At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Eftichios Vasilakis, CEO. Mr. Vasilakis, you may now proceed.
Yes, thank you. Welcome everybody to our 2024 annual results call. Just to say that along with me today, we have our Deputy CEO, Mr. Dellianis, our CFO, Mr. Drakopoulos, and our Controller Investor Relations Director, Zafirakis Laos. Welcome from all of us. 2024 has been another very successful year for the company. I think we're proud to say that we never expected to have three consecutive years with earnings before tax that would be over EUR 100 million out of a car-related business in Greece and in the Balkans.
we are particularly proud of actually I would say taking an initial, let's call it rebound effect out of COVID, which was rebound in travel and rebound in terms of used car values because of the supply chain problems at the time, which supported our initial results in 2022 and made them effectively 2 times what we were making pre-COVID. being able to sustain that result with different components going forward in 2023 and 2024.
As you might know by monitoring our peers, whose primary business is either rent-a-car or leasing in Europe or in the U.S. indeed, you will see monitoring their results and how they have performed in the last 3 years, that there is a significant divergence in the level of performance ranging from historical highs to historical lows in terms of results and even losses. Be it either in the rent-a-car business in particular, and some volatility also in the leasing business, both in Europe and the U.S.
Within this environment, our level of profitability having been sustained already for three years, yes, with a different balance, year by year establishes, I think, for one more time the validity of the model of Autohellas, the complementarity of the different sectors, and our ability to adjust and be effective within different degrees of difficulties and different kinds of difficulties in all markets, while of course most importantly being able to take very good advantage of whatever positive opportunities are found to be our way or are more fairly so developed to be on our way. Another successful year, our EBITDA levels reached once again around EUR 280 million. Our profit before tax EUR 106 million, and our profit... EUR 105 million, sorry, million euro.
Our profit after tax and minorities at EUR 84.8 million, and 9.9% increase over last year, which is what allows us, of course, to proceed with a significant increase in the dividend, from EUR 0.7 per share in 2023 to 0.85% per share in 2024 and still retain a payout ratio that is around 50% and therefore sustainable for the future, so long as we keep producing similar results.
If I am to make a short reference to what has worked better for us during 2024 relative to the year before and what not, I would say the part of the business that has grown stronger has been leasing in Greece and used car retail of used car sales through our retail operations here in Greece. The part that has stayed at very high profitability and development levels but did not grow further than the market itself was rent-a-car operations in Greece and rent-a-car and leasing operations in the Balkans and in Cyprus.
The parts of the business which had a small retraction relative to the historical high of 2023 was the wholesale trade business in the country, partially because a lot of the pent-up deliveries of 2022, 2023 were exhausted in 2023, and therefore in 2024 we sold more or less what we received new orders for and not some kind of backlog from the past. Where we had our most important miss, as I believe we've also mentioned in our in our release, has been the profitability of Portugal, which went back quite a bit due to the competition situation in the market and our relative also new standing in the market based on when we invested in that acquisition. Overall, we reached again a revenue that's a little bit shy of EUR 1 billion.
If we add to that the joint venture, the joint control of the Stellantis related business in Greece with our partners from Israel. Our overall revenue actually goes to EUR 1.135 billion. A very sizable business, which now has come to employ close to 2,000 people, I think over the summer. A significant difference in terms of what we had, both in revenues, results and employment. I would say diversification of sources of revenues relative to the past.
One more thing which I did not mention, I should have mentioned in my first analysis, was that 2024 was also the year where we saw the reinitiation of direct profitability contribution from Aegean's participation, which had been silent in terms of dividends towards the shareholders, therefore, Autohellas as well for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, so for 4 years. We saw a restart of dividends, which we certainly expect to continue going forward, coming from our significant investment with Aegean. A reminder that we hold circa 12% of the shares of Aegean in Autohellas. Also we were gratified to see our more recent investment in Credit Estates begin to pay more significant dividends to the company, and hopefully we expect that to continue over the future as well.
The pillars of supporting Autohellas profitability have grown again from our three primary businesses, being rent-a-car and leasing in Greece, car trade in Greece and rent-a-car and leasing internationally to the fourth one, which is a satisfactory direct financial return from our two listed investments. Now we're, let's say, active again on all sides of our profitability generation. This is how we have been able to offset the gradual degradation of the value of the used cars primarily, that we saw a peak of, basically by late 2022, early 2023. We see that value of the used cars in gradual decline after a two-year spike following COVID. That spike, that decline is measured and gradual in our country.
With the ability that we have to wholesale and retail used cars here, we are reasonably confident that the significant contribution of this part of the activity to the conclusion or the closing of the rent-a-car and leasing cycle will continue to be significant and will continue to support our profitability, even as we expect year by year to have some marginal further declines. Having said that, of course, we have to remember that the basis of our primary demand here in Greece comes from two factors. One is the state of the economy and the other is the number of arrivals and the quality of the tourism arrivals in Greece. Once again, 2024 saw a healthy increase of that. It's been a repeating scenario for the last few years.
We see, again, looking at aviation capacity to the country and initial signs, positive signs going forward. That is continue to support the business. Rent-a-car, there's very few businesses that are more fragmented and more competitive than rent-a-car is in our country. We have mentioned oftentimes in the past that there are over 2,500 rent-a-car companies in Greece. To be able to perform in that environment is no small feat with the consistency that we have shown not only in the last years, but frankly since the time that Autohellas has been listed and even before that.
That part of the business continues to be healthy, continues to be supported by growing arrivals, and continues to be supported also at the secondary level by the gradual increase or improvement of the Greek economy, which continues to grow at higher rates than the European economies. That helps a little in the rent-a-car business. It helps a lot in the leasing business, where I think we've made our more significant relative strides to the year before, recovering a little bit of market share, a trend we expect to and hope to continue during the year that we're at right now. In a nutshell, this is a very initial first description of how I would describe our activity for 2024.
I would like to stop here and take your questions for me and the rest of my colleagues, so that we can be hopefully more helpful in our analysis. Obviously I know that a lot of you either have already reached out or will reach out to our investor relations department, Mr. Vasileios to get much more granular and specific analysis on any items that you might need. Please do go ahead and we'll try to be as effective as possible in answering the questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star followed by one on the telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your headset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Alexis Alathouros with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I hope you can hear me. I was wondering if you could give us like the big picture on competition and pricing and in the rental car business, which is quite big, I assume, given that capacity is increasing there. Maybe the. Give us a remind us the CapEx plans on your fleet. You refleet in 4 to 5 years and is this going to continue going ahead? This is a question for the rental car business. I also have a question on the Autotrade business. What are the dynamics you're seeing for 2025? Thank you very much.
Thank you. In terms of pricing in the rent-a-car business, looking at 2024, broadly speaking that was, there were downward pressures on pricing, which we were able to largely offset by improving the mix of vehicles that we rent to our customers, basically improving the mix of our fleet, in such a way as to offset these effects. At the same time as improving what we refer to as the channel mix, which is basically the sources of customers. As an example, direct sources of customers such as Hertz International or Autohellas' own website or its relationship with Aegean and the generation through Aegean's website, are broadly speaking more positive sales channels in terms of lower cost and in terms of improved quality of mix.
Relative to broker channels, where we are exposed to the full competition effect of our peers. Therefore, for 2024, the broad tendency was for average prices, rental rate per day to go down. We were able to offset that by, as I said, improving the mix either of the fleet or the channels. For 2025, I would say we should expect a little bit of the same. I believe results in the sector, broadly speaking, do not indicate that people will be as aggressive in developing their fleet internationally. However, Greece might be an exception to that. Therefore, we still do expect our competitors to keep improving and increasing their fleets.
Based on the fact that we expect something between 5% and 7% of improved arrivals in Greece, it's natural to expect that the sector will increase by round about 8%-10% in the rental at least. This will allow competitors an opportunity either to improve utilization in winter months or to grow further overall and through economies of scale for us or for others, try to offset gradual price pressures. Yes, I would expect marginal additional pressure on pricing going forward. This is what we see. At the same time as we see an improvement in seasonality, which is not unimportant in this market as well.
In terms of AutoTrade, I would say the market, as we've seen from registrations in the first two months already, is somewhat lower than the year before. It's clear that the prices of cars where they are do restrict the capacity of Greeks to purchase cars. At the same time, it's the case that the variability of the regulatory environment in terms of how much, how many, what level of subsidies is there and for what length of time, particularly for electric cars, creates some stops and goes. We don't expect material growth in the car trading market. We do, however, expect by 2026 to be in the market with a minimum of two additional brands coming from China.
We are talking about a market in wholesale that we don't expect to have to see significantly grow during this year. We are being reasonably successful in gradually expanding our brand portfolio, and given the time that these brands that we have already contracted or will contract in the next few months expect to launch products in the European market and with us here in Greece, we expect our portfolio to be stronger than where it is today by early 2026. That should be a support vis-à-vis the potential 3%-4% trend of decline of the market that we see today.
In terms of the leasing market, which is also very important, we see there, of course, the effects of the overall decline, but we see also a gradual improvement in the penetration of the fleet versus retail. We are not particularly concerned in being able to retain a decent growth rate coming out of the leasing, particularly because our expiration schedule this year, in terms of previous year leases is rather limited relative to the years before. Even with a smaller potential intake, if the market is a little bit stronger, we do still expect our leasing fleet to grow substantially during the year. That's, that's as much as I can say at this time.
Okay. Thank you. That was very clear.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Vassilakis for any closing comments. Thank you.
I think this is the most conclusive proof, the most conclusive statement to the fact that if you have a good dividend, people don't ask many questions. I wasn't trying to have that effect, it seems to have had that effect as well. Thank you for attending our call. Once again, I would like to refer you to Zacharopoulos for any specific questions and explanations you might need on some of our numbers. I realize that as our activity across different countries develops, you might have some additional questions that are more difficult to answer on a call. Once again, we are very proud to have achieved this result for this year.
Our third, as I said, consecutive year over EUR 100 million EBT, and I believe our 68th consecutive profitable year without a break since Autohellas has actually gotten into business. Thank you for being with us. To those of you that are also shareholders, thank you for being shareholders as well, and I look forward to our next call. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a pleasant evening.