Securitas AB (publ) (OTCPK:SCTBF) Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call February 6, 2025 3:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Magnus Ahlqvist – President and CEO
Andreas Lindback – Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Remi Grenu – Morgan Stanley
Johan Eliason – Kepler Cheuvreux
Sylvia Barker – JPMorgan
Andy Grobler – BNPP Exane
Suhasini Varanasi – Goldman Sachs
Raymond Ke – Nordea
Karl-Johan Bonnevier – DNB Markets
Magnus Ahlqvist
Good morning, everyone. And warm welcome to our Q4 Results Presentation. We’ve had good progress in 2024 in terms of executing on our strategy and similar to the last couple of quarters we are about to finish the year with significant performance improvement versus last year.
So let’s go straight into some of the highlights of the quarter. We delivered 4% organic growth for the Group and 6% sales growth in Technology and Solutions, and the operating margin improved to 7.3%.
Similar to the third quarter Europe with Security Services contributed with good results but we also had good contribution from Security Services North America and our global Technology and Solutions businesses.
The operating cash flow was very good at 153% in the quarter and 84% for the full year, and improved profitability in combination with strong cash flow are contributing to continued deleveraging and we closed the year with a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 2.5 times.
So the performance across the Group is good and the Board of Directors propose a dividend increase to SEK4.50 to the annual general meeting in May. But as we build in the new Securitas we have identified further opportunities to optimize how we run the business and primarily in Europe, and to this end we have initiated an optimization program that we will execute in 2025 and that will generate savings of approximately SEK200 million on an annual
