ISS A/S (QJQ.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to ISS Conference Call for the Full Year Results of 2020. My name is Michael Bjergby. And today, I'm sitting at the ISS headquarter in Søborg, with our group CEO, Jacob Aarup-Andersen, our group CFO, Kasper Fangel, as well as my IR colleagues. Before handing over to Jacob, please pay notice to the disclaimer in the appendix. And all eyes, I'll move to Slide #3. Jacob, please go ahead.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. As you're all aware, I joined ISS in September last year. And together with my leadership team, we conducted a full and comprehensive strategy and market review. That review led to the OneISS strategy announcement on 16th of December 2020. Since the announcement, we have forcefully executed on the strategic agenda. We've both been ensuring long-term enhanced execution through an aligned global operating model. That has entailed heavy work in the countries and global functions to get us off to a good start. At the same time, we've been focusing on improving the short-term financial performance by turning around the specific well-known underperforming countries and contracts. On COVID-19, the development of global government restrictions continues to be uncertain and unpredictable, with vaccine rollout slower than originally expected in many countries and continued changes in local restrictions. Revenue in Q4 and Q1 is heavily impacted by the continued lockdowns and those effects will continue to an extent in Q2. We cannot control these external factors, but what we can firmly manage is our cost base. The restructuring program is developing according to plan, and the underlying margin has improved quarterly since Q2 2020. All in all, we closed a turbulent 2020, in line with the expectations given in August and reiterated in November and again in December. Our 2020 results are well within the guidance, and we are confirming our preliminary guidance for 2021. Please move to Slide 5 for a strategic update. So let's just recap the key elements of OneISS. First of all, we are implementing the new operating model in countries and group functions. The idea here is to create a more balanced global versus local decision-making. It is to strengthen the global functions so they can support the local execution because this business is all about executing in the countries. And it's about creating aligned processes, products and service development at global standards, not at local standards but a global standards to give a scalability. In the end, this is all about basically driving towards utilizing better our global scale and creating scalability in the functions. In terms of the turnaround, Danish Defence has now committed to enter negotiations for a potential exit. We're very pleased with that development, and we're looking forward to the negotiations, and we will update you accordingly. The restructuring in France and U.K. is progressing according to plan. And on DTAG, so Deutsche Telekom, we have a dedicated structure, an action plan in place, and we are executing on that on track. On technology, we are creating the ISS hub in Warsaw that is progressing with more than 30 positions recruited. Strategically, it's a key important -- it's a key component for our long-term performance, and it has to give us the scale to invest to become a tech leader. The IT security incident is officially behind us. We've closed with success, and we've also built a more solid and secure platform on top. On people and culture, our culture program is building, and it's building on global alignment and a performance mindset. We've updated incentive structures and new KPIs have already been implemented. And on the additional key hires that have been announced, I will come back on that. So let's move to Slide #6. Let me deep dive on one of the key elements of the new strategy, which is the newly enhanced operations performance function. It will sit both as a core group function and a country function with a seed in the country leadership team. A successful operations performance function is critical to leverage our global scale and to use our scale and global presence as a competitive advantage. The operations performance function will own the business systems and processes for continuous operational performance improvements. That means standardized and improved methods for benchmarking, productivity, quality and compliance for cleaning, food and technical services. Initially, we will initiate a rollout with cleaning focus as this is where we will get most bang for the buck. We will be allocating resources dynamically to the contracts with the largest potential, and we are increasing our investments into teams that are transitioning large key accounts from bid to operations. As you will recall, when we look at risk management in December, this was a key component from our side. This will improve initial performance when we go live with the customer, and it will reduce the risk of new contracts significantly. Next slide, please. As you recall at the December announcement, we announced a reramped EGM, but also a broader senior leadership team to drive the next leg of the ISS journey. Since that update, we have continued to add additional key senior hires to our organization. 2 latest named additions are Markus Sontheimer with an impressive track record joining EGM in a crucial role as Chief Information and Digital Officer. Eva Wimmers is joining us as new country manager of Germany. Eva is an experienced leader and has core competencies within IT. She is also the former Head of Group Procurement at Deutsche Telekom. We have also created a new global diversity and inclusion director position, who we'll be able to announce shortly and the person is starting May 1. ISS is all about people. It's all about diversity and inclusion as a core of everything we do. With our new global directors passionate involvement in promoting diversity and inclusion internally and externally, we will be accelerating the power of our people focus and integrated into our day-to-day operations, which is incredibly important to me. In addition to these profiles, we've also hired a number of senior commercial colleagues, several new CFOs and a new country manager of U.K. and member of the EGM with a name to be announced shortly in March. Next slide, please. So I'll make the update on our divestment program very short. We are on track. We have achieved DKK 1.4 billion during 2019 and 2020 as planned. We've targeted additional DKK 2 billion in '21 and '22. The program delivers the desired strategic refocus and it aids our deleveraging process. And it's on track, as I said. With this, let me leave the strategic update, and let's jump to Slide 10 for an update on the business performance. COVID-19 has had a very diverse impact on our business during 2020, depending on industry segments and service lines. From this illustration, it's quite clear how large the differences are -- we've seen across industries, something which is also relevant in terms of considering the long term implications. We do have a large part of our business, which are specialized in production-based industries. Those industries have been deep and very resilient during COVID-19, and this business environment is unlikely to change materially due to COVID-19. For office-based industries, the workspace will change materially, as we also discussed in our strategy review in December, but not necessarily to the negative in the long-term for ISS. For the service lines, food services have clearly seen a significant adverse impact, while cleaning has been very resilient despite many global workplaces having been locked down. Here, our global leadership position shines through. And the remaining service lines also did not experience significant negative growth during the period beyond food. Summarizing, we have a large part of the business, which is resilient by nature and where long-term implications of COVID will be limited. And then we have a smaller part of our business, which has been hard hit and will recover to some extent, but most likely not 100%. Next slide, please. If we focus on the performance in Q4, we saw exactly as expected and implied from our guidance, a weakening of the organic growth compared to Q3. The lockdowns in U.K. and Germany were the main drivers of the weakening Q4 over Q3. However, I'm very pleased with our performance. We cannot control lockdowns and government reactions, and we are seeing many different developments country by country, but we are successfully scaling our cost base. This relates naturally mostly to our food services that has been hit hard. To give you some color on that, if you look at our top 12 markets, which is 90% plus of our food exposure, we've been able to renegotiate more than 70% of our food contracts, and that means we are broadly where we want to be on renegotiations. As an example, in the U.S., we have renegotiated 70% of our contracts, and the remaining 30% is attractive in the current form. These are examples of how we are moving fast to make our business model attractive even in difficult environments, which is also illustrated in how margins improved sequentially from Q2 to Q4 despite not having any seasonality. Please move to Slide 12. My last slide on the business update before handing over to Kasper and the financials. If we turn to our commercial development, it's clear that the bidding environment slowed down in early 2020, but has gradually picked up again. We've extended a number of contracts expiring in 2021 and, therefore, have low exposure of 4% this year. We are in strong renewal talks on a number of the 2022 contracts as well and are confident about prolonging a number of these. Since Q3, we won a new contract in energy in Spain, extended -- and expanded a key account in Norway and lost PostNord in Scandinavia on price. Combined, there is a small net increase in revenue from this. Let me hand over to Kasper and a deeper review of the financials. And with that, let's move to Slide 14.

Thank you very much, Jacob, and good morning to everybody on the call. I have to say, it's nice to be in touch again. We're closing an unusual and challenging year. And as a general statement, the financial results for 2020 were not satisfactory and clearly below what I say should be operating at. However, as Jacob also mentioned, our results are in line with our recent guidance, organic growth of negative 6.5%, operating margin before exceptionals at 0.5% and free cash flow of negative DKK 1.8 billion. The amount of restructuring costs and one-offs ended in the high end of our guidance just around DKK 3.5 billion. And this is, of course, a large number, and I'll come back to that shortly. But also believe that this is a moment where we are drawing a line in the sand and are looking forward fully focused on the execution of OneISS. Let's move to the next slide. As you can see from the realized results and recent guidance, Q4 developed in line with our expectations. Jacob went through the quarterly development and growth. The key driver of the quarter-over-quarter development is the lockdowns in November and December, particular in Germany and the U.K. The growth per service line was also a result of the geographical mix. Growth in Americas, where food service are large were roughly unchanged Q4 over Q3. Projects and above base continues to grow, and absolute revenue is actually higher in Q4 2020 compared to Q3. Q4 is normally the largest quarter of for project and above base due to year-end tidying up and use of customer budgets. Let's move to the next slide. I do not want to spend a lot of time on the margin development in 2020. We are all very aware. Our underlying margin has been suffering from the loss of revenue during COVID-19 and the underperforming countries and contracts. Now let me spend a bit of time to give details on the restructuring and the one-offs, the DKK 3.5 billion. Half of these costs are noncash, write-downs, assets that have been written off, which you will never hear about again. Then we have DKK 1.8 billion, which is cash, DKK 1.2 billion restructuring costs and around DKK 550 million cash one-offs. A part of that has already been paid in 2020. The underlying margin for the full year was 0.5% and 0.8% for the second half of 2020. There are 2 key things that needs to be true for this year. One, we need to gradually improve the underperforming entities; and two, we need to achieve payback on our COVID-19 restructuring efforts. This leads to a margin above 2% for the full year this year with the trajectory towards our turnaround target. Please turn to the next slide for a deep dive of the drivers until end of 2022. On this slide, we have quantified the drivers of the margin recovery until end of 2022. In short, we want to get the underperforming countries back to positive margin and to improve Deutsche Telekom and Danish Defence significantly. Finally, we need to see expected payback on our restructuring efforts and recover some lost revenue from COVID-19. These drivers combined will make us reach our turnaround target, but all of them also represents a further potential in the longer term. Will we achieve the targets exactly as we have outlined it here? Of course, not. There will be ups and there will be downs, but the target in total is clearly achievable. This also gives you some granularity on which drivers are important in order for you to follow the margin recovery and progress, and we will, of course, give you a status on each of the drivers on an ongoing basis. Please notice that some of the restructuring payback is included under France, DTAG and U.K. and hence, taken out of the COVID-19 box to avoid double counting. Also notice that the negative 20 bps in the last box represents what I would call recurring restructuring, which are always required when operating a business with more than 400,000 employees. In addition, it includes a whole range of other drivers related to the rest of the business, including our investments to implement the OneISS strategy. Let's go to the next slide. This is a simple overview of the free cash flow development, where we've tried to take the complexity out of the many moving parts this year. Moving from EBIT before exceptionals to the free cash flow cleaned for all the noncash write-downs. Underlying operating profit was DKK 0.4 billion, including DKK 70 million from discontinued operations. All cash out from the one-offs, restructuring and malware was DKK 1.1 billion. The next box is showing working capital which I have to say, I'm quite satisfied with. And I'll come back to that in a second. Then we had interest and tax payments combined of just above DKK 1 billion. Finally, the net amount of D&A and CapEx, including IFRS 16, which gave a positive impact of DKK 400 million. This large bucket should, of course, net to 0 in the long run. This gives us a negative free cash flow of DKK 1.8 billion and adjusted for factoring, negative DKK 1.5 billion. And I think it's worth to mention that 2020 tax payments are higher than it will normally be in a year with negative profit before tax. Let's go to the next slide for a deep dive on working capital. I put in a slide focusing on working capital because there are some very large movements, but generally covers the development that I'm pleased about. The decrease of trade receivables and other receivables is underpinned by significant noncash write-downs, such as transition and mobilization costs on Deutsche Telekom and an underlying positive development. I'm pleased to see that our efforts in reducing overdue receivables have paid off and it's a good example of what a more globally aligned operating model can deliver. The underlying improvement in the receivables is offset by a reduction in payables, as you can see in the right-hand chart. It is driven by lower activity, higher share of self-delivery services. And of course, we also wanted to be relative -- accommodative on payment terms to some suppliers during this challenging COVID-19 period. Next slide, please. I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide. The leverage ratio ended at 7.3x by the end of 2020, primarily driven by lower EBITDA. Debt increased by DKK 1.1 billion during 2020. And with this, I will leave the financial view, and I will move to the outlook for this year. As Jacob also mentioned, we are confirming the preliminary outlook for this year, as announced in December. This is confirmed based on the progress on the underperforming countries and contracts and the general business development since our OneISS launch. There is, of course, 1 very big uncertainty, and that is COVID-19. The lockdowns and restrictions continue to develop in an unpredictable manner and creates uncertainty for this year and our financial performance. We are specifically assuming that the restrictive environment will ease from Q2 this year. We assume that we will start to regain lost revenue from COVID-19 from the second quarter and onwards. And this is, of course, a key assumption and an external factor that we have no control over. As already mentioned, the main drivers of the margin improvement from 2020 to 2021 are 2 things. Payback on restructuring, we're already seeing progress on this; and two, continued improvement from the underperforming countries and contracts. We do not see COVID-19 revenue recovery as a margin driver because the negative impact from lockdowns in Q1 will be roughly offset by the positive FX from -- impacts from this in Q2 to Q4. Let's move to the next slide for more details. We're guiding for positive organic growth this year. We will still see underlying growth coming through as outsourcing trends continue and may likely accelerate after COVID-19. We also see that we can continue to grow with our customers, especially in the industries where our business has been less impacted by COVID-19. In Q1, we will still be significantly impacted by lockdowns and restrictions, so Q1 will, from a growth perspective, most likely look similar to Q3 and Q4 last year. And as I said, and that's important, we see COVID-19 easing from Q2 this year, and this means that the COVID-19 effects may roughly be awash for the whole year combined. Please move to the next slide. And that's my final slide before I will hand back to Jacob. This gives you a simple overview of the drivers of the free cash flow this year. The chart is clearly meant to be indicative. And the buckets of free cash flow are, by nature, difficult to exactly predict and manage. We will generate an operating profit with a margin above 2% as seen on the left side. I see a roughly stable working capital development this year with a small positive impact from factoring as we ramp up our new large customer in Americas. Cash outflow from tax will most likely be lower than in 2020, mainly driven by tax losses carried forward from last year. The net amount of CapEx, D&A and additions to leases will most likely have limited to a small positive impact on the cash flow. And this gives you an underlying positive free cash flow with a cash conversion that is clearly still healthy. Looking beyond 2021, the cash conversion ability will increase when the margin increases as interest will be diluted with higher profit and lower net debt. The last light blue bucket of the chart are the payments of restructuring and one-off costs recognized in 2020, which are nonrecurring and will decrease materially in 2022. I will now hand back to Jacob for some concluding remarks.

Thank you, Kasper. Let me end our presentation by confirming that we are on track. We are now putting 2020 behind us, and we look forward while confirming our turnaround targets. There are a number of challenges and difficulties that we have to overcome and which will take time to solve. But we see a clear way forward. The potential and the underlying health of the business model is intact. There is an exciting journey in front of us, and we have all the right elements to deliver on our plan. And with that, I think we should open up for the Q&A. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Bilal Aziz from UBS.

Just three for me, please. Firstly, just on commercial momentum, please. A few of your peers have talked about more outsourcing opportunity, pipeline improving after pandemic. Can you please comment on what you're seeing and some of the conversations you are having? Question number two. Just on the phasing of the margin improvement, you've clearly indicated an improvement sequentially since the second quarter. How should we think about the first half versus second half split into 2021? And then lastly, just on working capital, you clearly mapped out what's been done in 2020, the improvement in overdue receivables was notable in the second half. And perhaps if you could highlight some of the driving factors behind that, and if you think that's sustainable going forward, please?

Okay. Thank you, Bilal. Why don't I open up on the commercial momentum and then Kasper can move into the details on margin and working capital. So I can only echo our colleagues in the industry in terms of the fact that we are seeing an increased pipeline emerging, both in terms of short-term return of RFPs and tenders that have been put on hold or where people have prolonged existing contracts by 6 months or 9 months or 12 months. So that is returning to the market gradually. And at the same time, we are seeing more fundamental, structural debates around outsourcing opportunities from players who had not been going down that line before. So I do agree, and we also said that in December that we do see the opportunity set as we emerge out of COVID to be attractive, and we are starting to see that emerge. Do also remember that in this industry, when we talk about larger contracts, which I know you are aware of Bilal, which is for the greater good here, that there is obviously a clear delay from a process starting until you start seeing it hit the accounts. So enhanced commercial activity here in the beginning of 2021 will not have a significant impact on the '21 accounts. It's more of a '22 and onwards thing. But we are seeing the right momentum out there. And we obviously hope that, that is maintained given the outlook we have in front of us. But the volatility we've seen so far with COVID, I'm saying that with a cautious tone, but so far, so good on the pipeline. Kasper, do you want to go into the margin?

Yes. Thank you, and good morning, Bilal. You are indeed right that you should expect to see higher margins in the second half against the first half. So the margin recovery will be back-loaded this year. And there are really 3 things that I would like to mention that underpins that. The first thing is that, clearly, it will be a gradual recovery, where we will see the business recover during the year. And hence, the margins will be higher in the second half against the first half. Additionally, remember what I said in the presentation that we do expect a significant hit from COVID-19 in Q1, where we expect the same impact as we have seen in Q3 and Q4 last year, which obviously will impact the top line, but definitely also the bottom line. And the third element that I will mention is that you should also expect some normal seasonality in the margins this year, which obviously is helping second half's margin. So in summary, you're indeed right about what you issued. In terms of working capital. I do expect the working capital, as I said in the presentation to be sitting broadly at the same level at the end of this year compared to 2020. And I think the building blocks, just high level, is that we will expect to see a negative impact from expected growth this year. But that is expected to be offset by a continuing improvement on reducing our overdue receivables, and I'll come back to that here shortly. And then we also expect, as I said, the factoring to be slightly higher at the end of 2020 against 2020 on the back of the win that we have had in North America, where invoices are eligible for factoring according to our policy. And really, what has driven the overdue receivables down at the end of 2020 with the DKK 800 million that you can see in the chart, is an increased focus. And additionally, we have changed the provisioning rules as a general rule of thumb, which is putting additional pressure on the business so we are more aggressive in that, and that is clearly pushing the business to collect the cash faster. So very pleased with that, and we will continue that momentum this year as well.

The next question is from the line of Michael Rasmussen from Danske Bank.

Well done, guys, and at least the initial effects that we see here in the case. So three questions from my side. First of all, if you could add just a couple of more comments on the Danish Defence contract here, Jacob. So just to understand it right, have all onerous contract provisions have been taken in no matter what the outcome on this discussion is going to be? My second question goes on your very good Slide #10 that you showed in your presentation, where you did show that organic growth was minus 30% for food services in 2020. Could you just remind us, all else equal, how much of a drag on margins that industry did to your -- or that service line did to your numbers? As I recall it, food is structurally a higher margin than group. And just a final question, Jacob, did I hear you saying that you won the PostNord deal on price? And if that's true, could you please explain why you're certainly being a little bit more aggressive on pricing here?

Okay. Thank you, Michael. I'll do the Danish Defence and your last question, and then Kasper can speak to the food margins. So first of all, on Danish Defence, you are indeed right. We, a couple of weeks ago, announced that we have now entered into to exit negotiations together with the Danish Defence. And that is after the Minister of Defence gave the mandate to work for an exit. Both parties have agreed that this contract is not satisfactory for any parties, and both parties agree that the best outcome is likely exit. So we entered exit negotiations. And the expectation is that, that is what ends. But let me just make it clear, of course, we will only entertain an exit if we stay within the boundaries of reason. But everyone is committed on both sides to find a constructive solution here that works for everyone. You asked about what the -- what you say, provision levels, et cetera, there is around Danish Defence. We said in Q3 that we have provided for what we believe are all likely outcomes, whether we maintain the contract at the current level or we exit with a certain exit cost. I think your question was, no matter what. I cannot guarantee you that I cannot make up a scenario where there isn't a cost. But all plausible scenarios that we have in front of us, we are covered. So we consider it to be covered with the provision that we've made. On the PostNord, I have to correct you on that one, sorry, Michael. But we didn't win it, we lost it on price. So don't worry, we are not suddenly advertising that we're winning on price. We lost it on price, which is hopefully also a sign that there is a commercial discipline focus here in terms of making sure that we enter with the right terms. And I'll hand it over to Kasper on the food and margin impact.

Thank you. Michael, we do not disclose our margins per service line. So I'm not going to tell you the margins for catering. And what I will say, in general, around the drop rate, I thought it was a very good indicator in the beginning of the pandemic, but it's very hard to separate the cold and hot water now with government grants, margin accretive project work, et cetera, et cetera. So very hard to use a drop rate as a good indicator. Instead, the way we're looking at it is to look at the run rate. And going out of 2020, the run rate is sitting approximately at 1%. So that's where the recovery journey is starting from.

The next question is from the line of Dan Hobden from Crédit Suisse.

Just 2, if I may. One was around the corporate costs, which I noticed were sort of significantly higher in the second half of the year compared to the second half of 2019. And I was wondering if you could just provide a bit more color as to how much that increase was one-off, which I think was noted in the text. The second question is around the contract maturity. I know as you mentioned, 4% expires or matures, I should say, in 2021, with 9% in 2022. I was just wondering around the timing of that -- is that 4% heavily weighted towards the back end of the year? And the 9% in 2022, obviously, a bit of a larger number there. Is there any comments you can give around what makes up that bucket?

Thanks, Dan. Good questions. Let me start on the contract maturity part and then Kasper can speak to the corporate cost. So on contract maturity, you're right, it's 4% in '21 and 9% in '22. Do recall that if you look at the current -- sorry, the composition of our customer base, a normal year given that the typical length of a large contract is 4 to 5 years, in a normal year, you would expect around 5% of contracts to be up for renewal. And with those stats, I guess, 4% in '21 is not particularly concerning. And as you will recall from the last update, it was clearly a higher number. It was 6% at that point. When we look at '21 and '22, there are 2 big tickets. There's 1 big ticket in '21 and 1 big ticket in '22. We are in very good dialogue and talks on both of those. And as you would expect, on all of these types of larger contracts, we started very early dialogue with the clients. It's often very strong partnerships. And it's more a question of making sure that we align the next phase of the contract to the strategic priorities of the client, et cetera. So I am -- I can't give you a [ skew for, ] but most contracts in the 4% bucket, it's the end of '21 that they need to be renewed, and that means we are in talks on all of them. And as I said, there are 2 big tickets that will also -- when renewed, will bring down the numbers quite significantly. And the 2 big tickets are '22 tickets, just to be clear on that. So hopefully, that gives you a bit of color. I think this is business as usual. We do have around 5% in a normal year.

Yes. And on the corporate cost, thanks for that question. It is really a combination that is driving the higher corporate costs. We did have some costs related to some assistance we got in the strategy work with OneISS, which is clearly a one-off. We also have some costs associated with adjusting the cost base. So that is of a one-off nature. But we're also starting to see the investments predominantly that we're doing into the new operating model and around IT, strengthening our commercial setup, which is impacting the cost base in the second half. So it's a combination of these 2 things.

The next question is from the line of Magnus Jensen from SEB.

I have 3. The first 1 goes to the table that you have on the page 3 in your accounts. It's the 1 on the Harvey balls, shows how far you are progressing on the different pain points that you have impacting your margins. Maybe you Kasper could give some flavor to how fast -- I mean, this goes to 2022 and I guess not all of these issues will progress with the same pace. So maybe you could say something about how fast you expect the different issues to sort of settle throughout 2021 and 2022? Second question is in terms of catering. Catering, I think you said that it's around 15% of business. But looking at how it's been progressed through 2020 due to COVID-19, could you say how much catering was of revenue in 2020? And the final question. I think that one of you said that the recovered revenue from COVID-19 in 2021 would not be a margin driver, did I hear you correct? And could you please give some granularity on that? That was my question.

So thanks for that, Magnus. Let me just do the catering one. And on the catering is, as you rightly pointed out, it was 15% of our business in 2019. It's been a growing share, especially post the Guckenheimer acquisition in the U.S. a couple of years ago, et cetera. In 2020, given the drop we saw, the significant drop we saw in volumes as with our peers, we are down to 11%, which is a combination of the strength of the cleaning business and the drop in the food business. So 11%, and we would expect that share to come up as we go through '21 and into '22. I'll hand over to Kasper on the margin bridge and the other question on margins.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. So just generally, I will say that we are indeed increasing our transparency. And that's also why we can give you this granularity that we have put forward in this table. But again, please be very aware that there will be ups and downs. We're bringing you along on the journey here and are giving you how we are seeing the world right now. We're comfortable with the overall target, but each of the items can move up and down. Just to be concrete on the hotspots here, then you can see that the U.K. has progressed already. There's a number of contracts that we have exited in the U.K., which is improving the margins. Also, as Jacob said, the Danish Defence we are fully provided for. And then in France and DTAG, as Jacob also mentioned, we're entering into the final discussions with the unions. But 1 overall thing that I will say, and I'm not going to push us into a corner where we're going to commit to how this is developing quarter-over-quarter is that it is not a quick fix, this 1 here. So it's hard work, and it's about being patient. We have the [ plants. ] We have the transparency. Now the execution starts for real, but it is going to take some time for sure. In terms of your question around COVID-19 being -- not being a margin kicker this year. Then -- what I meant about that was that we do see revenue from COVID-19 being neutral to the top line this year. So a significant hit in Q1, similar to what we have seen in Q3 and Q4 last year. And then that is being offset by expected recovery in Q2 to Q4 this year, but top line neutral and therefore, also neutral to the bottom line.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of James Winckler from Jefferies.

A few from me. One, apologies, if you touched on it already, but wondering if you could give some comments on exit rate out of the quarter and how it sort of developed near the end of the year. Obviously, you've given guidance for sort of similar growth in Q1 to H2, but wondering if it's continuing to sort of trend in a positive direction as well or year-to-date, if you can comment on that. Two, just regarding COVID related work, deep clean sanitization, the key debate it seems is the sustainability of that through this year. I'm wondering how you guys view the ability of those "COVID related services" and if you're seeing any traction in rolling that into longer-term work as well? And then lastly, I believe most of this -- of the contracts you're exiting are weighted towards catering. And as somebody touched on earlier, the biggest exposure to catering is Guckenheimer in the U.S. I'm just wondering if you could comment on how you see -- how comfortable you are still with Guckenheimer and how it fits in your overall strategy as well?

Sure. Thank you. Thanks, James. Let me just comment on a couple of these. I'll let Kasper speak to the first question, which I believe was on the exit rate going out of '20 and what it looks like in the beginning of '21. I can obviously just make it clear that we will not talk about how we have done so far in '21, but we can talk about the exit rate in '20 on the margin side. But I'll let Kasper talk about that. On sustainability, on COVID services. So this is obviously -- has been a massive factor in '20 the above base, as we would refer to it here, above base cleaning services and deep hygiene services. When you look at our numbers, then it's -- you also have to take into context that a significant amount of other above base work has disappeared in 2020. So it's more replacing other above base services than just being a pure upside. So as an example, a lot of technical services and buildings have obviously been postponed due to buildings being closed. We are rightly so, as you said, working very hard on making sure that on many of the larger contracts where there's been big structural, above base work on cleaning and hygiene that we convert that into the ongoing portfolio business contract base -- that is an ongoing negotiation and discussion with our customers, and it really depends on the situation. So I have said it before and we are very firm on that, we do believe that we will see an increased focus on cleaning and hygiene going forward structurally. And that will convert into a higher base in cleaning going forward because it is -- there's no doubt when we talk to our clients, especially our larger clients, it is a massive effect for them, and it has been a game changer. So we say, if we look across the broad scope here, we talk about people having moved from 2 times a week to 2 times a day. And we do not expect people to move back to 2 times cleaning a week again in a year's time. So structurally, we see a higher base from this. It is too early to say how much of it converts in, but we would expect above base to continue as long as we also have COVID restrictions: those 2 go hand-in-hand. In terms of the exiting of food business and what our view is on Guckenheimer, Guckenheimer is a fundamental part of our strategy in North America. It's a phenomenal franchise that has really added significant franchise strength to our North American business and we are very focused right now on developing and innovating and making sure that Guckenheimer comes out even stronger post-COVID. Of course, we have done restructuring in all of our food businesses to reflect the changed volume, but Guckenheimer is a pivotal part of our future strategy. Let me just ask Kasper to comment maybe on the exit rate.

Yes, sure. So the way that we see the exit rate in 2020 is that it's sitting at 0.8%, 0 point -- so slightly south of a percentage point. And we are seeing improvements in the margins from first half, which was -- you remember, it's 0.8%, so it was 7/10 and that is not driven by the normal seasonality. That is very much disrupted because of COVID-19 this year. So it is real improvements coming from the contract trimming, the restructurings that we have done in Q3 that is having an impact in Q4. And then generally, I will say that the business has improved the way to deal with COVID-19. We're adjusting the cost much faster now. And generally, the control over how to deal with the pandemic is much better than what we saw when it hit us in the first half.

The next question is from the line of Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux.

This is Johan. I was just wondering about the Deutsche Telekom contract. Are you seeing that it can still sort of achieve and exceed your sort of longer-term group margin target? Or is it sort of with the provisioning you have done, it's a breakeven type of development in the U.S. -- just to make that clear.

Yes. Thanks, Johan. Let me address that one. So on Deutsche Telekom, no doubt that last year was a tough year financially in terms of that contract as we've also been restructuring it. As you point out, in '21, we have a very clear execution plan with very, very stringent milestones and a lot of resources allocated to deliver on it. We see a significant improvement in '21. And as we exit '21, we expect that we enter '22 with the contract moving towards breakeven. That is not where the journey ends. Deutsche Telekom is a great partnership. It's a great client. It's a complex contract, but also a great lighthouse contract for us in terms of innovation and complexity. And the plans that we are working on does not stop 31st of December '21, but the plan is to continue to drive profitability improvement on Deutsche Telekom to get it to the right margin levels. Whether or not that exceeds group levels, I don't think that's a debate to be had here. I think that would -- right now, the focus has to be on bringing the contract back into black numbers. And then we can have those types of conversations at that stage.

The next question is from the line of Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley.

Just 3 questions from me. So firstly I believe, I mean, you've talked a lot about more [ outing ] opportunities and commercial activity and so on. But I was wondering if you could comment also on the competitive environment. I know in the past, you've lost some bigger contracts to the global property management companies like CBRE and so on. So I'm just wondering whether you're also seeing increased levels of competition and pricing pressure as a result of that? And then secondly, given the wage inflation being reported across several of your key geographies. I know that historically, that has been positive for the pricing of your contracts. But are you having any issues pushing that through in your renegotiations with customers, particularly in a post pandemic world? Any comments on that would be helpful. And then lastly, just on your staff currently on furlough. I think when we spoke last year, you had around 50,000 staff still not returned to work. Could you give an update on where that is today?