And meanwhile, of course, as all other companies and organizations, we still have a cost inflation going on, not least from annual salary increases that kick in. And we’re likely to return in 2024 to more normalized variable pay accruals from very low levels in 2023. Restructuring provisions came to SEK 1.5 billion in the fourth quarter, and that brings the total to SEK 6.5 billion versus the previously communicated SEK 7 billion of restructuring in 2023. If we move on to the next slide, I look at the full year numbers. Reported sales then decreased to SEK 263.4 billion compared to SEK 271.5 million previous year. That’s a decrease by 10% organically following the weak RAN market discussed many times. IPR licensing revenues as a positive. We grew to SEK 11.1 billion versus the SEK 10.4 million we recorded in the previous year.
And we see that as a result of new 5G license renewals during the year, partly offset by some expiring agreements. Gross margin then, excluding restructuring declined in the full year to 39.6% versus 41.8% in ’22, as Börje mentioned earlier in the introduction, again, driven by operators’ CapEx reductions and the market mix, as we have described many times before. If we look at Cloud Software and Services on gross margin, we reached 36%, up from 33% a bit more in 2022. That’s encouraging. And of course, we continue to drive improvements in that segment. Looking at the parts of OpEx, R&D increased about SEK 1 billion to 48.2, and that’s impacted by a negative currency effect of SEK 0.9 billion. And you see that the Mobile Networks business, that’s in the Segment Networks and Cloud Software and Services was slightly down in R&D.
We do increase in Enterprise, and we also have the impact, of course, of the full year consolidation of Vonage now in the numbers. Turning to SG&A. Excluding restructuring, SEK 38 billion, also a negative currency effect here, SEK 0.7 billion in this case. Same story, we decreased in the Mobile Networks part but increase in Enterprise. And this has mainly to do with investments in go-to-market activities in Enterprise Wireless solutions. Also here, of course, we have an impact from the full year consolidation of Vonage. So that leads us then to an EBITA of NOK 21.4 billion, excluding restructuring in the full year. That’s at 8.1% margin. Obviously, not a level we can be satisfied with in absolute terms. But again, I would like to say it illustrates the strengthened resiliency in our company and our operations considering how extremely challenged the market has been in 2023, and still we delivered more than SEK 20 billion EBITA.
Free cash flow before M&A was SEK 1.1 negative for the full year. And as you will remember, we flagged at the outset for this. We would see a negative cash flow in 2023. It’s due to the same business mix shift that we talked about on the P&L towards big rollout projects and those projects have a longer order to cash cycle than the normal business mix. So now what we saw in the fourth quarter, and we will continue to see is that we move out of the intense rollout phase in those projects. And therefore, we see a positive effect on working capital reduction and therefore free cash flow generation. Some data points going forward, if we move to the next one and for the first quarter. So as Börje said, we do expect the current market situation to prevail into 2024.
The AT&T contract will start to ramp up during the second half. And we’re expecting a gross margin here in the Networks segment to land within the range of 39% to 41%. There is a change in the mix from Q4 to Q1, and that is the reason for our guidance here, 39% to 41% with less software. Cloud Software and Services. We’ll continue to invest here. We have strategic investments in the 5G portfolio. We’re doing that for competitiveness and resilience, and we expect that to remain into Q1. And please remember also when it comes to Cloud Software and Services, the nature of that business is such that results will fluctuate between individual quarters. So we should not expect a linear development from quarter-to-quarter there. Then in the Enterprise segment, we expect some seasonality negatively impacting sales from Q4 to Q1 with maintained profitability level.
I want to comment also on OpEx and reiterate that the Q4 levels were low, partly due to these low accruals for variable pay, given the lower target fulfillment in the year, and we expect this to revert to more normal accrual levels in the first quarter. And some other factors play in as well, including annual salary increases, but also the investments that I mentioned in Cloud Software and Services and Enterprise. So we would not expect OpEx in Q1 to come down as much as the average the last couple of years. So I would recommend being cautious when you model this part. Lastly, I just want to mention on capital allocation. Strategy remains. We keep priorities – prioritizing organic investments in technology leadership and building an enterprise go-to-market organization.
