XXL ASA

OSE:XXL

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Tolle O. R. Groterud]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the fourth quarter results presentation. My name is Tolle Groterud, and I have the pleasure of guiding you through today's presentation. Our CEO, Pål Wibe; and our CFO, Stein Eriksen, will take you through the results and the key drivers and then followed by a Q&A session. And for media, there will be an opportunity to perform separate interviews after the presentation and then using the digital channels. So please direct your request to our press contact. So without further introductions, I turn the floor over to you, Pål.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Tolle. It's a pleasure to welcome you to this quarterly presentation in a sunny and cold Oslo of February day, great weather. We will start immediately with the results. I think if we had to sum it up, I think the key messages for us today is that Q4 had really strong sales growth, even better gross margin growth, and of course, then resulting in a very, very strong development in EBITDA and you can, of course, reflect on a fantastic development since 12 months ago. So we were in a very different position then. And if you look on 2020, as a total, it is the same: good sales growth; even better gross margin growth; and a very, very strong improvement in EBITDA, driven, to a large extent, also by our fantastic e-com operations. We will also, today, come into -- talk a little bit more about the outlook going forward because we think that even better than the results is actually the opportunities ahead of us, and we still have a long list of things that we can do better. And we have a lot of exciting improvement ideas that we will also talk about today. So good results, but even better outlook. Thank you. If you look at Q4, as I said, revenue up 11% in the group, driven by 20% in our main market, which is Norway. But maybe even more exciting is the growth in gross margin in kroner. So gross margin in kroner is what we have to pay all our bills. And in this quarter, we had 23% growth in gross margin in kroner in the group or more than 30% in Norway. So really, really strong margin development, driven by lower seasonal sell-down and improved campaign execution. If we look at the market shares, we always like to highlight that the most important market share figures we are following is, of course, the long-term months because over time we need to take market share. And the pleasing thing with 2020 is that we took market share in all 4 markets. And the biggest gains is in the biggest market, Norway; and the smallest, but a big growth market, Austria. So really, really pleasing development on market share development in all markets in 2020. One of the key reasons for that is our e-com platform. And in the fourth quarter, our e-com operations grew by 57%. And in all of 2020, it grew by 43%. And that's quite an astonishing figure, keeping in mind that we, already at the start of the year, have the biggest e-com operations in the industry. So we have started with the biggest e-com operations in the industry, and we grew by 43% in 2020. That is exciting. And now we are at a 20% e-com share in -- for the total year, but more than 25% for Q4. And again, we are not stopping. There's a lot of things we can do to improve our e-com operations and a lot of actions that is coming into place in 2021. I always say that Q4 is the Champions League final of retail, it's the most fun part of the year, and it's all about seasonal execution and daily operations. And in this quarter -- part of the success in this quarter was that we were able to execute better than before and we were able to cooperate across departments even better than before. And we cannot only see it on the sales, but we can also see on the customer satisfaction. And we have now started in September last year to measure customer satisfaction, and we're measuring every store every day, every week. And we see, from a pretty good starting point, a very good development also on this KPI. Of course, the customers are always the most important success factor for us. If you look at 2020 as a total, that was the COVID year for -- in the market, but for XXL, it turned out to be quite good. We had a 16% growth in operating revenue and Norway, again, leading the pack with more than 20% growth in 2020, improved margin and a very, very strong improvement in EBITDA. So quite startling difference to where we were 1 year ago. And due to that sales and EBITDA development, we have been able to build down inventory, and we're in a financial situation now that is very different than where we were 1 year ago. I would also like to highlight the contributions from our employees. It has been a very challenging year. And especially now in the last month, where we had severe COVID restrictions in many markets, that they have been able to adapt in record speed and really turn around and do a lot of exciting things. So thank you to all our employees for an extraordinary effort in 2020. If you look at another exciting feature with our business, it's Austria. Austria is our newest market. We have 7 stores now. We're going to open store number 8 a little bit later this summer. This is the growth area for us. And of course, it's very pleasing to see that in 2020, we were able to keep sales stable despite being actually physically closed all the stores for 10 weeks in the year. So despite all stores being forcibly closed for 10 weeks, we were able to keep sales fairly stable. And as you can see, results improved dramatically through 2020 despite very, very tough conditions. And we took market share by a huge margin in Austria in 2020. We still think that we have much more to do and ahead of us in this, our Austria plan. We can still adapt the assortment, the marketing and our offering to the Austrian market in a better way than we had done historically. And we have the plans and the team now who's aligned to do that. Another exciting feature about Austria and maybe one of the things that I'm most proud of in the fourth quarter is our new central warehouse in Vienna. This is probably, at least as far as I know, the fastest-built central warehouse in the history of retail or something, at least as far as I know. We decided this in the Board meeting in July. We signed the contract in late September, early October. We started putting up the outdoor store equipment in November, December. And we were operational this Monday. And for those of you who have experience from retail, setting up a warehouse from decision to actually operations in 6, 7 months, that is supposed to be impossible. But our heroes in the logistics and Austrian team really, really did a fantastic job. And now we can deliver next-day delivery to all of Austria, which is a fantastic feature for our customers, and of course, for our Austrian team. With that, I think I will give the word to Stein, who will take us through the financials.

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Pål. So good morning, everyone. Yes. Let's go through the financials. Before I go through the Q4 results, I want to inform that, during Q4, we had a thorough review of our supplier contracts, particularly related to supplier bonuses. Based on this, we revised our accounting policy related to income from suppliers. We believe the new accounting policy is more appropriate and better measures the profitability of XXL. And the new accounting principle recognizes income in the P&L once the goods are sold to the customer, while it was previously recognized over the P&L once it was received -- no, sorry, or purchased from suppliers. So we have concluded the need to restate the 2019 annual and quarterly results and Q1, Q2 and Q3 2020. I want to highlight that the change is only related to timing of recognition of bonuses and has no cash effects. And you will find more information in our financial report in Note 10 and Appendix 1. Then move -- let's move over to the results. Each quarter in 2020 has been eventful and has had its own focus areas. But I think just summing up the year, we are pleased to see that XXL has succeeded well in accomplishing what we said we would do. Then let's look at the P&L. XXL posted an EBITDA of NOK 327 million, up from NOK 209 -- or from minus NOK 209 million last year. But please remember that last year was negatively affected by an extraordinary write-down of inventory with a net effect of NOK 349 million. Despite this, XXL had solid EBITDA improvements versus last year, explained by positive sales development in the fourth quarter versus last year, delivering 11% growth where Norway and e-com were the strong contributors to this growth. Also, we are pleased with the strong gross margins in the period explained by good price management, improved campaign execution and less seasonal sell-down. Also OpEx percentage, 2.7%, 6 points lower than last year, explained by good cost control in the segments and continued marketing efficiency. I also want to highlight 2 things. We have a high tax rate in the quarter that is related to a derecognition of a deferred tax assets. And going forward, we expect the tax rate of approximately 20%. High financial expenses in the quarter versus last year is mainly related to currency effects on intercompany loans. While it's then important to say that the net interest expenses equaled NOK 11 million, which is down from NOK 22 million last year. Yes. As I said, we are happy with the gross margins. We ended at a strong 40.4% in the quarter, up 19 percentage points. But of course, then again, we have to remember the extraordinary write-down of NOK 349 million. But despite this, we had the underlying gross margin growth of 4 percentage points. And going forward, we are confident that the gross margin now are at more sustainable levels going forward and it's related to improved market dynamics. It's capacity taken out from the market. I mean do not expect to see the huge restructuring that we experienced last year with massive shutdown sales. Point number two, the improved campaign approach and execution that we're having internally in XXL. We performed Black Week much better than we have done during the last couple of years. We have cut out some, what should I say, unprofitable campaigns. And also, we have a much more healthy inventory now compared to both last year and a couple of years ago, which will affect the gross margins going forward. Also, very happy with the OpEx percentage down due to strong top line, improved marketing efficiency and also, like I said, good cost control in the segments. HQ was up NOK 25 million, explained by the ongoing improvement programs, restructuring costs and a temporary increase in use of external advisers. Yes. EBITDA development. We are pleased to see that all segments are posting improvement versus last year, and especially, of course, our most profitable market, Norway. My favorite slide, net development -- net debt development. During the year, as Pål said, we have strengthened our balance sheet significantly through a positive EBITDA; very good development in working capital, especially the inventory; and also the capital raise earlier in 2020 contributed positively. And hence, the net debt went from NOK 1.2 billion to merely NOK 71 million at the end of the year. And as you can see from the next slide, looking at XXL's financial position, I would define it as strong. Yes, compared to previous years, we have very little debt, as you can see, and high liquidity reserves. And of course, we are very happy with such a strong balance sheet in these uncertain times. And it gives us good room for maneuver and flexibility in our daily operations. So to sum up the financials. As mentioned, we have restated 2019 and 2020 figures related to the new accounting principles for supplier bonuses. Good EBITDA of NOK 327 million, especially happy with gross margins and OpEx. And as I said, we continued to have a strong cash flow and a very strong balance sheet. And with that, Pål, hand the floor over to you.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Stein. Yes, a little bit summing up and talking a little bit about the outlook going forward. As we said earlier, of course, when you look on a season, you have to take the whole season into account. If you look at Q4, winter condition was actually a little bit worse than in 2019. So we didn't have any winter before Christmas. But obviously, it came back with a full force in January, where we had more normal winter conditions and very cold weather. And in a seasonal-dependent format like sports, that is, of course, very positive, and we have experienced sales growth of 50% with an e-com growth driven up 100%. We give you these details that's a little bit of an extraordinary thing this year because of the COVID situation. We think that it's applicable to give the market a little bit more detailed information this time. I'm very, very pleased with that. I'm actually even more pleased with our heroes in the Norwegian operations that managed last week. Last week, you remember, we had 30% of Norwegian stores sales closed. But still, we have more than 30% sales growth. But I think that shows the flexibility of the team and the ability to adapt to very uncertain circumstances. So a very, very sort of strong start to 2021. Of course, it's only 1 month, but very pleased that we can show those kind of figures in a very uncertain environment, as Stein says. And in times like this, of course, you always have to just be alert for changes because it changes every week. We are also preparing for a new kind of staycation spring/summer, and nobody knows when COVID is out of the societies we live in. We hope that it's going to be soon, but I think everybody is preparing for that more people will spend summer at home this year than in a normal year. And that we are prepared for. I talked about a lot of exciting improvement ideas. And really, 2020 was a lot about improving our daily operations, seasonal execution and cooperation across departments. 2021, we call it the year of implementation because we have been busy during the pandemic, working on a lot of projects that is very exciting. I can only talk about 4 of them here, otherwise, we will spend another hour. But 4 of the most exciting ones are here. Two of them are customer-facing, which means that the things that customers are going to notice. One is what we call the new zone change in the stores, which is basically to organize our stores in a more customer-friendly, customer logic way. So you get ski clothes together with skis. You get running apparel together with running shoes. You get outdoor shoes and outdoor equipment together. So that's something we do. And then we're actually doing this reorganization of the stores in all stores throughout the first half year of 2021. So quite a massive change, but it also shows the ability of the XXL organization to change fast when we decide something. On the other side, the revitalized brand platform is basically the look and feel of how we present ourselves to the consumers and all the visual areas, both online and off-line. And there, we will not do many dramatic changes, but we will modernize the look and feel of our chain in all channels. And you will see that also throughout 2021. And then we have some exciting ideas that is more into operational efficiency. RFID tagging of each product will enable us to have a much better accuracy on our inventory. It will also give us much more availability online of our assortment. And we will actually be the first one, I think, in the Nordic who will RFID tag all products in the stores, and we will do it in 2021. We have already started. On the electronic shelf labels, that is also that, I think, we are the first in the industry in the Nordics. Might also be the first one in the industry in Europe who will do electronic shelf labels. And again, it enables us to operate more efficiently and it enables us, over time, to do more frequent price changes and be prepared for doing that. So all in all, this will be -- we present ourselves more -- sort of better to the consumer, but also operate more efficiently. And I think this is just some examples of the projects we're doing trying to be in the forefront again. XXL was the first chain in the industry to do automation in big scale. We were the first to recognize that e-com is here to stay and grow. And then we are also the first one now with RFID and ESL in our industry. And we will continue to try to be the first in developing new ways of operating our business. Everybody is, of course, looking forward to COVID stopping or the vaccination program hitting the market so that they can get back to normal society. And we also look forward to that. Of course, when that happens, we will not have a tailwind of demand in the same way as we have had in 2020. But one of our key points today is to emphasize that once COVID is out of the market, and we all hope it's going to be soon, we will not necessarily go back to where we were before the pandemic. So before the pandemic, the sporting market was in a very different situation. Now, as Stein said, a lot of capacity has been taken out of the market. And the demand -- the underlying demand is also stronger because a lot of consumers have tried new things that they will also, to some extent, do in the future. So we believe that the market will be very different. The sport market will be very different. We will not have bankruptcy sales by competitors. We will have much more capacity taken out of the market. And even more important is that XXL will also be in a very different position. And I think I can guarantee you -- I cannot guarantee you much, but I can guarantee you one thing, and that is that going out of the pandemic, XXL will be better than we were going into the pandemic because we have been busy over the last year preparing and improving. So we will go out a very different company than we were going into the pandemic. So yes, COVID will hopefully disappear, but XXL will be changed and the sporting industry will be changed. So with that, you can expect the following of us going forward. There are 3 areas that we want to highlight. One thing is that we are concerned about the long-term market share growth. We want to take market share when you measure it over the long run, so basically every year. That, you can expect from us, both -- of course, also driven by our online presence. The other area is that you can expect of us to improve gross margin from what we called a stabilized 2020 level, which we had sort of set at roughly 39%. So you can expect gross margins to be improving and sort of being at this new level and the key reasons, as Stein talked about, is this is a different market and we are more disciplined in our daily operation and execution. And then you can and should expect of us that the cost ratio will go down over time. We are investing a lot of exciting projects that is aimed at improving operational efficiency, so over time the cost ratio will go down. And with that, gaining market share, improving gross margin and reducing the cost ratio, of course, you can expect more of us going into the future. So that was the fourth quarter. Summing it up: a good quarter, fantastic on gross margin, delivering a massive improvement in EBITDA and we are in a totally different situation than we were 12 months ago. 2020, a good year, but even more exciting for us is that we still have a lot we can do better going forward. And we have a lot of exciting improvement project coming out in '21, and we're giving a little bit of glimpse into some of them, but there are more to come. So with that, I think we'll open up for questions, Tolle?

[Tolle O. R. Groterud]

Yes. Thank you, Pål. So then we open up for questions. And I then call upon the conference host for further introductions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first one is from Ole Martin Westgaard from DNB.

[Ole Martin Westgaard, Analyst]

Congratulations with a good result and a good outlook for 2021. My first question is on the gross margin. You state that you aim to strengthen your gross margin from the current levels. Can you shed some more light on what is going to drive this improvement, and hopefully, some more comments on the various countries? And also, can you follow-up with specifying what was the effect of supplier bonuses on Q4? And what you have of remaining balance of already written down goods on your balance sheet?

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

I can answer the 2 last ones. The effect on the gross margins in Q4 related to the new accounting principle was NOK 5 million, so quite insignificant in the fourth quarter. Question number three regarding the obsolete accrual, we haven't done any changes from Q3. So it's still around NOK 185 million in the balance sheet related to obsolete goods.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

And when it comes to the gross margin, I think it's a little bit the same as what we talked about in the fourth quarter. We are improving the campaign execution, the seasonal execution. We are more disciplined in the way we do campaigning and rebating. So of course, this is only early days. We are getting better at it from every season and every quarter. So you can expect that to sort of continue going forward. At the same time, we will always keep our price policy constant. So our price policy, as you might know, is that we should always have the lowest prices on everything. Always. So that is sort of stable and we follow the prices very closely. But despite that, we have been able to work a little bit more disciplined and better seasonal execution and that has improved the margin in all markets basically.

[Ole Martin Westgaard, Analyst]

And a question on your inventory per store. It looks very low. Are you happy with the current inventory level? And are you confident that you will be able to get enough goods for what potentially could be also a strong first half?

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

To be honest with you, it's a little bit low now. We have to -- we are more happy if we see between NOK 300 million and NOK 400 million higher than the current levels.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. So the inventory per store is a little bit on the low side. Of course, we are -- the key success factor is to get the right products and we are working on that. But we have much better processes now in terms of understanding and estimating and prognosis of what to expect. So we are at a better stage now than we were 12 months ago in terms of forecasting what we need. And it's a great job done by our buying team that has been really, really good and securing the right volumes at the right prices. So it is a challenge, but we have a little bit more time to solve it, and the team is on it.

[Ole Martin Westgaard, Analyst]

Yes. And on that note, can you comment upon how your relationship with the suppliers have developed during 2020? What should we expect forward?

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. I think if you take 2020, which is good because I don't think you can expect changes from month-to-month and quarter-to-quarter. I think that we see a sort of significant improvement in our relationship to suppliers, and we get that feedback from suppliers that we are improving. Of course, we think that we can still do better in both ways. We still have a lot of exciting ideas that we wanted to develop and talk with our suppliers about. So it's not like we are finished. This is long-term work. We are buying now for fall/winter '21 -- or soon we're going to start buying for next summer. So it's long cycles, but we see that we get a better dialogue with the suppliers and that's the most important success factor.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Markus Heiberg from Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Markus Borge Heiberg, Equity Research Analyst]

Congrats with a very strong development in Norway. And I have a couple of questions. But the first question here is Norway in January and how sort of you see the current trading? And of course, how the last week and sort of the last week uncertainty is impacting your growth rate? Could you comment on that?

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Yes. First of all, as I said, there was a little bit of an exceptional -- consider it a Christmas gift to us -- from us to you in -- because of the uncertain times. So we have sort of provided you with January figures. Of course, I encourage you to look at long-term trends and not the monthly and actually weekly figures. But as I said, last week, I think that was pretty representative. Last week, we had 30% of sales in Norway being closed, but we still had more than 30% growth in Norway. So of course, we are affected. Even if you have this e-com operation that is fantastic, we are, of course, somewhat affected by having 30% of sales closed in Norway. But because of e-com and because of the underlying trends, we have been able to have more than 30% growth.

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Can also state that the growth in January was broad based across all Nordic countries. So we had good growth in all of the Nordic countries. But of course, once again, driven by especially Norway. Yes.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Yes.

[Markus Borge Heiberg, Equity Research Analyst]

And a follow-up on that because, of course, January last year was terrible. I think it was down 22%. So are you -- so it's fair to say that you're now at 2019 level? Or is demand stronger than 2019 level?

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

It's much more -- stronger than 2019. But yes, of course, last year was terrible. I think that last year, we didn't have a winter, which is, of course, a little bit unusual. This year, we have a winter. We have cold temperature, a little bit colder than normal, but not unusual for a winter in the Nordics. And of course, we have also a little bit of snow, which we didn't have last year. So I think from a weather and operational point of view, last year was not good, but we have surpassed 2019, too, and with a good margin.

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Compared to all previous years, this is the strongest January we have ever seen, it's fair to say.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

It's the best in history this time.

[Markus Borge Heiberg, Equity Research Analyst]

That's very assuring. So another question here on OpEx and the OpEx development. Of course, in Norway, OpEx is up some 10% and then it's down some 10% in Sweden and Finland and more than 15% in local currencies. And HQ is up -- it's a mixed cost quarter. So can you tell something about sort of the underlying situation here, what's this temporary layoffs? And what are sort of the underlying cost developments?

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

It's a good question. And to be totally honest with you, I mean, it has been quite a -- we are getting some, like in Austria, for example, we have got some compensation from the authorities, it's like you say. Then also we have had some layoffs in Austria. So -- and then -- but also, I would state that all the countries have had a good cost control. And then also, like we stated in the report, we have increased marketing efficiency. So we are -- we have used a little bit less on marketing, but what we see is that we're getting a lot more for every kroner that we're putting into the marketing spending. So I agree with you, it's a little bit mixed quarter and I can't say exactly what's the underlying development in the quarter, but we are -- to be -- we are very happy with the OpEx development in XXL in all the different segments.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

And I encourage you also to look upon costs over a little bit longer perspective than the quarters. So look at the 2020 figures and -- so the full year figures because they can vary significantly if you look at the markets in a quarter so.but we are happy with the cost control. As I said, marketing efficiency improving significantly in 2020. And we still think that we have some efficiency things to work on.

[Markus Borge Heiberg, Equity Research Analyst]

And the final question from me is on the accounting policy. And should we expect any impact on 2021 because now we have done some positive restatement to 2020, 2019, of course, relating to having lower volumes this year, but then higher volumes the year before. So you should sort of have this -- so is it fair to say that it would be negative on 2021? And how should we sort of think about the prior bonuses in the gross margin going forward?

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

I think what's nice for you now is that you don't really have to think about supplier bonuses explaining the gross margin because now it's going to follow the sales. So if we have a good sales month, then you're going to see -- then we're going to have a stronger EBITDA because of higher supplier bonuses and the opposite when we have low sales, then it's going to be the opposite. So -- but it won't influence the margins, especially the gross margins, as it has done before. So it will be much more stable. So the short answer, you shouldn't see any effect in 2021.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

Look at the sales growth.

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, yes. Look at the sales growth.

[Markus Borge Heiberg, Equity Research Analyst]

Yes. That makes sense. But my point is, of course, that the cost base would be higher because you had lower volumes, right? So sort of the inventory level you have now is higher than what it would have been if you had expense or sort of recognized it? Or is that the wrong way of thinking of it?

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean the inventory now is lower, but that's because we -- now we have booked the supplier bonuses over the inventories. Now it's NOK 250 million, around that, lower. But like I say, of course, I mean, if we are buying mortgage then we book it through the inventory and when we sell it, then we will get, of course, a positive effect on the supplier bonuses, but you won't see it until we actually have sold the goods. So like I said, it will follow the sales. Yes.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from [indiscernible] from [ Carousel Finance ].

[Unknown Analyst]

Congratulations on what seems to be a good report. A quick question on Sweden and Finland, a bit disappointing sales development. And excuse me if you did speak about this in the beginning of the presentation, I was a bit late. But could you elaborate a bit on what your competitors did in Sweden and Finland in Q4?

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

It's a little bit mixed, first of all, as we talked about. And I don't know if you were here on the slide, but I think it's most important is really to look at the long-term development of market share, and we're going to say it many times, because it sort of can vary a little bit from quarter-to-quarter. In Sweden, we saw a very good start to the Christmas season. But then, of course, it came sort of stricter and stricter COVID restrictions that influenced the market and then the cancellation of the mellandagsrea. That was also very negative for us as a very campaign-driven. This is the high -- sort of, except for Black Week, this is the really high sales period in this quarter and that was negative for us. And also the lack of winter conditions in both markets actually before the Christmas means that a hardware-focused chain like us experienced a negative trend in both Sweden and Finland. And then in Finland, in addition, it was 2 factors that were specific to Finland. One was that they had quite good comparables in 2019. And then also there's a special trend in Finland that the hypermarkets are gaining during the COVID. So Finnish consumers are sort of -- we see it in the figures that they are shopping more at hypermarkets across many segments, not just sports. And that is a specific trend in Finland. So we're not worried about it, and we encourage you to look at the long-term figures. In 2020, we gained market share in both markets and we are planning to gain market share also in 2021 in both markets.

[Unknown Analyst]

All right. And last question, and I know this basically goes to the Board. They're not here, so maybe you could try to explain how they think. But you have close to NOK 1 billion in cash. You're generating a lot of cash flow. You're spending about NOK 200 million in CapEx. So what are you doing with all your cash?

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

We're not going to start a bank, but Stein can maybe elaborate.

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

I like cash, [ Beven ]. But like you know and we have already stated, we have an agreement with the banks that we can't pay out any dividends in 2021. But of course, it's something we probably, down the road, will revisit. But it's, like you say, it's up to the Board. And I think also the previous years has shown us that we need some financial flexibility in our balance sheet. So we won't end up where we were a year ago.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

We think that, of course, we're not going to hoard any cash that we don't need. But we think that one of the key success factors also going forward is to make sure that we set ourselves up so that we are a company that can handle a winter where we get a winter and handle a winter where we don't get winter conditions. And that kind of financial flexibility and maneuverability is very important because then we can make the right decisions also in a bad year as well as in a good year. But that being considered, of course, we have a little bit -- it's a nice problem, but we have a little bit too much cash in the bank now. But I'm sure we're going to solve that problem.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from [indiscernible] from Danske Bank.

[Unknown Analyst]

So 2 questions from me. Can you give some details on the growth of e-commerce for the different countries? And one specifically, how much is the revenue in Sweden from e-commerce?

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

That's -- I don't have it on the spot. I think that the growth was sort of broad based, so in all markets. Of course, in Austria, we were a pure player for 10 weeks last year and 4 weeks out of 12 weeks in Q4. So I think in Austria, we had a very good growth in e-com. But I think the e-com growth was sort of strong in all markets. We saw in Sweden that e-com growth was very strong after the government said that they didn't want you to shop in physical stores.

[Stein Alexander Eriksen, Group Chief Financial Officer]

I mean I can comment a little bit more. In Norway, it was around the same level as for the group. In Sweden, it was better because, like Pål said, I mean it was a restriction imposed by the government. Austria, it was also good e-com growth. And then we saw a little less e-com growth in Finland. Yes. Compared -- but still e-com growth, but not as high as in Norway and Sweden.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There is no further questions coming through, so I will hand the call back to you again. Thank you.

[Tolle O. R. Groterud]

So thank you. Yes. So that ends our session then. So thank you all, and have a really nice weekend.

[Pål Wibe, Group Chief Executive Officer]

I encourage you to go out skiing.

[Tolle O. R. Groterud]

Yes.

[Operator]

Thank you for joining today's conference.