Iss A/S

CSE:ISS

Earnings Call Transcript

[Michael Bjergby, Head of Group Investor Relations]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to ISS conference call for the Q1 2021 trading update. My name is Michael Bjergby. And today, I'm sitting at the ISS headquarter in Søborg with group CEO, Jacob Aarup-Andersen; our Group CFO; Kasper Fangel; and Louisa Larsson from the IR team. Before handing over to Jacob, please pay a notice to the disclaimer in the appendix and move to Slide #3. Jacob, the floor is yours.

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. So I'll start out with a summary of the highlights of the quarter. Overall, we've moved the business in the right direction in Q1. We've been enhancing our business fundamentals, aligning the operating model for long-term performance and improving short-term financial results. COVID-19 continues to be a significant factor for our business, given its unpredictable nature and with large variations across all countries. We've been strengthening our performance during lockdowns by firmly trimming, restructuring and renegotiating contracts, mainly within food. COVID-19 also creates opportunities for us. As the global leader within cleaning, there's plenty of opportunities arising in front of us. This is visible in Q1 with strong demand for above-base offerings. Our organic growth in Q1 was better than expected. But on the other hand, the global reopening and ease of restrictions appears to be dragging on for longer than initially assumed. Overall, our financial recovery is on track, and we are confirming all financial targets today.Please turn to Slide 5 for an update on our strategy. Our OneISS strategy can be split into our work on the operating model to create the long-term foundation, a short-term financial recovery and finally, our divestment program. I'm satisfied with our solid execution speed. Our divestment program is a testimony to this speed, and we have now signed 50% of the 2-year, DKK 2 billion target, only 4 months into 2021. Our work on the operating model has been focused on the organizational design and road maps per country and per function. This is the backbone of our new execution model. Standardization is a prerequisite in order to leverage our global scale and to use that scale as a competitive advantage. At the same time, we are strengthening our global functions, our IT infrastructure and adding significant global external tenant. As an example, our new country manager in Germany and our new country manager in the U.K. have both taken office. Our new commercial segment leads for key industries have joined from a number of our peers. The turnaround of our underperforming countries and contracts is developing according to plan, and that's supporting the financial run rate performance. Kasper will come back with more details. Now let me dive into the details of the divestment program on the next slide. The divestment program is sharpening and simplifying our business. We've divested 12 out of our targeted 18 countries. This compares to 8 countries divested when we announced our full year results in February. The divestment of our sewer activities in Switzerland was important for us. It represents almost 10% of the planned revenue divestment from continued operations. The business had attractive profitability and, as expected, also an attractive valuation. Overall, the divestment program is on track, and we are targeting approximately DKK 2 billion in net proceeds. Previously, we communicated up to DKK 2 billion, but we are comfortable to change wording and that we will reach approximately DKK 2 billion now. This concludes my strategy review, and I will now move to the business section on Slide 8. On the commercial side, we had no losses and no new large wins in the quarter. That basically reflects the current market environment. The market activity is picking up, but it's not fully up to speed, and many processes that have started will take some time. We've had some large wins in Q4 and some very material extensions in Q1. So timing is also a factor. Barclays is a very important customer for us, and it's our second largest contract. The contract was extended for a new 5-year period. We also extended successfully Rolls-Royce. This is the reason for the change of key account contract expiries in 2021, as seen on the chart to the left. It is down from 4% in February to now 3%. Overall, our pipeline is attractive, and we see good opportunities for new business opportunities in Q2 and onwards. I am confident that our new enhanced process for commercial bids, combined with our new commercial model and significantly strengthen commercial teams, with dedicated senior segment leads, will make us win, not only new business but also the right business. Please turn to the next slide for a few comments related to some of our key actions on the back of the pandemic. Clearly, there will be both challenges and opportunities arising from COVID-19. Firstly, as the world's leader in cleaning, we will leverage the increased strategic focus that we see from all of our customers. We are experiencing a step change in cleaning focus also visible here in Q1, both in cleaning frequency and a shift towards more disinfection and decontamination. Secondly, we will adapt to the changed operating environment for food offerings following COVID-19. We are working with 3 major themes: First, flexing the commercial and financial model to balance risk and volume. This includes renegotiation of food contracts. And as you know, we finalized that earlier in the year, as I discussed at the annual results. Secondly, it's about creating new service delivery models. These will be more flexible with solutions such as digital ordering, drop off delivery, desk delivery and takeaway options. Customers are also moving away from the traditional self-service buffet to a plated food service solution. In response, we've developed our Nordic food court solution, which is up and running on several of our large key accounts already. Thirdly, the theme of new growth opportunities. Hybrid working models will likely continue and with potentially fewer days in the office, the attractiveness of the food experience is going to be more important for employees as they come back into the office, enhancing productivity and driving corporate culture. We are co-creating with customers to find the right solution for their specific back-to-office needs. Let's then move to Slide 10. Another important trend is the transformation of the way we work. This has been in motion for many years, but the pandemic has accelerated that development. A hybrid model with 1 or 2 days of working from home per week is likely here to stay for many people. As such, we will support our customers and our employees working both from home and at the office, supporting them in the workplace. The office design will move away from personal desk spaces towards more creative spaces with a focus on collaboration and innovation. Before the pandemic, a typical office workplace had around 40% space allocated for individual workplaces. We believe that this figure will decline significantly as more people will tend to work from home. In the office, there will instead be a high demand for spaces that are designed for meetings, socializing and innovating. In essence, the office needs to outweigh the flexibility of working from home through superior service, facility and food offerings. We offer unique workplace management and design with our SIGNAL business, and we can take advantage of the workplace management opportunities from our key accounts. So these were some of the current activities in food and workplace, having discussed cleaning at length in the previous earnings updates. But the pandemic is not behind us. We will stay flexible, innovative with a clear commercial mindset. This will enable us to win opportunities as they arise in the wake of COVID-19 and enable us to support our customers. With this, I will now hand over to Kasper for the Q1 financial review on the next slide.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you very much, Jacob, and good morning, everyone. I hope you're well and safe in these unusual times. Before going into the numbers, I just want to give you the highlights of our performance. Overall, our efforts are creating results, and the financial performance is indeed improving. Our liquidity position remains strong, and we will further benefit from the net proceeds of the divestment program and underlying free cash flow. We have stabilized the financial and operational performance. We are in control of the business, and I'm comfortable with the transparency and oversight that we have as a management team. And as a consequence of that, we've decided to cancel our EUR 700 million backup credit facility. And this will have a small positive impact on our financial expenses and cash flow. Now with those remarks, let's dig into the revenue numbers, and please turn to Slide #12. Organic growth was negative 5.6% in Q1 this year. And this is a clear improvement compared to the previous quarters and also better than what we expected 3 months ago. Despite of significant lockdowns and health restrictions, we see that the increased focus on cleaning and hygiene is creating new business opportunities. If we look at the different service lines, then we see that foodservice continues to be impacted and is down materially as we also saw in Q4 last year. All other service lines combined are actually flat in the quarter. Please move to the next slide for a review of the split between portfolio revenue and above-base revenue. The first important message on this slide is that we see a nice improvement in growth rates, and that's both for our portfolio business and our above-base volumes. In the last weeks of March, the comparison base was easier, but the primary driver of our results is that we are leveraging the commercial opportunities that naturally arise from COVID-19. Our apparatus all the way down to site level is driving new sales opportunities during the lockdown. Growth is particularly strong in above base. And let me highlight and it's important that the share of revenue for projects and above-base is the same as it was in the second half of last year, 20% of the total revenue for both periods. Let's move to the next slide. On the regional split, 3 out of 4 regions have improved revenue performance in the quarter. Americas is the only region, which is not improving because of the food exposure, mainly in office environments. The Americas team has worked hard to restructure and trim the portfolio and renegotiate contracts. This is impacting revenue, but it has created a healthier and profitable business even at these current low volumes.We are also transitioning the new large American customer, and this is on track and will contribute to growth in the coming quarters. APAC continues as a region to perform and operate well as they also did last year. Their margin profile has been resilient last year but also in the first quarter of this year. Finally, we are improving our revenue growth in Northern Europe and Continental Europe. The European teams are fundamentally improving their business, and we have great success with our pure space and our new back to work product offering. Please turn to the next slide for an update on the margin drivers to reach our turnaround target. We got positive feedback from you on the slide regarding -- on this slide regarding the full year 2020 release. And therefore, I want to continue to indicate our financial progress on each of the elements for you to have the transparency. The overall message is that we are on track. In the U.K., we have completed a number of restructuring initiatives and foodservice renegotiations. We have fully recovered from our system issues, and the whole organization can now focus on improving operations and delivering efficiencies. This has a clear impact on the run rate, and we see a healthier improvement compared to our 2020 margin level. As Jacob also mentioned, our new Country Manager, Liz Benison, has started on May 1, and we are excited to have her on board. In France, our restructuring is progressing according to plan. We have concluded the initial phase of our restructuring towards the end of the first quarter this year, and this will gradually improve our run rate. As you all know, France is still impacted by lockdowns and restrictions, and our exposure to the aviation industry makes operation challenging. On the underperforming contracts, we are having constructive negotiations with Danish Defence and are getting close to a solution acceptable for both parties. Deutsche Telekom continues to be a challenging contract. We're executing according to the plan, but the financial run rate has only slightly improved compared to 2020. We're still in an early stage, and there are still challenges ahead of us. The COVID-19 restructuring on the fourth bucket on the slide is clearly having a positive impact on the results, not least in our food business in the U.S. We are still to see the impact from revenue recovery as countries reopen. Finally, in the fifth bucket, I want to mention that we are currently investing in our group functions as an important element of our new operating model. Our cost savings program to fund these investments are ramping up. And as announced in December, the sum of the investments and the savings is currently a negative to the margin, but this negative impact will gradually decline up until 2022. As this is a trading update, we will not provide the exact Q1 margin numbers, but it should be clear from the above that the margin in Q1 2021 was better than in the second half of last year, which was underlying 0.8%, and that is fully in line with our plan. Please go to the next slide for a review of our outlook. I will not spend a lot of time on the outlook. We are confirming on all parameters. On organic growth, we are off to a good start, but the expected easing of restructuring appears to be dragging for a bit longer than initially expected. We therefore see a different phasing of growth over the year. And there's no doubt that it's challenging at unpredictable environments that we're operating in.We're also on track on operating margin and free cash flow, and I consider both parameters less dependent on the reopening schedule due to our restructuring efforts. Considering the continued uncertainty in the market, we find that our guidance in open-end ranges continues to be appropriate. Please turn to the next slide, which is also my final slide. We're also confirming all of our turnaround targets. Jacob went through our divestment program. And as you heard, we are progressing well on our debt reduction. We're derisking and making our business stable and healthier. We are satisfied with our progress, but also acknowledge that we have a lot of hard lifting in front of us.This concludes the prepared part of this call, and we will now open up for the Q&A session. Operator, please.

[Operator]

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

[Bilal Aziz, Associate Director and Equity Research Analyst]

Okay. I'm limited to 3 questions from my side. Firstly, just on commercial momentum, please. I think some of your peers are suggesting pipelines are now already above 2019 levels. You're clearly benefiting from above-base work right now. But perhaps can you highlight any structural increases you're seeing in outsourcing trend? And if above-base could be reclassified at some point? Secondly, just on the margin. I appreciate you've suggested you won't give a number, I'll still try. What is appears to be tracking a bit ahead of where you said -- where you think you would be? So if you could give a bit more insight into the improvement that we've seen and what's driving that improvement into the first half of the year so far.And then finally, at the Capital Markets Day in December on the strategy update, you clearly added a lot of infrastructure to improve transparency on the profitability and cash flow from all your regions. I appreciate it's still relatively early days in the turnaround. But perhaps can you give us an update on the visibility you have on the remainder of your portfolio outside of the [indiscernible] now?

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Yes. Thank you, Bilal. Let me start with the commercial momentum, and then I'll let Kasper speak to the other 2 issues. There's no doubt that as we also discussed in the past, it's been a funny last 12 months on the commercial side, starting with a very abrupt stop in terms of commercial activity as most clients were dealing with the immediate impact from COVID. And then we have, over the last 3 to 4 months, seen a return to market, which means that we are, as you refer to, to peers, talking about improving pipelines. We are clearly also seeing improving pipelines. So better traction on pipelines and a number of new tenders and situations coming to market as we speak. That doesn't reflect in a Q1 reported new sales. As you know, pipeline takes time to build. And also these larger deals, they take a couple of quarters from the tender process starts to they are awarded. So I think we are seeing good traction and good pipeline building. We also -- I have to say, I know this is an old saying we hopefully all agree on, but the best sale is a renewal. And we've seen some big strong renewals in this quarter, which has been very important for us.You asked about structural increases. There's no doubt that we are seeing a different type of demand on the back of COVID, Being the world's leading cleaning company, we are seeing a strong demand for cleaning and disinfection. That is also reflecting in the types of tenders and requests that we're getting.And as you say, it feeds very well through already in terms of the above-base that we're seeing in Q1. We should be very clear that the above-base we're seeing in Q1 is high. But as you also say, it is our job to convert as much of that into ongoing portfolio business. It is too early days to talk about what percentage we expect to convert. But as you can rest assured, that that's a significant focus for both our key account managers but also our commercial people in unison. So big focus on new wins, on new pipeline, but also a big focus on upselling within our existing portfolio because of this increased demand for cleaning and disinfection. But let me hand over to Kasper on the other 2.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thanks for the questions, Bilal. And indeed, you're right. It is a trading update. And I'm sure you will all understand that the scope and the disclosures are adjusted accordingly. So I'm not going to give any exact numbers, but I'm happy to give a bit more color on the margin in Q1.And it is right, the underlying margins are better in Q1 compared to the underlying margins in the second half of last year of this 0.8%. And really, what is the driving factors behind that is predominantly 2 things. The first thing is that we are following the plan on the recovery on the hotspots. We can see -- although it's early days, and there's still a long way to go, but we can see in the first quarters that the things are coming through as planned.And the other thing is remember the significant charge we had into the P&L in the second half for the restructuring. We are starting to see the benefits of that coming through into the profit levels as well in Q1. And I think it is super important to highlight that the share of above-base revenue is the same percentage, so 20% in Q1 this year as it was in the second half of last year. So we do not have a tailwind from the additional above-base against the 0.8% in the second half last year. So in other words, the underlying improvements indeed are coming through. On your question around transparency, I think we're making progress. I'm very pleased with the development, actually. I think changing the reporting lines for country CFOs into group, I think we're starting to see that we're building a stronger community, better alignment, better transparency. We have a process in place, which is super strong to flag early indications of issues, which is a daily cash flow reporting from the countries, and we are comparing that against a forecast. So we can see constantly where we are on the cash side. And that is really helping to give comfort and build the transparency and the quality. So super happy with that and also super pleased with the fact that we're using this process and mechanism to assess the quality of earnings.

[Operator]

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

[Michael K. Vitfell-Rasmussen]

Jacob -- Kasper and Jacob, well done. So 3 questions from my side. First of all, on the deep cleans that you do right now for clients. Do you have any empirical evidence that you show that to clients where they can see that a deep clean actually does kill more germs or disinfects better versus just a normal ISS clean? Is this something that customers are asking you for? Or are they just doing it because it looks good to go the extra way right now? My second question is on the Slide #15, the margin drivers, where I see that in particularly the bar for the U.K. recovery has changed a lot. You just briefly touched upon it, but maybe if you could add a few more details. And do you expect to be done with the U.K. ahead of your original plan?And then my final question is, I don't know if you've seen this most recent KPMG -- sorry, KMPG survey (sic) [ KPMG survey ], where only 17% of global CEOs want to cut down on office space. And that number back last year in August was as much as 69%. So I'm just putting this into perspective on your 10% to 15% less office space assumption. I think you mentioned that in the standing report for 3 years. Do you think that will -- could end up being a too conservative assumption to have in your modeling?

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Thank you, Michael. Let me take #1 and 3, and then I'll let Kasper speak to the U.K. margin question. So let's start on the deep cleaning. You're asking around empirical evidence. And here I have to say that one of the big efforts we started immediately last year around when COVID started becoming a theme is the PURE SPACE product, which has been a very important product for us, and it's also something you're seeing. When we talk about above-base here in Q1, part of that will also be coming from the PURE SPACE product. I will not give you details on the proportion of it, but it is one of the factors in terms of the product innovation from last year during COVID that is driving the demand. It is -- PURE SPACE is basically taking our traditional office cleaning, which, by the way, is already high-quality, as you are aware, to the next level in terms of creating daily certification and empirical evidence around bacteria level, microorganisms on services, we actually -- we do sample testing every single day and evidence to clients. It's also third-party verified and therefore, the third-party verification of our evidencing is incredibly important, especially for our larger clients.This is a product that means that especially our larger clients can put evidence behind when they say to their employees that they are providing a safe workplace. And that's been incredibly important for us because anyone can claim that they have cleaned surface but being able to verify and also third-party verify that we brought bacteria levels to below certain clinical thresholds is incredibly important for us.So that is an increasing driver in terms of the innovation part on cleaning. So -- and that is where we talk a lot about the global muscle at ISS, and that is where you see the power of the global firm because this is where we, in a local context, can stand out and compare to local competitors because we have that development muscle and can do this on a global basis. I may jump to the third question, and then I'll hand it over to Kasper. So on the KPMG survey, yes, we have seen that. And it is a quite significant move in terms of, we say, normalizing expectations back to much more of a workplace occupation level -- that resembles what we saw pre-COVID. You know we've said for actually quite a bit of time now, I guess, 4.5 months, we've been talking about the 10% to 15%. It is interesting to see the global survey is now coming to the levels that we've been talking about. And when we came out with that number back in December, it was driven very firmly by the fact that we are one of the companies in the world that look into most workplaces.That also means we speak to most CEOs and C-suites around their expectations, and it's something we monitor on a -- literally on a daily basis through our client interaction. And we have seen -- so I can completely recognize the pattern. We have seen a significant shift in expectations towards how many people will be moving so we'll be working from home versus working in the workplace.And I did mention in the -- I think, around the annual results that an interesting sample was speaking to our largest clients when I was announced in May last year, speaking to the same clients this spring. Their expectation just like-for-like has come -- has changed significantly in terms of how many people they expect to have back in the office.So we do see some specific clients in specific segments changing their footprint quite significantly. But the vast majority still sees the workplace as the core place to work, collaborate and innovate. And therefore, we see a strong structural demand on an ongoing basis also post-COVID. Let me hand it over to Kasper on the U.K. and margins.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you very much, Jacob. And Michael, thanks for the question. I mean, indeed, the run rate is improving in the U.K., and there are 2 things that I will highlight. These are really the key things, Michael. The first one is that, you remember, at the 2020 release, we spoke about some system issues in the U.K.We've recovered from that now, and that's super important because it gives the transparency and the clarity to operations so they can start to drive efficiencies out of that better visibility. So that's the first part on the system side. And the other thing is that U.K. is one of the countries where we are seeing that the benefits from the restructuring is coming through, and we can track that clearly into the P&L.It's too early to confirm that the recovery will be faster in the U.K. So I don't want to do that. We've certainly made a good step in the first quarter. But there's still some heavy lifting ahead of us also in the U.K.

[Operator]

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

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

I have 2 for you. The first one goes to about Deutsche Telekom. That's one of -- one of your, say, issues that may just egress the list. But as I recall, there's some important milestones coming up during the summer and the rest of the year. Could you please remind me of those, Kasper? And then the second question is, in terms of the deep cleaning and the increased demand you see for deep cleaning and disinfection, do you have any sense of how this will sort of -- how this level will be after the COVID '19? I know it's probably pretty early to say, but do you have any indications of how much of this would be relevant when you get to the other side of COVID-19. Those are my questions.

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Thank you, Magnus. Why don't I start with the deep cleaning question and then Kasper can speak to the milestones this summer on DTAG. So I think it's early days. We -- as I said previously, we do see an increased demand for deep cleaning and disinfection in general. It's a critical conversation right now with many clients. Also, as right now, we're having many conversations with clients around their return to office. So it's one thing to run with 10%, 15% capacity, but larger clients that are now starting to plan for bigger returns to the office, starting to ramp this side of summer, then ramping more fully the other side of summer. Deep cleaning is obviously part of that conversation. It is too early to say what percentage or how much of it will stay, but there's no doubt that we do believe that we will be seeing a higher structural demand for deep cleaning services going forward. As referred to earlier, one of our key tasks is to make sure that we increase the contract volume so the portfolio business, i.e., we convert above-base business into portfolio business. As you know, that often comes with potentially a bit lower margin compared to above-base, but it also secures the business then for multiple years instead.So comes with a clear advantage there. So I do expect to see a positive impact from deep clean going forward, but it's too early to give you a specific guidance on what that means. And then on DTAG, Kasper.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you, Magnus. On DTAG, it is indeed right that the recovery is back loaded. That's not a surprise. That is exactly what we have in the plan. And you're also right that one important milestone is around the summertime where we are supposed to develop and hand over the IT system that we spoke about -- we've spoken about previously to the customers. And we are broadly on track with that. And what we have visibility to as of today is that this system will, in all material aspects, be developed and handed over to the customer around summertime this year.

[Magnus Thorstholm Jensen, Senior Equities Analyst]

Okay. Just a small follow-up. You say that Deutsche Telekom is back-end loaded, but I guess that's back-end loaded in terms of 2021, not in terms of the turnaround until 2022. Or did I get that one?

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

It is correct that we expect to see a significant improvement over the course of this year. Correct, Magnus.

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Maybe to add one thing, Magnus, to what Kasper said, which I completely agree with. Obviously, there's a lot of focus on the IT side here, as Kasper said. The other element is the more fundamental work around also driving efficiency on the contract. And that is what we'll be driving into '22 as well. So especially in the next 6 months, massive focus here on -- or 4, 5 months, massive focus on the IT side. And then we continue the efficiency track post that as well.

[Operator]

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

[Annelies Judith Godelieve Vermeulen, Research Analyst]

Just a couple of questions from me. I know we spoke briefly about wage inflation at the full year results, but perhaps given how that has continued to ramp up across I think several of your geographies. The U.S. is probably a good example. And I know that historically, that's been positive for the pricing of your contracts. But are you having any issues pushing that through in your negotiations with customers, particularly given sort of in the context of rising cost inflation across other parts of the supply chain? And are you seeing that either any other material cost inflation in other parts of your compact space? Any comments on that would be helpful.And then secondly, is there any update on some of the larger contract expiries you've got coming up in 2022? How those negotiations are looking? And then lastly, we've talked in the past about some of the businesses that you don't think will come back post the pandemic or will take sort of longer than 2 years to come back, I think, particularly in food service and so on. As we're now more than a year after the start of pandemic, is there any change in your view as to how much of that business will come back and over what time frame?

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Thank you very much, Annelies. Let me speak to the first 2 ones and then Kasper will speak to the revenue question. So starting on the wage inflation. Yes. No, Annelies, I think it's a very good question, and it's obviously something that is becoming an increasing theme just across all industries and sectors.As you know, and you also mentioned it yourself, it's bread and butter for a company like us to deal with wage inflation. It's a company with 400,000 employees. And literally, our entire cost base is basically wages. We deal with wage inflation. We've been doing that for 120 years. And there's been periods with high inflation. There's been periods with low inflation.It's something that, as you know, we pass on to the 2 customers on the significant proportion of our contracts. And then the ones where we don't, we have very clear mitigation plans and efficiency plans for how to deal with any unexpected moves in inflation.But generally, if it's especially minimum wages, it is all fully in the contract. So it's not something that is leading us to change anything in terms of our expectations. It's something that we need to deal with, but we've always have to deal with it. And as you say, inflation is ultimately good for outsourcers because it helps drive the need for productivity improvements. And that's something that we are able to drive through our integrated self-delivery model.The only thing I would say is that a prerequisite for inflation being a positive is a strong contractual framework. And that framework then requires that we have to require flexibility and pass-through mechanisms in place, and we have that because that's what we do. So not a concern. It may actually, as you say, potentially drive even more outsourcing as people look for savings.In terms of the contract expiries 2022. Compared to when we spoke last at the annual results, you know that we've reduced that proportion with the Barclays renewal. We have a couple of other bigger contracts in that grouping as well.They are not, of course, the size of Barclays, but they're still significant. On all of them, we are in good dialogue. I cannot go into details as you would fully understand, but I think some of the dialogues are tenders because they are due to their cycles, they have to go out and tender. It's tenders where we can both lose business, but we can actually also gain business compared to our current situation.And then -- but most of those situations are actually situations where we are negotiating with the client, and it's not a competitive situation. So it's more of renewal discussion. So I think we are -- we have the same balance view as we always have. There's always a risk of losing some business. But on the other hand, there's nothing concerning for us as we look at that portfolio right now.Kasper, do you want to talk about the assumption of our business coming back?

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, definitely. And our assumption really hasn't changed since last time we communicated with you. We do see that COVID-19 has had impact on top line of approximately DKK 10 billion annualized. And of that DKK 10 billion annualized, we have visibility to 2/3 of that will come back gradually over the next couple of years. And 1/3 of it, we do not have visibility to at this point in time. So there's nothing that really has changed our view since we communicated on the 2020 release, Annelies.

[Operator]

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

[James Peter Winckler, Equity Analyst]

Apologies if any of this is reasking. But I'm wondering if you could give us the organic [indiscernible] because obviously, that was impacted by the contract exits. And then also if you could talk about what you would classify as the COVID impact on the Q1 organic growth rate as well.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you very much for that, James. So first, in terms of the contract trimming, that's also consistent with what we have communicated previously. We expect that to have an impact of organic growth of approximately negative 1%. And then I think it is important to highlight on the COVID-19 impact that the first quarter last year, there was only a very limited and small impact from COVID-19. It was literally only a couple of weeks. So actually, it is a decent comparison to look at these numbers -- this quarter's top line against last year.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Laurits Kjaergaard from ABG.

[Laurits Louis Kjaergaard, Lead Analyst]

Two questions from my side. The first one in terms of the trend in pandemic that you mentioned in the slides in terms of catering and office layouts. Does ISS need to do reshaping necessary to embrace these changes, do you think Jacob? Or are you flexible enough to do it without major reshaping? Second question is you -- I recognize that you don't mention the earnings in terms of Q1. But in terms of the free cash flow, this was above expectations for Q4 in the second half of 2002, especially driven by the working capital. Are you satisfied with your working capital and free cash flow in Q1? I'm not sure if you can give any flavor on that.

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Thank you, Laurits. So let me start on the pandemic trends and then Kasper can speak to free cash flow. As you know, he can literally speak all night about free cash flow. So let's see if we can control him.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Happy to give it.

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Yes, Kasper. In terms of embracing these trends, I think what we -- our -- the embracing that we've done is very much the OneISS strategy. So when you look around many of the initiatives that comes out of OneISS, it is an acceleration of our offerings and our services and also how we align our business towards dealing with the new workplace needs. One of the reasons why we are investing, Kasper mentioned the negative impact on margins in the short term from our investments is also to make sure that we have literally better capabilities, more products, more services towards the changed workplace environment.So I don't see a reshaping needed. The plans that we worked on all autumn announced in December and are already in full flourish on is exactly to address what we are talking about here. It plays well to our strengths, to be fair. It plays well to our strengths with a post-pandemic event-based office that needs a stronger safety element to it that needs better deep cleaning and hygiene that needs better food solutions and workplace design, which is something you know that we have ramped over the last couple of years, especially after the acquisition of SIGNAL. That acquisition has really given us extra horsepower and innovation power within workplace.And it's something where we're seeing, especially our dialogue with larger key accounts. It's a very important differentiator for us. So no, I think we have the right components in place, but a lot of the investments we're doing right now is to embrace this. And I think it's going to be a continued development as we go through '21 and '22 in terms of building our portfolio within this. But let me hand it over to Kasper on cashflow.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you. So I am pleased with the initiatives that we have launched to improve working capital. And I think we are progressing in the right direction, no doubt about that. And I think talking about cash flow, there are a couple of other points that are worth mentioning because I do think that 2020 has been a rebase to working capital swings that you have seen historically within ISS.So I do expect a more stable cash performance throughout the year. And obviously, our liquidity position, as we're putting in the trading update, is better than year-end, which, of course, is supported by net proceeds, but of course, also supported by a decent free cash flow performance in the first quarter of this year.

[Laurits Louis Kjaergaard, Lead Analyst]

What would it take to become slightly positive to positive free cash flow in your guidance?

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

I think, Laurits, it's early days. This is one quarter, and there's still a long way to go even for the year. So let's come back and have that discussion on the back of the first half results.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America.

[Simona Sarli, Research Analyst]

Just a couple of quick questions from my side. So you mentioned you renegotiated a contract with the Rolls-Royce and Barclays. Could you please comment on -- high level on the terms of this renegotiation, like are pricing getting better or worse? And is the margin curve for these contract renewals, typical -- similar to what you typically see, so being significantly lower in the first 1 or 1.5 years after renewal. And second question, what was driving the improvement in the portfolio work from minus 15% in Q4 to minus 11% in Q1? Can you please comment, especially in terms of contribution of customer segments? And lastly, in terms of the Danish Defence contract, could you maybe give us an update on timing regarding this contract?

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Okay. Thank you, Simona. Let me talk about the first questions around renegotiations and margin curves and pricing. And then Kasper will speak to the portfolio work, and then I'll speak to Danish Defence as well. You mentioned specifically Rolls-Royce and Barclays. And you would appreciate, I will not talk about pricing on specific contracts and specific clients.But I'm happy to talk about, as you know, we have around 100,000 contracts. I'm happy to talk about what we're seeing in terms of the development on contracts at the moment. And those contracts would then be part of that overall portfolio. What we are seeing is that we are -- contrary to what some people could have feared, we're not seeing a worsening of terms due to COVID or due to clients looking for extra efficiencies. I think we're seeing roughly the same competitive environment and roughly the same type of price pressure or pressure generally on terms because, as you know, terms, in many ways, the value of terms is much more than just the price of the contract.What we're seeing is that -- so we're seeing profitability levels as something that we can maintain as we renew contracts in general. This is a general statement not commenting on any specific contracts. And what we're also seeing is that the new feature that is predominant around all major contract renegotiations is very much around the flexibility.So it's very much around how do we provide flexibility for clients, given the uncertainty there is right now, and how do they provide flexibility for us in terms of ensuring that we have more downside protection in terms of potential shocks -- further shocks in the future.As you know, we renegotiated around 70% of our food contracts over the last 6 to 9 months. And in the same vein, as we renew and win new business, we're very focused on making sure that the same types of flexibility we see from those renegotiations are also brought into new contracts. So in terms of terms and in terms of renewals and new business at the moment, financially, terms are relatively unchanged, but it's more about flexibility, downside protection, these things that are being discussed.You talked about margin curves, and this phenomenon in the industry of larger contracts, having a, you can say, front-end loading of savings towards clients and therefore, you can say, a weaker margin profile to start with and then an improving profile during the year.We generally, if I look over the portfolio of renewals and new business won over the last 3, 4 months, that is a feature of many contracts in the industry it continues to be, but we've also seen many clients being more focused on innovative solutions around flexibility, et cetera, which in many instances, has become more important than the upfront saving. But yes, we do still see across the portfolio that there is a significant amount of these early margin cliffs. And that's completely fine. That's what we're set up to deliver on. That's what we delivered on for 120 years, and that's in the model. Let me just take the Danish Defence before Kasper comes in. On Danish Defence, it's hard to give a timing because, as you know, we are negotiating with the Danish Defence with the mandate from the minister. And therefore, it's also a political process. But what I can say is it's a very constructive dialogue, and we're having a very constructive negotiation. Both sides would like to find a good solution. So it's an atmosphere that is very constructive. Both sides acknowledge that this contract is not working for either of us.And therefore, I envisage that we will be progressing at a relatively good pace. I will not put a date on this because once we have agreed on a deal, it needs to be approved politically. And I have to say, I'm not an expert on how that will develop. But we are comfortable that we will get to a good solution with the Danish Defence contract. Let me hand over to Kasper on your last question.

[Kasper Fangel, Group Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you very much. And I mean there are really 2 things that are worth mentioning on the portfolio business and the improved trend in the growth, although it's still a negative. The first one is that we do see easier restrictions in a few large-sized countries in Q1. And of course, that is helping the portfolio revenue and helping on all service lines with the exception of food. And then also, even though I consider the material, of course, it does help on the comparison that we do have 2 weeks in Q1 last year that was impacted by COVID-19, and that's another part that is helping to the positive contribution on portfolio revenue in the first quarter of this year.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Allen Wells from Exane.

[Allen David Wells, Research Analyst]

Most of my questions have been asked. Just 2 very quick ones. And firstly, just a clarification question. You talked a little bit earlier around, I guess, some of uncertainty and slight changes in the phasing of how you see 2020. With 1Q, obviously, a little bit better than at least consensus was expecting it. And FY -- full year guidance, obviously, dependent on 2Q restrictions easing, obviously, in May, and it's happening a little bit slow. Am I right in thinking that versus those initial expectations, Q1 better, Q2 a bit weaker in the second half, obviously, we just need to see how things open up with potentially some slight delays as people maybe go to the office, more like September, maybe versus the kind of June, July time that many of us maybe we were expecting at the start of the year? And then second question, just on the Americas business. Can I maybe just ask a broader question around how you see strategy here? Obviously, it's been an underperforming region for some time for ISS. It is now impacted by the kind of food and aviation exposure you can see portfolio filings ongoing. Maybe versus your thinking when you first took the position, Jacob, how do you think -- how is your opinion change in ISS can really succeed in the U.S.? How do you change the mix in that market to make sure that ISS kind of succeeds in the region?

[Jacob Aarup-Andersen]

Thank you, Allen. So first of all, around the phasing of this year. So we think it's early days. So we've had a good Q1. You are right that we are seeing and we're also expressing it here that we are seeing an uncertain path over the next couple of quarters in terms of how restrictions ease. We are not highlighting that we see something you're not seeing in terms of the restrictions and openings. But it is fair to say that it would be foolish of us to sit here with a very clear voice and say that we expect all restrictions to be lifted without any issues in the short term.We have seen a pattern of continued surprises of how this has developed over the last couple of quarters. And therefore, what you're hearing from us is a cautiousness around how opening -- how the phasing of the opening will be.It is not us, I think you said that we are guiding a lower Q2. We are not guiding anything on Q2, Q3 or Q4. We have repeated and reiterated that we are comfortable with our guidance. We are just highlighting that we are still facing a lot of uncertainty in terms of how COVID develops. And it's too early to claim victory over that pandemic, both from a society perspective but also in all the countries we operate in.I'll give you one example. We are looking at a portfolio right now where, as you know, the U.S. is opening up rapidly but at the same time, we also have India that is going the exact opposite direction. And therefore, I have to say when I look over the landscape of ISS, we are basically a mirror of the global society. and there are both pros and cons. So no way -- I'm not going to be specific on how we see it play out exactly. We maintain our overall expectation for the year, but we are cautious around how it develops because we would like to see it pan out in front of us. In terms of Americas, so that's obviously a big question what my strategy is for America, but I think we are very, very comfortable with our American business. I guess your question relates to the fact that, obviously, the U.S. has had a tough COVID. It's had a tough COVID for the simple reason that this is where we have our biggest food business, and we all know how hard food has been hit in the pandemic.It also means that the U.S. is also the region where we would expect in the coming years to see the best bounce back in our performance. So -- and the U.S. is also the region where we have also been our fastest in terms of our restructuring and trimming of the business to ensure that we have a good long-term fundamental business there.I and the rest of the leadership team are very comfortable with our U.S. business, and we see it as a key strategic lever in the coming years. It's a very attractive market where we have, finally, after a lot of hard work, gained a strong position over the last couple of years. And we have a strong management team there. So I think the opportunity set is quite attractive. So I think you'll be hearing a lot about the Americas in the coming years.

[Michael Bjergby, Head of Group Investor Relations]

Okay. There are no further questions. So that concludes today's call. I wish you all a good day and hope to see you virtually during our roadshows. Thank you all.