Good afternoon. My name is Thomas Plenborg, and I'm the Chairman of the Board in DSV. First of all, a warm welcome to all shareholders. All the ones sitting here physically, it's a pleasure to see you all. Also to the ones who are participating via the online connection, also to our employees in this building, thank you for listening in and, please go back to work. As in previous years, the presentation and discussion will be conducted in English. There will be a possibility to get the translation or the English wording, discussion translated into Danish via the headsets. If you need a headset, you need a translation, raise your hand and our fantastic staff will give you a headset. There's one there who need a headset.
As usual, I will briefly touch upon the stock price since last year. Last year's AGM, the stock price was DKK 1,482.5, and I just looked it up just before the meeting here, and today it is DKK 1,598.5. It corresponds to a share price appreciation close to 8%. Today, we will give you a brief update on how we are doing in DSV, and that also include how we are doing with the Schenker acquisition we did last year. Before we continue, I will hand over the word to Simon Milthers, Attorney Simon Milthers, whom we, the Board of the Directors, have chosen to chair this session.
Simon has been chosen for quite many years now, and we appreciate that you accept the invitation, Simon. Simon will walk through the agenda as well as the practicalities. Please take the stage, Simon.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Thomas, and to the Board of Directors for yet again appointing me as the meeting chair of this annual general meeting of DSV. I look forward to carrying out the meeting in a good and orderly manner. Please note, as Thomas also just mentioned, and as it was stated in the notice convening the meeting, that the discussions today will be conducted in English, and this is also in accordance with the company's articles of association. Before we get into the agenda of this annual general meeting, we have a few formal tasks that we must go through. We first need to determine whether the general meeting is duly convened and legally competent to transact the business comprised by the agenda.
Prior to the annual meeting today, I have noted that the notice of the meeting was published in due time, and that it probably satisfies the requirements in the articles of association of the company, as well as in the Danish Companies Act. For the sake of good order, I can inform that actually five minutes prior to this meeting, the general meeting commenced, it was registered that 161 shareholders are physically present at the meeting. One or two may have slipped in in the last few minutes before that count. Furthermore, I can inform that approximately 73.5% of the votes and the share capital is represented excluding treasury shares. The final figure will be in the minutes.
Hearing no objections, I conclude that the annual meeting is duly convened and legally competent to transact the business as set out in the agenda. Thank you. Prior to the general meeting, the Board of Directors has received postal votes and proxies equivalent to more than 73.3%. With the number I mentioned before, 73.5% being present, that means that 0.2% of the shareholders' votes are present here physically. The rest have been provided by proxy, votes by letter, postal votes. At this point, I can inform that the Board of Directors' proposals and recommendations therefore already enjoy a great and sufficient support by the votes that have been cast in advance of the general meeting and thus will be adopted.
Section 101, subsection 5 of the Danish Companies Act requires a full account of the voting for every resolution at a shareholders' meeting, even though the results are clear, as they are here today. However, as we usually do, and as is practice in Danish general meetings, I propose that we yet again deviate from, as we can, from the full accounting of the voting for every resolution. Hearing no objection, I assume that that's adopted, and thank you. Now, for practical reasons, when we get to that, if anyone wants to have the word here, please approach the bench here or myself and show your identification, and then I'll give you the word at the appropriate time.
That leads us to today's agenda, which is, as you can now see on the board, item 1, report of the Board of Directors and the Executive Board on the company's activities in 2025. Item 2, presentation of the 2025 annual report with the audit report for adoption. Item 3, resolution on application of profits or covering of losses as per the adopted 2025 annual report. Item 4. Approval of the proposed remuneration of the Board of Directors for the financial year 2026. Item 5. Presentation and approval of the 2025 Remuneration Report. Item 6. Election of members for the Board of Directors. Item 7. Election of auditors. We round up the meeting with item 8. Any other business. Consequently, we can now move on to the first items on the agenda.
As it is common practice here in DSV, the introductory items on the agenda, being item one through five of the agenda, are processed jointly and brought up for debate jointly. The items are listed on the screen behind me, I hope. No? Next slide perhaps, or the agenda again. Yeah. The first five items will now be the introductory items that we will treat jointly. Now, the introductory items will be presented as follows. The Chair of the Board of Directors, Thomas Plenborg, will present the first part of the Management Report, followed by CEO Jens Lund, who will present the remainder of the management report. Thereafter, CFO Michael Ebbe will present the 2025 annual report for approval, including the grounds for the proposal for appropriation of profit and distribution of dividends.
Conclusively, I will present the Board of Directors' proposal under item 4 and 5 of the agenda. I will now give the floor to the Chair of the Board of Directors, Thomas Plenborg. Thomas.
Thank you, Simon. I will start the year giving a few comments on our performance during 2025. The year was an extraordinary year for DSV, a year defined by major strategic progress, continued market volatility, uncertainty, and of course, the integration of Schenker. It's fair to say that all employees and the management team has been extremely busy in 2025. In the beginning of the year, global trade tariffs were announced, which had significant impact on many of our customers, as well as our own industry. These tariffs affected normal volume and trade dynamics and led to increased volume in the beginning of the year. It was followed by more muted activity levels in the second half of 2025. Recently, we have again seen significant geopolitical events with the conflict in the Middle East.
We have been working hard to help our employees in the region and support our customers, and I would like to extend my gratitude to our staff and our customers for understanding in this very difficult situation. I hope you all stay safe. Despite geopolitical uncertainty, shifting trade tariffs, and disruptions across global freight markets, we delivered solid financial performance in 2025 in line with our financial guidance. The performance was supported by positive contribution from Schenker and the first synergies being harvested. This result would not have been possible without the exceptional commitment of our more than 150,000 employees. Integrating two global organizations while ensuring that customer supply chains run smoothly requires dedication and teamwork. I want to sincerely thank all employees, not only in this building, but globally.
Our Group CFO, Michael Ebbe, with a beer here, he will come up later on and give further information on the financials for 2025. With the completion of the Schenker acquisition in April 2025, we welcome more than 85,000 new colleagues to DSV, a major milestone in our growth journey that we are proud of. The acquisition has created a new global leader in the transport and logistics industry. It is not an easy job combining two large global companies across more than 90 countries. It is actually rather complex. Despite this, we are making significant progress and faster than we initially expected. In the first 8 months of the integration, we completed 30% of the integration, including some of the largest countries. Based on this strong progress, we now expect to finalize the integration already this year, 2026.
We have received strong customer feedback on the integration and the combination of the two companies, and it has been a clear priority to us to strengthen our commercial alignment and ensure continuity for customers throughout the integration. Group CEO Jens Lund will soon come up here and give further insights on the integration, but I can say that we are proud of the progress we have made so far. Again, thank you to our staff for that wonderful job they are doing. As we as a company turns 50 years old this year, we reflect with pride on our journey from a small Danish transport company to a global leader and the preferred logistic partner to small and medium-sized companies, as well as large and very large enterprises.
For those present here in the room, you can see the installation over here that gives us an insight on some of the key themes of the first 50 years of the DSV story. We are proud of our history, but we are also looking ahead because we still think the biggest opportunities lie ahead of us. Our strategic focus remains centered around strengthening our global network, enhancing our service offering and value proposition to small and medium-sized, as well as large and very large customers, supported by end-to-end solutions and industry-specific capabilities. Our leading platform positions us strongly to drive both organic and inorganic growth as we continue to develop business and to utilize our commercial approach. In the future, our efforts will be supported by artificial intelligence, AI, which can help us significantly optimize workflows, improve productivity, and create new opportunities for our customers.
Looking ahead, we are confident that our strategy of growing and optimizing the company will unlock significant value for our stakeholders. We maintain a disciplined capital allocation policy that we have used for many years. We continuously seek value-enhancing investment opportunities such as M&A. When such opportunities are not available, and we are within our financial gearing target, we will return capital to you shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Currently, our financial gearing exceeds the targeted level due to the financing of the Schenker acquisition. As a result, and in line with our capital allocation policy, we will use all available cash to reduce financial gearing. In 2025, we saw a strong cash flow generation, and we reduced our net interest-bearing debt by more than DKK 7 billion following the completion of the transaction.
For the year, we are still proposing a dividend of DKK 7 per share, which represent 20.6% of last year's income. In 2025, we further strengthened our decarbonization framework by combining the capabilities of DSV and Schenker. We advanced initiatives within electrification, renewable energy, customer-focused emissions transparency, and we delivered on our targets when it comes to Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. To illustrate the progress on the sustainability agenda, let me highlight two concrete examples. Today, we operate one of Europe's largest fleet of electric trucks with more than 400 trucks, while in the warehouse facility in Horsens, it runs on sustainable electricity generated by the world's largest installation of roof-mounted solar panels.
Following the Schenker acquisition, we have reaffirmed our science-based targets and aligned our ambition with our long-term growth strategy, and we remain committed to reaching net zero by 2050. DSV has become a truly global organization with operations in more than 90 countries, and listen carefully, we have more than 180 nationalities employed in DSV. We have a strong organizational culture built on respect for human rights, diversity, inclusion, and employee satisfaction, and I would like to add also a sense of getting things done. Throughout the integration of Schenker, we have placed strong emphasis on our people. We prioritize an efficient and a transparent selection process, and this approach has been well received across the organization.
Within the first month of the integration, we established a combined global leadership team, creating clarity for employees during a significant period of change and, of course, also uncertainty. We recognize that integrations lead to some redundancies, and when this happens, our focus is on handling these processes responsibly and respectfully and to reduce the uncertainty for the involved employees. To assess our employees' view on the Schenker integration, we completed a global employee survey with focus on integration in 2025, and we are pleased that our employees have a high confidence in the integration and acknowledge the benefits for DSV as well as for our customers. The survey also identified areas with room for improvement related to internal communication and change management, which we believe is valuable feedback that we can use to continuously improve as an organization.
In addition, we have been engaging with our global leadership team via summits, town halls, executive calls, regional visits to get important perspective, but also to mobilize our leadership team for the next phase of our journey as an organization. At DSV, we are always focused on ensuring that we have a strong and effective board of directors. As the company grows and evolves, we continuously review our competencies to make sure the board is well-equipped to support management and oversee the long-term development of the business. As part of this, we conduct an annual self-evaluation to assess our composition, skills, and overall performance. The evaluation covers key areas such as our work and results, collaboration with the executive board, sitting here, succession planning, and future focus areas. The process ensures that we maintain the right capabilities to oversee DSV's strategy and also development.
Last year, we announced the initiation of our succession plans. As part of this process, Vice Chair Jørgen Møller, sitting in the front row, has decided to step down from the board. Jørgen has played a very important role in DSV for many, many years, first as CEO of A.P. Moller-Maersk that he essentially built from scratch, of course, supported by very strong people around him, and later as a very dedicated member of the board. Jørgen, I will ask you to stand up so people can see you.
It's a pleasure.
This is Jørgen Møller. He has been working very hard for so many years. I was just about to say, "Can you help me give him a round warm applause?" You did that yourself, so thank you. To replace Jørgen Møller, we have to have two people chosen this year or elected. I will ask you Lars to stand up first. Lars Rasmussen brings extensive new leadership experience from major Danish companies, both as CEO and as board member. He further served as chairman of the Committee on Corporate Governance. Tan Chong Meng, please stand up. Thank you. He brings. Yes. Tan Chong Meng brings significant international, expertise with senior leadership experience across global supply chains, energy, healthcare, including deep insights into the Asian markets, which has increasing strategic importance to us. We are getting quite big in Asia.
We welcome both candidates and are confident that they will bring valuable perspective to the board. With these changes, we maintain a highly capable and well-diversified board, a board that is strongly positioned to support management and ensure effective governance and guide DSV through the next phase of our growth journey. Lastly, this is my last item here. I will address the remuneration of the executive board and the board of directors. In 2025, remuneration for the executive board and the board of directors follow DSV's remuneration policy that was adopted at last year's AGM. Members of the board of directors receive a base fee of DKK 800,000, which we propose remain unchanged this year. The executive board sitting here receive a one-time discretionary cash bonus relating to the successful acquisition of Schenker, and this is also in line with our remuneration policy.
For more details, please refer to the remuneration policy and the remuneration report for 2025 if you want to know more about this area, both of which are available on dsv.com and have been provided with the notice of this AGM. That will conclude my reporting from me and the board of directors. Thank you for listening to that part of this AGM. Jens Lund, I will kindly ask you to come up here.
Thank you very much. My first slide will be basically on our fiftieth anniversary. I'll just say a little bit more about it. It's actually something that we celebrate throughout the company. This is from humble beginnings of our company's journey. Some might even be in the room that is still in the picture. I've had the pleasure before the meeting to speak to some of the people that have been part of the journey or some of the family related to some of the people part of the journey as well. It's really something that is very warming when I get to meet people that have been part of the journey. Everybody's proud of it. Everybody's done a tremendous job trying to participate in growing the company to what it has become today.
This summer, on the thirteenth of July, will be 50 years on exactly that day, and we will also have a celebration in relation to that here in Hedehusene as well, where we will welcome also people that are present here today. We will try to get in contact with some of the people that have been part of our journey as well. We look very much forward to celebrating this. Actually, also over here, I'll just make a little bit of an announcement as well. You can go over there some boxes that tells a little bit about some of the things that we've been through on our journey. There's a little story in every one of them.
Perhaps you can also recognize some of the people on the picture over there. You can, for example, see that Brian Ejsing, for those that can see, 1997, he's actually on that picture over there. There's a few other people that you'll be able to recognize as well. It's a fantastic year for us to be able to celebrate our fiftieth birthday. If we look at our journey, I think it's fair to say that in the beginning of our journey, it was very much focused on the domestic market. Then, over time, basically the company has evolved from being a very local player, also focused on the road activity and then diversifying through M&A all the way through. We've made some significant acquisitions over the years.
Of course, some of the more spectacular one might be the DFDS transaction, where we quadrupled our size as a company. That was definitely a significant milestone, but there has been many. Every time we make a transaction, we often say, "Now this is the most important one." We've said that quite a few times on our journey, and I think it's something that is very unique for our company. We still have the aspirations, the energy to continue driving the company forward. It's part of the founding culture of the company. It's something that the people that were involved all the way from the beginning should be very proud of, that they managed to create a company that has a culture like this.
us that are on the team right now, we have the obligation to continue to preserve that culture and, nurture it so that we keep it, because it's, as you can see from this slide, still a very fragmented market that we operate in. We are the market leader, but we hold 6% market share globally. Of course, there's still much work to be done. Now it's hard to buy a company that is larger than ourselves. There are still many very capable, very, very competent companies out there where it could make sense to combine ourselves with them. With Schenker, our M&A journey is still not finished. We want to continue the journey where we participate in the consolidation of our industry. I think it's food for thought just to look at the slide up here.
If we take Schenker and the Schenker integration, I think the chairman said we would say a few words about this. This is actually our basically branding campaign, winning as one, because we have to become united. We have to become one company, DSV and Schenker. As you can see, the road goes into infinity. The journey will be everlasting for us. Schenker, as you can see, is actually larger than all the transactions we've done all together during the years. Of course, it holds a tremendous complexity for us because normally we would buy a company that would be typically part of or focused on one division. Schenker, very powerful company, very competent company. We are so proud of all the new colleagues that we got on board, but strong in all three business areas. Very strong on the MC side.
Basically also a global network like we had in DSV with presence in all major markets. Road, actually also a very, very solid network on road and present in more markets than we were in DSV and with a stronger capacity as well. Of course, it's fantastic to acquire that capacity and combine it with the one that we have. Part of our culture is always that we then embrace these things and bring them in. On Contract Logistics, we also have now a situation where we have basically doubled our size and we are a very, very strong and very capable player. Also with Schenker, actually under Contract Logistics, we focused on the midsize segment. Schenker actually had capacity also to handle some very, very important and larger accounts. Here we also basically expand our capabilities.
I think this is very, very important and we are really so happy to continue to develop the company and get the new competencies in because it's something that is very important to our customers. On the integration, I think when we do the integration, it has a certain, you can call it playbook, but there's a certain formula that we use all the time. The first question we always want to answer when we buy a company is to answer to the employee, what does it mean for me? One way to answer that question is that we set the leadership team quickly. On closing, we had announced top 250. Basically leadership in all 90 countries that we are present, not necessarily in all divisions, but it's really a tremendous undertaking. One month later, top 550.
One layer lower in the organization had been announced. This really helped to, if you noticed in the press and in the media and all kinds of places, there's been very little noise in relation to the integration. I believe that that's earned through the hard work that the whole organization has done to set the team. I cannot say how proud I am of that, but it's just amazing. The next question we would like to answer when we do M&A is the customers. They have the same question. What does it mean for me? We need to set the team before we can get in front of the customer. Having set the team really quickly, actually I had the privilege myself on the first week after closing to go and see the 10 largest customers of the combined entity.
I cannot tell you how much they appreciated that we reached out so fast because they can then answer to their stakeholders, what does the transaction mean for them? They get firsthand insights. Now it's a standard playbook that we use, but it's really, really important. The next thing we do when we do an integration is that we try as quickly as we can to merge the organizations in the countries. In this case, we started on the 1st of August. We had closed the deal on the 1st of May. Three months later, we already go live on the country go lives and merge the organizations. The teams that have been working on this, I'm immensely proud of them, the work they have put in. It is very, very complex to do that as fast as we're doing.
Of course, we have significant experience, but still I think it's something that we have to be very proud of. We've then done the integrations. Thomas had already mentioned that we'll be completing the integration this year. It's definitely, we are in good progress. I think if we look at the synergies, we are still well on the way to create the benefits economies of scale brings in such a transaction. This also what will keep us in the game in the long run, that we drive these efficiencies. Running a company like this is an infinite game. The only real thing that matters is that we stay in the game for a long period in time. In order to do so, we then have to take finite decisions on how we organize ourself and then drive the efficiencies, as we go along.
This is really a little bit on Schenker, and it's a fantastic competence that we have. Once again, thank you to all the colleagues throughout the group that has worked really hard on this. I can tell you many people have put extreme efforts into it, and it's really well-recognized. If we take then the outcome at the end of the day, what have we delivered? Well, I think we have delivered solid performance in an integration year with tons of complexity. Then on top of that, we actually had also some new rules that came in because of a political situation in certain areas of the world where our customers, they actually had to deal with different regimes on tariffs, et cetera, on a continuous basis.
The customers, they had continuous war rooms, so every week there was a new rule coming out on Twitter or X or some other social media, and then we had to redirect the supply chains. I think we've managed to steer through this, deliver a solid financial outcome, and basically live up to the expectations of all our stakeholders when it comes to that. I think we've also talked about the customer feedback. It's been very positive. They wanna engage with us. When we have meetings now, we don't talk about integration anymore. We talk about how we can continue to evolve together with the customers and drive basically the business relation forward.
Michael will talk a little bit about the cash flow, but it's always good, you know, if you can convert what you're doing into real cash flow. We're very pleased with that. Of course, on the earnings per share, that's what it's all about, driving the earnings per share up because this has significant impact on our share price. For next year, we have to deliver between DKK 23 billion and DKK 25.5 billion. It is a significant increase, but also what must be delivered and that can be expected given the capital that we've deployed buying Schenker as well. It's like this also with all our internal business cases that we allocate resources and then there has to be an outcome. I think that's basically what there is to say on the highlights.
Of course, the run rate for the synergies, they will have to be fully phased in in 2026, so that we can see them in the numbers in full for 2027. Here's a little overview of the numbers. Revenue of DKK 247 billion as a group. Here, I think it's important to remind ourselves that the Schenker volume and numbers, they are not included for the full year. If it had been so, we'd probably been beyond DKK 300 billion in revenue. As you can see, the Air and Sea division, our largest division still. Of course, also now Road, very large division with the addition of Schenker. As I mentioned, they had a large activity within the road area than DSV.
Of course, our very important Contract Logistics division as well. That's how it's divided, and this is how the company looks at the end of 2025. Sustainability. It's still important here at DSV. I've heard in certain part of the globe it's perhaps not so much in favor anymore. Actually, DSV, when I got to know DSV in the year 2000, sustainability was already at that time on the agenda. If you look back in the old reports, it's something that we've been focusing on throughout all the years. Sustainability really is all about the environment. How can we reduce our footprint on the CO2 emissions?
It's also on the social side, how we basically act and how our governance is when it comes to act as a good employer. Not least, Thomas mentioned also under governance, how we govern the company on the highest level, but also on code of conduct and other areas within the company so that we have a firm network for that. Actually, I'm pretty proud of being a Scandinavian company because we have strong traditions in all areas. I actually believe that it's part of our success that we have high standards within this. We have fantastic teams that do an incredible job making sure that we stick to our principles and also educate our people in how it is we conduct business in DSV.
When it comes to Schenker, actually as a German company owned by the government, they also had high standards. This integration is not that complicated when it comes to the ESG agenda, because they also were used to similar practices within their company. We've just taken a few projects. Thomas had already talked about it. This is our Horsens setup. It's part of it that you can see. It's a cross-dock and a storage building. The large building we have over there, you can actually not see. It's not in the picture. It's 170,000 square meters. When we constructed it, we had to calculate in the rounding of the Earth, that size the building has. It's also filled with solar panels.
It's a very big pilot that we made to invest in it to get acquainted with the technology, what it can do for us. As far as I'm aware, it's if not the largest, but one of the largest facilities that is on a roof of a building globally. It is significant for us, and we already see that we now start to harvest the benefits of it. We're also putting in solar panels in other places. This is not the only one. Of course the electric trucks. I just wanna give a little bit of perspective on the number that Thomas said, previously. Last year, I visited Volvo Trucks in Scandinavia, market leader on the trucking side for electric trucks. I shouldn't say all that because Benedikte is down here.
She's also familiar with Volvo from the board, but actually it's the real number that I heard that approximately at that time, 5,000 trucks had been sold, electric trucks. We have 400 running in our fleet. I'm not sure they're all Volvo, but they had 70% market share. They had sold 5,000. Of course, Volvo are a very important player also for us. But in general, we had 400 running. It means that we are market leading. I think it comes out of our Scandinavian tradition, and we continue to invest and involve in this. It's a little bit slower, the technology, than I think we had anticipated, but I'm confident that we will get there.
The capabilities of the trucks right now is in line with what it should be in order to be efficient, and also the pricing now starts to become cheaper. It has been very expensive in the beginning. Important, we just wanted a few use cases. We can talk a lot about numbers, but this is real tangible stuff that we're talking about. That was it from me. I just wanna say thank you also to you for coming here today, and also like to thank all our employees once again for their hard work and dedication. It means the world for us all the efforts that you put in. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jens. That will bring us to the next agenda item, which is the presentation of the annual report for 2025. I think I will save you some time and not go through the entire annual report. Even though it's only 133 pages, which is short in these days. Of course, I encourage you to read it. If we take some of the highlights, the first thing that we start out with is, of course, to look at the auditor's report in the annual report because that is, you could say, an approval of the numbers within it and all the compliance that we'll need to live up to.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has actually reported their audit opinion without any reservations or supplementary information to that. That's a clean audit opinion. For those of you who are not that familiar with ESEF, it's a Electronic Single European Format requirement that we also have to live up to. There is also one more audit report in these 133 pages, which is on our sustainability report that is included in the total annual report, and that is also issued without any qualifications or supplementary information. That is, you can say, approval from the independent auditor of all things included in our nice annual report.
In order to save time and not go through all of it, I think I will just go through some of the highlights that you can see in the annual report. I think Jens, he very well explained you can say our financial performance down to operating profit before special items, which amounted to DKK 19.6 billion in line with what we have guided and a significant growth compared to last year. Out of this DKK 19.6 billion, we have had some special items costs. It's not without cost to integrate a company like legacy Schenker. This year amounts to DKK 4.5 billion, and we'll also have similar level of costs for this year, 2026.
We also had to pay interest on our net interest-bearing debt, including all the leases that we have, which brings us to a profit before tax of DKK 12.1 billion, and then we pay tax of DKK 3.7 billion last year. It's higher than we normally do, and that is due to the fact that we are integrating companies. There's always be costs that is not deductible for tax purposes. Due to the fast integration that we have had, then the tax rate this year is higher than what we would normally see in a normal run rate. That leaves us with a net profit that is attributed to you shareholders of DKK 8.4 billion. This was about the profit and loss.
Of course, we also have a balance sheet here, and you can say out of the DKK 290.4 billion, we have equity of DKK 117 billion, which is around a solvency ratio around 40%. Quite solid balance sheet that we have. Our return on invested capital, 12.8%, is a little bit on the low end. It's of course impacted by the investments in legacy Schenker and will increase over the next couple of quarters and years. Jens was so polite also to mention the cash flow. Significant increase compared to last year, DKK 16.4 billion in cash flow, free cash flow, as we say.
Part of it has been used to reduce debt, obviously, seven billion we have reduced our debt that we acquired in connection with the acquisition of Schenker. You can also see that our net interest-bearing debt amounts to DKK 86.6 billion. Maybe you remember the number that we paid, around EUR 14 billion. We have been able to reduce some of the debt. If you look at it compared to last year, we had zero debt. That was because we did the share capital increase in connection with paying for the shares of legacy Schenker. Our gearing ratio is 2.8. We are aiming to get it down around 2.0, which is in line with our capital allocation policy. We continue that journey obviously.
Our average duration, that is you can say, when we have to pay back the debt is around 5 years. All in all, I believe that we can say that we have a robust and strong balance sheet, so we are well equipped to move into next year as well and the following years. This is a slide that we always have our CAGR, like we call it, 16% annual growth in EPS. Obviously, we also strive to really work with that and continue that journey throughout the next years. The money that is left now maybe worth noticing that now it's the parent account that is on this slide, so it's not reconcilable to the balance sheet that we just spoke about.
It is so that the legal entity, the company that pays out the dividend is the listed company in which you have shares, and that is the one that has to pay the dividend, and that is why we have to show this balance sheet here, how we will suggest to use the profit that we have. I think Thomas already mentioned that we propose to pay out dividends 7 DKK per share, around 20%, I think you mentioned as well, Thomas, of the total, you can say net profit that we pay out. This is a suggestion to do that. It amounts to DKK 1.7 billion, leaving DKK 82.8 billion.
There's still plenty of equity left in the parent accounting. That was a quick run-through of the annual report. Of course, I again can recommend 130 pages only. Then also the resolutions of applications of profit. That's it from my side. Then I will leave the word to you, Simon.
Thank you, Michael Ebbe, Jens Lund, and Thomas Plenborg. As I mentioned earlier, I will now present the Board of Directors' proposal under item four and five of the agenda to finish the presentation of the introductory items. Under item four of the agenda, the Board of Directors proposes that the remuneration of the members of the Board of Directors for 2026 is based on a base fee of DKK 800,000, which is unchanged compared to the base fee for 2025. No change. Under item five of the agenda, the Board of Directors proposes approving the presented remuneration report, which has been available on the company's website since the date of the notice of the annual general meeting, and I generally refer to the remuneration report.
I note that the remuneration of the Board of Directors and of the executive board is determined in accordance with the DSV Remuneration Policy. Now, before I open the floor for questions and comments, I note, as mentioned by Thomas and Michael Ebbe, but as chairman of the meeting, it falls for me to say it as well, that the annual report is signed by the Board of Directors and the executive management, and that the auditors have issued an unqualified opinion regarding the audit of the financial statement.
As also mentioned by Michael Ebbe and I think Thomas, the Board of Directors proposes that of the profit for the year of DKK 3.842 billion, as stated on page 132 of the annual report, DKK 1.683 billion is distributed as dividend, which corresponds to approximately 44% of the profit of the year or DKK 7 per share of nominally DKK 1. The Board of Directors proposes that the remaining profit of the year of DKK 2.159 billion is transferred to the equity reserves.
I will shortly open the floor for questions and comments from the shareholders. To begin with, we have, prior to the general meeting, received notices from a few shareholders, who have planned a contribution, and I'll therefore first give the floor to Anders Schelde from AkademikerPension. If you're ready. Yeah, there you are.
Thank you. My name is Anders Schelde, as said. I'm the Chief Investment Officer at AkademikerPension, and I speak here today on behalf of AkademikerPension and LD Fonde, formerly known as Lønmodtagernes Dyrtidsfond. For decades, we have been loyal and satisfied shareholders in DSV. Over the years, the company has developed into one of Denmark's most significant business stories, success stories. Today, DSV serves as a reference point for many companies, both in Denmark and internationally. This journey has been made possible by skilled employees, strong execution, and a clear strategic direction that truly deserves recognition. Thank you. However, when a company grows to the size and importance that DSV has today, it also comes with a special responsibility, not only towards shareholders, but also towards employees, business partners, and the broader public.
At the same time, expectations increase, as does the attention given to the decisions that are made. It's therefore natural that greater attention is directed towards the company, both when things go well and especially when decisions or priorities raise questions. We've seen a number of developments that have raised concern among investors. This includes, for example, the involvement in the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia, which has already been the subject of much public debate. It also includes the information regarding the joint venture between the CEO and the chairman of the board. We believe that too much attention has been gathered around these different matters related to top management, and this is quite unfortunate and ultimately does not serve anyone well.
Situations like these place pressure on the trust in the company and particularly in the board and the chairmanship, and trust is one of the most important assets for a listed company, and it's therefore crucial that both management and the board continues to safeguard it well. We therefore welcome the planned renewal of the chairmanship of the board that has now begun, and we see this as an important step in the right direction. We hope that this can mark the beginning of a renewed focus of the work in the board and that the discussions around governance can once again move into the background. In our view, governance works best when it's not the subject of discussion. Usually, that means that things are simply in good order.
It is therefore important that the board identifies a solid and long-term solution for the chairmanship, a solution that reflects what DSV needs as a Danish company operating in a global environment, both today and in the future. The chairman of the board in a company like DSV must remain an active part of the company's leadership foundation. The role requires a person who can engage with executive management as a strong strategic partner while also appropriately challenging the management in appropriate manners when necessary. Ultimately, good governance means that authority on decision-making rests with the company and not with a single individual. I would also like to take this opportunity to briefly comment on the remuneration report. This year we have chosen not to support the report.
Having said that, we would also like to acknowledge that the structure of remuneration has moved in a more appropriate direction in recent years. We therefore hope the company will take the final step and introduce a true long-term incentive program with clear and transparent performance criteria. For us as investors, it's essential that the link between pay for performance is clear and transparent. The reporting should enable us to understand and assess how remuneration relates to results that have been achieved. We therefore look forward to next year's remuneration report, and we hope that the continued simplification of the remuneration structure will be reflected in improved transparency. In other words, we should be able to work backwards from the numbers. If that is not possible, transparency is simply not good enough.
In closing, I would like to emphasize that we continue to see DSV as an important investment in our portfolios. We recognize the significant work carried out every day by the company's management and many, many employees in creating value. We therefore wish DSV and all its employees continued success in the year ahead. We also look forward to the upcoming Capital Markets Day, where we hope to hear more about how DSV intends to balance between value creation through acquisitions and organic growth. Historically, combination of these two has been central to the company's impressive development. As DSV has grown in size significantly, it's natural that the transformative acquisition of the same scale as in the past will become more difficult to identify and execute. At the same time, the environment in which DSV operates is evolving rapidly.
While DSV's core task is moving physical goods around the world, many other parts of the value chain is being digitized around with great speed, not least through the use of AI.
DSV has historically been strong in IT, lean and efficient processes, and it'll be interesting to see how new technologies can be implemented so that DSV not only remains relevant, but continues to stay ahead. We therefore look forward to hearing management perspective on these developments at Capital Markets Day, both the opportunities and the risk and how they may shape the next phase of growth. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you for the recognition to the management team on the integration and how well they're doing in growing the company. We also acknowledge that we can probably do better in certain areas when it comes to corporate governance. In all fairness, I think we're doing fairly well, okay as a company. We may be a little bit of disagreement on certain things here. I would recognize the two new board members, new corporate governance, bringing their skill set into the board, so that is definitely recognized. Even though we had to let Jørgen Møller go after many, many years of due service in this company. Thank you for your words.
Thank you, Anders Schelde and Thomas Plenborg. Another contribution that mentioned they would like the word is Michael Bak from Dansk Aktionærforening. The floor is yours.
Thank you for the floor as it goes, and thanks for being here. My name is Michael Bak, CEO, Director of Dansk Aktionærforening, representing 17,000 investors, also some of you here today. This is my first time here, and in a minute you will know that it is. Let me first say thanks to DSV for hosting this event and also hosting a lot of you for something to eat. To the investor relations, thanks for receiving my paper yesterday and not telling me that it couldn't be in Danish. Pardon my English here. Having said that, I actually still think that a lot of good companies can translate both ways.
With a lot of Danes sitting here, I think the debate sometimes could be better if we could do it in Danish and English. So just a little note on that, and the rest here is then, you know, elaborated on my Danish paper, but you can read it on the Dansk Aktionærforening's website. First of all, of course also for me, a big and huge thanks to DSV, to the management for, especially for the Schenker integration and everything you've done. It, you know, it comes with huge respect. The other thing I would like to touch upon is geopolitical insecurity, as it was said. Of course, there is many insecurities, and there have been many insecurities over the last, say, 12-18 months.
However, I would like to hear a little bit more about what to expect from a shareholder's perspective in five to ten years. Should we look into a future where you cannot make as much money as you do nowadays? Do you see that actually as something that we should look into because there are so many things going on now? The other thing is the NEOM project that was also mentioned by Mr. Schelde, and is there any sort of more specific things going on about the projects that we should know about, with also the recent weeks' insecurity down in Saudi Arabia and the region? The other thing also touched upon by Mr.
Is the criticism that was in the press last year, both on the management, but also in the board, and I know it's maybe not appropriate to take too much discussions, but I still think we should, as shareholders, be able to, with respect for the company and with respect for the management, to discuss it a little bit. Therefore, I would like to hear both the leadership of the management, daily management, how it has been dealt with, and of course also I would like the chairman to put maybe a few more words on time schedule plans for changing, if changing is coming in the board.
Having said that, I think it represents the shareholders' interest but also the society's interest that we don't go in the press, discuss things like this, but we meet here and discuss it here. That's my point. Third, and the last one is artificial intelligence, AI. I know you're working with that, but during the last quarter, we actually one day saw a very sort of a dramatic increase in the share price of the company. Apparently that was also because of a small company saying they were good in AI. Also another thing was that it's also, you know, AI-related trading.
Therefore, I would like to ask you, is that something we just have to sort of recognize as the new normal, or is there anything that you can do as DSV to actually meet such pressures on the shares? So that was my sort of freestyling on the Danish script. Thanks a lot for that challenge and yeah, all the best to you.
Thank you, Michael Bak. I can in fact assure you that there are actually interpreters that would interpret it to English.
The question that you had around creating calmness in the management and the timeline, et cetera, process for that, the chairman will reply to that. Jens Lund, I understand, will reply to the remainder of your questions. Thomas.
Thank you, Simon. Thank you, Michael. It was also entertaining, and you do well in English, I should say. First of all, the feedback we of course receive and have seen also in the press is also disturbing for us. It's a little bit annoying. It's because we really want to run our business, and I think that goes back to your point as well, and we truly just want to run the business as good as we can. I actually think over the last nine months we have been fairly successful in doing that. Of course, we carefully consider the feedback, and I can say that we have never spent more time and investment on communication and leadership training. That's really important to stress. That is something we take quite serious here.
Having said that, when I and the board are traveling around or when I'm walking around this building, I can say that I think actually the atmosphere is quite good. I at least enjoy to walk around and talk with people here. At least when they talk to me, they're quite friendly, I should say. When it comes to succession, I think we are now starting on the succession here with Jørn being replaced. He has been a dear member of the company for many years, as I've said, and also of the board, but now we get two strong new candidates in Lars and Chong Meng representing two different perspective that we look forward to get on board. That will be the first part of this succession.
We can do that because of, you know, the very hard and efficient and well done work by our staff, so we are more comfortable with the Schenker integration. When we will do the next step, when I will step down as chairman, we will inform you, of course, in due time. I hope you can live with that, Michael.
You had some questions, Michael, about the geopolitical uncertainty. I think if there's something that we've seen over the years, it has basically been building up over time. I think if we go back to the first presidency of Donald Trump, it already started there, the disruption at that time. It actually already got us engaged in business continuity planning together with many of our customers. It also started the journey of us being more agile than before, keeping the supply chains of our customers flowing. We got the unfortunate event of COVID that basically also led to a lot of situations where we had to act in different ways than we were used to.
In the beginning, in the interest of society, and then, later on when things sort of normalized a little bit just to keep countries and businesses running. I think that's been the journey. Now, of course, we have then a situation where, as it seems that the world order has changed a little bit and, people they try to annex other countries or do certain things, and it also leads to, significant disruptions, as well. The role of the freight forwarder is to keep the supply chains flowing however difficult it may be. Our role in reality now, when we have the crisis in Iran, is actually more important than ever before, because all you that sit here, you will still consume. We have to make sure that the freight, it moves.
Of course, it can then get into a situation where we will have a global oil crisis, and then perhaps our consumption patterns might shift for a certain period in time. I've never seen a period in history where consumption or the GDP has structurally declined. There can be swings up and down, and also significant, I must say, but I've never seen that it structurally declined. As I'm a little bit of an optimist, I think that the world will hopefully continue to evolve in the same direction. It will probably mean more work for us. We can add more value, and there's still gonna be volume to move. Being part of a business like this as an investor is hopefully not too bad an idea. The other thing that you talked about was NEOM.
We went into the NEOM project some years ago, signed a JV agreement, and it had to be activated. Actually, NEOM was a project of the government in Saudi Arabia, where they wanted to develop the city based on very high standards on the ESG side. Unfortunately, the project has not unfolded the way that it was anticipated because there was actually something wonderful in it for freight forwarders. Well, we would consolidate all the inbound volumes to this major construction site, and that's unseen on the planet. We were actually quite proud that we were seen as the strongest candidate to deliver an unprecedented service. We are actually ready to deliver it, but I'm seeing that the project, every time we hear something, loses more and more substance.
Now I'm not a geopolitical expert. The redirection that the project has been going in has been consistent in the reduction. I've not heard that this journey is gonna change in the foreseeable future. We will operate on a master service agreement like with any other customer that we have. The JV has not formally been activated. We have actually registered a listed company, but it needs to be founded, and both parties then need to contribute capital and the things we have agreed in the JV agreement. That's the status on NEOM. Actually we've had a lot of talk, but there's been very little outcome on the NEOM side. On AI and business transformation. I think you are absolutely right when you say there are significant fluctuations.
In my experience, the capital market fluctuates a lot if there's too little knowledge, because then the investor, they react on anecdotes and rumors and not so much on, I can say, an informed basis. AI is very hyped, and there's many speculations what will it mean. Actually, that's the reason why we also have invited for a Capital Markets Day, because we will try to explain to you what does it mean for us. We just had a board meeting, and we have some very competent people in the board that also discuss this topic with us. It's the transformation of the business. How do you do this? It's not only the technology in itself. That is, as a matter of fact, it's not uncomplicated, but it's the easy part. The difficult part is to transform your business.
When we run the business, what you invest in when you buy DSV share, it's very much change capacity. How much can we change the business that we operate on a continuous basis? When we buy a company, how much change can we impose on that company? It's the same muscle we're gonna use for AI. We will explain in more detail on the Capital Markets Day. I can say already to you now that it's something we call a domain-driven architecture, where basically we operate the company in a different way, and then we will also transform our workflows so that they are perhaps produced in a different way. As I said, I'm really happy that we have a strong board that is very engaged, both on supplying technology, actually into our structure, but also to discuss it together with us.
We look forward to discuss it together with you as shareholders and then perhaps by informing each other, take a little bit of the volatility out of it, so that you can believe in the longer term plan and the financial aspirations that we have in the company. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael Bak and Thomas Plenborg for the comments. That's fine with me again. Thank you. I will then pass the word to Claus Wiinblad from ATP. There you are.
Yeah. Thank you. My name is Claus Wiinblad, and I'm representing ATP. I'd like to start with thanking you for the report and presentation of the annual report. With an EBIT of a little less than DKK 20 billion, DSV lived up to the expectations set for 2025. In my view, this is a very solid result in a challenging market with very many uncertainties. We are now more than a year into the integration of DB Schenker, and we think we have been moving really fast. The integration is ahead of schedule and on track to deliver the promised DKK 9 billion in synergies. That's really impressive given the scale of such a transformative acquisition.
Prior to the acquisition, DSV made significant changes to its commercial operating model, which I expect will support the successful integration of DB Schenker. DSV has expressed strong optimism that the integration will result in only limited negative sales synergies. This leads me to the following question: Are you seeing the same strong progress on the commercial performance of the integration as you are seeing on the cost synergy side? I will also talk a little bit about AI as the other speakers. In recent months, there's been a lot of hype and focus on the impact of AI, along with growing concerns about its potential to disrupt various industries. I'm convinced that DSV is well positioned to benefit not only from AI itself, but also from the broader business transformation it enables.
In my view, the company's disciplined integration of past acquisition is a key enabler of success in this context. I look forward, as the other speakers, to learn more about this transformation and its potential at the upcoming CMD in May, which I really will be looking forward to. I will try with a question anyway, because I understand we'll get more details at the CMD, but I would like to raise the following sort of more high-level question in this context. Where do DSV see the main opportunities for AI adoption, and where do DSV see the biggest risk of AI potentially disrupting the industry and putting potential margin pressure on the business? Lastly, I would like to thank Jørgen Møller for a very long and very significant contribution to DSV. You have really been part of creating history at DSV.
Thank you so much for that effort. Thank you. Further, I would like to welcome both Lars Rasmussen and Tan Chong Meng as new members of the board. With those words, I will, I would like to wish the leadership and employees good luck in the coming years with the further integration of DB Schenker. Thank you.
Thank you, Claus Wiinblad. Please, Jens Lund, reply to the questions.
Thank you for the good questions, Claus. I think when it comes to the commercial approach that we'd sort of basically commenced on the first of February 2024, what we'd done at that time was to basically get a clear customer segmentation in place in the company, and we can then monitor how the different areas of the company was evolving when we sort of worked on them. Of course, now having integrated Schenker, we can see in the different categories or segments where we are actually performing and how we are performing.
I think it's fair to say that, when we look at it, I think, the Achilles heel that we had was in the past transactions or the previous was the largest segment where we actually had the largest attrition of volume. This has actually now become our best performer. This is actually where we see the best development. That doesn't mean that the other areas, what can I say, are not performing well, but we've managed basically to turn this situation around, and that was a key objective for us. I think, when it comes to this, we're doing well. Of course, there's always the situation when you do the integration that there will be a little bit attrition of volume, which is, I would say, normal in an integration year.
I'm quite sure that we'll be able to deliver on the promises or expectations that we have sent out. Actually, the aspiration is if we can do it a little bit better, it would also be really good. If we take AI and tech, we actually call it, in DSV, we should probably also call it transformation, on top of that. I heard AI and tech referred to, not as your enemy. Your enemy in reality is the company that you compete against that is better at introducing it than you are. I'd always said to the teams that we wanna be that company because, of course, when you are in a commercial market, it's always competitive every day. I think it's both a threat and an opportunity.
If we do not introduce the technology, we don't get the efficiency, then somebody else will. I have two aspirations when I go to work. One is, of course, to repay the trust that you all put in DSV because you've invested. Thank you very much for that. We all do a lot to then deliver the financial outcomes. Now, I also have another aspiration, to look after our colleagues. This means that we will have to introduce the technology so that we stay competitive, so that we have a long-term job for employees in the company. It's really important.
If you look at that, it's quite an obligation if you sit in the management to think about the guy that drives the forklift over here or somebody that works in the canteen or something else, that if we do not do the right thing on the technology, DSV might not be the consolidator. In the long run, we might be consolidated. We're all gonna do in the management in the company whatever we can to make sure that we stay relevant and that we acquire the capabilities that the new technology brings to us, and that we're gonna do it faster than the competition. You can rest assured on that. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jens Lund. Now, does anyone else wish to make a contribution? One at a time. Steffen Rochon, could you take the word first? Sorry. There was three people standing up at the same time. I believe that's Steffen Rochon but do please introduce yourself.
It's 50 years since DSV started. I think it's time for me now to speak up. For those who don't know me, I can tell you that I've been part of the history of the company since it was listed. It was founded by Leif Tullberg. He was a hauler of gravel, and together with other haulers, he agreed to establish the amalgamated haulers. They did it. They joined forces so as not to compete against each other. They wanted to build a bigger company transporting soil away from road construction. At a certain time, Leif Tullberg got the idea. He bought Borup Autotransport, and that was a good idea. Kurt Larsen was there. Kurt Larsen and his team in Borup Autotransport near west of Roskilde, where Leif Tullberg also came from.
They had the idea that it was better to run with full loads. If you were a forwarding agent, you wanted to do full loads and not pick up individual bits and pieces, right? No, you shouldn't do that. You wanted customers who could provide full loads, so it wasn't so much trouble, so you can make more money from it. Borup Autotransport was a very, very small forwarding company. They were completely unknown outside Roskilde and the neighborhood. Kurt Larsen was a very good forwarding agent. He had a good agreement with Leif Tullberg. They agreed that as long as Kurt Larsen wanted to be top of the management, he would be the CEO. That was like a deal that they made. Very few people knew about that.
That was one of the reasons why Kurt Larsen was the CEO for all these many years and where DSV acquired one company after the other. Kurt Larsen became the chairman of the board, and personally, I felt very comfortable with that. I felt comfortable with Kurt Larsen as CEO and as chairman of the board because this was a guy who really knew the business. He was a forwarding agent. He knew customers. He knew transport. He knew fancy systems and what it was all about if you wanted to make money in the forwarding industries. It was a very unique, a very pleasant person as a CEO, and I really appreciated him. I met him at AGMs and also at various receptions and other events. Under Tullberg, Leif Tullberg, and Kurt Larsen, a lot was done.
Palle Flackeberg, he was the chairman for many years, and he was one of Tullberg's comrades as haulers. Previously they had an attorney from Roskilde, but that was too much trouble. They put in Flackeberg, and he was chairman. Anyway, there was a lot of entertaining effect from that on many occasions. Other than that, they were very skillful business people. They knew where to go, and they got there. They got where they wanted to go. Leif Tullberg was very sort of, you know, impulsive. When he got an idea, presented it to Kurt Larsen, and when they agreed, they went on with it. Kurt Larsen, he said that he had to do all the work afterwards, right?
To see whether they could succeed once again with a big acquisition, for instance, of a new hauler company. Right then. Today, we are here in three or four months, and on the 13th of July, the company will turn 50. I really would like to recognize and congratulate Jens H. Lund and also the rest of the team up here. In your report, Jens H. Lund, I really noticed. You know, I'm eight to 10 weeks in Germany every year. You really recognized Schenker. I appreciate that. Schenker was a bigger company than our DSV. It was a big company, very proud company, serviced many big German and American companies. In many ways, they were our big brother. They were not the underdogs. They were actually bigger than us and very professional, as Jens H. Lund said here today.
I really appreciate the fact that you recognized that because the Germans have always been a very thorough people. They hadn't been that much involved in Denmark before. Digitization we carried out over the last 20 years, but it makes society very impersonal, I think. Anyway, the Germans, even if they had not done so much on IT and digitization, still have been extremely efficient, so they could have a position as the world's biggest transport company and forwarding agent before DSV acquired Schenker. Congratulations on that purchase, and I'm happy that the integration is going well. From the very outset, when you got approval of the takeover with your bid of DKK 107 billion had been accepted, and you went out to visit the biggest companies. That was very important.
That's the most important thing. No matter what business you have, you know, in addition to your product, it's the employees and the customers. They're the most important. The fact that Jens H. Lund travels probably with Schenker's CEO to visit the 10 biggest customers, this really shows me that DSV has its focus in the right places. I've been a salesman all my life, creating relations. I've helped in doubling two companies in four or five years. Personal relations, I know how important they are. You can have all the competitors with lower bids, right? If the personal relations are strong enough, customers want you. They want you know, if they only send things in the Nordic countries or only in Europe or sending things throughout the world, they want it to work and to work every time.
This is the most important aspect because, big companies and their subcontractors, as we are to big companies, we are a transport subcontractor, and it needs to work. DSV's people try to do that every day, I know. You don't necessarily need to be the cheapest. You don't need that. You just need to be reliable. It's great to hear the integration with Schenker is going well, and you recognize and appreciate the professionalism of Schenker. It still is very professional, that's for sure. Now, you're number one. Your gigantic, ambitious goal to be the world's biggest haulier company here in Hedehusene. Who would have thought that 10 years ago, right?
If you said that in Copenhagen or in Jutland or wherever you said that, then in five or six years from now, the biggest transport company in the world will be in Hedehusene here in Denmark. Not many would have believed it, but that's a fact now. I'd say that, I've said it before, I know, I think that you need really to focus on being excellent in the way you execute and operate the business, and then you need to focus on the environment. The environment has really been abused the last 50 years. We travel, we eat, we buy, we do as we please, right? See how many people have become extremely fat in the last 50 years at the expense of the environment, much of it.
You only have to go to Germany, to Harz, a natural area, mountain area, not tall mountains, but it's an area with mountains that are 500, 700 meters tall. But 80% of the trees have gone out because of heat. The temperature is much higher. 80% of the trees are now dead. You see it every year, forest fires in Southern Europe, in Greece, in France, in Spain, in Portugal. They last for weeks, and they ruin thousands of square kilometers because the temperature has gone up so much, particularly in Southern Europe, but also here. I mean, Harz is not far from the German border. Here in Denmark, we focus a lot on it, but you know, we don't have these disasters, right? We live the way we've always done, don't we?
Put a few solar panels on the roofs, and then we have a clear conscience. That's what we think. DSV, you need to focus much more on the environment. In January, February, there were 18 storms in Portugal and Spain. The Portuguese fishing industry has been completely ruined because of 18 storms, tempests in 2 months. Central Europe, we had flooding last year. Humongous places were ruined, Germany, Hungary, because the rivers spread. We've seen it again and again, also here in Europe, that the weather has become much more dramatic. In DSV, we also need to cater for that. How do we do that? Well, every day between 60 and 100 trucks leave Italy to go to Denmark with spaghetti, wines, industrial products, and what have you. Think how many trucks go ahead to other countries.
The good forwarding agents, they use the railway system. When I holiday at the Rhine, two or three times every hour, we have these long rail systems. There are trailers they put on in Northern Italy or elsewhere, Southern Germany, south of Germany, and they're going to the north of Germany or Europe or the Nordic area. DSV never use railways very much because. I'll finish. I just want to encourage DSV's board and management because in DSV, you look at what is efficient, how can we make money. You have to think much more about the environmental impact. We owe it to ourselves and to coming generations. We need to pay much more attention to that. On Friday the sixth of March, I saw Grimaldi, an Italian forwarding agent in the Port of Hamburg.
We can get our products by ship also to Northern Europe. There are many reasons why we can use the railways and ships going from south and to north in Europe. The margins might be a bit lower, but Schenker have a lot of experience. They were owned by Deutsche Bahn, you know. They were owned by them. At DSV, we need to look more at the environment, even if the margins might suffer a bit. Jens Lund and company, I hope you will focus on that in this coming year. Thank you.
Thank you, Steffen. Jens Lund would like to comment.
Now I have to decide whether to answer in Danish or English.
I don't know whether to answer in Danish or English, but I think it'll be English.
It's like we have an international audience here, so that's how we've decided to conduct it. Anyway, if we look at block trains from Italy, it's something that we've been working with for quite a while to get cargo basically on the rail instead of the road. One of the things that have been driving this sort of trend is also that it's very heavily restricted on the weight when you drive the trucks up, let's say for example, to Austria or Switzerland. Already today, significant cargo moves on that. I would also just like to point to your attention to that the waterways is something that we use quite a lot in Europe as well. We move significant volumes.
As you know, we have a very big trailer pool in DSV where we can do unaccompanied traffic. I think we're the market leader on that, and I think we are also the market leader on electric trucks. I think actually we do put quite significant effort in, and when we can move freight in this way, it's actually cheaper than if you move it the conventional way. So it's both effective, but not all types of cargo can be moved like this, unfortunately, because some is time definite. But all the cargo we can produce in this system is produced in this system, and we take the environment very seriously and also your comments, and we'll make sure that we stick to the plans that we have in the green transformation. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jens Lund. Is it Jens Bjørn Andersen? Keld Vestergaard? Well, Keld Vestergaard, you can take it now. You can take it too if you want. Sure. Keld Vestergaard, say it later. Not a comment to you, but I can live with saying it to Keld Vestergaard later. Yeah, yeah. We'll make it important. Yeah. Jens Bjørn Andersen can-
Well, Björn always has some good stories to tell. We can talk about that later. Thank you for your appreciation of shareholders. You gave us a good meal before the AGM before the meeting where we are here to support you. I think the best thing you can actually do with regard to shareholders is to give them a good meal, because we spend the whole day just getting here. It's a bit poor to see what nourishment we get in some of the large businesses that have AGMs. Thank you for that. Thank you also for the good effort you've done in relation to the integration of Schenker. You have acquired a company in Saudi Arabia, as far as I remember, but let's not talk about that now.
What you tend to skip when you go over an annual report, it's the page where you read all the interesting things, the explanation of, yeah, the comprehensive income statement, where you find interesting information. It shows that a large proportion of the profit is taken out of it. We would like to hear a bit more about that perhaps, and also more about the equity, because that's where all the interesting things are happening. We need to be aware of that as shareholders. I think that this should be mentioned in the five-year review in order to make it easy for us ordinary shareholders to get a quick idea of what the situation financially is like in the business. What we haven't got here is information about acquisition of treasury shares. Have you bought? Have you sold?
Have you allocated to employees, and what share, what price did you pay? That's the kind of information that escapes our attention because it's not very easy to find. Orkla, a couple of years ago, had acquired treasury shares at a price of DKK 2,066, I think. Then we had the crisis in 2008, and the price declined. The share price of Rockwool went down to DKK 666, I think. It was a huge decline. Who would like to buy shares at that price as an employee? There was a loss for Rockwool in this that the shareholders knew nothing about, and it was concealed in the accounts. A question. No. There's another thing.
It's all very well with this much mention of water and climate, but what about all the airplanes in the air that emit aluminum and other toxic things? All those white trails they leave, the airplanes, in the sky. We need someone to take action, and it's the government that need to do something. Trump has done that in the US. The Kennedy son, they have simply made sure that it is not okay for airplanes to emit those white trails. Now they're closing Federal Bay, and they are about to introduce new systems. Which steps have you taken to deal with the change in the US economy? I'm afraid that Europe is going to be left behind because we have done something very stupid in relation to Ukraine, where we have wasted a lot of money.
We have tied ourselves to the Chinese, and we are not very good friends with the U.S. We have really shot ourselves in the foot here in Europe. What do you intend to deal with the new economy? I hope you've heard about it.
Tak for det.
Thank you very much.
Tak for det. Thank you. Michael Ebbe, will you reply to the financial question?
Yes. I will be happy to. I hope that I caught most of your questions. I'm sorry if it becomes a little bit too technical. It might be a bit technical. You are right that we have a loss in other comprehensive income, only because of exchange rate translation. When you acquire, you acquire in a foreign currency. IFRS requires that. We need to convert that, and the dollar has been against us last year. That's why other comprehensive income has a negative DKK 5.7 billion, and this is 99% of the development you have there. If you look at the equity and the explanation, other comprehensive income is part of that. Because of the exchange rate losses, we have the net result. This also influences the equity. The total equity rises from last year, DKK 114 point.
to DKK 117.7 billion this year. Other major items that are here is DKK 1.7 billion for dividend to shareholders and the sale of treasury shares primarily to staff, gives us an income for equity of DKK 2 billion. If you look at the treasury shares that we acquire, in the annual report, there is a note that specifies precisely the movement of purchase and sale of treasury shares. Some of them we do to cover our option programs that we've been running for many years. We have not purchased any shares last year. Here, we used our cash flow to reduce debt. The shares that we acquired are below a price of 1,150 on average. When the staff utilize their bonus, you do get that profit in there.
Okay.
Uh, I see-
That was a partial answer. You haven't got the nominal values in. You have DKK 2 billion, yes, but that is because when you purchase those shares, you wrote it down over equity, so it's part of equity with DKK 0. It's this whole interaction that's so difficult for us as shareholders. That's why I say, let's get those things out in the five-year overview so we see what has been bought and what has been sold and what values they've been entered at. That would be satisfactory. Thank you for giving me the floor once again. Yeah. The question of, I think, competitive power in China, Europe, and the U.S., I think we're also questioning the various economies and so on and so forth. Some countries thriving more than others. When we work, we normally go in the direction.
You can see we've expanded our board of directors. We are now getting more exposure towards Asia. We've already invested in Asia for many years. It's because they have a growing economy. The same in the US. We're going a bit slower in Europe, so we're allocating fewer resources to Europe, and we are allocating more resources. It could be Mexico, the US, or it could be Asia. This is a natural part of the way we operate our business. This is a way we can generate a return by following the dynamics that exist. You can be certain that we monitor these developments that you talked about. It is part of the way that we do our resource allocation. Thank you.
I'll return to English. Anyone else who wants the floor before I conclude the debate? That does not seem to be the case. I will therefore close the debate. The debate is now closed, so moving on, I therefore conclude that the general meeting has, 1, adopted the board of directors and the executive board's report on the company's activities in 2025. 2, adopted the annual report for 2025. 3, resolved on the application of profits and distribution of dividends as per the adopted 2025 annual report. Approved the proposed remuneration of the board of directors for the financial year 2026. And 5, adopted the 2025 remuneration report. Accordingly, items 1 through 5 are closed. The next item on the agenda is item 6 regarding election of the members of the board of directors.
The board of directors proposes that the board of directors is composed of eight members and that six members of the current board of directors are reelected. Accordingly, the board of directors proposes the reelection of Thomas Plenborg, Beat Walti, Benedikte Leroy, Natalie Shaverdian Riise-Knudsen, Sabine Bendiek, Tarek Sultan Al-Essa. Further, the board of directors proposes that Lars Rasmussen and Tan Chong Meng are elected as new members of the board of directors. For information on the candidates' qualifications, other managerial duties in commercial undertakings, demanding organizational assignments, and independence, I refer to the fact sheet on the candidates, which was included in the notice of the annual meeting. Does anyone wish to comment on the proposal? Seeing that is not the case.
By that, Thomas Plenborg, Beat Walti, Tarek Sultan Al-Essa, Benedikte Leroy, Natalie Shaverdian Riise-Knudsen, and Sabine Bendiek are reelected as members of the board of directors. Lars Rasmussen and Tan Chong Meng are elected as new members of the board of directors. Congratulations on the election. Any mispronunciation of anyone's names, I beg your forgiveness. The next item is item seven, regarding the election of the company's auditors. The board of directors proposes reelection of PricewaterhouseCoopers Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab as auditor of the company in respect of statutory, financial, and sustainability reporting. According to the EU Regulation on Statutory Audit, I inform that the proposal is in accordance with a recommendation provided by the audit committee, which is not affected by third parties and which has not been subject to any agreement with a third party limiting the general meeting's election of auditor.
This is something I must state. Is there anyone who wish to comment on this proposal? That is not the case. Consequently, I record for the minutes that PricewaterhouseCoopers Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab is reelected as the company's auditor in respect of statutory, financial, and sustainability reporting. Congratulations. The last item on the agenda is any other business relating, of course, to DSV. Are there anybody who wishes to take the floor? Once again, I remind you that needs to regard DSV. Thank you.
I was a bit brief before, so I wish to tell you that on LinkedIn, on my profile, I have given some information about this chemtrail from the airplanes. I've also a song that you will find on my profile about the pollution caused by the chemtrail. It simply to the detriment of our animals. You heard just now that the trees are dying because we use aluminum, or rather they are sprayed with aluminum from the airplanes. No one's doing anything about it. The reason for all this is something that people generally omit to address. That's just what I wanted to point out. Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone else on the last item on the agenda? As that is not the case, this completes the agenda of the annual general meeting, and all that for me remains to do is to resign as meeting chairman of the general meeting, and I do thank you all for an orderly and successful annual meeting here at DSV. For closing remarks, I'll pass the floor to the chair for the one last time. Thank you.
Thank you, Simon, for chairing this AGM so well. I would like to say thank you to the speakers, to Anders. Thank you for your input to us in the board of directors and to the executive management team. Michael, refreshing input from you as well. Thank you so much. Claus, thank you also, and thank you for the acknowledgement of Jørgen for his long duty in DSV. It is so well deserved. To Steffen, I really appreciate that you also acknowledge our roots, Leif and Kurt as an example. That definitely deserve credit for where we are today. Keld, you should say thank you to DSV for getting free airtime here with your LinkedIn ad thing, Keld. It will cost you a few beers afterwards, I guess.
With that, I would like to say thank you to all for coming here today and hope you have enjoyed the input. We have enjoyed that you have taken the time to come here. We try to convey some of the things that are going on with the gentlemen up here. I just wish you a safe trip back, and have a wonderful day and evening.