You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: On the call today, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow.
I'm proud of the performance we delivered in 2020, particularly in the light of the unprecedented challenges we face due to COVID-19.
Under the leadership of our newly expanded management team, which had been in place just 75 days before the pandemic took hold, we made significant progress on our historic transformation executing on our strategy, and operating in four new segments.
We further optimized our portfolio completing targeted divestitures, and exit during the past year.
We also ended 2020 with a lowest net debt in 2.5 years and paid our regular quarterly dividend demonstrating our disciplined stewardship and financial strength.
Although I'm proud of how well our team has executed, the impact of COVID-19 on our financial performance was clear.
We reported revenue of $1.79 billion for the full year 2020, a decline of 11% compared to 2019.
You will note, at our Q1 earnings call we had forecasted 20% adjusted EBITDA margins for the full year 2020; fast-forward nine months later, I'm very pleased to report that we achieved this goal delivering adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.4% for the full year, despite the macroeconomic impact from COVID.
Importantly, COVID did not change our focus strategy and one thing has become increasingly clear; our company's diverse portfolio and business model are highly durable, we have the right strategy, right segments, and right team to whether any major macroeconomic storm.
We're a sales driven company now, we continue to invest the strong cash flows contracts and promotional solutions to grow payments and cloud solutions, each of which is well positioned in secular growth markets.
Now, I would like to take a moment to review the 4 core pillars of our strategy.
First, sales; continue to unify our go-to-market sales approach in order to drive growth, selling more of what we have to new and existing customers, breaking our previous dependence on acquisition-only growth, that also resulted in escalating debt.
Second, payments and clouds; we focus on these secular growth businesses, sell what we have, build new products, and migrate to a recurring revenue model.
Third, promotional solutions profitability; adjust revenue mix and distribution channels moving to a recurring revenue model.
Fourth, our Checks business; gain market share, capture the share while holding margins flat by making smart investments, giving a strong set cash flow to invest in payments and cloud.
The strength of this strategy and our significant progress on our transformation is compelling, and is undeniable despite COVID-19 impacts.
In 2019 we promised to become a sales-driven company, and that's exactly what we did.
We estimate Deluxe delivered full year sales driven growth in 2020 for the first time in more than a decade, excluding COVID impacts of course.
We achieved this result by building an employee ownership and sales culture, fundamentally changing our go-to-market approach.
Instead of having dozens of separate sales organization, calling on a customer selling one product at a time, we built a unified sales team with a complete review of our customers relationship with us.
Complementing [Phonetic] these efforts, we have product experts ready to help close the sale.
This integrated go-to-market strategy is a key part of our One Deluxe strategy, and this strategy is working.
In 2020 we signed more than 3,900 deals.
We added many new logos and expanded many of our existing relationships.
In fact, since we began One Deluxe, we sold 6 of the Top 10 deals of the last decade, including the largest sale in the company's history.
Here's just a flavor of our wins in 2020; [indecipherable] they signed a multi-year deal in our Check business, SunTrust had been a longtime customer of Deluxe, so with the merger of SunTrust and BB&T, we're pleased to have been selected as the trusted partner for the new combined entity; this deal is the single largest total contract value in the company's history.
We further grew Check market share with additional strategic takeaways winning two national or super-regional banks and more.
Our Checks retention rate is the highest in five years.
Synovus expanded it's relationship with us to include our entire receivables as a service platform.
Being selected by Synovus treasury management to be their digital transformation partner, it's clear evidence our integrated receivables as a service platform is what the market demands.
Payments further added or expanded relationships with P&C and Sirius XM Radio.
We also expanded our relationship with Alliance Data and Citibank.
Alliance Data joined our receivables management solutions, and Citibank joined our Deluxe Payment Exchange.
Promotional solutions also built on a key relationship.
As you know for previous calls, we're customer of Salesforce, but importantly, now Salesforce is a customer of the Deluxe.
Salesforce can now utilize our digital Deluxe brand center platform to manage their digital assets promotional products, marketing collateral, and other essential supplies.
With our growing relationship with Salesforce and other opportunities in our pipeline, we're well positioned to expand our sales efforts in the technology industry in 2021 and beyond.
In our telesales centers, we delivered record average order value growing 7.5% over last year, and our sales team find more than 200 cross sell deals totaling $35 million in total contract value.
Cross-sell has been an allusive goal for this company for more than a decade, and we delivered in 2020.
Of course, all of these wins are scheduled to onboard in 2021, timing of which will be dictated by COVID lockdowns and restrictions.
But here is the bottom line; our One Deluxe approach is working, enabling us to set new sales records in the middle of a pandemic.
Now, let's talk division specifics.
Our top growth segment payments, which did not even exist in it's current form until January 2020, had a successful year.
In addition to Synovus, SiriusXM Radio, Alliance Data and all the other newly signed clients and distribution partners; integrated receivables continues to benefit from positive secular outsourcing trends as new and long-standing customers focus on speed and efficiency.
COVID has put a spotlight on an additional Deluxe competitive advantage; the strength of our balance sheet and our leadership.
During the pandemic we've benefited as a number of institutions shifted volume away from our competitors to the safety of Deluxe.
In cloud solutions, our other target growth area; we made important progress in adding a number of new clients.
You can see we did experience significant directly related COVID impact, the financial institutions deferred marketing campaign spend impacting our data driven marketing business.
Additionally, our website services also experienced weakened demand during the year.
We did see encouraging signs for recovery at our corporation services, as we've previously announced.
We're particularly optimistic about data driven marketing as the recovery unfolds.
We're already deeply engaged in planning multiple large-scale marketing campaigns for our financial institution customers adding to our confidence for 2021 and beyond.
Next, we're going to talk about promotional solutions business, and I'm going to talk about two areas.
First is business essentials, where we've delivered custom forms and more that businesses consume in their routine operations.
Second is branded merchandise used to promote a business.
Encouragingly, we saw volume in our business essentials as the year progresses.
We expect to see a rebounded branded merchandise as events and physical promotion return as COVID fades.
Further, I'm extremely proud of the speed with which the promotional services team adapted to the new reality adjusting our product mix.
We saw $31 million of personal protective equipment in 2020, a business we had not been in previously, where we had no source of supply, no way to book an order, and no sales training at the beginning of the pandemic; it's a great example of innovative thinking, and speed this organization can now deliver.
We also find many new customers focused on our turnkey-managed brand services program giving us more confidence in our future profitable growth.
Salesforce is just one of these examples.
Fourth is our Check business.
Consistent with previous economic slowdown, the secular decline in Checks was higher due to the impacts of COVID.
We expect the business to rebound in line with historical secular trends as the economy recovers.
Encouragingly, we witnessed a sequential increase in new check customers resulting from new business start-ups at 2020 unfolded; this is an important evidence of the ongoing necessity of checks.
We were also encouraged to see acceleration of self-service and digital order volume acceleration throughout the year proving our digital strategy works.
Our multiple check wins at expanding market share bring important new revenue providing a partial offset the secular declines.
Clearly, in 2020, we have made significant and measurable progress in all four pillars of our strategy to become a sales-driven growth, trusted business technology company, which we achieved all of this in the middle of a pandemic with a new team.
Next, I want to briefly outline our progress in three areas that are helping to accelerate our transformation.
These three critical areas are talent, technology infrastructure, and efficient operating footprint.
In 2020 we further built on our team expanding products, business development and innovation.
An example of how talent is helping us succeed is our development of the Medical Payment Exchanger, MPX.
MPX is the only healthcare option that digitally attaches a check payment to the explanation of payments, delivery them together electronically; this is important because it doesn't require any workflow changes for anyone.
To accelerate our MPX progress, we announced our joint venture with Eco-Health in April of 2020.
We also continue to foster a culture of empowerment, inclusion, diversity and equity enabling our employee-owner [Phonetic] spring their full authentic cells to work.
In doing so, we're more directly reflected the diverse communities and customers we serve; all of this helped us achieve status as a 2020 Great Place To Work.
Our company had never before been so recognized.
We continue to execute on our previously discussed upgrade advancing optimization and efficiencies.
Third, is an efficient operating footprint.
We took full advantage of the work from home reality to drive efficieny and productivity.
We closed an additional 24 sites during the year, reducing our location count by 60% in the last two years.
We're particularly encouraged by the future operating savings and significant capital avoidance we will achieve by relocating both, our Minnesota headquarters, and Atlanta Technology facilities to more efficient spaces.
I do want to discuss M&A for a moment.
As you know, since I joined DLX, we have paused on acquisitions to reduce debt, strengthen the balance sheet, optimize the portfolio, get our talent and technology infrastructure in place, and importantly, expand our sales capabilities.
As I've outlined today, we've now delivered on all of these fronts and are once again ready to look at opportunistic ways to augment our business through acquisition, particularly in our higher growth engines of payments and cloud solutions.
In summary, we are very encouraged by our success on all four of our strategic pillars, and in our transformative talent, technology infrastructure, and operating footprint initiatives.
Our solid performance in the midst of the pandemic gives us confidence in our future post-pandemic.
For 2021, we look forward to closing the year as a sales-driven mid-single-digit-revenue growth company, with margins in the low-to-mid 20s, continuing to drive enhanced value for all shareholders.
Now, I'll pass it to Keith for more financial details.
As Barry mentioned, DLX delivered in 2020; we delivered EBITDA margin in line with our plan and guidance.
We took swift action to address covert at the onset, and we sustain this focus through the year.
The result, we delivered EBITDA margin in line with our commitments, reduced net debt to it's lowest level in 2.5 years, and we continue to invest for growth.
Before I get into the details, I want to express my gratitude to all my fellow employee owners who worked tirelessly and overcame many challenges this year.
The foundational work we began in 2019 made 2020 a successful year of transformation and continued innovation that produce measurable progress positioning us to deliver full year sales driven growth.
That said, we felt the continuing effects of the COVID-19 in our financial results.
Our total revenue in the quarter was $454.5 million, a decline of 12.9% as compared to the same period last year; however, an increase of 3% from the third quarter.
For the full year, total revenue declined 10.8% to $1.791 billion.
We reported GAAP net income of $24.7 million in the quarter, and $8.8 million for the full year.
A comparison of reported 2019 and 2020 full year results is difficult given each year was impacted by asset impairment charges.
Our measures of adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA excludes these non-cash charges along with restructuring, integration and other costs.
These adjustments are detailed in the reconciliations provided in our release.
Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $94.9 million resulting in $364.5 million for the full year.
Adjusted EBITDA margins for the quarter was 20.9% bringing full year performance 20.4%.
As previously committed, our cost containment initiatives improved our adjusted EBITDA margin performance from the first quarter low by more than 300 basis points, this brought both Q4 and full year adjusted EBITDA margin into the low end of our pre-pandemic long-term adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range.
A closer discussion of Q4 segment performance helps demonstrate the resiliency of our new portfolio approach.
As payments continues to experience year-on-year revenue growth, cloud continue to expand EBITDA margins versus prior year.
Promotional expanded revenue went to 15%, sequentially versus Q3 and Check maintained a strong EBITDA margin despite significant COVID-related headwinds to the business.
Consistent with our expectations and as we had shared at the third quarter call, payments grew Q4 revenue 3% to $78 million as compared to prior year, achieving 12% growth for the year and ending at $301.9 million.
We did see less one-time hardware revenue in the quarter against a tough Q4 2019 compare.
Treasury management led the growth with encouraging demand for our integrated receivables.
As Barry mentioned, the team expanded the number of FI partners that have moved to our full suite of capabilities.
We will continue to work with these partners to onboard these services and work to expand the number of full-service clients in 2021.
Adjusted EBITDA decreased in the quarter and for the full year by $4.5 million and $6.3 million respectively.
For the year, adjusted EBITDA margin was 22.6%, well within the range of our pre-pandemic guide on slightly lower revenue performance.
We expect to achieve double-digit revenue growth for the year with Q1 growth in low single-digits as expected while we continue to work on implementing the many new clients we signed in 2020.
We continue to invest to drive growth and as such we're assuming adjusted EBITDA margins in the low 20% area through the year.
Cloud solutions revenue declined 27.1% to $59.2 million in the quarter and ended the year at $252.8 million, resulting in a decline of 20.6% compared to 2019.
Q4 data driven marketing solutions revenue remained flat sequentially versus Q3 but experienced a decline versus prior year consistent with pandemic induced financial industry slowdowns in marketing spend.
But you can't see in the revenue performance as a number of new data driven marketing clients that signed during the quarter and will benefit us in future periods.
Web and hosted solutions saw declines to loss of customers discussed last year, the economic impact of the macroeconomic environment and expected attrition from our decisions to exit certain non-strategic product lines.
In Q4, cloud achieved a 160 basis point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin versus prior year, and expanded 20 basis points to 24.4% for the full year reflecting solid performance against pre-pandemic guide on significantly less revenue.
We expect the loss of revenue associated with Q4 2020 product exits will continue to impact the business into 2021, but we anticipate cloud margins to remain healthy in the low-to-mid 20% range.
Promotional Solutions fourth quarter 2020 sequential revenue grew by 15.3% from Q3 to $144 million, the year-over-year rate of decline moderated to down 16.6%, reflecting the continued impact of market conditions.
Adjusted EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter was 14%, down from the prior quarter peak.
Full year revenue declined 17.4% to $529.6 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.6%, and was greatly impacted by macroeconomic conditions in 2020.
In promotional solutions, we are seeing a modest rebound in business essentials, but continue to feel COVID-related impacts most acutely in marketing promotional products where revenues are tied to events and branded merchandise.
We believe the business will continue to improve but we are not expecting a rapid recovery in 2021.
We are anticipating improved adjusted EBITDA margins throughout 2021 in the low to mid-teens as a result of cost actions taken in 2020, including changes in key distribution relationships throughout 2020 and continuing in 2021.
Checks fourth quarter revenue declined 10% from last year to $173.3 million due to the secular trend combined with the impact of the pandemic.
Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin levels of 48.1% held largely steady versus Q3 declining only 10 basis points sequentially despite lower revenue levels, but remained lower than 2019 levels as a result of increased selling costs, new wins, and technology investments in support of our One Deluxe strategy.
Full year Check revenue declined 9.4% to $706.5 million as compared to last year, and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 48.4%.
Based on the high renewal rates and new businesses won in 2020, we do anticipate Check recovery rates in 2021 to return to mid-single digit declines, consistent with the recovery from previous economic slowdowns.
Free cash flow defined as cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures was $155 million for 2020, a decline of $65.1 million as compared to last year.
The decline was primarily the result of lower earnings, partially offset by lower interest, taxes, integration and lower CapEx.
We did not repurchase common stock in Q4, and we will continue to evaluate future repurchases in 2021.
We ended the quarter with strong liquidity of $425 million, including $123 million in cash.
During the quarter we reduced the amount drawn under the credit facility by $200 million, ending the year with $840 million drawn, a reduction of $44 million in the year resulting net debt continue to decrease through the year ending at $717 million, the lowest level in 2.5 years.
Our Board approved a regular quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share on all outstanding shares.
The dividend will be payable on March 1, 2021 to all shareholders of record on February 16, 2021.
Our strong execution and solid financial position, give us confidence to established guidance for the full year of 2021, the specific timing for economic recovery remains uncertain.
Our expectation is though for first quarter of 2021 will feel much like a continuation of the fourth quarter of 2020 as a result of the ongoing pandemic.
We are poised for recovery to begin in the second quarter enabling us to exit the year a sales-driven mid-single-digit revenue growth company.
All of this means, we expect to achieve full-year 2021 revenue growth of 0% to 2% with full year 2021 adjusted EBITDA margin of 20% to 21%.
We expect to invest approximately $90 million in CapEx to continue with important transformation work, innovation investments in building future scale across all our product categories.
Before I pass it back to Barry, I want to summarize for you; our very strong financial stewardship combined with our new leadership team, winning sales strategy, and ownership culture allowed us to not only protect but improve the company's financial strength, while simultaneously positioning us well for 2021 and beyond.
COVID certainly took it's toll but our strong team delivered in the worst of times, and we proved our cash generating business model is highly durable and our transformation is real; all of this gives us much confidence in our future.
Now, back to Barry.
In early 2020, we could not have anticipated the year that was in front of us.
But Deluxe-ers [Phonetic] have always had the grit to succeed.
Our team just put our heads out and went to work.
We're proud of our progress on our strategy and transformation to become a trusted business technology company.
We're proud of our strengthened balance sheet and improved portfolio.
We're proud to be a sales-driven revenue growth company, our cross-sell results, all-time record sales success.
But what's more impressive to me, we did all of this in the middle of a global pandemic.
I now have great confidence we'll be a sales-driven company growing low-to-mid single digit with margins in the low-to-mid 20s over the long-term, and expect to be that company exiting this year.
We've done the work, we've completed the preparations and laid the groundwork, and now our company is well positioned for the future.
I can't close without recognizing the extraordinary contribution of my follow Deluxe-ers [Phonetic].
Our team went to work and got the job done.
We're team living our purpose of values and ownership culture because we are all shareholders too.
Now, we'll take questions.

user
sees fy 2021 revenue up 0 to 2 percent.
qtrly revenue $454.5 million versus $522.1 million.
positioned for recovery to begin in the second quarter, enabling us to exit 2021 with revenue growth in mid-single digits.
expect q1 financial performance to be a continuation of q4 2020.

assistant