Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pandora's Annual General Meeting 2025. My name is Peter Ruzicka, and I am Chair of Pandora since 1st of January 2020. As a reminder, the Annual General Meeting today will be held in English, as provided for by our Articles of Association. But as a service to our shareholders, there will be simultaneous interpretation to or from Danish during today's meeting.
I will kindly ask you to pay attention to the disclaimer. The key message is that our presentation may include forward-looking statements and that these, by definition, are associated with uncertainty. Before we start today's agenda, I would like to introduce the speakers of today. With me today, I have CEO, Alexander Lacik and our CFO, Anders Boyer. Alexander and Anders, they constitute the executive management of Pandora.
Over the past few years, Alexander and Anders have successfully executed on Pandora's Phoenix strategy, which is clearly yielding tangible benefits. Last year, this execution once again came across quite a challenging consumer backdrop, but Pandora clearly continued to perform very well. Alexander and Anders will provide more details on the business development later.
For now, I'd like to thank them both for their great contribution and efforts in 2024. Thank you. Actually, I think they deserve a hand. Now, according to the Articles of Association, the board appoints the chair of the Annual General Meeting, and the board has appointed Pernille Dalhoff from Kromann Reumert as chair of the Annual General Meeting 2025. So with this, let me now hand you over to Pernille. She will talk you through today's agenda and make sure all formal requirements are satisfied. So welcome, Pernille.
Thank you very much, Peter, and thank you to the board for appointing me as chair of this meeting. Before we start, I would like to inform everybody that the meeting is being live-streamed from Pandora's shareholder portal. So any questions from the shareholders will be transmitted online, and the recording will be available on the website after the meeting. My first task as chair of the meeting is to make sure that the meeting has been properly convened. And according to the Articles of Association, general meetings must be convened by not less than three and no more than five weeks' notice, by advertisement on Pandora's website, and by email to registered shareholders who have requested so.
And Pandora has informed me that on February 7th, notice of this meeting was sent out by email, announced in a company announcement, and published on Pandora's website. Also, the complete proposals to be discussed here at the meeting today, draft new Articles of Association, Pandora's annual report for 2024, the remuneration report also for 2024, and forms for notification of attendance, proxy, and postal votes have also been available on the website since February 7.
So on this basis, I find that all requirements in Pandora's Articles of Association have been met and that this ordinary general meeting has been properly convened and is competent for the transaction of the business on the agenda. Any questions or comments on the formalities? That doesn't seem to be the case. Then I conclude that this ordinary general meeting 2025 is properly and lawfully convened and competent for the transaction of the business on the agenda.
I can inform you that of the 82 million shares, a total of 53 million shares are represented or present here at the meeting. I will please ask you to look at the agenda for today's meeting. Item 2 and items 4 through 8 may be passed by a simple majority of votes. Item 3 regarding the remuneration report is subject to an advisory vote only. Item 9 includes five proposals by the board. I will go through each of them when we get to that. The items regarding share capital and authorizations to the board will require two-thirds approval of the votes cast and of the votes represented here today because it involves amendment to the Articles of Association.
Then we have also a proposal to authorize the board to purchase own shares and authorization of me as chair to register the decisions made by the meeting today, which can be passed by a simple majority of votes. Looking back on the agenda, items 1 and 2 regarding the board's report on the company's business for 2024 and adoption of the 2024 annual report will be dealt with jointly like we normally do, and the remaining items will be considered one by one. And I will now give the word to Peter to present the board's report on the company's activities during 2024.
Now I can start. Thank you, Pernille. So let me start by saying that Pandora continues to be in a very strong position to continue to generate value for the shareholders in the years to come. First of all, Pandora is the world's most known jewelry brand, catering to everyone across generations all over the world. Pandora's crafting facilities in Thailand are the next key asset. It is the largest branded jewelry facility in the world.
It is state-of-the-art when it comes to scale, skill level of our employees, and when it comes to efficiency. On top of this, we are also on the forefront with regards to how we treat our employees and the environment. Some of you would have noted that we are moving on well with our plans of opening our next crafting facility in Vietnam. This will be operational next year. The global store footprint is comprehensive and profitable and is truly complemented with a strong online channel. With this, we have global mass distribution both online and offline. Pandora is and will be a sustainable and responsible investment.
We believe we have set ambitious targets to be a low-carbon business, for circular innovation, and to have an inclusive, diverse, and fair culture. We are making good progress on all aspects of our targets. Next, the company is highly profitable and has a strong cash generation. With the full year results, we announced another new share buyback of DKK 4 billion, and today, we ask you, the shareholders, to authorize Pandora to distribute DKK 20 in dividend per share. We strongly believe that this is a very solid basis for us to continuously compound growth for Pandora in the years to come. Alexander will tell you more about this shortly, but let me give you some facts to illustrate the scale of Pandora.
In 2024, we sold 130 million pieces of jewelry. We had over 865 million visits to our physical and online stores. We sell in more than 100 countries through 6,800 points of sale. As of August 2024, we use 100% recycled gold and silver in the crafting of our jewelry. A fantastic feat. And of course, all of these numbers helped us generate revenue of just under DKK 32 billion last year. And if you reflect for a minute over the size of these numbers, you will understand why Pandora is the most well-known jewelry brand in the world.
Before I leave the word to Alexander, I also want to comment on the board's self-evaluation. I can confirm that in 2024, the board conducted an evaluation of its performance and its cooperation with the executive management. The evaluation was conducted with the support of an external provider to ensure objectivity and benchmarking.
The report and conclusions of the assessment were shared with the board and executive management, followed by a thorough discussion. The assessment identified that the board continues to be well-established and well-functioning, supported by a strong belief in the strategy and effectiveness in collaboration with the committees and executive management. Responsibility for strategic direction and risk assessment on ESG sit with the board, as shown in the graphic of the Annual Report 2024. The board receives a minimum of two updates a year on Pandora's sustainability direction. So with that, I would like to hand over first to Alexander for a business update and then to Anders for an update on the financial performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. This is my sixth Annual General Meeting with Pandora, and it's a pleasure to once again stand in front of you and report yet another successful year. We not only delivered results ahead of our initial guidance, but we successfully started on the next phase of our growth journey, something you'll remember we called the Phoenix strategy, which we initiated back in 2021. We clearly demonstrated good momentum across all the strategic initiatives.
But before I remind you of the strategy, let's have a quick look at 2024. We ended the year with a record high revenue and earnings per share, and this came despite a still challenging consumer backdrop, so it clearly shows that we are on the right path. Revenue grew 13% organically, and the growth was solid across our segments. The growth also came while we kept scaling the investments into the Phoenix strategy.
Despite this, Pandora maintained a strong profitability with a gross margin of around 80% and an EBIT margin of 25.2%. Now, before detailing the strategy, let's just remind ourselves why Pandora exists. Our purpose is to give a voice to people's lives. Of course, we do this through our jewelry. We pursue this purpose by crafting affordable, hand-finished, branded jewelry for the many rather than the few.
With this purpose in mind, we have set out a very ambitious plan for our company. We want people to see Pandora not only as a charm brand, but rather appreciate that we cover all aspects of the jewelry offering. This, in a nutshell, is what our strategy called Phoenix is there to deliver, to be seen as a full jewelry brand. Unlocking this change in consumer perception is the foundation for continued multi-year growth path.
The strategy we launched in 2021 is focused on further developing our existing core business, where we continue to see significant opportunities to generate growth, and we provided an update on this at the Capital Markets Day in London in 2023. Phoenix is a growth-oriented strategy, and we have chosen four distinct growth pillars, which I'll go through and you see on the chart. So the first is the brand. And as Peter mentioned, Pandora is the most well-known brand across the well-known jewelry brand, I should say, across the world.
Eight out of 10 women across the globe will have heard of Pandora. And that's a unique position which we've got to and we will keep investing in. The two avenues of investment are going to be to keep driving awareness and elevating the brand desirability. Secondly, design. Driving the core, which is the Moments platform, is the number one priority for us, but we continue to build on our other platforms too with exciting designs as we fuel our growth with more. Last year, we launched the Essence collection, which expanded Pandora into a new design aesthetic. Here, we're addressing an organic, fluid, and natural design language, which has a very wide global appeal.
Our Fuel with More segment indeed had another strong year of like-for-like growth. The third pillar is about choices in relation to our geographic priorities, as well as in which channels, both physical as well as virtual, our brand will be available. Finally, it also covers the execution of those touchpoints. We have divided the geographies based on size as well as our brand maturity.
In general, there is limited white space, while there is much more opportunity to further drive brand penetration in existing markets. North America, which we doubled in the last five years, remains one of our most important geographies that we still see significant growth opportunities for many years to come. The fourth growth pillar is about a personalized brand journey. This is powered by our increasing understanding of our customers.
In the most recent past, we have rewired our digital infrastructure such that we can now collect not only transactional data, receipts, but also information about our customers and what they're interested in. And we can project the future where artificial intelligence will be a very powerful tool to overlay on this dataset and create even more compelling experiences between consumers and our brand.
In addition to this a bit more tech-oriented part of the journey, we have rolled out a global engraving service, which has been very well received by our customers, and we continue to develop other services in this portfolio, which we believe is part of a holistic brand experience. It is abundantly clear that we're building off a strong foundation as we look to elevate the company even more.
We have put in place a good foundation in all critical areas during the last couple of years, ranging from a much stronger talent pool to sustainability and digital transformation, which I just touched upon. This means we have a strong starting point, but it doesn't stop here. We will continue developing these areas going forward. Finally, our strategy execution is paying off, which confirms the potential ahead of us.
We have started quite strongly in relation to our 2026 financial ambitions, and we announced these at the CMD in 2023, but let me quickly go over them again, so on this slide, you can see our financial ambitions for 2026. We are targeting an organic growth at high single-digit levels while also expanding our margins further, and I'll just stop here, and this is in the context where the jewelry market in the last five years literally has not been growing, so this means a very significant share building that we are driving for.
Now, this in turn will continue to drive significant free cash flow in our business, which will continuously look to return to you, our shareholders. As I mentioned, we've had a strong start to these ambitions and look to be making further progress towards them in this year. As mentioned, we saw solid growth across our two segments in 2024. In our core, we saw robust 2% like-for-like growth, and this segment still accounts for nearly three-quarters of our entire revenue base.
Then in the Fuel with More segment, we saw another year of very strong growth of 22% like-for-like. This segment now contributes to just under a quarter of our entire business, so it has been making very good progress indeed, exactly in line with our strategy. Driving our core, our charms and carriers platform remained the number one priority for us. This is a clear stronghold of Pandora, and we will look to keep it that way. And I'm happy to say that the core continued to remain very healthy through 2024, driving robust like-for-like growth between the quarters.
We ended the year also on a good note as our Christmas collection was very well received by our customers. We continue to have ample opportunities to take our charms and carriers platforms ahead into the future. And as I've always said, a healthy core is where our journey starts. Tied to that, we have an exciting pipeline of innovation also planned here to ensure we remain culturally relevant as well as staying top of mind.
Within our Fuel with More segment, I already mentioned a 22% like-for-like growth, but you should also keep in mind that we already had a very strong growth in the prior year, so therefore in 2023 in this segment. So that makes this performance even more impressive. In this segment, we have many beautiful collections that are consistently appealing to our consumers.
I mentioned the new Essence collection, which we launched during last year, which is off to a very encouraging start, and we will continue to drive this entire segment forward with strong marketing and further design developments. As a global consumer brand, we have good presence across many markets in the world. When you see it from a top-down view, Europe accounts for nearly half of our entire revenues when you also include countries like Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe, which are within what's called Rest of Pandora here. In that context, we saw a 10% like-for-like growth across all of Europe last year. Within the key markets, growth in Europe was driven by strong performance in Germany of a whopping 45% like-for-like growth, although this was somewhat offset by challenges in Italy and France.
Our largest market, U.S., delivered another strong growth despite a relatively tepid jewelry market in the region, so it's clear that we have good momentum in this market. Finally, rest of Pandora had a very strong year with growth still relatively broad-based. I mentioned some of the contributors here when I talked about Europe in aggregate. For those of you who follow our story closely, you will be aware that we have quite some store rollout ambitions.
I'll cover that shortly, but I also wanted to highlight that this comes with a significant upgrade of our store concept into a more desirable consumer experience, so not only quantity but also quality. In total, we are targeting to have around 1,400 of our concept stores under this new exciting store format by end of 2026, and this will be a key step in Pandora being recognized as a full jewelry brand.
We have a total of 425 concept stores in this format today and remain excited on what it can bring to the brand. As I mentioned, for our entire store network, we highlighted an ambitious roadmap in the Capital Markets Day of 2023. In total, we are targeting to add between 400 and 500 net store openings over the period of 2024 through 2026. You can see on the slide how this will be accretive to our group growth in the years to come, and we've already added around DKK 4 billion of profitable revenue since 2022.
So therefore, you shouldn't be surprised to hear that we will continue down this path. We place sustainability at the core of our company. We aim at being a low-carbon business, drive circularity principles in everything we do, and act as an example of what it means to be inclusive, diverse, and fair. Our goal is to halve our CO2 emissions across the entire value chain by 2030 and achieve net zero status by 2040, which would be 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.
And in 2024, we made significant strides towards this target. We brought our greenhouse gas emissions down by 17% compared to 2019, and in the same period, we increased revenue by 45%. So we have shown that it's possible to decouple growth from emissions, and this is essential to mitigate climate change and align with the Paris Agreement. We are, of course, proud of our progress to date, but we're also fully focused on the work we still have ahead of us to get all the way through to these ambitious targets. In 2024, we also made great strides in becoming a more circular business.
After four years of work, which has involved more than 100 colleagues, we completed the shift to 100% recycled silver and gold into our jewelry crafting, and we are the first major jewelry brand to do so. Our commitment to sustainability remains steadfast, and we are pleased that our efforts are being recognized. At this year's World Economic Forum Summit in Davos, we were ranked among the 100 most sustainable companies globally.
So in summary for 2024, it was yet another strong year, confirming that our strategy is delivering, and to end on a personal highlight, we also got - or the Pandora, I should say, the Pandora brand was included in something called Interbrand, and they ranked the top 100 most valuable brands in the world. There's only one other brand in Denmark, and there's another three in the whole of this region in the world. So I think that's not so shabby for us. Anyways, thanks for listening, and now I'll hand over to Anders for a close look at the numbers.
Thank you, Alexander, and also a warm welcome to everyone participating today from my side. I'll start off with a closer look at some of the financial KPIs, as you can see on the slide here. And we are quite happy to report that our strong top-line performance that Alexander already went through also is reflected down through the profit and loss statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow. And as you can see, basically what you can see on the slide here is the beauty of operating a very high-margin business, which is very asset-light at the same time.
First of all, I would like to pick out the gross margin, as you can see, so roughly in the middle of the table here, and the gross margin continued to strengthen throughout 2024 and ended just below 80% in 2024, and that is obviously a very high level, and it reflects both that we have some very good structural drivers in the business, including our very high economies of scale in the business, the efficiencies that we keep driving at the crafting facilities in Thailand, but also our recent price increases that we've done in 2024. If you move a little bit further down the profit and loss, we did continue to invest quite heavily in the brand during 2024 in order to drive our top-line growth.
And we are investing both to drive growth in the year in 2024, but we are also investing quite significantly in order to continue driving growth in the years to come. But despite these investments, as Alexander already mentioned, we delivered a very solid profit margin, EBIT margin at 25.2% last year. And then if you move one line further down in the table here, you can see that the cash conversion as well was quite high in 2024 at 85%. And that's not the least driven by quite strong working capital management across the company, where we ended the year in a slightly negative position as a percent of sale. And in this context, negative is good. And in fact, this takes us to be among best-in-class, among consumer brands globally being with negative net working capital.
So if we move to the next slide, we'll take a look at 2025 and our guidance for this year. As you can see on the slide, we're guiding that 2025 will be another year of good solid growth. We're guiding for an organic growth between 7% and 8%, and that 7%-8% revenue growth consists of two parts, two elements. First of all, we are targeting what we call a like-for-like growth of 4%-5%, and that's the growth in the existing store network. And then on top of that, we plan to have around three points of revenue growth from expanding the network here in 2025. And I'll just give a few words on the like-for-like growth, the 4%-5% like-for-like growth that we are planning.
First of all, the performance that we've had during the last couple of years has made it very clear that our Phoenix strategy is working, and we continue to make very good progress in establishing Pandora as an accessible full jewelry brand across the world. And that's a good foundation for the guidance for this year. And based on that, we expect another year of good progress in 2025, driving 4%-5% like-for-like growth, which will be or is within what we said back at the Capital Markets Day in London in 2023, as Alexander showed on a previous slide.
However, we are very conscious, I should say, about the macroeconomic environment, which remains relatively weak. It's not a recession, but it's not strong either, so relatively weak. And I think all of you in the room here today or online will agree that it also remains quite uncertain. Hence, we believe that growth in 2025 could be slightly below what we have delivered in 2024 and 2023 in like-for-like terms. Nonetheless, a 4%-5% like-for-like growth this year in this environment, we believe, will be a very good outcome for 2025.
On the EBIT margin, the way to read the guidance that we have put out here is that we expect the EBIT margin to be almost flat at around 24.5% versus just above 25% that we delivered last year in 2024. Within this guidance, there is quite a substantial combined headwind from commodities and foreign exchange of nothing less than 270 basis points or 2.7 percentage points of headwind from gold, silver, and foreign exchange rates. Again, we think that it would be quite a great outcome to be able to keep the margin at around 24.5% despite all of that headwind.
We would also like to stress that this is a testament to how serious we take when there is external headwind, how far we go in order to try to offset it. As always, one thing that is absolutely non-negotiable in how we are planning in the years ahead is that we keep investing behind the brand, keep investing behind driving brand awareness and brand desirability across the entire value chain, and that will not stop in 2025 either. Then finally, from me, this is the guidance on a couple of other parameters that we communicated back at the full year announcement. On capital expenditure, investments into the business, we expect that to be around 7% of revenue this year.
That's higher than what we normally can operate this business at, and it reflects, among others, not the least, that we are investing in building a large new crafting facility in Vietnam. On the tax rate, we expect that to be very much in line with last year, 2024, of between 24% and 25%. Then our financial expenses, we expect those to be between DKK 1 billion and DKK 1.05 billion in 2025. With that, I'll leave the word back to Pernille. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anders, and thank you, Peter, and Alexander for the report. As mentioned in the introduction, we will deal with items one and two together. I will continue with the agenda item regarding adoption of the 2024 annual report. I have been presented with Pandora's annual report for 2024, signed by Pandora's executive management and the board and Pandora's auditor, EY. And in EY's independent auditor's report, they state the following, and it's quoted here on the slide.
In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements and the parent company financial statements give a true and fair view of the financial position of the group and the parent company at 31st of December 2024 and of the results of the group and the parent company's operations and cash flows for the financial year 1st of January to 31st of December 2024, in accordance with IFRS accounting standards as adopted by the EU and additional requirements of the Danish Financial Statements Act.
At this point, I would like to hear if there are any comments or questions to the report on Pandora's activities or to the annual report, and I will start by inviting Dansk Aktionærforening by Bjarne Kongsted , who has presented us in advance with a brief note. So please, Bjarne.
Thank you. My name is Bjarne Kongsted . Thank you to the CEO and the chair for a good report on the many figures and the activities of the company. I asked for the floor at this AGM to represent the Association of Danish Shareholders. We are an organization that takes care of the interests of about 16,000 members representing private investors. We have participated in the Pandora AGM before, and we are happy to do so again this year.
Pandora has always been a share which has prioritized to reward its shareholders and thereby its owners through dividends and share buyback programs, which is also the case for the financial year 2024. At the AGM today, the company proposes a dividend of DKK 20 per share. That is an increase of DKK 2 compared to 2021, 2022, and 2023, and which corresponds to a payout ratio of 105%, taking into account the proposed share buyback program of DKK 4 billion. It is not quite the same ratio as for the financial year 2023, with a payout ratio of no less than 136%, but it is still quite handsome. Not many companies pay out more money to their owners than they make, but Pandora has chosen to do so.
Most of the financial institutions have a higher target share price than what the share price actually is, and they also recommend to purchase the share, so if you are to believe the experts, this bodes well for the future of the company, and what does Pandora expect from the future? Well, the first and obvious question I would like to ask to the company management is, to what extent have your predictions changed since you published the annual report 2024, and here, what I have in mind is the increasing uncertainty on the world market with threats of tariffs and trade barriers, as well as other macroeconomic challenges that might hit Pandora extra hard. Last fall, CEO Alexander Lacik mentioned that the company was challenged due to high prices on silver and gold, but also due to the strong dollar.
Is there a limit to how much, generally speaking, you can add to the prices of your jewelry? And in the same message, the group CEO said that it would be necessary to cut back on make efficiencies. Have you begun doing that, and in which areas? Does the company continue to expect a growth of 7%-8%, which I might add is about half of the 2024 accounts? Or, as the company CEO says, do you expect another year with solid and profitable growth? At last year's AGM, I said the following. One of Pandora's future growth hopes is lab-grown diamonds.
This sounds exciting, and I understand that this is something that the company management expects quite a deal of. These diamonds should even have a very small climate footprint. This sounds great and would be turning this sector upside down, end of quote. Now, today, I understand that the business for these lab-grown jewelry has not become the success that you expected. The answer to my question at last year's AGM was that the expectations for 2026 and the years beyond that was an annual sale of more than DKK 1 billion.
Now, from the accounts of 2024, I can see that the sales have instead been at DKK 315 million for 2024. Therefore, my question is whether your expectations for the future are still the same. But this is, however, an interesting and exciting business area that I hope that the board and executive management will continue to focus on. Innovation and development are interesting areas of the jewelry sector so that you can create new products and markets all the while taking into account the risks and challenges by operating in a global economy.
Pandora is an international group with Danish roots, and the share is listed on the Danish Stock Exchange. Of course, the group language is English, but I think it would have been commendable if you had given us a Danish summary of the annual report with the most important information, notes, and figures. Other international groups listed on the Danish Stock Exchange do exactly that. Let me just mention Genmab, which is an international biotech company. Pandora has many Danish shareholders who might not all master the English language as well.
On the other hand, I would like to thank you for continuing to give us the opportunity to attend the AGM in person. There's a tendency among large corporations, just take Danske Bank and Maersk, who no longer give their owners, their shareholders, the opportunity to meet them in person at a physical AGM. Lastly, let me thank the board and management for their continued engagement in driving Pandora and maintaining the company as an interesting share for their shareholders, and let me also wish all of your employees a very good year 2025. Thank you very much.
Thank you to Danske Aktionærforening, and now I will hand the word over to the chair of the board for the first reply. Peter, please.
Yeah, thank you for a lot of really relevant questions that we spend quite a lot of time on discussing every day in Pandora. I will comment on your first question related to what's happening in the U.S. with the geopolitical uncertainty and so on, and how that will influence Pandora, and of course, it's hard to say how it will influence Pandora because we don't know what will come tomorrow.
However, I think since I came in this company end 2019, we have faced a large series or a continuous series of uncertainties. It started with the pandemic 2020, and then it was the war in Europe with increasing raw material prices. All prices increased a lot, inflation to the sky. And then now we have the uncertainty that we are faced by the new government in the U.S.
But I'll just say that during these years with the pandemic, with the hyperinflation, with war and so on, I think Pandora, the management and all employees of Pandora has really shown ability to cope with the uncertainty and to adapt with changing environment, changing requirements in a fantastic good way, and I think our development over these years is a proof that they have really delivered on this. I'm sure that the management and our team and the whole company will be able to deliver on these uncertainties also going forward. So then I will hand over to Anders to answer some of the other relevant questions that came up. Thank you.
Thank you, Bjarne, for the questions. I'll answer some of them, and I think then Alexander might take the last few ones. Please remind me if I forget to answer some of the questions on the guidance and the sort of increased uncertainty that we've seen since we made the guidance back in early February. The guidance still stands. The world hasn't become an easier place to navigate in since we made the announcement, but the guidance still stands.
As you know, regulation also is that if at any point in time that we would think otherwise, we will have to announce it with immediate effect. So that still stands. And related to that, also asked about whether there's a limit on how much we can raise prices on our jewelry. The short answer is yes. There is a limit on how far we can go. And within that, I think it's also very important to acknowledge or remember which segment of the market that we're operating in. We are a mass market brand. We are an accessible jewelry brand, and we are, I would almost say, obsessed about making sure that we have something that's good value for money that you can go into our stores or online and buy something that is accessible for a very broad audience around the world.
Having said that, we have been able to increase prices in total. We increased prices by around 6%-7% last year, which is much more than what we've done historically, and we will increase prices a bit more this year, and that will work to offset quite a decent part of the headwind that we've seen from silver, gold, inflation in general, and foreign exchange, but the important starting point is that we want to remain what we call an accessible luxury brand, then I think there was a question about the cost program, the cost program that we've started. It's still somewhat early days. We kicked it off in the group leadership team back in November, and then it became something we announced company-wide in January from memory, so we're still in the analysis phase.
The approach that we have been taking to this is that when something happens in the world, silver prices goes up, gold prices goes up, the easiest thing to do for us as a management team would be to sit down and say, "Well, sad, that something comes from the outside. Now the earnings of the company will be lower." We're taking the opposite approach, saying, "Well, something has happened." It is our duty to keep looking in every corner of the business, all departments all across the world, to see other ways that operate in the company in a more efficient way that can help us offset the headwind from silver and gold. So we're using this as an opportunity to look through how we are operating the business.
We're doing that with external support in order to have someone who can challenge Alexander's and my thinking and the rest of the leadership team, how we think about to run the company. There's not going to be one big silver bullet of pockets where we take out cost, but you should rather think about this as being across the value chain, across the company. But that's enough to look for that gives a decent support for us to deliver within the range of the EBIT margin target that we set back in London at the Capital Markets Day in 2023. So getting to 26%-27% EBIT margin next year, despite having almost 3 percentage points of headwind from external factors. And I think that was a question I was supposed to answer, but correct me, Bjarne, if there's something I'm missing. Otherwise, I'll leave the word to Alexander. Thank you.
Thank you. And sorry for the answer being in English, but that's the way we speak here. So on your first questions on lab-grown diamonds, let's just take a step back. The global jewelry market is roughly $250 billion in size. Of that, roughly 28% is connected to diamonds. That $85 billion is in front of a major technology transformation. Lab-grown diamonds is a big innovation by humanity. So we can create the hardest material in the world now in a lab rather than having to go about it by digging up half of the earth. So what happens, and it happened continuously through human history, is when big technology innovations come, they disrupt and they move the needle into different places. That's the reason why we entered lab-grown diamonds, because the value equation for consumers completely shifts. Okay?
Now, of all the things we do, this is the longest bet we put on the table. So when we put out this target of 1 billion, it was more staking the ground of an ambition that we need to get it to critical mass. That 1 billion operationally means that in each single country where we carry the diamond business needs to reach a certain level in order to get the interest from the salespeople, from the merchandisers that it requires, the space it has, or justifies the space we will have to give it in the stores. So the billion is more an ambition than a hard core number. And of course, when you enter something which is completely new for the company, we enter into a space which is new for consumers, there's high uncertainty. So I would say that the billion remains as an ambition.
Is it going to happen in 2026? No. I mean, you don't have to be Einstein to make that math. It's going to happen, but we're going to have to push it out. Part of this is also some insights that we generate as we're inside a new business segment. Okay? And what we've learned is that unless there is very high, let's say, critical mass of awareness of any concept, then the growth is going to be much, much slower. So now the question we're confronted with, if we enter a market, and we did two trials, one in Mexico and one Brazil, where there is zero awareness of lab-grown diamonds. We did, let's go into a market where we know that this is the condition and see what happens. And what we see is that the consumer uptake is extraordinarily slow. So then you're faced with the choice.
Do I now throw the kitchen sink at it from an investment standpoint to generate that awareness, to inform the consumer or educate the consumer, or do we allocate the scarce resource we have in the company to other priorities? And that's been the choice. So therefore, we've changed the global rollout schedule, and consequently, it's going to take a little bit longer time before we get to that billion. But in the markets where we're in, and in particular in the U.S., where we know awareness of lab-grown diamonds is roughly 80% in the millennial audience, there we actually have a very sensible business. It's profitable, it's interesting, and there's good momentum. Last year, it grew 30%-40% from memory in the U.S.
So as we kind of go into those markets where the conditions are correct, then we see that this is a very viable business for Pandora to stay in. Now, of course, when we do a launch like Essence, which is much more kind of in the playground that we understand, then the growth is much, much quicker. Okay? So that's on diamonds. So we're still super interested in this. There will be a complete transformation. This is my belief that in the future, a mined diamond is going to be the rarity, and the market is going to be dominated by lab-grown diamonds. And there Pandora has the best positioning of any brand in the world to take that opportunity. So watch the space. Then the other question was on annual reports or the Danish language. The majority of our shareholders reside outside of Denmark.
As Peter mentioned, the statute says that we conduct the business in English, and for a short while, we have made a brief extra, let's say, excerpt of the annual report in Danish, but the reality is it's not being used. There are very, very few people that actually read it, so kind of staying a little bit kind of also mindful from a sustainability standpoint, we're not going to be printing material that people aren't using. That's the simple story, so as unfortunate as it is, most of our shareholders are not sitting in Denmark, and English happens to be the language that we use, so that's kind of where we sit on that. Was there another question?
Physical AGM.
Physical AGM. Yeah. I mean, I think in the statutes, we have the ability to do both virtual and physical. And for now, we have, post the pandemic, chosen to use it in this format. Does it mean that we'll continue? Let's see. But we have the ability, based on our statutes, to choose one of the two. So I think that's it, right? Thank you very much.
Thank you. Are there any comments for the report or the annual report? Does it seem to be the case? Then I will conclude that the annual report for 2024 has been approved and then move to the next item on the agenda, which is the remuneration report for 2024. This has been prepared by the board. And as I mentioned in the introduction, it will be an advisory vote only. And I will invite the chair, Peter, to give a presentation of the report.
Thank you, Pernille. The remuneration report was reviewed by the independent auditors, EY. The auditors have not reported on any deficiencies in the report. In line with the general salary increase for Pandora employees in Denmark, the board fee increased by 3.5% in 2024. Due to less travel than in 2023, the total fee for the board increased by only 1% in 2024. We believe that the company's remuneration is in line with general market practice.
The total remuneration of executive management in 2024 was up 50% from 2023 to ensure we remain competitive. Included within this is a special award to the CEO, which is within the Rem policy approved by the AGM. However, we take note of the feedback from the shareholders that the vesting period should be longer than two years. We have adjusted this accordingly to be three years.
The remuneration committee and the board will do whatever we believe is in the best interest of the company and, of course, within our remuneration policy, and for obvious reasons, we cannot share all the details around our reasoning and our discussions, but I can assure you that we do what we believe is best for Pandora and for our shareholders, and performance under the current executive management has been stellar. Hence, payout under ordinary STIP and LTIP is high, and I think we should all be happy about that, and we also receive feedback from many investors. We are also being challenged whether our incentive system for our management is sufficient to keep them motivated and keep them in the company.
We have to balance all the feedbacks we get from different shareholders and do what we believe is best for the company on the long term. And we are a global company with ambition to recruit and to retain the best talents worldwide. And in order to succeed, our benchmark for remuneration is not only Denmark, but also Europe and U.S. And hopefully, that's useful context. And I will now give the word back to you, Pernille.
Thank you for the presentation, Peter. Are there any questions or comments for this agenda item? Otherwise, I will consider the 2024 remuneration report approved by the shareholders. Thank you for that. We will move to agenda item number four, also concerning remuneration, this time the board's remuneration for 2025. And the board has asked me to present this item.
The suggestion is a fixed base fee of DKK 591,700 . This is changed from DKK 570,000 in 2024, corresponding to an increase of 3.8%, which is in line with the general increase of salary for Pandora employees in 2025. The suggestion is that the chair receives three times the fixed base fee, and the deputy chair receives 1.5 x the base fee. The chair and members of the audit committee receive 0.8x and 0.4 x the fixed base fee, respectively. The chair and members of the nomination and remuneration committee receive 0.5 and 0.25 x the fixed base fee, respectively. This is all in accordance with the remuneration policy. Further, as also set out in the remuneration policy, members of the board receive a travel allowance reflected as a percentage of the fixed base fee when participating in any company-related meetings outside their country of residence.
The fee for continental travel is 6% of the fixed base fee, equal to DKK 35,500. The fee for intercontinental travel is 12%, equal to DKK 71,000. Any comments or questions for the proposed remuneration of the board for 2025? That doesn't seem to be the case. Then I consider that approved by the shareholders also. Thank you for that. We will move on to agenda item number five, proposed distribution of profit. This has been mentioned already, but I will give the word to the chair, Peter, to motivate and explain this item. Thank you.
Thanks, Pernille. Well, as both Alexander and Anders have been through, we had a very strong performance also in 2024. Based on this performance, and of course, based on the low leverage and ample liquidity, we propose continuing the strong cash distributions to our shareholders.
As part of today's agenda, the board proposes the shareholders to approve a dividend of DKK 20 per share. This is around 10% growth versus the dividend paid last year, reflective of Pandora's progressive dividend policy. The board has already had the authority to initiate a share buyback at any point in time. And in February, we announced a new share buyback program of up to DKK 4 billion, which will run until early February next year. The capital structure policy remains unchanged, and the leverage remains low. So I will now give the word back to Pernille. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. Any questions or comments regarding the proposal for cash distribution and dividend and share buyback? Then I consider that approved by the shareholders. Thank you. And we will move to the next item regarding election of members to the board of directors.
According to Pandora's Articles of Association, all members are elected by the general meeting to hold office until the next annual general meeting. And all seven of Pandora's existing board members are up for re-election today. A detailed description of each of the board candidates has been made available on the website. So I would like to know if there are any questions or comments for members to be elected for the board. Then I will congratulate each of the board members on your re-election. We also have to elect the auditor of Pandora. And based on a recommendation from the audit committee, the board has proposed to re-elect EY as the company's financial and sustainability auditor for the financial year 2025.
And I have been informed that the audit committee has not been influenced by third parties and has not been subject to any agreement with third parties, which limits the general meeting to the election of certain auditors or audit firms. So any comments regarding re-election of EY as Pandora's auditor, also for the sustainability reporting? Then congratulations also to EY on the re-election. The next item on the agenda concerns resolution on the discharge of the board and executive management from any liability. And I can inform the shareholders that only matters that have been disclosed already in the annual report or here at the meeting are included in such a decision.
Any comments or questions regarding this? Okay. I will then consider the general meeting to have granted discharge to the board and executive management. And now we are moving along to item number nine. As I said in the beginning, this includes five different proposals today. The first one concerns reduction of the company's share capital by cancellation of treasury shares. And this is an effect of the share buyback that was carried out last year.
The proposal is to reduce Pandora's share capital by cancelling 3 million shares. And according to the practice of the Danish Business Authority, cancellation of treasury shares is considered to be actually a distribution to the shareholders, although the money has already been distributed. So this means that we have to consider it a capital decrease by payment. And I can inform you that in addition to the 3 million nominal amount, a total amount of DKK 3,281,146,400 has been distributed. Sorry for the numbers. It's quite technical. Any questions or comments regarding the capital decrease? Then I will consider that approved.
You will not see it in the Articles of Association before at least four weeks from now because we will have to make a notice to the company's creditors in the IT system of the Danish Business Authority. When that period has been completed, we will register the new Articles of Association. The next items on the agenda concern an authorization to the board to effect capital increases. 9.2 is with preemptive rights for the shareholders.
The board has stated in the notice convening the meeting that in order to accommodate for the board's intentions to maintain agility in capital-raising opportunities, it is proposed to give the board a renewed authorization with preemptive rights for the shareholders to increase the share capital on one or more occasions in the period until March 12th, 2030, by a nominal amount of 39,500,000, which is corresponding to 50% of the share capital after the proposed capital decrease you just approved a minute ago. And the existing authorization is set to expire in March 2026. So this is extending the period. Any comments or questions for this proposal? Then I will consider this approved by the shareholders. Thank you for that. And move to item number 9.3 .
It's a similar proposal, but this time without preemptive rights for the shareholders and at a much lower amount, which is DKK 7.9 million, corresponding to 10% of the share capital after the proposed and now adopted capital reduction. Any questions or comments for this? No? Thank you. I will consider this approved then also. Moving along to item number 9.4 , authorization to the board to let the company buy back own shares. Again, this connects to the proposed share buyback and concerns a proposal to authorize the board to allow Pandora to buy back own shares in the period until March 12th, 2030. The proposal is that Pandora may acquire up to an aggregate nominal amount of 10% of the company's share capital, provided that the holding of treasury shares does not at any time exceed 10% of the company's share capital.
The purchase price that can be paid with acquisition of own shares must not diverge from the price quoted on any regulated market on which the purchase is carried out at the time of the purchase by more than 10%. And this is standard market practice. Any questions or comments for the authorization to purchase own shares? I will consider this approved then also. Thank you. And then the final fixed agenda item is an authorization to me as chair of the meeting to register all the decisions you have made here at the meeting today, including changing the Articles of Association to reflect the new authorizations. And I hope this will be an uncontroversial point and of acceptance. Thank you for that. And with that being said, we are reaching the final agenda point, which is any other business.
At this point in time, please note that we cannot have any proposals that require any adoptions, but any comments from shareholders are welcome. I would like to hear if there are any additional comments. Anybody would like to make any statements? No? That does not seem to be the case. Then I would like to thank the board and the management and all of the shareholders. I would give the word back to the chair to finally close the meeting. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Pernille, for chairing this meeting. And thank you to all of you shareholders who attend our annual meeting today. It's been a great pleasure to see you all. I look forward to seeing you again next year. And the only thing left for me to say is, before I say that the meeting is over, I would just like to also take this opportunity to thank the executive management, the executive leadership team, my board colleagues, and of course, all our fantastic employees in Pandora for their hard, strong efforts for our very, very good performance in 2024. So thank you, everybody. And I look forward to see you again next year. Thanks.