Founded in Sweden more than 135 years ago, today we're one of the world's leading construction and project development groups with four core offerings: construction, residential development, commercial property development, and investment properties. This means we design and build all types of structures, from hospitals and offices to roads and bridges. We develop homes and communities for smarter, more sustainable living. We make places where people collaborate and thrive. Why do our customers want to work with us? Our teams offer an unmatched set of skills, people whose knowledge, foresight, and ingenuity move our customers and communities forward.
With a strong local presence backed by global competence, we nurture lasting relationships with our customers, most of whom choose to work with us again and again. Together, we create innovative and sustainable solutions that support healthy living beyond our lifetime. The next time you are catching the train, looking for a new home, or working on your next big presentation, you might just notice we are with you, making your everyday life and community a little bit better.
All right. All right. Once again, welcome to the Capital Markets Day. I will go through the performance and also the way forward. Before I go into the performance, let's just have a short overview of the company. We are one of the world's largest and leading construction and project development companies. We have operations in different parts of the world, and we are diversified when it comes to geographies. You can see here the split in revenue. The largest market is here in the U.S., but we have a large operation also in the Nordics and Europe, which stands for Central Europe and the U.K. You can see to the right here the split in revenue also between the streams. The largest operation when it comes to revenue is the construction stream, as we can see.
All in all, we have around SEK 180 billion in revenue, and we also have more than 26,000 highly skilled employees in the company. Let's start with an overview of the different streams. The construction stream, which is the majority of the operation, where we build both civil construction projects and also building projects for external customers, but we also build it internal, of course, where we develop commercial office building and also residential building. Residential development, we buy land. We develop residentials. We sell them to consumers, and that operation is in the Nordics and Central Europe today. Commercial property development, where we have operation in the Nordics, Central Europe, and in the U.S. We also buy land, and we develop office building, multi-rental residential buildings, and also we divest them eventually to external investors.
Sometimes we divest them to our internal investment properties, which is our most recent stream that we started a few years back. Here we focus on high-quality office building in the three largest cities in Sweden. Right now we have been building up a little bit above SEK 8 billion in the portfolio. When it comes to driving a company like Skanska with more than 26,000 employees, you need to have a governance that is very, very clear and also a clear direction of the company. We are a decentralized organization, and I strongly believe in that. That creates a lot of responsible accountability out in the organization, and it is a local business. That is critical for us. We need to hold the company together, and we have common values. You can see them to the left here. Common values that go along the whole organization.
Every time I'm out on sites and meet people in the organization, I can see that these values are true. The organization really lives our values, which is really encouraging for me. Those also drive the culture, of course, the performance culture and also the customer-focused culture, and that's key for our success. Of course, it's all about creating value for our shareholders and our customers. EBIT generation is, of course, an important part of that. We will come back to that, how that has looked like. It's also about revenue growth. We have seen growth now here in the U.S. in the construction. Last two years, we have been increasing the revenue with close to 20%. We have also seen growth in residential development in Central Europe the last couple of years. Very strong market and very good performance.
We also see growth in commercial property development in Central Europe. Of course, we have all seen the build-up in the investment property portfolio the last few years. Also creating value, capital efficiency. We will come back to that, what we are doing to increase the capital efficiency to really get the return back on the level we want to see. Before I go on into those issues, I want to present my team. Besides me, the whole team is here, so I have a lot of opportunity to discuss with them and ask questions. I start with Jonas Rickberg, CFO. Please stand up. We have Åsa Thunman, General Counsel. Åsa and Jonas, they came from recently this year from other industries, creating more diversity in the team. We have Lena Hök, heading up sustainability and innovation.
Richard Kennedy, you already met, heading up our construction operation here in the U.S. We have Claes Larsson, heading up the commercial property development and investment properties. Ståle Rød, heading up construction in Central Europe, Norway, U.K., and residential development. We have Therese Tegner, heading up our human resources. Let's go into the performance, way forwards, and the target we have. I will start with the history of the performance for our different streams. This might seem a bit complicated, but it represents the performance year by year for all streams. You can see the dark blue bars are representing construction, lighter gray residential development, lighter blue commercial property development, and you can see investment properties that we have been contributing already the last couple of years here with positive cash flow and profit.
If you look at the history here, we are a diversified company, which makes us more resilient. If you look at 2017, 2018, we were struggling big time with the construction stream in the company. The performance was unacceptable. We took some important strategic decisions at the time. We have been disciplined. We have been selective for projects we go for. When for projects, we have seen that we have a competitive advantage. We have the right team in place. We have a good track record and a good relationship with the client. That has really paid off. The last four or five years, we have been on the target 3.5% that we have been working with up until now. I'm really proud of the organization who has been doing this during quite a difficult time in the market as well.
That is great. We can see the project development, residential development, commercial development that has been performing very well if you look 15 years back. They have definitely been on our target, and I will come back to our targets. The last three years, we have not reached our target. We have been hit by a very tough market and market condition, both when it comes to commercial and residential. We will address that during this today, and we will also address the actions that we will take to restore the profitability here. I am glad to see again the investment properties contributing to, already now contributing to the cash flow and profit here. Of course, we have clear operations synergies since we are working in the whole value chain. That is quite unique if we compare to our competitors around the world.
We can use the knowledge from commercial development, resi, and also investment properties when we start new projects, internal development projects. We can also use that knowledge to be competitive and win projects for external customers as well. That is a really good position. We also see some clear financial synergies in the company. We are creating a lot of cash flow, free working capital in the construction stream that we use for project development. We are in a position where you do not need to ask any bank if you want to start a project or buy land. We can decide that on our own. That is a really competitive advantage. We can work contra cycle as well. Of course, it is all about return, profit generation, return on capital employed.
We want to be a reliable dividend provider for our shareholder as well. I'm talking about that. Here you can see the equity position over time back to 2018. We have been that blue bar, dark blue bar here. We have been able to build up the equity year by year from SEK 29 billion. Last quarter, we were at just about SEK 60 billion in equity. The payout, we have been building up because, as you have seen, we have been increasing the investment in project development. We're building up the investment property portfolio. We need more equity for that. The payout ratio, as I talked about, the dividend has been around 50% the last five years. If you look at the total shareholder return the last five years, we have been on 10% in average, which is competitive. Margin.
We just recently sent out the press release that we have increased our margin in the construction stream. I'm confident that this is a relevant target, 4%. You have all seen how we have built up the profitability over the years. Today, we have a really good position when it comes to the order backlog. We have a very high quality in the order backlog today. That definitely supports this 4% or above target over time. You can see the last quarter, we were at 3.9% on a rolling 12-month basis. The rest of the targets we have kept, we think they are very relevant for us. We have a return on capital employed target of 10% in the project development, including residential and commercial. The outcome, though, is below our target. We are not satisfied with that, 1.4%.
That is something we will address. What is our plan to restore the profitability here? The return on capital employed in investment properties here, the target is 6% or above. The outcome is decent, 4.7%. To be able to reach the 6%, we need to see growth in the value, market value of our properties. The 6% target is also competitive if you compare to similar real estate companies in different markets. Return on equity, we have our 18%. That's definitely something we aim at. The outcome right now is 10%. We need to, all streams need to contribute and be on their target to be able to reach the 18%. Adjusted net debt limit, we have a limit of SEK -10 billion. The outcome last quarter was SEK 9.3 billion in net cash position.
We have a lot of headroom here to take action if we think it is right to start a project or if we want to buy land in good markets. We also kept our payout ratio on the dividend between 40%-70%. The outcome last year was 57%. We also have some group sustainability target. When we talk about our own operation, and that includes group one and two, we have a target of minus 70% compared to our baseline year 2015. The outcome right now is minus 64%. We are on the right track. This should be reached at 2030. I am confident that we will reach that target, even though we have picked some low-hanging fruits here. We also have a carbon emission in the whole value chain in project development of 50% reduction up until 2030.
Here right now, we are at 37% reduction. Also there, we have seen some good progress. The ultimate target is to be net zero by 2045. To be able to reach that, we need to work with the whole value chain, including our clients, including our subcontractors and suppliers. I see a lot of change and transformation in the industry and in our company when it comes to digital transformation. I think the industry as such has been lagging behind other industries for some years. Now I can see a real trend. It is strong. A lot of things are happening when I am out in different projects. Our challenge, but also the biggest opportunity, is how can we scale this up to really take the benefit on this? That is something we work hard with. We will come back with that as well.
It is about aligning the company when it comes to developing people, processes, and technology. I am really, really encouraged by what I see here. A really big potential. If I go into the different business stream and switch into the commercial direction, in construction, we have seen that we have been growing, growing the business. We also see potential for further growth, both when it comes to revenue, but also when it comes to increasing the profitability. We are going to deep dive in that in a few minutes. Residential development, we are in a good position. We are performing very well in Central Europe. It is a strong market. The market has been slow in the Nordics. I think we need to see some growth in the economy.
When the market eventually picks up, because the underlying needs are there, I think we will be in a very good position to benefit from that. On the commercial property development, it's all about maximizing the value creation in a slowly recovering market. We can see some positive signs in the market, especially in Central Europe, but also in the Nordics. Investment properties, we are building up that portfolio as planned. I'm really encouraged to look at this into the future. We definitely have the competence. We have the pipeline to continue that road. Now we're going deeper into the commercial direction for the different business streams. We will start with construction.
In construction, we bring dynamic teams together to build buildings and infrastructure for working, living, and connecting. Over 135 years of knowledge and expertise shapes every project where we create solutions that help our customers succeed. We have a diverse sector and geographical footprint with operations in the Nordics, U.K., Central Europe, and U.S.A. The customers we serve represent public and private sectors. We build commercial spaces, social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, housing and offices, and infrastructure for travel and transport like highways, bridges, and tunnels.
Yes, and together with me on stage here with Ståle and Richard to go deeper into this construction stream. If I start with the past here, looking five years back, here you can see the bars, blue bars are revenue. The green line is operating margin over time, rolling 12. And you can see our old target here, 3.5%. And you can see that we have quarter by quarter increasing the revenue.
At the same time, we have kept the profitability here. That is what I addressed earlier. I think that is a really good achievement by the organization. I have been selective, I have been focused on cost management, and we have seen organic growth in strong market. Average has actually been 3.6% on a three-year perspective. If we look at the order backlog, you can see the blue bars here represent the order backlog. We can see that we are now on a historically high level. We have high quality. We will look into that, how it looks like after a break. It is high quality. We can also see that the book-to-build ratio, the dotted blue line here, has been pretty much above 100% all the time, which means we are building backlog. To the right, you have our market outlook.
In the Nordics, we see a stable market outlook in the civil business. The building is impacted by a slow residential and commercial development market. In Europe, it is more stable, both when it comes to building and civil. A lot of EU funding coming into Central Europe, creating good projects in the infrastructure. In the U.S., we expect a strong civil market going forward. We are mostly in the traditional infrastructure, and we see a lot of good pipeline there. On the building side, we see a stable market outlook there. We have a good pipeline, both for building schools, hospitals, airports, and also for data center. With that, I hand over to Richard.
Thank you, Anders. Okay, as Anders said, we have had good, strong revenue growth in Skanska over the past five years. We have had solid and stable margin development and performance over the past five years.
As you can see here on the screen, we have a healthy record backlog based upon a selective bidding strategy. For our construction stream, we feel like this gives us a very strong foundation to seize growth opportunities in the market. We see certain drivers that create those opportunities right here in our home markets in the U.S., Europe, and the Nordics. If you look to the left-hand panel, technology and AI, we see a rapid transformation in those sectors, double-digit growth forecast for those sectors, very exciting opportunities there for us. In the middle panel, demographic and economic development. We see strong fundamental economic and demographic growth in our home markets that is giving us opportunities. Resilient societies. Pre-pandemic, it was just-in-time delivery was the word of the day.
Post-pandemic, resilient societies has been more of a theme that creates lots of opportunities for us here at Skanska. Let's get into those. Technology and AI, again, I mentioned earlier, we've had over two decades of data center experience here in the United States. We've had over three decades experience building semiconductor plants here in the U.S. We have a proven track record, great customers. Last year, we created a specialized team for this called Skanska Advanced Technology that allows us to serve our national customers across the U.S., combining with our local geographies. I think it's a really strong and important evolution of the U.S. building business that we're able to run across the entire United States and also tap into our local strengths in a very good way. I'm very happy about that. It sets us up well to serve those national customers.
It also supports our ability here in the U.S. to help our colleagues in the Nordics and in Europe to seize data center opportunities. There's plenty of data center and also semiconductor opportunities coming there. We're very happy to share our experience and expertise and knowledge and customer relations as we can. Very good opportunities for us in the technology and AI space. In terms of demographic and economic development, I mentioned strong fundamentals, demographics, people moving into our markets. We need infrastructure. There's a lot of big need for that here in the U.S. In the U.S., I'll talk about that. In Florida, in particular, I mentioned earlier, we have a very strong U.S. building business in Florida. We've had that for a long time. We've been there as U.S. civil for many years. We've had our challenges, but we've learned our lessons from those projects.
We've incorporated them into our operations, and we've built amazingly good customer relations by delivering for our customers in Florida over many years. What we see happening in Florida today is big population growth, a lot of need for infrastructure, what we do, water, highways, so forth and so on. We are going to take a position in civil down in Florida, working with some key customers. We think projects in the $150 million-$500 million range are our sweet spot there. We are going to build on that from our experience to date. Longer term, what I see, and I talked about this earlier, up in Boston, you see it here in Seattle. We have great one Skanska opportunity down there. We have U.S. building, very strong operation.
We can build our civil presence there, and I can see really great opportunities in the future of those two units coming together as we have in other markets, including this one. Utah and Arizona, we talk about those as more opportunistic markets. I showed you the slide before of our acquisitions over many years. There was a company, Nielsens, that we purchased back in 1998. That headquarters was in Colorado. We have people from that region. We've been in these markets before Utah and Arizona. We're actually in Utah, or excuse me, Arizona today with civil. So we have good experience there. We have good customer relations. We decided to close down that office a few years ago because those markets are cyclical, and we didn't feel it warranted a full-time office and everything that goes with that.
What we see today, as we say here, these opportunities in those markets, you have the Winter Olympics coming to Salt Lake City in 2034. We see some good highway work, some good transit work coming there. Same thing in Utah. We see mining work there. We have good mining customers. We can pivot into these territories from Southern California and from up here in the Pacific Northwest. We have people with experience there and ties there. Really good opportunities for us in Utah and Arizona. We can see the U.S. civil business in particular growing there. With that, I'll turn it over to Ståle to talk about growth opportunities in Central Europe and resilient societies.
Very good. Thanks, Richard. As Anders said, the residential market in Central Europe has been really good over the last years.
Actually, we see good opportunities in the Central European market going forward, very much being funded by what we believe now, increased investments, both national, but also EU funding going forward that will go straight into, say, traditional infrastructure like highways and rails, where we are very strong today. You can say it's our sweet spot in Central Europe. It's for us very easy in a way to transfer our competence and capabilities across different borders there. In addition, we see an upgrade now within energy and the energy infrastructure in Central Europe, partly because of, in a way, the consequences of the war in Ukraine. There's a lot of investments flying in there. We believe that, in a way, the demand for new housing will continue. This leads me over to the right here, resilient societies, as Richard mentioned.
You can say a lot of the investments now will require, say, built-in resilience to withstand different dimensions. The obvious one is that we have actually now to adapt to the consequences of the climate changes: more rough weather conditions, more water and flooding, etc. That is now being built into all the projects we see. We have to withstand, in a way, the consequences of the climate crisis. It's already here. We have to handle it. As a consequence of the war in Ukraine, all the countries are now more focused on how can we build a resilient and good infrastructure in terms of energy, both in terms of the grid system, but also in terms of new production. Within the next two decades, Poland will have its first nuclear power plant.
That is a sign of, in a way, transforming from fossil fuel into something else. Generally, in all our markets, but also in Central Europe, most of the, say, water and wastewater infrastructure has been built, say, 100 years ago. There is a huge need to modernize that, to upgrade that, to, in a way, meet the future needs. We also see that because of the war in Ukraine, there are a lot of things related to that. There is a massive investment going into defense now, massive investment going into defense. Our geography with Poland, Czech, Slovakia, they are all, in a way, close to the Ukraine border, in a way, the front of NATO. A lot of investments there. We see work coming up for us, both on the civil side and on the building side to support that.
We're looking very positive on the market in Central Europe. Back to what Anders addressed around, in a way, having a diversified portfolio, standing in different geographies, in different sectors, this is a focus for us going forward as well. Makes us less vulnerable for the cycles and the changes that we know will happen. It happens in the construction industry. Looking at this slide here, you can see our sector distribution, both in terms of our civil operations and our building operations. We are spread between different geographies. We are spread within different sectors. Makes a solid foundation for us going forward. We also have a very clear view on what kind of customers we would like to work for and what kind of customers we have. On the civil side, we have mainly public clients, mainly public clients that are supporting that.
On the building side, we have more like 50-50, 50% private clients, 50% public clients. Out of the 50% private clients, we also are a client ourselves through our development operations within residential, within commercial. We're approximately 10% of that volume. As I say, the portfolio management that we are so focused about very much goes down to making sure that we take on board projects where we have the right clients and the right conditions that enable us to handle and control and steer the risks that are embedded in all the projects we have. That could be related to the different contract types that we have, the procurement route that the different projects have, and the responsibility overall that we take on as a company.
You can see here on the right-hand side of this slide, you can see how our portfolio and our, in a way, project portfolio has evolved from 2018 to today. Back in 2018, we had 60% building in our portfolio and 40% civil. Looking at today's portfolio, we have 60% civil and 40% building. That is kind of a dramatic shift over quite a few years here, and it has been done by purpose. Richard would like to elaborate a little bit more on that and our journey through the last years here.
Thank you, Ståle. Okay, we have talked about this so far. We have had good revenue growth. We have had solid and stable profitability and margin performance. We have got a healthy backlog based upon a selective bidding strategy. We have good growth opportunities in our home markets.
We have a good way of looking at our customer types and our contracts, make sure we're getting to the right projects the right way. We are ready for some growth in construction. With all of that, predictability remains our priority. If you look to the bottom left-hand corner of the slide, you can go back to 2018. The blue line is our margin performance at a group level at that time. Obviously, it was unacceptable. We were sub 1%. We came together as a group leadership team, and we committed to bringing this back based upon a dual strategy of profit before volume and selective bidding. We cannot say that enough. I am very proud to say that we have done what we promised. I mean, we have brought this back. You can see the blue line. We came out of 2018. We brought ourselves back to profitability, 2019, 2020.
Our team did an amazing job pushing through COVID, through the pandemic, to deliver high profitability in 2021. You can just see it is a strong, strong margin performance, 2021, 2022, 2023. We have turned it up. We have done what we promised to the market. We have brought construction back to profitability. We feel very good about that. At the same time, we have lowered the volatility in the system. If you look at the gray area around the blue line, you can see our standard deviation around our margin. We have just slowly narrowed that over time. We are in a perfect position right now to grow this business. It gives us all the confidence we need to set this new target of 4% or greater over time. We think it is a relevant target, as Anders said, and we can achieve it.
The activities that have led us to the performance that we have today are listed here on the right-hand side. They are the same activities we will follow going forward because they work. Strong customer focus. Anders mentioned it before. We have always been a strongly customer-focused company. We have about 300 people who have come into Seattle for this week. We have a big meeting tomorrow and the next day, it is called our leadership meetup. We are going to spend a lot of time talking about customers. We have a great customer focus today, and we are going to get better. Resilient portfolio and deliberate business mix. Ståle just talked to us about that. We know how to profile our customers, our clients, our opportunities, make sure we are getting into all of our projects the right way with the right margins and setting up our teams for success. Growth and selective bidding.
These two things have gone hand in hand for us over the past eight years, and they're going to continue to do so. Selective bidding is our North Star. We're going to continue to follow it because it works. The final two bullets, cost management focus, productivity, and efficiency. For me, they go together, and they apply both externally to our customers and internally to us here at Skanska. For our customers, we have to be cost competitive. Budgets have been, or costs have escalated significantly in the last few years. Our customers' budgets have been challenged because of that. We need to help them to get their projects into budget. We've been doing a great job of that, focusing on productivity and efficiency in the field, the way we deliver. This is what we do every day to create value for our customers.
We do the same thing for ourselves internally. We need to have a tight machine in Skanska. We need to be fit for purpose out there in a competitive landscape, always keeping our S&A tight. Our teams continue to focus on that, and we're going to continue to focus on that in the future. We see some digital technologies we think that can help us do that as well for some back-of-house functions. We have a really good tight ship today, and we're going to keep doing better. Jonas is going to show you some of that later in terms of our gross margin and S&A development over several years. I talked about digital tools just a second ago. We not only build semiconductor plants and data centers that create the digital tools that are powering our economy today.
We are also consumers of those tools in Skanska. The key for us as a consumer of those tools is to find the right ones that enable our teams to be successful, predominantly out there in the field and also in our offices. We need a tight, efficient, productive workforce, and digital tools help us do that. You can see this photo here on the right, drone technology. We've been using that for many years. There's nothing whiz bang about that in terms of technology. There are a lot of software programs that are coming out allowing us to harness that technology in a better way. One example is doing flyovers of our project sites on a daily basis that feeds back information to our teams. They can see in real time what's happening.
They can plan better for the next day, help them be more productive, more efficient. This is it. Anders talked earlier about scale. We're harmonizing our platforms across Skanska, across the global company so that we can help our teams gain the benefit of the knowledge that we have in all of our different local operations. Decentralization is a strength. It can also be a hindrance too if you can't scale it. We are finding ways to scale all the knowledge and experience that we have in Skanska and use it for the benefit of the company as a whole, leveraging insights and knowledge sharing across our markets and disciplines. We have a really good focus there. We're going to continue to get better. We see momentum building, and I can see this becoming a more and more important part of our construction delivery in the coming years.
With that, I'll turn it back to Anders to wrap up with the commercial direction.
Of course. Thank you. Yeah, as you have seen now, we have great potential. We are in a really good position in the construction operation, and we have great potential to continue to create value. We will continue to secure a diverse and resilient portfolio because that makes us less vulnerable. Of course, as we have been talking about, we see potential to increase the profitability even further. We are positioning ourselves to growing in different segments, sectors, but also in geographies, delivering on customer demand for a sustainable environment. I can see that a lot of customers require high standard when it comes to sustainable products and projects. We can offer that. We have the competence in-house.
Of course, productivity, efficiency, and digital transformation, that is our own challenge and opportunity. That is something we can impact ourselves. That is a great opportunity for the future. With that, we will go into the residential development stream, and I hand over to Ståle.
In residential development, we design and develop attractive homes focusing on shaping urban neighborhoods where people can live, meet, and thrive. We buy land, plan, design, and sell homes while the construction assignments are performed by our construction business stream. Our geographical footprint is in select cities in the Nordics and Central Europe. Our portfolio spans product segments with an emphasis on our core offering, which delivers quality homes for singles, couples, and families in different life stages.
Presenting the commercial direction for our residential development, I'd like to start with some words around this project that you can see on the picture or the animation behind me here. This is a project in Central Europe. It's in Prague. It's called Modranský cukrovar. And it's a very good example of a project or the type of project that we like to do in Skanska and that we're really good at doing in Skanska. This is a multi-phase project. It's converting a previous brownfield into a new fantastic residential project. It's been very attractive in the market. We have a good sales rate, and we are approximately halfway through this project now with the third phase ongoing here. You can see the parts of the legacy here with the chimney from the old sugar factory. So it's really, say, built-in history in the new residential area.
This is a good example of how we are, say, converting cities to new residential areas. The next slide here shows, in a way, the geographical footprint of our presence now and going forward, where we are focused in the three largest cities in the Nordics, both in Norway, Sweden, and in Finland. In addition, we have activities and a strong foothold in Central Europe, in Poland, and in Czech, then in Warsaw, Krakow, and in Prague. You can say that the housing market is very often exposed to demand cycles. Those demand cycles very often follow the economic cycles in the different markets. You know the Nordics have been heavily affected by the cost increases and the inflation, and in addition, the interest hikes that we've seen over the year.
Also in the Nordics, actually, you can say the global uncertainty has affected the market a lot. There has been a weak market, and as a consequence of that, the consumer confidence in the Nordics is quite low. To the opposite, the Central European market has been really good, really good for us, and in general, we see it really good also for others. We have had, say, good sales in all our projects, and this is because the unemployment rate in Central Europe is extremely low. It is extremely low. There is a good underlying economy. In this market, we find a lot of cash customers who come to us actually to place their cash into new homes.
With, in a way, the solid, say, economic foundations that we see a lot of private have here, a lot of our investors in new homes, they are actually, say, upscaling, bringing up new quality in their homes, moving from old premises into new premises that we can offer on attractive locations. There is a population growth also in Central Europe, and this is a market where we see that development continues to be strong. It is a market where we actually see that here is a potential to grow as well. Looking at the next slide, this starts with, in a way, showing the history, building a little bit on what Anders showed previously. This shows in the revenue in the different markets, the Nordics, which is the dark blue here, and then you see the Central Europe, which is the gray one.
You see the return on capital deployed, that is the green line that varies here. We have built up our residential development activities over years now to deliver approximately 6,000-7,000 homes every year. Through the last years, we've seen the deepest and longest downturn in the market for decades. We've done a lot of actions that I'll come back to in a way to adapt to those market situations. The fact is that the sales now are approximately half of what we had when this was on top. The actions we have taken, as you see here, you know, we had a low-cost segment called BookLook, and that segment was spread across the Nordics in Finland, Norway, and then in Sweden, and we also were in the U.K.
As a consequence of the market, we have exited Finland, we have exited Norway, we also exited the U.K. in terms of the BookLook segment. The only market where we still have BookLook now is in Sweden. We have also exited some geographies within the different countries. As I say, we're mainly focusing now on the three larger cities in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. That's where we see that, in a way, the demand is there, and the financial or economic fundamentals are expected to come back faster. That's the market we want to be in. We've done a significant job trying to adapt to the market situation. With revenue going down, we have to take down our cost base, and we've done a great job of that over the last two years.
We are also focused on making sure that unsold completed units are not growing and getting old on our balance sheet. Right? That is tying up a lot of capital, not making value for us, not making value for our shareholders. Despite the tough market, you have seen and probably seen that we have started projects. We have started projects in this difficult period in markets that support it. Just to elaborate a little bit more on the cost reduction that we have done over the last years, we have taken down our sales and admin costs related to residential development by approximately 50%. That is a significant achievement being done by two years.
That allows us now to have, say, a very efficient cost base that is based on the revenue and the volume we have now, and it gives us an opportunity to have a return on capital employed that is going the right way, as you can see on the green curve here now. The next slide, you can see the distribution of our residential development portfolio over time. The blue bar here is the land bank that we have. The gray bar here is the ongoing production, and then the green bar here is the unsold completed unit. You see how that has developed over time. As a consequence of the difficult market, the ongoing construction, ongoing production has gone significantly down, as I said. At the same time, the land bank has been more or less stable.
We have a very attractive and solid land bank today. The good thing about that land bank is that that land bank is very much sold. When the market picks up again, we have a lot of good land that we can deploy to the market, starting new projects, generating more profit going forward. As I said, the unsold completed unit that has grown over the last years, but we have focused hard to make sure that that, say, portion of capital employed is not growing old on our balance sheet. Going forward now, we do not intend to deploy more capital into this stream, but we will focus very much on rebalancing the portfolio, starting new projects in the right locations with good business cases, say, converting the land that we have in our land bank into new production and new profit.
That's our ambition going forward and making sure that we're not, in a way, building up more unsold completed units. That is our strategy going forward. Looking at our market, right, you can say understanding the customer need is the starting point for our offering in all the market. We're focusing very much on understanding what is it our customer needs and what are our selected customer target groups in the different areas, in the different locations, in the different geographies. We're building up an offer on the basis of that. We have a trusted brand, and we have satisfied customers. We see that from the feedback we get from our customers that buy in our project, that they are generally very happy with buying from Skanska.
We see that, in a way, sitting on both the development side and the construction side here, we can build in quality in our project, and we can adapt to the needs that our customers tell us that they want. We are very much focused on placemaking. The project we love is a multi-phase project where we can convert parts of the city into new fantastic residential areas. We are focusing on what kind of customer target group we have in the different areas. For example, here going to Norway, they have focused over many years for what we call empty nesters, people who today sit with their large villas, and they come to, say, a phase in life where they would like to convert that into more easy living, nice apartment, good location, good amenities, and we can offer that to the market.
When you have those offerings, you can actually withstand some of the cycles that we've seen with slowdown in the market because that customer target group, they are not so affected in a way about the changes that we've seen in the market in general. We're also focusing on building in sustainability features into our project that, in a way, meets the running cost of our customers, right? We want to help them to reduce their running cost. Therefore, focusing on building energy-efficient buildings, some of them actually also with energy production with solar panels, that is help reducing the energy bill to our customers. In Central Europe, where water is a scarcity, our gray water solution is also highly appreciated by our customers. Summing up our commercial direction, we will position ourselves not for a normal that was behind us.
We do not believe that the market will come back to how it was pre-pandemic, at least in the foreseeable future. We will position ourselves for a new normal in the market, and that is our focus going forward, with, in a way, focusing on capital allocation to the strongest market where we can see return to our expectation. We will start projects going forward, converting our good land bank into production in markets that support it. There is an opportunity now where we, with our balance sheet, can have an opportunity to actually buy land that would normally not be available in what you could say a normal market. Having a strong balance sheet can give us that opportunity. We will make sure that we deploy our pipeline and keep our financial flexibility. As you can see, we have taken down production quite significantly over the last years.
With a good solid land bank that is already very much zoned, we are ready to start fast new projects if the market returns. That is our strategic direction or commercial direction for residential property. Now we will focus on the commercial direction for commercial properties, and I'll leave the word to my colleague, Claes Larsson, to present this.
In commercial property development, we create attractive spaces with a focus on high sustainability standards and amenities where people can work, live, and connect. We initiate, develop, lease, and divest high-quality and flexible commercial and residential rental properties in good locations built by our construction business stream. Our geographical footprint is in select cities in the Nordics, Central Europe, and the U.S.A. With a portfolio consisting of offices, residential rentals, logistics, and life science, we develop dynamic neighborhoods.
Over to commercial property development, and I would like to start with this picture that in a nutshell shows our customer offering to our two customer categories. We have the tenants that lease the premises from us, and you have the investors that buy the completed projects. This is what it is all about. You need to pick prime locations, obviously. It is very hard to fix that later if you get it wrong. Prime location for us is central locations, or if not central, close to traffic hub, public transport, like metro station, etc. Very appreciated by both tenants and investors to keep proper value over time. We pack these projects with innovative solutions to enhance customer offerings or experiences. Of course, wellness, amenities, services are super important. Healthy indoor climate, outdoor space, as here, gym, etc.
Of course, the sustainability aspect is super important to design these projects from the beginning with the right kind of material, low carbon footprint, and energy-efficient solutions. It has been a rough ride the last five plus years to be a commercial property developer. You all know the history about this. We had a terrible pandemic, obviously completely unexpected, first one for 100 years in the world. That caused then the new concept of hybrid work to surface. We still have a lot of post-pandemic effects in the market. Companies are struggling with how to get the people back to the office. Is it three days a week, four days a week, completely flexible, or back full-time every day a week? We will not go back to where we were before the pandemic. We need to adapt to a new normal here.
We see that companies are striving to get people more back to the offices to create company culture, creativity around the café machine, inspirative environment, etc. We had the terrible invasion of Ukraine and shockwaves in all the supply chains, causing material prices to rise, construction prices to rise. It is very hard to underpin new business cases for us. We had cost increases in existing ones as well. We have to adjust to that as well. On top of that, high inflation, high interest rates. The effect of that is obviously for any investor that needs to put debt, most of them on their purchases. The cost goes up for debt.
You need to have a higher return on your investment, which puts the yields and cap rates going up and then puts pressure on the market value, which is another hit for us as a developer. Having said that, there are some bright spots here, and I'm really happy about the 57% leasing ratio in ongoing projects. That is a really solid number. We have 60% invested, meaning that we are investing at the same pace as we are leasing in the ongoing projects portfolio. 77% also in completed projects. That is projects not belonging to an investment property portfolio that I will cover later. 77% leased. I think a pretty solid number given some of these projects have been completed fairly recently.
Talking a bit granular about our three main markets here, or our three markets, Central Europe may be the best one for us right now when it comes to leasing. We see a strong demand, and what tenants see is that there is a supply gap coming here. Very few developers have started lately, and you can see the next two, three, four years, what are the completions in my market. If you are a tenant wanting quality space, you need to hurry up to secure that, basically. We feel a strong demand here, definitely. In the Nordics, maybe a bit slower. We see it as a stable market. You can see vacancies is on the rise, but it is a polarized market. It is a quality game, and we are in the upper segment.
Most of the vacancy increases we see are in wrong location and inferior products, and that's not where we belong. Also in the U.S., I would say there are bright spots. We have secured a couple of really good contracts in the last couple of years here. It's again flight to quality that matters here. A lot of companies would like to downsize and upgrade so they can pay much more rent per sq ft or sq m to get more qualitative space to attract people back to the office. Having said that, the weakest market we have is in the U.S., but I feel good about the development when it comes to leasing in the U.S. Enabling factors, we offer top quality projects, sustainable, innovative, top location, etc., customer mindset.
If a tenant is looking for space where we have a presence, we are always in the game. Of course, in these shaky times, if you sign a lease with Skanska during construction, if you buy a building from Skanska during construction, we will be there to deliver on time and quality. That is an extra add-on factor for our customers. Moving then to investor market, and also here, I would say Central Europe sticks out as maybe the strongest market for us. You see that we have taken up our arrows to stable markets in Europe when it comes to commercial property development. We see a rising demand from local capital in Central Europe here, actually.
You saw here last week, for instance, we secured a core divestment of a 100% leased property in Wrocław, Poland, Central Poland in phase two, with a repeat investor that we also did business with in Warsaw last year. Very good strengthening of the market in Central Europe. Also, a lot of Nordic capitals, Germans, still a bit hesitant, but they are starting to look back, and especially then, you could say, in Warsaw. Nordics, I would say, stable transaction markets. There are core deals done. They are picky. They want the right location, high leasing ratio, high top quality, etc. It is a stable market. If you go over to this part of the pond, it is a completely different picture. It is still very much dominated by opportunistic money.
We'd like to see distressed pricing, and that is one of the core reasons why you haven't seen us active in the divestment. I will come back to that later here. Actions then is to be very active in trying to divest and actually divest, as we have done this year, properties in Europe. When it goes to the U.S., we are focusing on completing the assets. We are focusing on leasing the remaining space, and we are focusing on being razor sharp in asset management. We need to backfill the pipeline with new starts, obviously. We are starting projects here on a selective basis where we can meet the fundamental that is in the market today. Everything we have started the last couple of years, I feel really good about.
You are probably interested in our big portfolio of completed projects, which actually is bigger than what we have in investment properties. There are 22 in total here. You can see the leasing rate is actually, as I said earlier, fairly good. It is 75% here in the U.S., 79% in Central Europe, and 84% in the Nordics. We have several projects that are 100% leased. For instance, three projects in Copenhagen office, 100% leased. We have a bunch of them as well in Central Europe, a couple of them in Prague, etc. The big part here is in the U.S. 68% of the capital employed is in the U.S., SEK 13.1 billion. I bet you are interested in seeing the breakdown where they sit. A lot of them sit in the capital city here, Washington, D.C., and adjacent markets, which is Northern Virginia.
We cover also here Tysons Corner and the Arlington Corridor. That is where you have most of the capital, also in this region, which consists of Seattle and Bellevue, which is sort of the twin market in the Puget Sound region here, where we sit today. 37% and the rest then is allocated to Houston. Mainly office projects, you can see to the right, but also some rental residential or multifamily, as we call it here. You see two other stuff here on the legend, Boston and life science. They are sort of connected. We are between activities now in Boston. It is just more a timing issue. We have had a fantastic run with all our Boston projects so far, but nothing complete, nothing ongoing. We are working really hard with a fantastic land bank within life science, office, and multifamily for the future in Boston. Super strong locations.
Feel really happy about that as well. This one I really love. This is the completion profile of our ongoing projects at present. These are the ongoing projects not sold segment-wise. We have the exit risk and we have the leasing risk on these. Look at the green dots here. The blue bar's height is obviously capital employed upon completion for each and every project here. You see the first one of the office one is 42% leased end of Q3. It's actually approaching 60% as I'm standing here. This is a project in Warsaw, Studio B, fantastic location. The only one that has a bad location is probably ourselves, Skanska. I feel very confident that this will be a leasing success, and we have until Q2 next year to complete. You have a 95% completed leased project in Copenhagen, 57%.
That's our next headquarter in Sweden, 100% leased in Budapest. You have to go to Q4 2027. That's two years ahead before you see something that is a low leasing ratio. You see the striped small bar there. We actually started that project this quarter in fourth quarter. That is the fifth phase of our project in Bosnia, region city in Poland, where we had a tremendous success on the previous four phases called Novorynek. The last one to be commenting up on here, and you might wonder why I'm so happy with 12% on that one. That's a multifamily project, and it is by design very low leasing rates to begin with. We start leasing those just before completion, and the game is then to lease them up to stabilization within 18 months. We have plenty of time to do that.
It's a completely different leasing profile where we like to lease offices if possible during construction. Let's talk a bit about the capital allocation. I know there's a big interest in the audience for that. Let's explain here a bit what we have. Ståle showed a similar breakdown for the residential before. The blue part here is the land bank. That's the raw material, strategically important to have future project. We need to have a big land bank. I feel also good about our current land bank in commercial property development. When you start a project, you move that piece of land, the book value for it, up into the gray area, and then you add whatever is invested on top of that for the project.
Once completed, it moves out from the gray, moves up to the green, and when we divest it, it moves out from the stack bar. That is sort of the transition from start to finish for a project. The problem here right now with the allocation, and you will understand this, I guess, is that land gives no visible returns. You get returns from the completed if you have leased them, and if you have leased them fully, you get a high return, obviously. Depending on the profit content, the leasing ratio, and the location you have for a project, you might get 4%-7% or something in return on investment in the green part, far below the 10%. The magic occurs in the gray part. We need to shrink the green part.
We need to increase the gray part, and we need to have a healthy size of the land bank. That is the game we are playing right now. We need to sell in a responsible way from the green part here. I mean, the U.S. market, I touched upon it earlier. It is very muted right now. These opportunistic actors just wanting to have distressed pricing. Look at this building. The ones here will tour it later today. We do not want to sell a top quality asset here at distressed asset prices. We have still vacant premises in some of them. We focus on that and asset management. When the market is back on more stable levels, we will start more active divestments in this region. Responsible divestment from the green and also selective projects start from the gray.
That is what will increase the return on capital employed over time. Focus forward here. Geography is super important. We constantly assess and evaluate our geographies, which city should we be present in, but also importantly, which submarket in each city. We pick the submarkets that are sustainable over time and not just have a quick peak and then they disappear. When it comes to project allocation, here you can see the history. We used to be more or less an office developer. We have stepped up in rental residential lately. If you see to the stack bar to the right, this is when depicting the total investment of all future projects in the current land bank we have. There will be a big distribution between almost equal distribution between office, life science, and multifamily.
In the Nordics, we do logistics and occasionally hotels. This is a snapshot of the land bank as of today. The commercial direction forward, and I just alluded to maximizing value creation in a slowly recovering market here, is to have patience with some of the assets in the muted market and really make sure that they are ready to divest. Maintain this good leasing momentum. We are in the quality trophy premises game here and attract the tenants that are really picky here. We have had successes in the last two years, but we have more to lease here, and that is a very strong and important priority for us. Capital efficiency, redistribute a bit between asset classes to drive returns upwards. Also, right now, we are moving much more into selective project starts. We have the financial capacity to start projects.
Very few others have. We are the ones that can solve the supply gap in the market and give the solutions to the tenants. Of course, I talked about the U.S. assets. We need to continue to just maximize the value creation and wait for the moment to realize that value. Of course, when we do asset management in the U.S. or in Central Europe or in the Nordics, we take all the help we can get by knowledge transfer from investment properties since asset management is core business in that part. There are other learnings to leverage from investment properties, and I will be back on that, so stay tuned for the final business.
In investment properties, we actively manage a portfolio of Skanska-developed high-quality properties with the highest levels of sustainability certifications.
With investment properties, we play a more active role in the whole value chain and can act as a long-term partner for local municipalities through our solid commitment to the areas we build. Our geographical footprint is in prime locations in Sweden's three largest cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Managing a top-quality portfolio allows us to test innovations that will strengthen our customer offering and competitiveness as a group. Investment properties was launched as a business stream in 2022 with the aim of building up a recurring revenue business generating predictable cash flow and with potential value creation over time, aiming for a portfolio value of SEK 12 billion-SEK 18 billion.
The last chapter of our commercial direction for the four business stream is investment properties. As Anders said earlier, this is completing the value chain.
We are one of the unique actors in the market that actually have construction, development, and asset management, and that is a very, very big strength. What is it all about? We are developing, designing, executing, leasing in the commercial property development part in the CDN, in the Nordic part here. Then we can select to divest office products in the three biggest cities in Sweden to investment properties. That is a decision taken at the moment we go for divestment here. You can see there are a couple of criteria that need to be fulfilled in order to transfer them. We would like most of the leasing work and moving-in tenants' work to be done in the commercial property development. 80% leased is a requirement. 60% occupied is another requirement.
We like to have a lot of tenants in the building, increasing the tenant interfaces and get a lot of tenant insights for the future. The geographical cluster is all about getting an efficient asset management and to become relevant in each submarket. So far, seven projects have passed the eye of the needle here: four in Malmö, two in Stockholm, and one in Gothenburg. You might have picked it up on the move that the capital employed is quite equally distributed within markets, so different product sizes. The target is SEK 12 billion-SEK 18 billion. We are approaching the start of that range. The idea is to have a very efficient asset management in each city, and you can have that if you reach these levels of capital employed. Revenue is building up here.
Not a big surprise if you keep adding products all the time. 4.7%, Anders talked about that earlier, is the rolling 12 current return on capital employed. As Anders said, we need to have market value increases because these are top-quality assets valued at a yield of maybe around high 4%, 5% at currently. If you just pick up the NOI from fully leased buildings, you will never get to the 6%. The game plan here is that over time also create additional value. It's a very strong portfolio from a quality standpoint. Of course, we have an environmental certificate everywhere. It's completely inflation-adjusted when it comes to rent levels. 110 tenants right now.
They are the most satisfied tenants in the Swedish real estate market for the medium-sized category, which was the sort of achievement we got last year from the biggest survey in the real estate industry in Sweden called Fastighetsbarometern. We thought after two and a half years in operation, getting this recognition was really inspiring for us. 83% economic occupancy rate could be higher. We are working really hard on that, obviously. A pretty new ratio for many of you, surplus ratio. That is a pretty important one showing the net operating income divided by the revenue. Basically, how much leakage do you have on the cost side? We think this is a pretty solid number as well. We attract tenants from all kinds of businesses, which is really encouraging as well.
If you see, I mean, we also have a lot of variety in lease lengths. When you see the expiration profile of when we need to renegotiate and keep our tenants, etc., make them shrink or grow or whatever, it is very evenly spread over time. This will be part of the core business to constantly try to keep the tenants happy and keep them in our building. The commercial direction here is to continue to build up the portal to the desired state here. One of the really big, I would say, synergies and advantages with having this business in Skanska is that now we get a much longer-term relation with the tenants. We can see how they thrive in our building, hopefully, and constantly have a dialogue. How can we make you more successful in Skanska buildings?
Maybe they would like to change the footprint. We have actually cases where they moved from one building in IP to another because they have some change demand, and we serve them and help them with that. We can also potentially know that they might need a new location somewhere where we have a presence, maybe in another country where commercial property development then can help this tenant to make them successful in another Skanska project. Leasing vacant premises, obviously a high priority. This clusters for long-term creation. This is something that we also pointed out as a big, I would say, advantage because we feel when we buy big pieces of land, we do the placemaking.
We start the first product, we divest it, and then when we have completed a full campus, someone that bought the first phase here will get a big value increase because that building is now sitting in a much bigger and completed context. Everything equal, the market value will go up. Now we can keep that value potentially for the future within Skanska. We have several big sort of land areas that might be potential candidates for investment properties in the future. I talked earlier about a bit of the synergies like in asset management competence transfer between the units.
We also have a lot of data that we will collect from all the properties under asset management phase, data that we feed back, see what went wrong potentially, what was right, how can we adjust and fine-tune for the future in order to become a much better developer and contractor. With that, I would like to hand over to Lena Hök for Drivers for Sustainable Investment.
At Skanska, we want to create buildings and infrastructure that stand the test of time. In both public and private sector, there is an increasing demand for solutions that deliver more efficient and more resilient performance. Today's customers face a growing pressure to increase their own operational efficiency, including infrastructure and buildings that are using less water, less energy, conserving water, and also optimizing the use of materials.
Additionally, there is an increasing concern when it comes to the extreme weather event and their impacts on the built environment and society, making it a top concern for decision makers. Climate adaption is by that moving up, becoming a strategic priority in order to safeguard people's lives, livelihood, but also the asset values. You can see here some of the projects that we are doing that are significant for this. The E10 road in the northern part of Norway that are pursuing the excellent BREEAM infrastructure, excellent certification. The Eight where we are now, significantly higher energy efficiency levels than market standards and also LEED Platinum level. To the very right, you see Slussen in Sweden, the giant spillwater gates that control the flow of water and protect the Lake Mälaren from the Baltic Sea. This is safeguarding the water supply for two million people.
That's the impact of our projects. The impact of our sustainability offering in our portfolio. We achieve 25% higher energy efficiency levels than market standards in our project development portfolio. That's both residential and commercial, looking at the rolling 12 months. We have 100% certifications of offices in our commercial development. In construction, SEK 62 billion comes from projects that are pursuing certifications. This at a rolling 12-month basis. That's our offering. That's our impact. We do this by engaging early with our customers, helping them to get the ability to make smarter decisions and gain greater efficiencies. The use of data plays a critical role here, unlocking those insights, improving design, but also precision when it comes to planning, gaining greater operational efficiencies and long-term performance. We are well positioned, just like you could see from the numbers, to make an advantage of our position here.
We do this by using emerging technologies and digital tools applied in design and planning for efficiency of materials and energy. We are also increasing our capabilities of using low-carbon materials and circular solutions, including refurbishment and renovation of existing buildings, making sure that they are being updated for modern demands and needs and efficiencies, as well as prolong their lifetime. Last year, refurbishment of buildings stood for 8% of our group total revenue. Also, of course, making sure we are increasing the efficiencies of the buildings by using building management systems where you are able to monitor, control, and optimize the use of a building. All of this with a focus for us to save carbon and save costs, both for us and our customers. For us, being present throughout the value chain also means that we can gain the understanding where these savings best can be made.
We are gaining the expertise and also transferring the knowledge how to design, build, and manage for more efficiencies, smarter solutions, resilient, and also sustainable performance. This is our competitive advantage. How to turn knowledge into performance and performance into long-term value for our customers and our shareholders. By that, I leave it over to Antonia.
Thank you, Lena, and everyone that's been on stage thus far. We're now ready for our first break. We've gone through the commercial direction and our strategies and our priorities going forward. Now it's time for some well-deserved coffee. You will find coffee and other refreshments at the back of the room and just outside through the doors here. We'll gather back here at 9:45 A.M. in 15 minutes for some further insights into our group financials. See you in a bit. Welcome back.
I hope that you had a chance to grab some nice coffee. We're now going to continue with the group financials. Right after that, we're going to open up for questions. We'd just like to turn to you that are following us from a distance. There will be an opportunity for you to engage with us here. Just use the telephone conference number that is provided on our global web page under the Capital Markets Day event, and you will get put through to us here at the stage. Moving over to group financials. Now we will take a closer look at our operational performance, our cash flow, and our capital allocation strategies. To take you through this, I give you our EVP and CFO, Jonas Rickberg. Thank you, Antonia.
Yes, today I will take you first through the business streams here from the financial perspective, and then I will go into the different parameters of the group financials and so on. Now I need a clicker, I realize. Thank you. It's easier. I will start then with the construction business stream. If it works as well. Yes, here we have. As you have heard here today, we have a lot of bigger ambitions here in order to sharpen our performance within this stream right now. We have increased the target to 4%. Of course, a little bit we have heard about the strategy in order to be delivering that. From a financial then perspective, you know that it's the gross margin and the S&A that build up the EBIT.
Over the years, we have been very stable here of 7.5%-8% of the gross margin. On the S&A level, we have been at 4%, as you can see here, hovering around. As a company, it is very important when it comes to S&A to focus, that we are working with active management when it comes to S&A. If volume goes down, of course, we need to readjust and focus on the cost side and take that down as well. As you can see here, we have been very successful at doing that lately. Also, you can see that on the left-hand side, there is a little bit of a dip there close to 2025.
That is actually our ability right now that we have managed to increase the revenue by keeping the same cost and actually get the leverage of the situation we are into. Long term, we think that 4% of S&A will be the standing point. That is very much driven by the fact that we are a big company with a big footprint, and we, of course, need to reinvest in the new areas that we believe in strongly here. What we have set up the company for here latest years is to set up a company with a very effective system. When I say that, I mean very much connected then to the bidding strategy as well as the execution way of how we have executed the project and so on. Our focus when it comes to that is very much on the gross margin.
I will just now open up a little bit so you can see how we are internally then looking into some of our parameters that we are judging here. Here you see the bid margin as well as the most likely margin as an average here. That is actually then corresponding then to 450 biggest projects that we have in Skanska, more like 70% of the total value. Most likely is all of these we are seeing, all the projects here, they are actually in the beginning of the phase and the mid and the end of the project phase. Also here, the mid most likely margin is actually what we think will be the most likely outcome of the project that we are reviewing quarterly until it is completed.
Also, when we are, you can see here the bid margin, that is actually the margin that we are entering to project with. As well as, you know, when we are reporting margin, we have a little bit more of a precautious view. That is actually that we are keeping continuousness for risk or unforeseen event that could happen out during the project. That is the NEIVA we'll talk about here later on even more. Look at the graph here. I would like you to pay attention a little bit to the blue line here. You can see that the bid margin has increased then from one with more or less 1%- 9% there. That is actually our ability to look for the risks and make sure that we get paid for them in the bidding phase.
Also the strong development here of the most likely margin that has increased almost 2.5%. That is actually our ability not only to foresee the risks when we are bidding, but also making sure that we are executing on them. That is a very good strength, of course, of Skanska, how we have been developing then. As you remember maybe the graph that Richard was showing here earlier, the standard deviation has come up to a very small level targeting then to the 4% that we are into. This is the fundamentals that we are working with within Skanska, if you open up so to say.
If we move on then to continue then to look into construction, but also for the future, if we open up and look into the order book, here we have divided the order book into different margin categories and with a different time period, as you can see there. Focusing and starting on the bottom there, you can see that it has then shrunken from 6% right now to 1% where we are right now. That is the projects that are below zero or zero, so to say. That has over the years come down to a very good level, I would say right now. That is one of the reasons, of course, that it's getting better profitability here.
Other thing that is important to look into here, actually the gray bar, that is the strong development that we can see in the good projects that we have, that is the margin that is more or less 8.5% or more. You can see how that has increased that share. Of course, that is a strength, of course, also here within our order book and the potential that we have here. Worth mentioning is also the mid space here. That is actually according to plan, I would say, due to the fact that there is, as we were into here earlier, different types of contracts as well as customer mix, but also a different level of S&A connected to it. That are actually playing according to what we would like it to be.
All in all, it's very much that we are working then with a portfolio and working very hard when it comes to the risk and reward balance within this area, of course. This is very much what we can see in future. Also moving on then to the top line of Skanska, you can see it had been a very good trajectory. If you remember what we talked about in Capital Markets Day in 2023, when we said that there was a funding boost into U.S. and then maybe mostly into the civil and civil work and so on. That has also then been translated into these revenue streams, as you can see here. Also mentioned today, we were very much into how to position ourselves for new growth. That is very important for us.
Even if you're focusing extremely much on stable performance within the construction stream, we are looking then for the growth opportunities that we can see here and mention in the tech and digital infrastructure and then the demographic and economic growth, as we talked about earlier as well. The resilient society. All in all, these will build up to new possibilities for Skanska. Opening up a little bit, you can see there in the light blue, that is a snapshot for next year. You can see that already right now we have a revenue in hand that is corresponding then to 68% versus the rolling 12 compared then to Q3 and so on. That is a good number, I would say. If you compare to the latest five years, it actually has been bringing 60-65.
We are in the higher end here preparing them for the future. Leaving construction business stream and moving in then to residential area, we can see that this is an area that we talked about earlier. We are targeting a 10% return on capital employed. Right now, it will take a little bit of time. You can see here in the graph that from the top to the bottom, we have lost a lot of revenue, of course, and that is mainly connected then to Nordic that we had challenges with. Of course, we really need this to come back going forward. Also pay a little bit of attention then to the green line there. Ståle was into it. We have reduced the cost with more than 50% here in this area.
You have seen that it has taken us to a level that is a little bit higher than the mean in average there. That is actually a situation that we are quite clear right now that we are having an organization that is prepared for more revenue to come, so to say. We have reset the structure, but we are ready for more to come going forward. Of course, it is very much that we need to see that the central market, Central Europe, has increased in the volumes. Of course, we need to refill the land bank there even more because that is what we are looking for, the profitability areas. Revenue and cost is not, of course, everything when it comes to the profitability.
If you open up a little bit and look into what we can see in the stocks on the margin side here, we have actually then within the residential development looked into the different time parameters here you can see in the bottom and the margins. We can see that 2020 then was a very profitable situation. 2023, it was a very challenging situation for the residential. Right now, we then are in Q3 2025. Also, you can see the color there. Starting then from the below, you can see that margins that are below 10% or below has actually then come down a bit from 2023. Still, it is a fact that we have some assets that are a little bit diluting the margin that we have right now.
On the other hand, you can see that going then from 2023 to on the gray bars, you can see that we actually then coming to a better situation with most likely margin that is coming out in a better place. That is mainly driven by the fact that we have started many new projects. Going ahead, we are focusing very much on the capital turnover and make sure that we are also then taking out as much as possible when it comes to the project that is not supporting the margin, of course. As well as we are continuing to developing the pipeline with new solid and good business cases. With this, I leave the residential stream and move in then to commercial development. Here we can see the unrealized gains over time period.
Unrealized gains is, of course, the difference between what we see is the market value as well as the total investment at the end date that is needed. You can see that has been over the year coming down to a situation we have right now of 10% in Q3. Of course, comparing then to what we had when we were in super good days on 20%, it has been then a little bit of a challenging situation. Of course, we need to start more projects here. It was very much connected then to the interest rate, of course. If we take the situation we have right now in Q3 and look into what we have there, let's see. One more. Here is actually the situation that we have divided things on ongoing and completed, and it's 10%, as I said.
There is a difference there, as you can see. If we play a little bit with the numbers, you will see pure mathematically here right now what the potential is if we see a yield change. This is very important for us that we will explain things going forward. Let's take a look here at what we have. If we then increase, if we have a yield compression of 50 basis points, you can see that we are actually then increasing the value of SEK 3.2 billion. Most important also that you are coming back then to a situation of almost the 20% when we had on a very good market situation. Only with these few basis points change, we can see good values in the return, so to say.
This is giving us, of course, a little bit of a situation that we are having a patient strategy for these assets. These are, as Claes was into, very key good assets for commercial development. They are so good. Of course, we would not like to fire sale here in a way. You can see just the fact that it is increasing quite good there. Also, we have, of course, the opportunity then to take advantage of the fact that we can increase the leasing here. We are into the situation. We are not 100% leased on all the assets right now, but we could also take that time advantage into our play here. Closing the chapter of the business streams and moving in then to the financials even more, we look into the cash flow and the capital allocation.
I will then start with the cash flow. You can see here on the dark blue that has very much contributed very good to the Skanska cash flows we were into because that is free working capital and our way of working with advanced payments here. It has been very successful over the year. Right now, we are on 18% in relation to revenue. As I mentioned here earlier, we had a good portfolio of almost then the SEK 264 billion that has a very good and healthy business mix to generate this good cash flow here. Also, you can see in the light blue, and that is a different dynamics around that because that is connected then to the project development. That is connected, of course, to where we are in the cycle of divestment or investing things here in the area of the project development.
That is more of a sluggish movement there. Lastly, but not less important, I would say, that is actually then the IP going forward when we have built up that it will be revenue or cash flow generation into our business, equally important, but not in a magnitude, of course, to the construction that we can have and using this capital into other things within Skanska. Moving forward to what we have here in capital allocation, you can see that we have had the growth trend over the years. We had it on hold for a bit. Right now, you can see that we have a situation that we are on SEK 54 billion. The gray bar there connected then to RD, residential development, has come down a bit.
Going forward, of course, we would like to start new projects where we have seen that we see good transaction opportunities, of course, but also that we are focusing on regaining the profitability in line with the targets that we have here. We do not really see a growth agenda here for this area when it comes to the capital employed. We have an appropriate level of capital employed already right now for the project development going forward. Moving into the strong net cash position that we have, we are very happy with that, of course. You can see that we are in the Q3 here, SEK 9 billion. That gives us then a headroom then to the limit of minus SEK 10 billion in depth of SEK 90 billion that we can use, so to say.
Going forward, we have very much a strong focus here on maintaining the good working capital ratio, of course. We would also like to make sure we need to have enough cash to navigate the uncertainties that can happen in our industry, of course, but also taking a good advantage of if we see good opportunities here and so on. Also important is that we are keeping the credit ratio equivalent then to investment grade going forward. That is very important for us as well. Moving on then to the equity position, underscores into it, we have a great development here over the years. And right now we are on the level of SEK 61 billion, then corresponding then to 38% equity ratio.
This is very much depending on the strategy that we have had here over the years, how we have worked with construction, how we have worked with also the PD business and so on in order to generate all this. Of course, when we set up the need here, we look into. Internally here, what we see is, of course, important when it comes to the underlying requirements, but also looking into a risk buffer, what do we actually need there. We see that we are very happy with the situation that we have right now here. Also looking into return on equity, you can see that we are right now on 10%, but we have the target then of 18. It will take time to get there.
The most important thing is that in order to get there, it's very important that all the business stream are delivering according to the targets. I just want to reiterate that we are focusing on this return on equity here. Moving on then here to the dividend and the good track record that we have here. We are focusing on the dividend in a way that we have a very stable and predictable. That is very important for us. One example of that is actually then if you look into the following the pandemic there that we cut the dividend and that was then connected then that we took it back then later on. Of course, over the years, we can see that we have a dividend around SEK 17 billion over the last five years.
Of course, you can see here also when it comes to the gray ones that we are working with extra dividends. It has been utilized early and, of course, to distribute excess capital and so on. Finalizing here, as we were into, Antonia showed this in the beginning. It is very much connected then to the way we are working. We are focusing here on the EBIT generation. It is very much profit that we are focusing on. We are also looking into the revenue opportunities that we have going forward with our way of working here with the different areas that we touched that was important for us. Also, when it comes to the capital efficient to really make sure that we internally distribute the money to the most profitable areas that we can see here.
All in all, of course, it is very important that we continue then to have a total shareholder return and focusing on that and the different aspects around that, I would say. With this, I hand over to Antonia again.
Thank you, Jonas. Now we are opening up for questions, and I will invite the entire group leadership team up on stage. I will take the opportunity to remind those of you that are watching from a distance. If you have a question for us here, then please use the telephone conference number provided and follow the instructions by the operator, and you will get put through to us here on stage. For everyone here in the room, if you have a question, please just raise your hand. We will bring a microphone to you, and I will ask you to start by stating your name and organization.
We will start with a question over here.
Hello, Keivan Shirvanpour on SEB. First of all, a question on the new margin target, 4% EBIT. Could you maybe elaborate what's the upside potential to this market? How much could you potentially have above that 4%?
It's a target is when we said 4% or above. You can definitely see some more opportunity to increase both to go for segment where we've seen high profitability growth in the past here, but also by being more efficient internally. I won't be able to quantify what's the potential, but it's a relevant target. I'm confident that the strong backlog we have, high quality backlog support that. Could you maybe say something about the different markets, how the margins will develop there? Yes, if you look at the last quarter, we have been performing well in all geographies.
That is also important to be able to reach a very high target, ambitious target. We need to perform in all geographies. We have done so. In Q3, if you look at the performance, it is quite evenly distributed. I would say all geographies need to contribute.
Thanks. I also have a question on the commercial property development. Because as you mentioned, you have quite low activity in the U.S. market, and you have quite a lot of projects that are completed but not yet sold. Some of these, you have consistently written down the surplus values in these projects, which is now 5% for the completed project, and then it is 20% for the ongoing projects. Could you maybe elaborate, first of all, on the difference between the ongoing projects and the completed projects? We could start there.
Okay. Yeah, I can take that one. I mean, 20% in ongoing projects. As I said, when I presented earlier, I feel very confident about everything we started the last three couple of years here. That is why I see a much higher margin on that. When it comes to the completed, I mean, we took quite a bit of value adjustment in the fourth quarter of 2023. You can see a range from, I mean, the ones we wrote down, then the book value is equal to the market value, and the surplus value, everything equal would be 0%. You, of course, have stuff in there that is more than 5%, and in average is 5%.
The key thing is that the difference here is that we start healthy projects, and we still have a backlog of projects that were subject to the write-downs and decrease of surplus value in the end of 2023.
Some of these projects, would you say that there are potentially projects that are loss-making or have a zero margin, given that it is a 5% in total? I mean, if you write down something, then the book value is equal to the market value at that point of time, right?
Yes, there could be any range from zero surplus value to higher surplus value than 5% in that. We do not comment on individual projects.
Okay, thanks. Those were my questions.
Very good. We have got another question up here.
Thank you very much, Graham Hunt from Jefferies. I have just got two questions. I will start with construction.
You talked a little bit about the strong demand you're seeing in data centers in Georgia and Arizona, but it's something we haven't seen come through into the order book in the last few quarters. Just wondering if you could comment on that and when we could see that demand come through into your orders.
If you look back to last year, we had very strong order bookings in building for data centers. It slowed down a little bit this year. We had a new administration come in. There was some volatility in the market. We're also working with our clients, so they were changing some of the technology, cooling technology, how they cool these data centers, these hyperscalers. We're in constant conversations with them now. Good opportunities on the board, so we expect our orders to pick up. They have softened a little this year after a very strong 2024.
Understood. And then just coming back to capital allocation and returns to shareholders, to me, it sounds like you're not looking to invest more in the property development business, just rather recycling capital, but you're generating a lot of cash in your construction business. You're at a very strong net cash position on the balance sheet. Could we see you've reiterated your payout ratio targets today, but could we see additional top-up with specials going forward or a move to the top end of that range closer to 70% going forward? Thanks.
We always continuously look at the capital structure in the company. We are in a very good position now, as we have shown here today. We're doing that together with the board all the time. I will not be able to guide you right now. We will come back on that after Q4.
Thank you.
Very good. We have another question up here. Okay, up there.
Stephan from Danske Bank. Two questions for me. First on the U.S. construction business. Looking back the last few years, it has been a phenomenal market with high demand. If I understood it correctly, maybe not even supply enough to supply that demand. Of course, that drives margins. Could you maybe elaborate on the situation right now? Is there a risk for normalization of the market where there is more competition and where margins are therefore hampered? How would you tackle that?
Anders said earlier, we have a strong outlook on the civil market in the U.S., stable outlook for building. It has been a strong market.
Our book-to-build last year in the U.S. was 156%, I think. Very strong opportunities. Right now, it's softened a bit, but it's still very stable. That's driven our margin. We've taken advantage of the opportunities available to us. I mean, as I stand here today, I feel we have a very strong backlog. We have good opportunities in the market on both the civil and the building side. We're just going to continue to seize those opportunities as they come to us. I feel strongly positive about where we are today.
Thank you. Back to the capital allocation question. I mean, we've heard here now that you're happy with the allocation to the PD streams. Of course, if the market recovers, those streams will actually contribute with some divestments. You have SEK 19 billion above your limit net debt target.
You're commenting that it's nice to have. Yeah, sure. If something bad happens, it could be good to have. I'm just curious, if you have minus 10, 10 as a debt target, what would be your target? Where would you like to be over time to always be secure? I mean, that's a different—I mean, the limit is one question, but where are you happy? Are you happy at 10 plus or zero or somewhere else?
I can start. It depends on the market situation. Now, we have been a few years where the transaction market has not really worked as it used to, both when it comes to commercial property development and residential. In that case, you need to be more cautious. You need to have a strong cash position, in my view.
When we say we do not need more capital in project development as we have now, we want to start more projects. We have been through this in the commercial direction. We want to start more projects, both in RD and CED, because that is where we create a lot of value for shareholders. Yeah, that is a message and that is a direction for us.
Last question then. You can use the cash in different ways, I guess. You could distribute it, as we had a question before here, but historically, you also have done some acquisitions. Could that actually come up on your agenda again?
I do not rule anything out, but we do not have a very high priority to go in for large acquisition. I would not rule out to complement the operation that we have today. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Erik Granström with DNB Carnegie. I have two questions as well. Starting off with the gross margin that you mentioned in your order backlog, you highlighted that you have a larger proportion now that have a rather healthy gross margin. Is this impacted at all by the fact that the order backlog has also increased versus civil work compared to building? Does that impact that at all in terms of business mix, or is it just simply organic? We can start there.
I think if you look on the civil operation versus the building operation, yes, the civil operation normally applies, say, a higher risk level, but managing that well, we convert in a way the contingencies for the risk into profit. You could say that has been a very good recipe for us and in a way, say, contributing to the margin development over time. You see that from the Nordic market where we're strong in civil. You also see that from the U.S. market.
Okay, thank you. My last question is regarding RD. You mentioned that you would like to adjust the land bank towards where you see growth. Right now, it seems like you're growing more in Eastern Europe. Does that mean that you're looking into divesting land in the Nordics in order to acquire land in Eastern Europe and adjust the land bank that way? Or do you simply see the opportunity to acquire more in Eastern Europe?
You could say buying and selling land is part of the business. We do that all the time.
When we are in a way looking at land bank opportunities versus in a way what we have today in terms of selling, that's always a balance in terms of where can we get more profit and how fast can we in a way turn or churn the capital. We are looking at opportunities in the market, as Richard said as well. The Central European market has been very good for us. We would like in a way to take a larger portion in that market. At the same time, we have a good land bank in Nordic as well. It will be a balance.
Thank you.
Yes, maybe add to that point. I mean, you also decrease the land bank every time you start a project, and then you need to replenish. That's another way of redistributing between geographies. Very good.
I see that we've got a question here at the back end of the room.
Thank you. Nicolas from Morgan Stanley had three, actually. Just if we can come back on the excellent shot where you show the gross margin on your largest projects, so nearing 10%. You said that's around 70% of revenues. On S&L 4, it means you're doing 6% EBIT margin on 70% of your revenues. Am I correct? Or that's how we read the chart? I mean, it looks extremely high. It also implies there's still a tail of projects with very low margins. How can you deal with that tail if need be? I wanted to come back to the point on the mix, especially in the U.S. between civil and building. We're seeing most of your peers do 2% EBIT margin on building.
You must be doing on civil something between 6% plus. I mean, the mix is key in driving the overall margin. Do you see continued efforts internally to skew the business to civil? Last one on data centers. Is it needed to pursue this in terms of higher margin? Is that going to help you continue to derive more than 4% margin construction?
I can take the first one. Yes, as we have been saying here on stage, we have a very high quality in the backlog. The opportunities in the backlog are definitely supporting the new target that we have, 4% or above. When we are talking about the most likely margin, it is not in the book. We need to execute the project in the right way, mitigate the risk that remains. That is the biggest challenge and also the biggest opportunity.
You're correct, we are in a very good position if you look at the history as well. Richard, can you take the other two?
Yeah, just a question about civil and building in the mix there. We have a fantastic standalone civil business. We have a fantastic standalone Skanska U.S.A. building business. They each thrive in their respective markets. I've learned humility over the years being with a Swedish company, but we're better than our competition at 2%. We bring that together. We're doing very well in both streams. We look for these opportunities. I showed them on the screen, Moynihan Train Hall, L300, other projects that we can bring together our respective competencies. That's where we can outperform the market. That's the power of one Skanska in terms of construction.
When it comes to data centers, and that's a burgeoning area for us, we have lots of work there now. We're talking with customers, as I mentioned, about additional opportunities right now. We think we can continue to outperform there in terms of a margin perspective from in that sector as well. Hopefully that answers your question.
I can just add there when it comes to the margin side of Anders there. Of course, when we look into the gross margin there, it looks like good. As I mentioned also, when we're taking forward the margin, we are really taking care of the we have some contingencies also until we have completed the project. That is also in the play here. As we say, we need to execute them first. Then we can see how good things will be.
That is also an important parameter that we will come back to here later on.
I will now turn to our operator and check if there is anyone in the queue wanting to join us here from our online audience.
So far, there are no questions from the phone.
Okay, very well. Have we got any more questions from the audience here in the room? Very well. Then we've answered all. Oh, sorry. One more. Okay. Yes. Nicolas.
Yes, you've talked a lot about margins coming back on construction, not too much on top line. We've seen the top line development has been relatively healthy, so around 3.5%-4%. Are you seeing enough? Are you comfortable enough to think you can overdeliver on that, on what you've achieved over the past three years? On that front, can you do more than that?
It's a mid-high single digit considering the markets you're in. Nordics, not great, but from a low level, Central Eastern Europe, the U.S. pretty healthy. Do you think you, yes, internally, nobody likes to incentivize on volume except puts margin at risk, but it's there. It's a hidden agenda to do more than basically the 3.5%-4%.
I can start. Yes, we have been very clear here on stage, in my view, that we see potential growth in market where we perform well. We have a good track record, and we also see that the market supports that. We are looking into new geographies. We can see potential growth in segments and also in other products. It's not something we will guide on, the potential here. I'm confident that we are in a position where we can benefit from that opportunities.
Very good. It looks like we've answered all questions that you had for us here today. Of course, our lunch mingle and our dinner mingle and our afternoon program will offer you more opportunities to ask questions. Now I would like to say thank you for the questions. Thank you to the team for providing good answers. We are now wrapping up the broadcasted part of the day. I would like to say thank you for watching us online. We are now going to conclude with some final remarks. For those of you that are here in the room with us, after those final remarks, we will have another coffee break, and then we will gather back in here at 10:50 A.M.
Now you have heard about our solid position that we are standing on currently, and you have heard how we are sharpening our commercial direction going forward for continued value creation. Let's listen to our President and CEO as he concludes our ambitions, actions, and strategies going forward.
Of course. We have been through the ambitions we have with the company. We have looked into the track record and performance, as you have seen for each and every stream. Also, we have been addressing the actions and priorities going forward, both when it comes to strategic choices, but also when it comes to commercial direction. On the commercial direction, if we just briefly go through the streams in construction, we have seen a tremendous journey here to restore the profitability. We are delivering on a very high level right now.
That is also encouraging to see that we see some potential future growth in different segments, different geographies. That is really encouraging. Residential development, it is all about taking care of the position we have today. As we have seen here on stage, we have a good land bank position. We do need to address and get rid of the unsold completed because we do not get any income from those. That is a big priority. We need to have a proportionate higher bar when it comes to ongoing projects. That is where we create value. We need to start where the market allows us because the project we start needs to support the target of 10% return on the capital employed. That is where we are today when we start projects. Commercial property development, maximizing the value creation in a slowly recovering market.
Also here, we need to start more projects, and we will do so where the market allows us. We see signs of improvement in especially Central Europe, but also in the Nordics. That will be a big priority going forward. Investment properties already today creating value for the shareholders, creating positive cash flow, and also the profit contribution. If I remind you of the target, we have been able to increase the target in construction. I'm very confident that the backlog and the strong performance supports that. We are already today at 3.9% on a rolling 12-month basis. The other one restores the profitability in the project development. We are not satisfied with 1.4%. We have been addressing here what our plan is to get back to the level we want to be. Investment property is a decent level today.
Return on equity, we keep our 18% target. I think that's a relevant target, and we have been there. Our ambition is to get back there as soon as possible. We have been talking about the cash position many times during these days. We have a payout ratio of 40%-70%. All in all, I'm very confident that we will continue to create shareholder value in the future as well. With that, I close this part of the capital market day. Thank you all for listening. Thank you.