Good morning, welcome to the presentation of Skanska's Q4 and year-end report for 2022. I'm Antonia Junelind, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Here in our studio, I have our CEO, Anders Danielsson, and our CFO, Magnus Persson, who will take you through some business, financial, and market updates. After their initial presentation, we will open up for questions. You can ask questions in one of three ways. You can use the conference phone number or the text field on the webcast page, or if you are here in the room with us, you can of course ask your question in person. With that short introduction, let's start with the presentation. I hand over to you, Anders.
Thank you, Antonia. Before I jump into the report, I want you to look at this picture to the right. It's one of the landmark office building in Stockholm developed by Skanska and also transferred to our new business stream investment properties. It's Stockholm One. If I look into the Q4 overall, I can say we have a really strong performance. The construction stream, very good performance across the borders. The residential development had a good start of the year, but a weak Q3 and Q4, we'll come back to that. Commercial property development, successful divestment during the year, we also started two new projects during the quarter. Investment properties, a good start, completely according to plan.
We have transferred three office building in Stockholm and Malmö during the year, two of them in the last quarter. Operating margin in construction, 5.4% in Q4, very strong of course. If you look at the full year, we had 3.7%, well above our target, so that is a really strong performance. Our Return on Capital Employed in the project development, 8.1%, below our target, but overall considering the market situation on a good level. Return on Equity, 15.8%, and we have maintained a really strong financial position for the company. Proposed dividend from the board is 7.5 SEK per share to be decided by the AGM later on. We managed to reduce the carbon emission with 55% compared to our baseline year 2015.
If I go into each stream, starting with construction. The revenue increased in the quarter. If I look at the local currencies, it's increased with 3%. Order booking was really strong, SEK 51.6 billion. We have a book-to-build of 104% for the full year of 2022. We are in a really good position there. We have historically high order backlog as well, close to SEK 230 billion. The operating income, SEK 2.3 billion in the quarter, which corresponds to an operating margin of 5.4%. Overall, strong performance and really good profitability. Our strategy that we have had the last few years really pays off now. We have been selective. We have been keeping our discipline.
We're going for projects that we see that we have a competitive advantage, also that we have a history of profitable projects. I'm really proud of the organization and the achievement here. Really good. The order backlog, again, historically high, also which is really encouraging that we do see solid performance across our geographies. That's also the underlying explanation that we perform on such a good level. Moving on to residential development. Revenue is really low in the quarter. 155 homes sold in Q4, and we started 671 homes during the quarter. Really slow quarter, and the operating margin of 0.6% is of course on a very low side.
If I look at the full year, as I said, we had a fairly good start of the year in 2022, the return on the capital is 7%. We do see a weak housing market, especially here in Sweden. I think a lot of hesitation amongst the buyers of homes due to high interest rates, high inflation, which leads to high energy cost and so on. And also that the secondary market is a lot of uncertainties. Buyers and sellers, they haven't met each other yet, so I think it needs to stabilize before we can see improvement here. The good thing is we do see an underlying need and an underlying demand from homes in all our markets, which is good for the longer term.
It's a good place to be. We have low volumes, and we also saw during the quarter underperformance in one of the segments of more affordable segments, which is BoKlok in our operations. Minor part of the total, of course, we have launched a turnaround program that we launched here in end of Q4. We also changed the management for that unit. Commercial property development operating income SEK 1.3 billion, which our gain on sale is close to SEK 1.5 billion, which gives us a Return on Capital Employed of 8.6% for the full year. I think that's on a good level. We've been successful when divesting projects.
Both, we can see that the investors, they are definitely interested and attracted by our offering. We have high, high quality, very high environmental standard in our, in our portfolio, in the right place of course. We do have SEK 34 billion in total investment when we have completed these 36 ongoing projects. The occupancy rate is today 31% compared to the 50% completion rate. This is something we follow very carefully because we don't want the gap to be too big. We started two projects in Q4. That was two multifamily rental projects. Started one in Copenhagen and one in the U.S. We had two large internal transactions in the quarter transferring to our new business stream investment properties.
The leasing remains a priority for us, quite slow. Has been slow during the pandemic and also during 2022. We leased 42,000 square meters in Q4. We can see that the tenants are coming back. They're more interested right now. There are hesitation of course, because the back to office has been quite slow after the pandemic. We can see it's going in the right direction. We can see it's leading actually in Europe, Central Europe, the Nordics. More people are coming back to the office. Companies want to get their employees back to the office. We can see a slower pace in the U.S., but it's also in U.S. it's going in the right direction. They are lagging a bit compared to Europe.
There's also a big priority or polarization in the office market. Both tenants, potential tenants, and investors, they are seeking for high quality, high environmental standard building in a very good location with public transportation and all of that. That's and that's exactly what we can offer because we are in the right places. I'm confident for the future here. Investment properties. New stream, as you know, from 2022. We are targeting here high quality sustainable office. We ambition is to build up a portfolio between SEK 12 -SEK 18 billion over a few years. It will give us a strong, stable cash flow.
We can also see a big potential to take part of the value increase as we develop an area, for example, and also value increase over time in office markets. I'm very confident that this is the right thing to do, and also satisfied with the delivery so far. We are running this according to plan. As I said, two acquisition during the Q4. Aqua Building in Malmö, Sthlm 01 here in Stockholm. Strong start in the first year. Going back to construction, and looking more in detail on the order booking. Here you can see over the years the development of the order bookings. It's a blue bar here, where you can see the order backlog.
The order bookings is the gray line, and you can see order bookings per quarter, orange line, and also the revenue, the green line here. As I said earlier, a record high order backlog. We can see that the revenue trend, have trended upwards, for the last two years. You can see the green line bottom up in early 2021. Quarter by quarter, yeah, we have seen increased revenue. If you look into the different geographies here, we have a good order intake overall. Especially strong in the U.S. as you can see. We have 113% book-to-build, slightly below 100% in the Nordics. As you can see, we have 14 month of production in the Nordics, 12 in Sweden, 17 overall. That's on a very good level.
We are in a very good position. We can continue to be selective. We can continue to keep our discipline and go for project that we know will have been successful in the future. With the fantastic team we have, I'm confident in that. With that, I hand over to Magnus to continue.
Thank you. We move to construction and income statement. You can see that on the slide here. We, as Anders already said, we grew revenues around 14% in the quarter, 3% in local currencies. Sort of the scope growth of the actual organization is considerably lower than what the values in Swedish krona imply. That's sort of quite an important signal to understand how we move the company and how we expand the resources that are available for us. For the full year, the corresponding numbers then is 18% in Swedish krona and 8% in local currency. You can see also that our growth rate is tapering off a bit towards the end of the year, which in a sense is nothing strange with that.
You just looked at a slide and heard explanations about the strong bookings that we have here. We go into this year with a very comfortable sort of booking position here, and also quite high burn rate in terms of revenue in the construction business. If you look at gross income, we took in around SEK 4.2 billion in gross profits in the quarter, up from SEK 3.1 billion last year. Corresponding margins to this 9.8% compared then to 8.5% is quite a big step up. We have a very well-performing portfolio of construction projects in the group at the moment. Very sort of strong underlying performance.
In the isolated quarter, we had a couple of effects that sort of positively influenced the quarter. I will come back to them a bit more detail in the next slide here. In Sweden, we have essentially landed an agreement with a client that allows us to, in this quarter, recognize revenue that we have been earning for more than one quarter, so to speak, a number of quarters prior to this. Since we had not agreed with the client on the compensation, we defer until this quarter to recognize it in the books, which is all in line, of course, with the strategy we have to work with the recognition in a very cautious way.
This also points out the importance here to not look specifically at individual quarters when you sort of assess the real performance of the construction business. You need to look at it in a sort of rolling 12 months or something like that. We also had a couple of, or we have a couple of very large construction projects in the U.S. that are approaching completion. As we do so, as we are successfully manages the risk, we can of course increase the profit takeout from these projects as we can release reserves that we have held in them. Normally, this doesn't show up very much, it's a very standard part of how we do.
We have this effect on a couple of projects in the same quarter, so the effects are sort of put on each other, and therefore it has a somewhat of a big effect in the quarter. Important here, this is not our view to be seen as something sort of extraordinary. It really comes out of our standard operation, even if there's a bit of a lumpiness. I would only urge you to look at performance over a slightly longer time stretch here. S&A is well under control, takes us down to very strong operating margin than of 5.4% in the quarter, significantly up from 4.2% last year. As Anders already pointed out, 3.7% margin for the full year. Last year, we were at 3.8%.
If you recall, this includes divestment gains from selling a business in the U.K.. This year, it's all about underlying strong performance in the real operations. Essentially marking the end of a very successful year in construction. If we look at the different geographies, Nordics came in with a margin of 5.9%. Sweden isolated 6.7%. Here you have some of the effects that I just discussed in the last slide. Europe, somewhat down from last year, 3.8% here is still a very strong number. As we have mentioned on, I think, a couple of earnings calls prior to this, we are exchanging ERP systems in the European operation, and this actually has an effect on the margin here. Strong performance in this operation, too.
Then in the U.S., 5.5% up from 3.5%. You heard explanations to this during on the last slide also. Overall, all geographies are performing really, really well here. Move to residential development. Slightly different story in the quarter. The quarter has been, if you look at the revenue, we essentially decreased them by 80%. The market has been really weak in the quarter. Probably the weakest market is the Swedish one. Maybe the strongest we have, relatively speaking, is the European residential market then. If you when you read these numbers, I think you need to understand what's a little bit about how we recognize profits in Skanska.
In our segment reporting, which is what you look at in our quarterly report, we recognize revenue at point of contract. That means when we sign a sales agreement with the customer, we recognize the revenue from that divestment, from that sales, essentially. This means that when you look at our P&L, you have a very sort of here and now reading of how the market has been performing in the isolated quarter. There are no real lagging effects between how the market behaves and when this shows up in our P&L. It's a very sort of accurate reading of where we've had the market during the Q4. Selling and admin, obviously, to SEK 134 million, to 30%. This seems a bit odd, but this is all due to the very low volume.
Essentially the profits here gets a bit eaten by the S&A charge. Very low volumes then. Operating margin 0.6%. If we look at the different geographies, both the Nordics and Sweden isolated have done negative profits here. If you read the quarterly report way back in it, you will see that we have had negative revenues, not a lot, but still negative in the Swedish part of the RD operation. The reason to this is, one, that the market has been weak, leading to very few new sales in the quarter. And in addition to this, we have had cancellations from customers, in a few select projects in Sweden in the affordable segment where we operate with the BoKlok brand.
It's a select few projects that this has happened in, and when it happens, due to the profit recognition we have, we have to reverse the revenue out of our books, and this of course contributes then to the weak result in the quarter. If we move to the European part, you can see 18.6% operating margin, which is sort of very good margin, but the volume is low, as you can see at SEK 52 million, and compared to SEK 120 million approximately last year. Homes started and sold, we started almost 700 units, 671, in the quarter, which is then quite a lot lower than last same period last year.
Obviously, and we have said this on a couple of quarters, when the market becomes weak, it is more difficult to find the business cases, and it's also more difficult to assess the relevant sort of price on the right and the projects out in the future, which slows down the starts, essentially. On the sales side, we sold then 155 units, which come as no surprise given what I just told you about the weak market there. Quite a lot down then from last year. We remain at a high production pace in this business. 7,900 units are under production, of which we had sold 65%. Due to the slower sales, this comes down somewhat from the 73% that we had at year-end last year.
Still within a very comfortable range here, 65% sold of the total amount that we have under production. We have 130 units that are completed but not sold. A fairly large part of these are, so to speak, show homes that we use in order to have customers come and look at the products that we market before we sell them then. This is also a low number, historically speaking, and we still have a good churn of these apartments. We move to commercial development. You can see, for the full year, we had a revenue of SEK 13.5 billion, approximately. Quite an active year. We made 19 outgoing transactions, divestments, actually during the year, quite a high amount of activity. Booked gains of approximately SEK 3.6 billion.
Bit down since last year when we had SEK 3.9 billion, still a very respectable number here for the business. In Q4 isolated, as Anders has already pointed out, we made three transactions, two internal to our own investment property stream. I'll come back to that. One transaction where we disposed of the remaining 5% ownership stake in a project that we have developed in Seattle, some time back then. Unrealized and realized gains. We had unrealized gains in the portfolio of about SEK 8.5 billion come end of the quarter, down from SEK 9.8 billion the quarter before that. The difference then is SEK 1.3 billion.
Should come as no surprise then that in Q4 we booked gains of SEK 1.5, essentially made a profit takeout from this surplus values that we have in the portfolio then. The absolute majority of this is of course, expected surplus values in the ongoing projects, and you can also note that we're successively sort of reducing the amount of properties that are completed but yet unsold. Which brings me to this slide, where you can see the completion profile of the portfolio. You can notice that approximately SEK 5.4 billion in invested, in properties are completed but not yet sold. This is the investment value, not an assessment of the market value then. These were on the average, leased to 66%.
Then after that, we expect to complete properties for an investment value around SEK four and a half billion in Q1 this year. These properties are currently leased at 44% then. The leasing profile here looks quite good, even if, of course, given the slowness of the leasing over the last year and a half or two, we would like to see it being a bit higher then. In the isolated quarter, the Q4 here now, we've also completed one property, sort of ends up in the completed unsold one. Leasing, we leased 140,000 square meters approximately for the full year. In the isolated quarter then 42,000 square meters.
As already been said here today, we normally would like these lines which represent the completion rate and the economic occupancy rate to go, you know, quite much hand in hand here. We are comfortable with letting them spread aside, but of course, we have to watch the risk tolerances here, which we do obviously. Now as we sell properties, we sell properties that are higher, with a higher amount of leasing obviously, and we start new properties with lower amount of leasing, and that is why we get this effect. Investment properties. We made two acquisitions then in investment properties in the quarter, both of them from Commercial development obviously. We booked the revenue of SEK 20 million which is very small, and an operating income of SEK 100 million.
When you look at this, I think it warrants an explanation, not at least because we've only had this business stream for very few quarters there. It says that we have changed the property value here and by that created gains. In reality, there's been no change in property value at all from our side. What happens is a technicality because when we make these transactions, we make customary adjustments to the purchase price based on the deferred tax that it is, that it carries along with it. When this property ends up in the receiver's portfolio, you have to revalue it to the right market value, so to speak, and then you get this effect through the way we report here.
Properties on an as-is basis has no change of value in the quarter here. In total, end of year we're at SEK 3.8 billion in the portfolio, very good start to the build-up of the portfolio. All of the properties there are of course environmentally certified to a very high degree, in total leasable space, 52,000 square meters. If we add everything together in the group income statement, we can look at the center line here. You can see the central cost comes down somewhat. I would urge you not to read too much into that because the underlying cost structure is essentially the same. You always have these different effects quarter to another, a bit with the legacy business.
It's very much the same. takes us down to an operating income then of SEK 3.5 billion. We have very positive net financials of SEK 200 million. Reason for this, I think should be no surprise. We have a very strong balance sheet, a lot of cash that we deposit in the most favorable way we can, given the restrictions that we have put in place on ourselves. With rising interest rates, we get a much better net interest, or sorry, net financial outcome for the different periods here. Both for the isolated quarter and for the full year, this is a very good outcome then.
Taxes, we taxed SEK 730 million in the isolated quarter, which is a tax rate of approximately 9.5%, to be compared then to a tax rate of around 15.5% which we had last year. The difference here is twofold. Last year, we were very successful in utilizing past sort of past losses in the group in Europe for tax deductibility reasons, which reduced the tax charge that we had to recognize last year. It's of course, very positive. This year, given the transactions that were made between commercial development and investment properties, due to the accounting regulations, when we make these transactions, we have to account for a tax of 20% of the gain. This tax is done in the accounting. We don't have to pay it.
It resides on our balance sheet as Deferred Tax Liability up until the future. Normally, when commercial development sells externally, we can package the properties and thereby make very tax efficient, almost tax-exempt, transactions. We will have this effect when we sell the properties between commercial development into investment properties. If you look at the cash flow, we had a negative cash flow around SEK 2 billion in the quarter. Main effect here is that we have a very high investment pace at the moment, which comes as no surprise. Last year, we started a tremendous amount of commercial development properties. We also started a lot of residentials that are now up and producing. We have a big net investment in the cash flow here.
The other part is also working capital, where we have some effects, and I'll come back to that. If you look at the working capital here, we are still at a very good level, around 19% of revenue. We have what we call free working capital, which is essentially the sort of advanced payments, if you will, from the clients that we can utilize. Still it comes down a little bit in the quarter. You can see this represented by the bars on the chart there. This is the effect we have then on the cash flow from net working capital in the isolated quarter. Investments and divestments. If you look at the green line on this slide, you can see the net investments of the group.
You notice immediately that for quite a long period of time, this has been well above the zero line, basically placing the group in a net divestment territory. We have been able to sort of harvest the proceeds from the build-up of the property development portfolio for quite a long period of time here. Since we have ramped up investments again, you can see this green line comes down, it creeps down below the zero, and we are now in a net investment territory, essentially building up the size of this portfolio again. On a rolling 12 months basis, we had net investments here of around SEK 5 billion, which is one of the sort of fastest investment paces we have had over the last 10 years.
We are really stepping on the gas here, which you can also see on the bottom part of this chart, where we show you the capital employed numbers, where we now are up to close to SEK 57 billion, or sorry, SEK 59 billion, comparable to SEK 47 billion than if you back up a full year. We have a very stable financial position to deal with this. We had SEK 3.7 billion in external financial loans and bonds at the end of the year here. We have available to us at any given point in time SEK 16 billion of cash here, of which then we have unutilized credit facilities of SEK 6 billion. We will have two majorities during the year that total is around SEK 1 billion.
I would also like to point out that during the fall here, we secured a new revolving credit facility. Also backup for any needs we have in the group. The intent of this is not to draw on it, but we should always have it to further secure our financial position. It's a five-year structure involving seven banks, and it is sustainability-linked. This is very good to have this as the existing revolving facility will run out in 2024. Which takes us to the group's financial position.
We had an equity position end of the year of SEK 55 billion, tremendously strong, obviously, with an equity-to-asset ratio of 36% and a very solid Net Cash Position of SEK 12 billion at our disposal to handle and make use of opportunities that come our way.
Yes. I will address the market outlook that we have overall here, starting with construction. Overall, we have a stable outlook when it comes to construction. We have strong market outlook in the U.S., continue to be strong in the civil sector. A lot of federal money coming out in the system. You can see that the states, on the state level, they're really pushing out projects, so it's a strong market. We also see that the non-residential construction market, the building sector, is also strong. We are in the right sectors in the U.S. We're building airports, university, hospitals, schools, and so on. We can see a strong market there, which is really good for us.
The residential development, low activity in the housing market. We expect the market to be slow during the next year. It's a cycle, cyclical market, as you know, and I believe it will stabilize over time. We have an underlying need for new homes in our market. Commercial property development, we can see that the hesitant behavior from the investors. We don't see a lot of transactions now in the market. We can also see that the leasing market slowly recovering from after the pandemic now. Again, as I said earlier, we do see a polarization in the market where investors and tenants go for high quality building. Overall, we have continued to have a slow market outlook for the commercial property development.
To summarize, before we open up for Q&A, solid performance for the Q4. Construction really, really strong across the border. Residential development, a weak market. Commercial property development, successful divestment, both in the quarter and over the full year as well. We managed to start up the new business stream, investment properties, in a good way, perfectly according to plan. We do have, as you have heard, really robust financial position. The strategic direction remains for the company. We will keep our discipline, we will prioritize profitability and responsible growth in the construction stream. We are aiming for being the leader residential developer in our market, and we have an ambition to grow the commercial property development and, of course, continue to build up the investment property portfolio over time. We do have a good plan to do that.
With that, I hand over to Antonia to open up the Q&A.
Thank you. Yes. Let's open up for your questions. As mentioned before, you can ask your question by calling in using the conference phone number, or you can send us a text on the webcast page. Use the text field on that page. If you are here in the room, you may, of course, ask a question in person. May I then please ask you to raise your hand so that we can bring a microphone so that the online audience can hear your question as well. We will start with questions from the conference call. Operator, do we have someone calling in?
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star one at this time. First question comes from the line of Graham Hunt from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thanks for the questions. Just two from me. I wondered if you could help a little bit more quantifying the impact of those contingencies released in the construction division this quarter and maybe your thoughts on what the sort of underlying profitability run rate is here going forward. Second question. You touched on, so while you're seeing an improvement in the outlook for the U.S. market, I just wondered if you could add a little color on the U.K. civil side of things, which I see is worsening in your view. Thanks very much.
Okay. I can answer that. Regarding the continuousness in the Q4, I would say you should not look into a single quarter. You should look on a more rolling 12-month basis. That's more accurate when you judge the construction margin. If you look over time, as you have seen, we have 3.7% Operating Margin. That represent the underlying performance for the business. We have been able to successfully winning new projects that we have successfully executed, and we have avoid loss makers that we have seen. We also managed to work out the debt revenue that we have a few years back.
When it comes to the improvement in the U.S., the market outlook, I think that's really encouraging to see that federal money coming out in the system. The different states are really investing a lot. We also see encouraging signs that the inflation might go down in the U.S. When it comes to the U.K., as you saw, we turned down the outlook for infrastructure, the civil market. That's due to the fact that it's a lot of uncertainty where will the U.K. economy go. Will we see a recession? Will it flatten out? That's a lot of uncertainty in that market, which gives us a slower market outlook.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from the line of Fredric Cyon from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Congratulations to a very strong ending to 2022. On the positive one-offs in the construction stream, in the U.S., you're mentioning that they are related to reserves. Might there be more potential there as we move into 2022?
Hi, Fredric. This is Magnus. Thank you for your question. You ask if there are more potential here. I mean, I'd say the potential is that we continue to perform in the projects that we have. We will over time sort of continue to have a strong profitability. I would think, and we said this also during the presentation, that in the Q4 isolated, we have had a couple of these effects sort of put on each other. The Q4 isolated is not something that you should take as an isolated quarter and then sort of shoot for. What you need to look at, like, rolling 12 months longer time perspectives. We expect to continue to deliver at a very high performance level in the U.S., yes.
Why? Typically, when you have write-downs, you quantify the effects. There seems to be a number of possible one-offs here in the quarter. Why are you not giving us more on what those may be in total?
I hear you a bit, but I think that, you're asking why are we not giving you more guidance on how much we have, sort of, how much is one-off effects in the quarter. Did I get that right?
Absolutely.
Yeah. This is because this is our standard business. I mean, we have the projects we have. This has not been like a claims release or anything like this in the U.S.. This is the valuation of our projects. We have in many times communicated that we go into projects, sort of with a cautious profit recognition. If we manage to handle the risks, we will successfully take out more and more profit. This is the effect you see now. We've also said that you shouldn't look too much when you assess profitability on isolated quarters here. I think that's the most important thing to bring with you when you look at this, because this money is not coming from as sort of from non-project business.
This is real underlying performance, but it happens to be a bit agglomerated in a quarter.
Got it. Moving over to residential development, obviously it's a challenging market and you're not selling as many units as prior to the 2022. But on the other hand, we're also witnessing that your G&A costs are growing year-over-year. Are there any plans to look at overall headcounts or i.e., cost reduction program?
Of course, we look at the cost level all the time, and we're doing that continuously. That's definitely something we do all the time. We also need to look ahead, of course. We are well-positioned when it comes to residential development operation. We have 65% sales rate in the ongoing project, very few unsold completed, and we have a really good land bank. We have worked long term with the land banking strategically for many years right now. We are well-positioned that day that the buyers come back and take the decision to buy apartments. I'm confident and strongly believe in the market, residential market, in the long term.
Two more questions from my side. Moving over to commercial development. Have you made any exit yield adjustment in your assessed market value of the overall portfolio during the Q4?
I think you are referring to the ongoing development projects we have and the market value that we're communicating but that we have not booked. Am I correct?
Absolutely.
Okay. We continuously assess this, of course. Normally what we do or what we always do is that when we underwrite the project and start it, we are quite cautious in the assessments of that business case. The expectation is that we need to obviously develop the project and build it, and then put it on the market. This whole process means that the exit is often three years or more out into the future. It's very warranted to be very cautious with the exit yield that we assume because there is a big uncertainty when you look that far out into the future. We have not made like a structural or total portfolio change to that. We look at this on a project-by-project basis, obviously.
My final question relates to the dividend, the proposal from the board. It corresponds to a payout ratio really in the lower end of your range. What was the rationale behind being on the cautious side?
I think it's a balanced proposal from the board of directors to the AGM. We have a very strong financial position. We also do need a lot of capital to execute our strategy. We want to increase the investments in commercial development, residential development when the market allows us to do that. We also determined to continue to build up the investment property portfolio for the future. That requires capital. We're also very determined to keep our financially strong position. That's a very good place to be when the market worsen. There's a lot of opportunity that will show up in the market that we can take advantage of.
Thank you. Those were all my questions.
The next question comes from the line of Markus Henriksson from ABG. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. A few questions from me, starting off with a commercial development one. You've been starting quite a lot of projects in 2021 and 2022, and the occupancy rate as you state is now 31 versus a completion rate of 50%. At what gap would you become more hesitant? Or should we interpret that you are already a bit more hesitant towards office since you started several projects in other property segments?
Hi, Markus. This is Magnus answering your question. We don't have like a specific gap here that we look at or a specific level of this gap that would make us react because we need to assess project by project. The viability of this portfolio is essentially consisting of the viability of a number of ongoing and completed projects. That is the level we have to make that assessment. What are we comfortable with? Yeah, I think that answer your question. Am I right?
Yes, you are right. Then on RD, construction cost inflation up and co-op prices down. Where do you see the best possibility for housing starts in 2023 given overvalue in the land bank and also dependent on market conditions currently? Do you think that the Q4 production start here of 670 units, is that a good average or bad figure in your view?
I think, if I start with the Q4, I think it's a reasonable figure considering the market development. We will always look carefully on the sales rate in the ongoing portfolio. Now we are in a good place, we are 65%. I'm comfortable to be in that range between 60 and 70 in a normalized market. We can allow ourself to go a bit lower as well if we feel that we are in the right places. We have the financial strength to start new projects, and we will do that in the right location. Even though we have a weak market outlook for the coming 12 months, it takes much longer to complete residential development projects.
I'm confident that the market will come back at some point. I'm confident that we will position ourself in a good way here, both when it comes to starting project, but also when it comes to buying land in the right location. We do have a really good land bank for when the market picks up here.
A follow-up also on the where you see the best possibility for housing starts in 2023 given different geographies?
I can see, definitely the Nordic, we are strong. We have a good position in the three largest cities here in Sweden. We also have a good position in Oslo, Helsinki. We are in Prague and Warsaw and Kraków. Those cities are really have been resilient for this. We can see that Central Europe has been resilient. There's not too many new projects out in the market. The prices on the secondary market is stable, I would say. I see opportunities in the
Capital cities in the market we have chosen to be. More resilient, actually, in Central Europe right now.
Thank you. Last question. Could you give a bit more color on the development for BoKlok? Also, I didn't catch if you took any restructuring cost here during the quarter in that division.
The development in BoKlok, well, you can say it's, BoKlok has been challenged during the quarter with the weak market. I say the impact has been toughest on the market in that segment. That is why that is where we have the BoKlok then. They are suffering from low volumes and of course an overhang of overhead. We need to get this whole sort of production and marketing and design and essentially the development machine working under this, the market conditions that we have now then. Which is why also, that we've had this turnaround that we referred to in the turnaround initiative that we referred to in the quarterly report.
Thank you. Does the turnaround imply that you will take restructuring costs in 2023 then?
That is too early to say because we have initiated that now. We do not have any material turnaround costs in the numbers for 2022.
Thank you. Those were my questions.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I have three, if that's okay. Firstly on commercial development. You've done quite well with internal sales to investment properties. You haven't done many external disposals. I'm assuming there's an effect from higher interest rates in the commercial real estate sector. Do you expect to be able to, you know, do a few transactions in the coming months? I guess that's my first question.
Yep, I can start with that. Thank you for the question. During the year, we actually made 19 divestments, sort of outgoing transactions in commercial from commercial development. Of these three were two investment properties. I would say there has been a good amount of transaction activity there. Obviously, the external transactions we have done has, due to various circumstances, been smaller than. I think that answers your question. Obviously the transaction market it is slower, there's no doubt about that. We have, you know, the amount of sort of reference transactions that we call it on the market are lower today.
We still feel that there's a good amount of interest from investors for properties that are very sustainable, they're cost efficient, they're in the right locations, and they're sort of economically well-performing as well. That's where we are with that.
Thank you for that. My second question is on the cash flow generation. I mean, in Q4, you mentioned the increase in investments, putting a bit of pressure on your cash flow. Can you give us a comment on the outlook there? Is it fair to say that you'll have more investments in the coming quarters?
Yeah. I mean, when we start sort of a property development project, that's often a multi-year, at least sort of a two-year venture. Throughout that whole project, you will continue to invest, obviously. I think we will without giving any forecast, the pure logic and dynamic of this business implies that when you are investing at the pace we are now, and we have just sort of ceased to increase the net investments, that will probably stay for a while because you need to finish the ongoing project, so to speak.
That's clear. Thank you for that. Lastly, on construction order intake, quite strong in the U.S., I guess a bit more stable in Europe. Would you mind commenting on the competitive environment in construction in Europe? I mean, the microenvironment is a little bit more uncertain. I assume there are maybe a bit fewer projects coming to the market. Can you confirm that? What do you see in terms of your competitors doing? Are you confident you can still take good orders at good margins? Thank you.
Yeah. We have seen a strong order intake across the board, I would say. We are slightly below 100% book-to-build in Europe and in Nordic, over 100% in the U.S.. That's definitely a strong market. When it comes to the amount of competitors, we have not seen any big changes there. The civil market, for example, has always been really competitive in Europe. We don't see any sign that it will increase or decrease. That's the way it is. Overall players are chasing the projects right now. Having said that, we do see a stable market in most of the countries in Europe.
We downturn now in the U.K., but we do have a very strong order backlog there. I'm confident that we can be competitive going forward as well.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I was looking at slide 19, it helpfully gives sort of the rental value and, you know, obviously the carrying value that, you know, carry investment properties at. I kind of, very simplistically look at, I think it sort of implies a 5% yield. Is that the right way to look at this? Is the SEK 122, for example, in Stockholm, is that the lease or the rental income on the 80% leased, or if it were 100% leased? Just so we understand what the sort of implied yield is that you're carrying please. That would be helpful.
Thank you, Gregor...
Maybe I'll let you answer that before I ask the next question.
Thank you for your question, Gregor. It's quite detailed. Your yield number, your calculation ends up somewhat in the wrong place. I would suggest that you liaise with our Investor Relations department afterwards.
Okay. In terms of sort of the construction margin, I mean, you kind of mentioned it, but just to be clear, you think the sort of 3.7% you printed for the year as a whole is a reasonable reference point to think about what the business is performing at? There's no reason to believe it's either that number is particularly. I mean, obviously it's above your target of 3.5%, but is that the right interpretation? I appreciate you're not specifically guiding, but sort of directionally. Is that what you're saying?
Yes. It's the underlying performance is on a very high level. Thanks to that we have been successful executing projects, avoiding loss makers, and being selective. We have kept the discipline. It is very good performance.
Okay. Remind me. This is the Q1, I think, in a very long time we've seen sort of a free working capital reduction, at least sort of towards the year-end. I guess my question is, do you think there's a trend here, or is it too early to call? I mean, I'm thinking, you know, interest rates.
Mm
are higher. You know, people make money on their cash. Maybe they don't prepay you as generously as they have done in the last few years. Maybe I'm misinterpreting. I just want to understand what you think, whether there's a trend here and what you think is a sustainable number, I guess. I know this has come up in the past. If you could just remind us.
I think it's an excellent question. This working capital position we have is sort of important for us because the alternative is to go to the funding market and source money from there. We watch this very carefully and, of course, do a sort of thorough questioning and investigations into this all the time to make sure that we are on top of any development in the market on a structural level that we need to be aware of to plan our capital sourcing, our balance sheet, et cetera, et cetera. Right? The effects in this quarter is actually quite, it's very sort of isolated. We have a very good understanding of what it is.
When we look at the overall portfolio and how we manage to negotiate with clients and the clients sort of openness to these negotiations, we see no change really. I would say this is something that happens when you have a very high net working capital balance. Then, of course, it's hard to keep it growing like that. You will have some setbacks at some point in time with that. We are not concerned about the stability of that position. Just to remind everyone also that it's hard to say what is normal and not normal here, but currently we are at approximately 19% of revenue in our sort of free working capital.
Historically speaking, this has been creeping up for many years due to strong negotiation skills and due to us being able to assert favorable payment plans also in projects.
Coming back to slide 17, which is sort of the completion profile. Yes, there's 66% on the stuff that's done. From memory, you only try to sell when you're sort of, let's say, north of 80%. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is that still your approach that you prefer to wait? In other words, you'd rather just not sell if lease rates are low? Cause obviously it begs the question whether you're gonna be selling, actually realizing anything. It's up to you obviously whether you decide to sell or not, right? Just wanna understand where you cut off, right, in terms of trying to actually get stuff in, onto the market?
Yeah. Good question. You will get another one of these maybe slightly boring answers. This is, of course, an assessment we make on a project-by-project basis. For every investment we have made, we try to sort of find the most lucrative way of monetizing that investment for shareholders, and that we assess continuously. Sort of every quarter for every project that is, sort of possible to sell, we have sort of an assessment of this you can say, right? When we have talked about 80%, that's because the market in general historically have responded in such a way that when you cross approximately 80%, you don't end up in discussions around that would sort of lead to you having to compromise on the price due to lack of leasing. The market is a moving thing, right?
This moves all the time. That's not to say that it will be exactly the same in the future. This is also why we have implemented the strict transaction guidelines we have when we buy properties into investment properties, where we say 80% leasing, right? In commercial development, on a case-by-case basis for every project, we analyze what is the best way to monetize the investment. We don't stick really to any specific rule in terms of an exact percent there on when we can divest it or not.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. That was all the questions that we had time for today. We've now run slightly over time. If there are any remaining questions, then please don't hesitate to reach out to either myself or the IR function, and we will ensure that you will be getting your answers. With that, it's time to wrap up this presentation. First of all, thank you, Anders and Magnus, for your presentation here today. Then, of course, thank you for showing up here at our studio in Stockholm. Lastly, thank you for watching. A recorded version of this broadcast will be available on our webpage shortly. We will be back in this setting to present the Q1 report on May 4th. Thank you.