Good morning, and welcome. On behalf of the board, it's a great pleasure for me to welcome you here to Lundbeck's AGM here in 2022 . After last year's AGM, which was completely virtual because of COVID-19, it is great that we can welcome you shareholders again face-to-face this year. And this year, the AGM is just like we know it from before COVID-19. We offer shareholders to follow the AGM via the webcast in Danish and English. There's sound interpretation into English so the shareholders over the world can follow proceedings, and when our CEO, Deborah Dunsire, speaks, there'll be simultaneous interpretation into Danish. Let me start by introducing you to the board. The AGM elected members are, except for myself, apart from myself, Lene Skole-Sørensen, Vice Chair, Lars Holmqvist, Jeffrey Berkowitz, Dorothea Wenzel, Jeremy Max Levin, and Santiago Arroyo.
In addition, we have three employee elected members: Rikke Kruse Andreasen, Ludovic Tranholm Otterbein, and Henrik Sindal Jensen. In March, there was an election among employees to the board for the period 2022 to 2026. We'll come back to that later on under item five on the agenda. Let me also introduce you to the executive management team: Deborah Dunsire, President and CEO; Jacob Tolstrup, Executive Vice President, responsible for Commercial Operations; Lars Bang, EVP, responsible for Production, Development and Supplies; Johan Luthman, EVP, responsible for R&D; Elise Hauge, in charge of People and Communication; and Keld Flintholm Jørgensen, EVP, responsible for Corporate Strategy and Business Development. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank the executive management and all employees at Lundbeck for their huge effort and the great results achieved in 2021, even if the year was challenging.
2021 was a busy year focusing on the execution of our strategy, our business and organizational adaptations, all of this to prepare Lundbeck for strong growth going forward. When I look back on the work that we've done on the board in 2021, I'm very pleased because the board has good, continuous dialogue with the executive management. We monitor the strategic development and the implementation of strategies. I and Deborah Dunsire will talk more about that here at the AGM. According to the Articles of Association of the company, the board appoints the chairman of the AGM. Again, this year, we've appointed Jørgen Kjergaard Madsen, attorney at law at Kromann Reumert, as the chairman at this year's AGM. Welcome, and over to you.
Thank you very much. Thank you for appointing me chairman of this AGM. I hope we'll have a good morning together. I can tell you that at the AGM, we have 79% of the share capital represented. I have a few practical points before we move on to formalities. As the chairman mentioned, we have interpretation into English. If anyone would like to have a headset who have not yet received one, please signal to us, and we will make sure you get one. As mentioned, the AGM is webcast. And just practically, I can tell you that the shareholders who wish to speak during the AGM are asked to approach the rostrum so that everyone can hear and see you as you speak.
Finally, I need to let you know that if you leave the general meeting, please make sure that you unregister at the desk outside so that we know how many shareholders are represented at all times. But let's get down to business. My first official task is to see to it that the AGM is lawfully convened and quorate. It has to take place in the right place. Now, we have a physical AGM again, and we are in the Capital Region, which is the right place. According to the articles of association, it must be before the end of April. That's also taken care of, and we need a notice of between three and five weeks, and the notice was sent out the 28 of February and published on the company's website and via a company announcement.
Those shareholders who have wished to have the notice sent by mail have received one as well. We fulfill the requirements according to the Articles of Association and the Danish Companies Act. The documentation needed has been available on the company website also since the 28 of February, and that means that the requirements are fulfilled. The agenda has been sent out in accordance with Article eight of the Articles of Association, and no items require a certain share of shareholders or of the share capital present. All items on the agenda can be adopted by a simple majority. On that background, I, as I see it, this AGM has been lawfully convened. It is quorate and competent to do the business on the agenda, and if there are no objections.
I'm asked to adjust the microphone, and perhaps we can turn up the sound. I don't think I can do that. Perhaps a technician can turn up the volume if need be. Of course, I can try to speak louder and see if that helps. As I said, this AGM has been lawfully convened and is quorate, and I will now move on to the agenda. Let me just briefly go through the agenda. First of all, we have item one and two, which is the report of the board of directors on the company's activities during the past year, and presentation and adoption of the annual report. Item three is the resolution on the appropriation of profit or loss. Item four is the presentation of the remuneration report. Item five, election of members to the board of directors.
Item six, approval of remuneration for the Board of Directors for the current financial year. Item seven is the election of auditors. Item eight is proposals by shareholders or the Board of Directors, and I will get back to these two items under item eight. And finally, we have item nine, any other business. I can also inform you that, with the proxies and postal votes we have received, and from the majority shareholders, we have a full majority for all of the proposals and for all of the items on the agenda today. So therefore, we don't need any formal votes in order to adopt the proposals under each item on the agenda. That said, I will pass the floor back to the Chairman of the Board, Lars Rasmussen, to give his report on the company's activities during the past year.
I've really been looking forward to giving you the report from the board and to review the annual report for 2021 with you. I'd like to say a few words about our purpose first. Lundbeck is driven by helping people with brain disease so that everyone can utilize their full potential. It is estimated that up to three billion people live with brain disease, so the world needs for science to deliver innovative drugs. We at Lundbeck continue being very dedicated to help these people and something completely different. I had hoped I didn't have to speak about that, but we are very worried about the attack on Ukraine and condemn the violence against the population of Ukraine. Lundbeck has donated DKK 10 million to Red Cross to support their emergency work, and we focus on continuing to deliver medication to patients.
We do what we can to support local employees to make sure that they are safe. We comply with all sanctions against Russia. We do not initiate new clinical studies in Russia at the moment. However, in accordance with our purpose, we do continue delivering medication to patients with mental diseases. As you may remember from previously, Lundbeck in 2019 launched a strategy, expand and invest to grow. So what it means is we are working intensively to maximize our current portfolio of products, and we invest in future growth. Our purpose is to help patients by producing and delivering innovative drugs that will change the lives of the people that live with brain disease. These are often diseases in niche neurology and psychiatry. It might be difficult to treat or it can be rare neurological diseases.
Lundbeck's long-term strategic ambition is to be number one in brain disease. We do that by maximizing the potential and maintaining momentum for existing products, by expanding our business areas in brain disease, by continuing to develop and strengthen our pipeline for new treatments, and to continue initiating clinical studies, and by running an efficient company. Last but not least, we do it by ensuring we have close cooperation across the organization. In 2021, Lundbeck delivered solid financial performance, particularly on strategic brands. Total revenue was DKK 16.3 billion. It's a small decline from the year before. This was very much caused by the loss of exclusivity on our core product, Northera, on our biggest market, U.S., continued COVID restrictions and challenges from exchange rate fluctuations. The U.S. is the region mostly affected by the decline. It went down 5%.
But we are in a strong position on our strategic products. Our business in Europe has grown by 3%, international markets grew by 2%. This is a satisfactory result, taking into account the Corona pandemic and negative impact of exchange rates fluctuations. We delivered within our guidance concerning profitability. Of course, we cannot be happy about a declining revenue, but it is mainly because, as I said, that Northera lost its patent in the U.S. in 2021. Disregarding Northera, we have delivered a solid result, 6% growth measured in current local currencies. Particularly, we've done well with strategic products, delivered good growth, 15% growth. About the operating results of the EBIT, it is DKK 2 billion. So it was actually an earnings per share of DKK 6.63 per share.
So 2021 was a challenging year. But what about the future? Looking at Lundbeck's development over a number of years, it's clear to see that Lundbeck has been on one long growth journey. Over the last 20 years, we've seen average annual revenue growth of just under 7%.... It is Lundbeck's long-term ambition to continue this historic growth journey. We have a good growth perspective in the coming years, but we also meet challenges with profitability in the short run when patents expire, as we've just seen with Northera. These challenges we have to address when we launch new products developed internally at Lundbeck or acquired. So we invest and we grow. Our strategy works. We'll continue to deliver long-term profitable growth, and at the same time, we will invest.
Our goal in the coming years is to maintain a sensible annual growth rate and to achieve an operating result of 25%. Lundbeck is a healthy business. You can see it up here. To the left shows the solid development in liquidity and cash flow in 2021, although developments have, of course, been affected by the decline in income from Northera. To the right, you can see the net holdings and net debts. Net debt went up in 2019 to DKK 6.6 billion, but in 2020 and 2021, our strong cash flow has reduced our net debt to DKK 3.2 billion. We expect a net debt in relation to EBITDA is expected to end at 0.9, which is unchanged from 2021. This is the key ratio that's also known as the gearing.
It means that Lundbeck still had, has good acquisition capacity. Lundbeck has strong focus on building up our business sustainably. Management has a shared ESG goal. It's part of their variable pay scheme. We made good progress in 2021 by expanding access to our medication in low and medium-income countries through our partnership with International Health Partners. We maintain our focus on business compliance across functions. 99.7% of our employees attended courses in business ethics in the year under review. We focus on the environment. For the seventh year in a row, Lundbeck has been admitted to the Climate Disclosure Project A List for climate. We reduced Scope 1, Scope 2 carbon emissions by 16%, and we have 65% reuse of our most used organic solvents. We also focus strongly on building up a versatile, inclusive workplace.
We are proud to say that 42% of management globally is women. We have recently announced that we are proposing to change our share structure. So you can see from the diagram here. Lundbeck historically has gone through internal and external innovation. We continue to go on growing. The proposal to change our share structure is not a change of strategy, but it's our view that the proposed share structure will contribute to Lundbeck's financial capacity to expand our company's long-term possibilities to look externally for growth, so thereby value creation based on our growth strategy. We also ensure long-term stability through the majority ownership of the Lundbeck Foundation. This enables us to be well prepared before things become necessary. We think there will be interesting growth opportunities for Lundbeck going forward by partnerships or acquisitions.
Lundbeck and the board have an ambition to selectively pursue these opportunities in the coming years. With this new share structure divided into two shares, we'll be well prepared to pursue strategic opportunities that may materialize. The proposed change of the share structure was introduced by the Lundbeck Foundation and has been subsequently developed with Lundbeck, so it's proposed to split the current share into one A share with ten votes and four B shares with each one vote, so all shares will maintain the same economic rights or financial rights. This proposal concerning a new share structure requires a new and extraordinary AGM. It'll come after we publish our first quarterly result later this spring. It'll depend on the approval of the Danish FSA of the required registration document.
If current shareholders wish to only maintain B shares and not hold potentially less liquid A shares, the Lundbeck Foundation is planning to exchange A shares for the foundation's B shares on a one-to-one basis for a short period. Let me summarize the expected transaction dates. Lundbeck's board has asked Lundbeck's management to take the dialogue with the Danish FSA to initiate the process for approval of the required registration documents. The process and dialogue with the Danish FSA is expected to take a few months. Lundbeck's first quarterly result will be announced in May. Depending on deadlines in relation to the Danish FSA, we expect an extraordinary AGM to be held in June 2022, and there'll be a vote on the division of the share. If this is adopted, the new A and B shares will be available for purchase on the stock exchange one or two days later.
Now I'm going to give the floor to Lundbeck's CEO, Deborah Dunsire. She'll take you through the company's performance in 2021. Over to you, Deborah.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us here today. It's a privilege to report on 2021 and to follow what Lars has already communicated about our year in 2021 . It was indeed a challenging year, given the decline of Northera, but we had some tremendous successes also as we pursued our strategy going forward. What's most important to us at Lundbeck are the patients that we serve, and we continue to serve over 7 million patients every day worldwide, facing the challenge of brain disease.... We have a tremendous group of employees, close to 5,600 around the world. We're present in, with our own offices in 56 countries.
Around our world at Lundbeck, those employees have managed through two very challenging and difficult years, where tremendous flexibility, resilience, creativity was required to adjust to our changing world through the Corona pandemic. And I'd like to thank all of our employees for their tremendous effort to continue to serve patients, to make our medicines. We were able to supply medicines throughout the pandemic, in spite of many challenges. So every person at Lundbeck around the world did their part. We are, to an extent, a family, and we think of our employees in the Ukraine, and we have eleven people who work for Lundbeck there. All of them are safe today. Two of them are outside of Ukraine, but we continue to look to help them in any way that we can.
As Lars pointed out, we continue to try to serve patients with our medicines. That's tremendously challenging in the Ukraine right now, as we can't logistically get medicines into the Ukraine, so we continue to work to find ways of ensuring that people facing brain diseases can get their medicines, and we continue to supply into Russia in compliance with all sanctions, and of course, people everywhere face brain ill health, and so it is our purpose and our mission to continue to serve them. In 2021, we had very strong growth of our strategic brands, and our strategic brands are those brands that are protected by intellectual property, still have exclusivity or patent life, and those really are the assets that can continue to grow Lundbeck, so we look very closely at how our strategic brands develop, and they grew 18% in local currency.
So despite the fact that we lost exclusivity on Northera, which had been built to a tremendously successful brand, given its service to people with Parkinson's disease and orthostatic hypotension because of that, yes, we did lose exclusivity and rapidly lost 74% of Northera, but our strategic brands that continue to be protected were able to grow. And we look at that as how is Lundbeck executing with what is in our hand? Are we able to do what we can with the assets that we have? And I'm very proud of what was accomplished in spite of the pandemic continuing to affect us as the different variants waved through the world throughout the year.
Our newest brand, Vyepti, still in its infancy, if you like, launched in the midst of the pandemic in 2020 and significantly affected by that, given it's an intravenous infusion, started to gain good momentum in 2021, as we were able to have our sales representatives promoting a bit more normally. Yes, still impacted by the pandemic, but better than in 2020, and also, patients were able to return to see physicians. Now, throughout most of 2021, Vyepti was only on the market in the U.S., but we did have two new launches towards the end of the year in November. Yes, small markets, UAE and Kuwait, but already we're seeing very positive reception from patients for Vyepti. This brand is extremely powerful, and its profile is exceptional for patients in the efficacy it delivers and in how quickly it delivers for patients.
And so we are very excited about the future for Vyepti. That goes on, and it is patent protected through into the first half of the 2030's . So we have a long time to be able to build this brand for patients. We had 6 additional approvals coming in 2021 in Canada, Kuwait, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, and Israel, and we've got plans for 10 launches in 2022 . So we're beginning to globalize Vyepti, and that will be a driver of its future growth. We did another trial with Vyepti in patients who had failed other older migraine therapies, and again, this trial was called the DELIVER Trial, and Vyepti delivered. We had exceptional results with Vyepti, and that trial is very important for us to gain reimbursement approvals in Europe.
So as we begin the rollout in Europe, we're glad to have that data on hand. One of our strategic brands that has been on the market now almost eight years and has continued to grow is Brintellix or Trintellix, and we saw great growth as patients were able to begin to see physicians again in 2021 versus 2020. A lot of the growth came from Europe and international markets, where the brand has been on the market a little less time, particularly in international markets, where Japan has had a very, very successful launch. We're now two years into the market in Japan, so we've still got a lot of runway to grow there, and we've already achieved over 5.6% market share.
We also had some good phase 4 data that continues to demonstrate the strong profile of Brintellix in people who have major depressive disorder, but also have concomitant generalized anxiety disorder, where Brintellix was able to address both sets of symptoms in our RECONNECT trial. We did a real-world evidence trial where we looked at how does Brintellix perform when it's not in a clinical trial, in people who are taking it just in the society where it's meant to be used? And clinical trials are kind of unique, so we always like to look at what happens really when people take it in their regular life. And of course, Brintellix was able to perform for them, giving them the ability to interact with their families more normally, giving them the ability to work more normally.
So we were very pleased with this performance of Brintellix. Rexulti, a partnered brand with Otsuka Pharmaceuticals of Japan, delivered strong growth, 14%, because it has a great profile. You see a dominance of North America in this picture of Rexulti's delivery, and that's because in North America, we have both schizophrenia in the label, as well as major depressive disorder as an adjunctive therapy to other depressive therapies. And that gives us a much bigger access to the market for Rexulti outside of or within North America. We are launching Rexulti in a couple of other markets, and we had a very, very successful launch in Brazil in the midst of a pandemic, one of our first, virtual launches, around the world. With Abilify Maintena, this drug is a long-acting injectable for schizophrenia patients. We had another...
an alternative injection regimen, approved in Canada that gives more convenience for physicians and patients, and we have a two-month formulation coming that we will submit for approval in the middle of 2022, but delivered the clinical package that will support that submission during 2021. Those are the brands that we really have in our hands today to continue to grow, but we focus in our pipeline on building for the future. And I'm happy to say that we've been working over the last three years to refresh and revitalize that pipeline, focusing on four areas of biology that have good, opportunity, we believe, for new medicines to be discovered, and we have programs across all four of those clusters.
We made a lot of progress in R&D on our late-stage portfolio with life cycle management to expand and globalize Vyepti, continuing the Asia development program, but also looking at new indications to expand the use of Vyepti in an area called episodic cluster headache, a different type of migraine, or a different type of headache from migraine, where we already are approved. We also have made progress with our Rexulti lifecycle management, which our agitation in Alzheimer's trial for Rexulti was significantly impacted by the pandemic.
Elderly people, as you know, were very significantly at risk in the COVID pandemic, so recruiting patients with Alzheimer's disease to the trial was extremely slow in 2020, but recovered in 2021, and I'm happy to say that we have all the patients now accrued for the final analysis of that study, coming up in the middle of 2022. We also refilled our phase 2 pipeline, or made the first steps in refilling the phase 2 pipeline with two molecules coming into the phase 2 pipeline. One from Lundbeck's own discovery laboratories, an antibody against alpha-synuclein, which is a protein accumulating in the brain in a number of different conditions, and we're focusing that antibody on a rare disease that is extremely life-threatening, called multiple system atrophy.
So we started our AMULET trial in this small patient population. We also have taken forward into phase two a product that came in its embryo form from our Alder acquisition, and that is a PACAP inhibitor, which will address different types of receptors that impact headache and other conditions. So that will be a good build to the franchise in migraine behind Vyepti. So our scientists were able to take that from its very unformed stage through preclinical development through a phase one trial and into phase two. So great progress with that. We have been transforming R&D within Lundbeck over the last years under Johan Luthman's leadership and have made tremendous progress. We have, as I said, in discovery our focus on four areas of innovation. We've also built our competencies in biotherapeutics, and we have-...
Biologic therapies alongside our small molecules across many of our different therapeutic clusters. That gives us optionality within our pipeline. We've made a big focus on de-risking the pipeline as we go, so that we don't invest all the way into the very expensive phase III area, but that we de-risk through using our experimental medicine approaches to study our products and make sure that as we move them from phase I to phase II to phase III, we've reduced the risk as much as we can. So we will kill products in those early phases when they don't have the power to go the distance for patients. Two-thirds of the programs in our pipeline are new since 2019, and we have established programs across all four biologic clusters. In fact, we've initiated 38 new clinical trials since 2019 and increased our IND submissions sevenfold.
These are elements of the progress of our transformation in R&D, setting up Lundbeck for that sustainable future. One of the other areas of focus is: how can we use the assets we've got and roll them out globally faster? So, Vyepti, we're investing a lot in 2021 and 2022 to make sure that we complete the global development so that we can maximize Vyepti globally quickly, and reducing the time it took versus our launch of Brintellix by 50% to get to our global markets. So I'm very proud of the progress that we have made. As we look to 2022, our guidance for revenue is between DKK 16.7 billion and DKK 17.3 billion, and our EBIT guidance, DKK 2.2 billion to DKK 2.6 billion.
Obviously, the strategic brands that we're focused on are going to have to be the primary driver of growth. We have a great mature portfolio, but that declines year- on- year as generics make encroachment into the use of those products, and we do see continued price reductions from governments in particularly Europe, LatAm, and other markets. So those are some of the pushes and pulls. Our selling general and administration, particularly our selling and marketing expenses, will go up in 2022, both because we are able to return to a more normal cadence of promotion given that we anticipate the pandemic is moving into the rear view mirror. We're also building for the launch of Vyepti in markets outside of the U.S. As Lars pointed out, we are a company that focuses very much on sustainability across all parameters.
But one thing that we did finalize in 2021 was, through our, our partner, Better Energy, the build of a solar plant in the south of Sjælland, where now, coming online in 2022 , 100% of the power utilization at our Danish facilities is matched by this solar production. This is part of our work on our climate and our footprint on the environment, and I'm proud to say that for the third year running, we are in the Climate Disclosure Project's A List, and we have been at the leadership level with the CDP for the last seven years consecutively. Being in the Climate A List puts us in the top 1.5% of the companies that report through the Climate Disclosure Project, and I'm very proud of the continued commitment that Lundbeck has shown over many years to this challenge.
Lundbeck is focused on delivering growth today and building that future growth for tomorrow. We maximize our strategic brands. That's what's within our hand, and under Jacob Tolstrup's leadership, we look forward to great growth from those brands. Also, rolling out Vyepti globally to continue that future growth into the mid-30's. Rexulti is at a pivotal point for us as we anticipate the data from agitation in Alzheimer's disease in the middle of the year to serve a great unmet medical need. As Lars pointed out, we have great growth visibility in the coming years, so we look forward to a period uninterrupted by loss of exclusivity. But we will face that in the future again, so we work both internally on our pipeline and through bringing in the right strategic, fits from outside our organization to continue to build that growth in the future.
We continually look to make our business more and more efficient so that we can devote our resources to serving patients both today and tomorrow. With that, I thank you for being here, and I'll hand it back to our moderator.
Thank you very much. That was items one and two on the agenda: approval of the annual report, and also taking note of the report for 2021 . The floor is open for comments... I have one person on my list, Michael Bak from the Danish Association of Shareholders. You have the floor.
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Thank you. The Danish Association of Shareholders, private investors, also those of you that are members of our association, well, we are pleased that we can meet physically again. It is important as a good thing that the company really involves people, also people sitting behind their screens. But it's important that we can meet, and we can discuss the business here at the AGM. Thank you for a good report to board and management, and the excellent ESG initiatives that were mentioned at the end. The number of private investors has gone up considerably in the last couple of years. We're happy with that. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the same growth in the price of the Lundbeck share. We are not quite as pleased with that, talking on behalf of private investors, and I'm sure that board and management agree.
We think that there is a need for reflection or maybe even action in regard to the long-term strategy. Lundbeck's medical business area is complicated. You can hear that. But these are diseases that have a lot of appeal in the populations, also, when you look at the pipeline that exists. So we think we should work, or you should work to recreate a new biotech people's share. That brings me to my questions. The first has to do with the strategy, expectations concerning growth. Seen in international context, it might seem that expectations are not ambitious enough. Occasionally, your growth ambitions, there could be a reason for that. The price of the share is sort of stable. Yes, it doesn't change much, but if you have too realistic...
Well, it's good to be realistic, but if you don't think ambitiously in the long run, it can threaten a company's existence. Others can take over your business areas. So that makes me ask board and management, how big do you think Lundbeck's potential is in 2030 , if you think that far ahead in terms of revenue, market shares? And can board and management indicate one or two international companies that could inspire Lundbeck, that you could look at, that are doing well on execution and growth, and something that could also lead to a price journey that can give shareholders the share price that they would like to see? The second topic has to do with ownership and the proposal to split into A and B shares. We're not dealing with it today, I understand that, but I think it's okay to comment on it.
At the Lundbeck Foundation and the company, they've been honest in their communication about the reasons. They reached out to a dialogue, and that's very good. It doesn't mean as to say that we are going to applaud this. We do not immediately think it's a good idea. The Danish Association of Shareholders is fighting for fair shareholder democracy. It can give the best return for all shareholders and the best conditions for the company. We understand it's a known construction with A and B shares in Denmark. We are in a country with proud traditions of successful foundation ownership, combined with popular shares. But our principle is always one share, one vote.
If we are to deviate from that as private shareholders, it should be done in companies where the majority shareholder has demonstrated that they can drive growth ambitiously, also, when it comes to the price of the share. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case in the last couple of years, so we think the timing and the consequences for private investors, they're unfortunate. We do believe, we do understand the foundation has the crucial vote, so it will be... It will go through, I'm sure about that. But, perhaps the foundation is not gonna be the right owner forever, if the necessary growth isn't displayed and if a bigger company were to come with an acquisition offer. So rather than changing the share structure now, we would like to see more, a stronger growth potential, growth strategy.
I'd like to hear from the chairman of the board, how he sees the alternatives for Lundbeck. If you do not introduce an A and a B share, what would be the best alternative? What would be the best scenario for Lundbeck, if you were not to introduce A and B shares? So finally, on behalf of the private investors, I wish board and management and all your skillful employees a good 2022 in a time of uncertainty. I remind you that we're always ready for a dialogue about how to strengthen shareholder democracy and cooperation between foundations and the private investors. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you to the Danish Association of Shareholders for the interventions and, well, two questions, one about the strategy of the company and future expectations, and the second question had to do with the proposal concerning the split into A and B shares, which is not on the agenda today. But still, I give the floor to Lars Rasmussen, and so maybe he will comment on that one also, anyway.
Thank you for the questions. To Michael Bak, I think you, you're spot on, you know, what people think, shareholders in the room and shareholders listening in, those that are not present in the room. So you're really, you're really hitting it here. Nobody's as ambitious as us, right? No, no company wants to say, "No, we're not very ambitious."...
So, the companies are not saying we plan that the share price should be flat or slightly declining. No, no, no. But a company such as Lundbeck is quite unique. We are dedicated to brain disease. That's what we're working on. It's one of the most difficult areas you can work with. Most people who work with brain disease have that area as part of a big portfolio of other stuff. So the area that we are focusing on, what characterizes that is whenever you start up ten projects or perhaps even more, very few of them will go the whole way. There's a very high level of attrition. You lose a lot as you go forward. It's very difficult to develop for this area.
There's a huge need, as Deborah said. I mean, we have seven million patients that we deal with every day, but there are three billion people in the world that suffer from some sort of brain disease. So it's a huge market we are looking at, but also a market that is very difficult to deal with. We are very ambitious, let me put it that way. I've shown you growth over the last 20 years, 7% a year with our own initiatives and with acquisitions. The strategies that we make, they are to grow. Our strategy is to grow, to develop the market, to win market shares, and to have a profit ratio of about 25%. It could be more, perhaps, if need be, but it simply means also we need to have the money to invest in new products.
I mean, the board of management of the company, nobody wants it more than us to have a home run, right? And to hit a bull's eye where we can see a better development of our share price. But I must say, we need the right products, and patients must come first. We can only be ambitious because we have peace and quiet concerning our ownership. The proposal that we'll be dealing with later in the year, the proposal to split the shares into A shares and B shares, really has to do with this. The foundation has said that they want to support long term. They are prepared to go even further than they can with the present setup financially, so they will still maintain their ownership, the foundation.
When we've talked about this here, I mean, please understand that there is a foundation, right? This foundation has its own board. Lene is the manager of the foundation, and she also sits as vice chair here in Lundbeck. So she has a dual role, right? So there is a foundation that deals with investments and companies that the foundation owns. And we, Lundbeck, Lundbeck's board, we deal with shareholders. We cater for all shareholders that have invested in Lundbeck, be it the foundation or be it a person who just holds one share. The question we've asked ourselves is: do we feel that's to the benefit of all shareholders, the proposal that we are putting forward? Do we feel it's to the benefit of all shareholders that the Lundbeck Foundation holds the company the way it is now? Yes, we do.
And that is why we clearly recommend going this way. Does that mean to say that we will also feel that? No, perhaps not. I mean, if we did believe that we could drive the company forward on our own, we could make a company that really does well internationally, there's lots of opportunity for that. It may require investment more than the foundation believes that it has had the capacity to do, and this is what this will open up for. Now, I decided to comment on it and sort of, perhaps a bit more than was appropriate here at the AGM, because there will be an extraordinary AGM where we'll discuss only that topic.
Just to let you know that, this really is not Lundbeck's board saying, "Well, the foundation thinks so and so, so we also think that." No, no, this is... We've had a very constructive dialogue, and we do believe it is in the interest of all shareholders to proceed in this way, and that's why we recommend it. Thank you.
Thank you to the chairman of the board. Are there any other questions or comments for the annual report and the first two items on the agenda? Let me just mention in this regard that, as usual, we have an unqualified auditor's report included in the annual report, page 105, from PwC, the company's auditor. If there are no other comments, I take it to mean that the annual report has been approved and that you have taken note of the report on the activities of the past year. That leads me to item three on our agenda, which is the appropriation of profit or loss. Here, the board of directors proposes to distribute a dividend of 30% of the net profit for the accounting year, corresponding to 2 DKK per share or a total dividend of 398 million DKK.
Are there any comments or questions? That is not the case. That means that this item has been adopted. That leads me to item four, the presentation of the remuneration report as it has been presented. Are there any questions or comments? That does not seem to be the case, and that means that the remuneration report has been adopted. That leads me to item five, election of members for the board of directors. Again, I give the floor back to Chairman Lars Rasmussen.
Yeah. Right. So you can see here the committees that the seven members elected by the AGM sit on, and we propose that we continue in this way, also in 2022. The persons concerned are Lars Rasmussen and Lene Skole-Sørensen, Dorothea Wenzel, Lars Holmqvist, Jeremy Max Levin, Jeffrey Berkowitz, and Santiago Arroyo. In addition to the seven members elected by last year's AGM, the board consists of employee representatives elected every four years by the employees of the Danish companies in the group. When the election period expires this year, Lundbeck has held elections for the board among employees for the period 2022 to 2026, and there are the following changes in the employee representation for the next four years. The newly elected member representatives on Lundbeck's board are Hossein Armandi, Dorte Clausen, Lasse Skibsbye, and Camilla Gram Andersson.
I'd like to thank the three resigning employee representatives for their excellent work over the last four years, and I welcome the four new employee representatives, so I'd like to really warmly welcome them. Back to Jørgen Kjergaard Madsen.
Yeah, tack.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments for the proposal for election of members of the board? That is not the case, and the members have then been elected for the board of directors. Congratulations. That leads me to item... Well, you can see all of the members of the board of directors on this slide, and that leads me to item six on our agenda, the approval of remuneration for the board of directors for the current financial year. Are there any remarks? You can see it here on the slide, and that does not seem to be the case, and I take it that the proposal is adopted.
That leads me to item seven, election of accountants, and it is proposed that PwC is re-elected, and that is in accordance with the recommendation of the audit committee, and this recommendation is free from influence by a third party and is not subject to a contract with a third party restricting the choice of the AGM. If there are no remarks or comments, PwC has been re-elected as the company auditor. Congratulations. That leads me to item eight. This is a proposal from the board of directors. There are no proposals from the shareholders, but we have the two usual proposals from the board of directors. The first one is eight one, to authorize the board of directors until the next annual general meeting to allow the company to acquire treasury shares of a total nominal value of up to 10% of the share capital.
If there are no questions, that proposal has been adopted. The next proposal is also the usual one, to authorize the chairman of the AGM to send whatever adoptions and amendments, and resolutions passed to the Danish Business Authority. That's a completely standard proposal, and there are no comments, and I take it the proposal has been adopted. That leads me to the last item on our agenda today. Any other business? Does anyone wish to take the floor? Are there any questions? We cannot adopt any proposals at this point, but perhaps there's a comment. That's not the case. That means we have exhausted today's agenda, and I will pass the floor back to the chairman of the board, Lars Rasmussen.
Yeah, so all that's left for me is to say thank you for attending this year's AGM. I look forward to next year's. It's expected to be on the 21st of March next year, and there will be an extraordinary AGM in the meantime. We don't know the date for that one yet. Thank you for coming. It was great to see you all. Thank you.