So let me expand on that. First, we’re leading the way by building high performance and differentiated networks, which will be needed to digitalize enterprises. By horizontalizing the architecture, we are allowing our customers to prioritize investments in different parts of the network at different clock cycles. This is important as it not only offers our customers advanced network architectures, but it also allows for a lower cost of ownership. Second, with Enterprise Wireless solutions, we extend the use of cellular connectivity through private 5G networks and wireless WAN [ph] And third, by developing a global network platform, we enable the exposure, consumption and payment of network APIs, which extends the market beyond consumers to enterprises as well as developers.
We are changing the monetization model of the industry. And this is a shift that, of course, will take some time, but we are encouraged by the progress we’ve made with a partnership with DT to offer network APIs to developers and enterprises, but we’re also seeing very strong progress with frontrunner customers. We’re confident this will create a more profitable and sustainable future for our industry and our company. So Ericsson has a clear leadership position today with leading offerings. With our strategy and the actions we’re taking, we ensure that we will continue to be well positioned when the market improves. Before handing over the word to Carl, I would like also just to comment on the announcement of our new CFO, Lars Sandström. Lars will be joining us from Getinge and comes with an extensive experience and knowledge from a variety of financial and management roles.
Lars will join us 1st of April, and we have also appointed Peter’s successor as Head of IR, Daniel Morris, who joins us from Vodafone’s IR team with a solid experience also as a sell-side analyst. So I would now just like to say a big thank you to both Carl and Peter for the time at Ericsson. It’s truly been a privilege to work with both of you. Thank you both. And now maybe for the last time, Carl, it’s time for you to go through the numbers.
Carl Mellander: Thanks a lot, Börje. Thanks for kind words and very good morning to everyone. So I will address some of the key items around the financials here today and also some comments on the outlook going forward. So if you go to the next slide and look at Q4 to start with. And I would just paraphrase a bit, Börje [ph] here, the challenging market we saw in telecom and this market mix shift, they were really dominant factors throughout 2023. And reported full year net sales in the U.S. were down by SEK 35 billion year-over-year, but India grew by over SEK 20 billion. So you see clearly how powerful this shift was during the year 2023. And the impact of this on both profits and cash flow is clearly visible. We have communicated around that many times.
Of course, however, partly countered with the cost-out efforts that – and the achievements that we have done and efficiency improvements across the company. But looking at Q4 then as a solid result despite the current market conditions and the execution during this quarter, I believe, demonstrates stronger increased resilience in our company and a good team effort. The group sales declined by 17% organically to SEK 71.9 billion in the fourth quarter, partly the decline is due to the retroactive IPR revenue we had in the fourth quarter ’22. But I would say the primary driver here was the continued drop in North America, where sales decreased by 43% year-over-year in the quarter. India, meanwhile, there, the 5G rollout continued, but the pace slowed, so we are up in sales in India by 10% year-over-year in Q4, but we dropped 40% sequentially as we see now the Indian market starting to normalize the investment levels following this unprecedented rollout pace that we’ve seen earlier in the year.
Gross margin then, 41.1%, including restructuring charges, that is slightly down year-over-year. But interestingly, if we adjust for the large retroactive IPR revenue in the fourth quarter ’22, it’s actually an improvement in gross margin. And how did that come about? Well, gross margin in the fourth quarter was supported by a high share of software, thanks to the efforts in that area, but also the market mix. I would also call out the cost reductions across the mobile networks business. And one more factor to mention here, the lower variable pay accruals that we have seen, which is also impacting OpEx positively in Q4. So in Networks, we achieved gross margin of 43.2%, excluding restructuring. That’s exceeding the 39% to 41% range that we had guided for.
And it’s really a result of the activities I mentioned to improve the sales mix with a higher share of software. Further down in the P&L and EBITA, excluding restructuring declined somewhat to SEK 8.2 billion versus SEK 9.3 billion in 2022. I mentioned already the retroactive IPR revenue, which plays into the year-over-year comparison. But we also had last Q4, several provisions moving in the opposite direction as we disclosed at the time. So if you look at year-over-year delta, the underlying reason is really lower sales and a changed mix in the networks. Cloud Software and Services continued the positive trend, delivered an EBITA of SEK 2 billion in the quarter, driven by a couple of things, of course, operational improvement, but we see it in gross margin, but also in reduced OpEx. And that resulted in a full year EBITA of SEK 1.7 billion, as Börje mentioned, which is meeting, I would say, with the margin our at least breakeven ambition that we communicated earlier.
Enterprise then grew by 7% organically, with a stable EBITA loss year-over-year. We had a negative impact in the quarter from some inventory write-offs in the Enterprise Wireless Solutions area. Cash flow then, we delivered SEK 12.5 billion of free cash flow before M&A in the fourth quarter, and that’s really ending the year on a strong note. We had strong cash collection, and we released working capital from conclusion of large deployment projects as we had expected and talked about many times. Then on cost out, to reiterate here, we have now achieved the committed run rate savings of SEK 12 billion, half of which impacted the P&L in 2023 already and the remainder to impact in 2024. And here, I just want to note that, of course, the SEK 12 billion are gross savings.
