It is time for me to sum up another year, and once again I am pleased to note that we have succeeded in exceeding our strong performance figures from the last few years. Coor has never had a higher customer satisfaction rating, or such committed employees, and has never been bigger or generated higher profits. Yet despite all this, I still believe we have a great deal left to be done. Coor’s Nordic home market offers major opportunities for expansion, partly because a large share of the market is not outsourced and partly because more companies are looking to move to an IFM set-up. We also see significant development potential in our single service business.
A CLEAR STRATEGY
Coor has succeeded in creating the market’s strongest offering through a clear long-term strategy with three components: to stay in the Nordic region, to grow in IFM and to grow in single services.
The Nordic countries are Coor’s home market and will remain so. Our proximity to our customers and our knowledge of local conditions enable us to offer adapted, flexible and effective service deliveries. As part of this strategy, in autumn 2019 Coor acquired the cleaning firm Norrlands Miljövård, which holds a leading position in the cleaning sector in northern Sweden with operations in over 15 locations from Gävle in the south to Kiruna in the north. The acquisition adds to and strengthens our existing business both geographically and in terms of expertise.
Another important element in Coor’s strategy is our continued effort to deliver the market’s best integrated services.
Coor also has a stated goal of expanding its single FM business, mainly in property services, cleaning and food & beverages, as these services form the basis in most customer contracts.
THE ULTIMATE PROOF
The large number of new, extended and expanded contracts that we signed in 2019 is the ultimate proof that we have succeeded in our efforts. During the year, Coor renegotiated contracts worth a total of nearly SEK 2 billion. In the past three years, Coor has had an overall retention rate of
93 per cent. For the sixth year running, we had some of the Nordic region’s most satisfied customers, according to the customer satisfaction survey that we conduct annually. Our extended IFM contracts included those with the Danish Police, Aker Solutions, Saab and Volvo Cars. Coor also signed several new contracts during the year, notably with ICA, Stadium and SSP Cleaning.
A PASSION FOR SERVICE
Coor would be nothing without our fantastic employees and their genuine passion for service. It is because our 11,000 employees think not only with their brains but also with their hearts when they go to work that we have succeeded in maintaining our high customer satisfaction level year after year. Not only do Coor’s employees like to create a positive atmosphere, they are also happy to get to grips with and solve the problems that arise every day, and to offer suggestions for improvements. This approach is encapsulated in our new vision.
IMPROVED SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMENT
Sustainability is one of Coor’s main focus areas. For us, the concept includes business, social as well as environmental dimensions. Over the past few years, we have strengthened our focus on sustainability. In practice, this means that we have continued our already extensive sustainability activities, with the difference that we now also define clear and measurable targets for our social and environmental sustainability activities, in the same way as we have always done for our business activities. To put these sustainability goals into a global context, we have chosen to link them to eight of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
For Coor, sustainability is not a separate issue, but rather something that inspires everything we do, and a growing number of employees, customers and investors are now making demands on us in these areas. This is a very positive development, and together we can have a tremendous impact on sustainability issues.
My position is clear: Coor is a part of the Nordic region. Every day, we affect the lives of half a million people, and if we can do something to influence these people’s environment, health and safety in a positive way we should of course do so.
Another aspect, perhaps the most important one, is that active sustainability management is essential to the long-term survival of our business and for our ability to hand over Coor to the next generation.
A VERY GOOD RESULT
In 2019, Coor delivered its best annual earnings to date. Coor ended the year with 5 per cent organic growth, 2 per cent growth from acquisitions and a 12 per cent improvement in operating profit. Sometimes I am asked what is the secret behind Coor’s strong performance, and the answer is very simple: there is no secret. It is simply a matter of having a clear strategy, investing in innovation and sustainability, a combination of mind and heart in everything we do and, above all, it is about hard work.
I am immensely proud of and grateful for the great confidence our customers and investors have shown us. I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to our employees across our business, who work hard every day to create the Nordic region’s happiest and most functional workplaces.
Stockholm, March 2020
Mikael Stöhr
President and CEO
