Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pandora's Annual General Meeting 2024. My name is Peter Ruzicka, and I am Chair of Pandora since January 1, 2020. As a reminder to the annual general meeting today, it 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 the meeting. I would also kindly ask you to pay attention to the disclaimer. The key message is that our presentation may include forward-looking statements, and that these, per definitions, are associated with uncertainty. Before we start with today's agenda, I would like to introduce the speakers of today. With me today, I have CEO Alexander Lacik and CFO Anders Boyer. Alexander and Anders constitute 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 excel. Alexander and Anders will provide more details on the business development later. For now, I would like to thank them both for their great contribution and efforts in 2023. Now, according to the Articles of Association, the Board of Directors appoints the chair of the annual general meeting, and the Board of Directors has appointed Pernille Dalhoff from Kromann Reumert as chair of the annual general meeting. With this, let me hand you over to Pernille. She will walk you through today's agenda and make sure all formal requirements are satisfied. Please, Pernille.
Thank you, Peter, and thank you to the board for appointing me chair of this meeting. I look forward to a good meeting here today, and before going through the formalities, we understand construction work is going on by the parking, so some shareholders might be a bit late. We will allow people to join us, so please excuse a bit of traffic in and out. But before we start, I will also inform you that the general meeting is live streamed from the shareholder portal, so any questions from the shareholders that you ask here today will be transmitted online, and the recording will be available on the website of Pandora after the meeting.
My first task is to check that a meeting has been properly convened, and according to the Articles of Association, the company shall convene general meetings by giving not less than three and not more than five weeks' notice by advertisement on the website and by email sent to the shareholders who have requested so. Pandora has informed me that on February fifteenth, a notice of the meeting was sent by email to all registered shareholders who had requested so. It was announced in a company announcement, and it was published on Pandora's website. Also, from the same date, the complete proposals to be discussed at the meeting here today, draft new articles of association, Pandora's annual report for 2023, the remuneration reports for 2023, and the forms for notification of attendance, proxy, and postal votes have also been available on the website.
So then, on this basis, I find that all the formal requirements have been fulfilled and that this ordinary general meeting has been properly convened and competent for the transaction of the business on the agenda. I would like to ask if there are any questions or comments for that? Nothing. Thank you. Then I will conclude that this ordinary general meeting is properly and lawfully convened and competent for the transaction here today. I can inform you that of the total share capital of 89 million, a total of 51.6 million is represented. That's equivalent to a little more than 63%. So please, take a look at the agenda for today's meeting, which I'm supposed to show you. Oh, here it is.
So, item two and items four to eight may be passed by a simple majority of votes. Item one will not be subject to a vote. Item three, regarding the remuneration report, is an advisory vote only, and item nine includes five proposals by the board. The ones concerning the share capital decrease requires a two-thirds majority because it involves amendment of the Articles of Association, but the other items can be adopted by simple majority. So items one and two, regarding the board's report on the company's activities during 2023 and adoption of the 2023 annual report, will be dealt with jointly, like we normally do, and the remaining items will be considered one by one.
I will now give the word to the chair to present the board of directors' report on the company's activities during 2023. Okay, we will make sure that you can see all of the items as we go along. We will flip through the agenda as we get to them. Okay, thank you. The agenda here on the screen is identical to the one that was posted on the website and sent by email when the notice was made. Okay. Okay, Peter, please.
Thank you, Pernille. Let me start by saying that Pandora's continues to be in a very, 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 all women across generations. Pandora's crafting facilities in Thailand is 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 efficiency. On top of this, we are also... Sorry. We are also on the forefront with regards to how we treat our employees and the environment. The global store footprint is comprehensive and profitable, and is fully 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 result, we announced a new share buyback of DKK 4 billion. Today, we ask you, the shareholders, to authorize Pandora to distribute DKK 18 dividend per share. We strongly believe that this is a very solid basis for us to unlock the true potential of Pandora in the years to come. Alexander will tell you more about this shortly. Let me give you some facts to illustrate the scale of Pandora. In 2023, we sold 107 million pieces of jewelry.
We had over 750 million visits to our physical and online stores. We sell in more than 100 countries through 6,700 points of sale. By the end of 2023, we moved to 100% purchase of recycled gold and silver. This therefore meant we met our circular innovation target a whole year ahead of plan, and I think that's a fantastic achievement by the team. We employed 33,000 people around the world. 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 evaluation. I can confirm that in 2023, the board conducted an evaluation of its performance and its cooperation with executive management.
The assessment also included a 360 peer review, using an online survey across 7 areas as value creation and strategy, board agenda and meeting, and also, of course, including the committees, how they were performing, talent and culture, board composition, directors' contribution, chairs effectiveness, and reporting and risk management. The report and conclusion of the assessment were shared with the board and executive management, followed by a thorough discussion. The assessment identified that the board continues to consist of individuals who possess relevant competencies and are engaged and well-prepared. The board structure and committee work are effective and well-functioning, including interactions with executive management. Responsibility for strategic direction and risk assessment on ESG sit with the board of directors, as signified in the graphic of the Sustainability Report 2023. The board receives a minimum of 2 updates a year on Pandora's sustainability direction.
We will be sure to elaborate more extensively on the Board of Directors' oversight of sustainability topics in the future iterations of our sustainability report and on our website. So with that, I would like to hand over first to Alexander for the business update, and then to Anders for an update on the financial performance.
Thank you, Peter. Good morning, and that's the only Swedish you will hear today. Good morning for those of you that don't speak Swedish. This is my fifth annual general meeting with Pandora, and I've really been looking forward to meeting you today to give you a brief update on what we've been up to in the last year. As Peter just said, 2023 was a very successful year for Pandora. We not only delivered results ahead of our guidance, but we successfully concluded on the first chapter of our Phoenix strategy, which we started in 2021. We clearly demonstrated good momentum across all our strategic initiatives. Before I remind you. This probably should move. Sorry for that. Before I remind you of our strategy, let's have a quick look at 2023.
We ended the year with a record high revenue and earnings per share. We upgraded our revenue guidance each quarter as we saw good momentum as we moved through the year. A great outcome, given the macro backdrop, remained quite challenging. The revenue grew by 8% organically, and the growth was solid across product platforms and geographies. The growth came while we scaled up our investments into Phoenix, into the Phoenix strategy. Despite this, Pandora maintained its very strong profitability with an EBIT margin of 25%. The strategy, which we launched in 2021, is focused on further developing our core business, where we see significant opportunities to generate growth. We provided a significant update on this at our capital markets day in London last year on how we would be taking this strategy to the next level.
This entails changing the perception of Pandora to a full jewelry brand. Let me repeat that, because that's really the essence of it all, to change the perception of Pandora from not just being seen as a charm brand, but a full jewelry brand. Our purpose remains that we give a voice to people's loves. Pandora pursues this purpose by creating affordable, hand-finished, branded jewelry for the many rather than the few. With the purpose in mind, we have set an ambitious plan for our company. We want Pandora to become the largest and most desirable brand in the affordable jewelry market. We have chosen four distinct growth pillars and updated these accordingly at the recent Capital Markets Day. First, our brand is the most widely recognized jewelry brand in the world, and we will continue to invest in this unique position.
Our focus is to increase the brand desirability and thus drive brand penetration. Secondly, design. Driving our core, the Moments platform, is the number one priority for us, but we continue to build on other platforms, too, with exciting designs. This year, we'll be launching our new Essence collection and building further on our lab-grown diamonds collection. The third pillar is about growing our markets. At the Capital Markets Day, we highlighted how we would be targeting broad-based growth across many markets which we're present in. The fourth growth pillar is personalization. Here, we are really looking to tailor the in-store experience for our consumers to leave a lasting impression. Our engraving services are a good example of this, and we were very successful already last year. It's 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 five years, ranging from a much stronger talent pool to sustainability and digital transformation. This means we have a strong starting point, but it doesn't stop here. We'll continue developing these areas going forward. Finally, our strategy execution is paying off, which confirms the potential ahead of us. We have reached our major financial ambitions we set out in the first chapter of Phoenix and have outlined new financial targets for the next three years. And let me quickly highlight those. Last year, at the CMD in London, we presented these new financial targets over the next three years. We are targeting to grow our organic growth at a high single-digit levels, whilst also expanding our margins further.
This will continue to drive significant free cash flow in our business, which we'll continuously look to return to our shareholders. These targets are slightly higher than our previous targets, but a good reflection on how far we have come as a company over the last five years. As mentioned, we saw good growth across our product platforms. Am I on slide 10? No. Here we go. As I mentioned, we saw good growth across our product platforms in 2023. Our charms and carrier platforms from our core Moments is our largest platform and continue to deliver solid growth. Pandora ME also sits as part of the core now and had a very successful year as we sharpened our focus here. To fuel with more, it's worth noting that our Timeless collection now represents nearly 1/5 of our entire revenue and is driving good incremental growth.
Finally, within lab-grown diamonds, we took significant steps during the year in expanding the assortment and geographical presence. We also issued a new target at the CMD of generating more than DKK 1 billion of revenue in lab-grown diamonds by 2026, as we look to democratize this category. Driving our core, our charms and carrier platforms remain a number one priority for us. This is a clear stronghold of Pandora, and we look to keep it that way. I'm happy to say that the core continued to remain very healthy, with solid like-for-like growth of 2%. Within this, Pandora ME had a very successful year of +12% like-for-like growth. We continue to have ample opportunity to take our charms and carriers platforms ahead into the future. As I've always said, a healthy core is where the journey starts.
As part of our strategy of being recognized as a full jewelry brand, we continue to fuel our growth with more. Here, I want to once again highlight our timeless platform, which showed 20% like-for-like growth. This was pretty broad-based across many product categories, where we still have a relatively low market share, so there remains many exciting opportunities ahead. Within lab-grown diamonds, I'm happy to report that our new expanded assortment was received well. We've seen good momentum building this platform, which was helped by an exciting new marketing campaign, so plenty to look forward to here as well. Looking at the markets, the growth was relatively broad-based. Our largest market, the U.S., delivered growth despite the still relatively weak jewelry market in the region. It's clear we've got good strategic momentum here.
In Europe, in aggregate, we saw solid growth overall, although there were some regional differences reflecting the consumer backdrop and our own strategic initiatives. Rest of Pandora had a very strong year, with growth still relatively broad-based. In China, we relaunched our brand in the city of Shanghai and saw some encouraging results, but overall, the business was challenging, and this will clearly be a journey ahead, but we remain committed to developing our brand here as well. I want to highlight that developing our network further is a key growth lever that we have. In 2023, this drove an incremental of DKK 1.3 billion, split between network expansion and forward integration. We opened a total of 109 new concept stores and 114 Pandora-owned shopping shops last year.
The financial metrics of expanding our network remain highly attractive, with EBIT margins over 25% and a very high return on capital. We highlighted an ambitious roadmap for our network journey at the Capital Markets Day. In total, we are targeting to add 400-500 net store openings over the 2024 and 2026 period. You can see on the slide how this will be accretive to our group growth in the years to come. 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 objective is to halve carbon emissions across the full value chain by 2030 and to be a net zero carbon business by 2040.
We have taken important new steps in 2023, with now a total of 27% reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions compared to the 2019 baseline. We also continued to drive circular innovation in 2023. As mentioned already, since the end of last year, we now only purchase recycled silver and gold for our jewelry production. To foster an inclusive, diverse, and fair culture, we have launched a comprehensive strategy addressing gender and underrepresented groups. We'll not only be working within our own organization, but also evolve the way we market our products and the partners that help us bring our brand to our consumers. And on that note, I will hand it to Anders. Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Alexander. I will now take you through a couple of financial highlights. And I'll start by taking a closer look at our financial performance, as you can see in the table on the slide here. In the table, we show some of our key financial KPIs for 2023 and 2022. Well, we're happy to say that you can see that the strong top-line performance that we had in 2023 is filtering through, down through the P&L and the balance sheet and leading to many other strong financial KPIs last year. First of all, I would like to pick out the gross margin. The gross margin continued to strengthen in 2023 once again and ended just below 79% for the full year.
And that is obviously a very high level, and it reflects that the good structural drivers, including, for example, that we keep seeing very good efficiencies at our crafting facilities in Thailand. And if you then move a little bit further down the P&L, we continued to invest significantly into our brand and other areas of the business last year in order to drive revenue growth. And we are investing both in driving growth in the year in 2023, but we're also investing to pave the way for continued future growth in the years to come. And despite these investments, as Alexander already mentioned, we delivered a very solid EBIT margin at 25% last year.
If you move one line further down in the table here, looking at the cash generation, you can see that the cash conversion, and thereby the cash generation last year went back to the high levels that we have been used to in prior years. That's mainly a result of the fact that our net working capital normalized during 2023, following a year two years back in 2022, where we deliberately increased our inventories across the company. Now, taking a little bit further, more detailed look at our guidance for 2024. We're guiding that 2024 will be another year of good and quite solid revenue growth. We are guiding for an organic revenue growth of between 6% and 9%. Within that, there's kind of two components to the revenue growth.
The first part is what we call like-for-like growth. That's the revenue growth in the existing store network. We expect that to be, that like-for-like growth to be between 3% and 5%. And then on top of that, we will keep expanding the network, in 2024 as well, adding new stores, and that will add between 3% and 4% to the revenue growth, in 2024. And if you convert this into real numbers, so to speak, that means that revenue will increase from around DKK 28 billion last year to DKK 30-31 billion this year. And that's obviously then, the first time that Pandora passes the DKK 30 billion revenue mark ever. And let me just give you a few words to frame why we ended up guiding, 6%-9% revenue growth this year.
First of all, we saw a very strong brand momentum during the second half of last year, the second half of 2023, and where we had like-for-like growth of 9%, both in the third quarter and in the fourth quarter. There's a lot of good drivers behind that growth last year, but keeping such a high momentum is not a sort of a given, it's not a linear progression and not something that we can expect to be repeated every quarter. That's one thing to keep in mind, especially for the second half of 2024, where we will be meeting a tough comparison base compared to the second half of 2023. Secondly, the growth in the buckets that we call of countries that we call Rest of Pandora was very high last year, as Alexander already mentioned.
Last year, those countries generated 21% organic growth. We continue to have a lot of growth opportunities in those countries, but we do expect some normalization of that growth rate from that very high level of 21% last year. Then finally, we are obviously conscious of the macroeconomic environment, which remains quite weak and uncertain. The low end of the guidance that we have put up here, the 6%-9% revenue growth, includes the risk that there might be a further weakening of the macroeconomic environment compared to last year. Then on the EBIT margin, we're guiding for another year of margins remaining at a high level of around 25%.
At the Capital Market Day in London last year, we highlighted that we have plenty of growth opportunities ahead of us, and in order to capture those fully, both in 2024, but also in the years to come, we will be continue to scale up investments in the company also this year, in 2024. That includes that we want to put proper investments behind areas such as repositioning, restaging the brand, and the rollout of our new Evoke store concept. Finally, the last slide from my side, this is a slide showing our guidance on some of the other financial parameters. On capital expenditure, CapEx, we expect that to be between 6%-7% of revenue this year, and that's in line with what we said at the Capital Market Day back in October.
As Alexander already mentioned, we will continue to expand the store network, opening up new stores. Here in 2024, specifically, we expect to open between 100 and 175 new stores. And then finally, the effective tax rate is expected to be between 24% and 25%, and not drop compared to last year, and financial expenses to be somewhere between DKK 950 million and DKK 1 billion. With that, I'll hand it back to Pernille. Thank you.
Thank you, Anders, and thank you, Peter and Alexander, for the report on Pandora's activities during 2023. I think before we move to the next item, which is adoption of the annual report for 2023, I know a number of shareholders have asked to come and ask a few questions for the board of directors and management. And anyone else having questions or comments, please let me know, and I'll let you speak in turn. But I think first we would like to welcome Bjørn Hansen to ask a few questions.
[audio distortion]. Thank you for this report. My name is Bjørn Hansen. I represent private investors, and some of them are women, and one of them would have liked to be here today, but she has left all the questions of shares to me. I have the following question: First of all, congratulations on your growth and profits and progress. The plans for 2024, which Anders described, are very positive, 6%-9%, and we hope that that will come true. I would like to ask about the stores and employees across the globe, because they have made the brand so well known, also among men. Maybe there are other reasons there than for women and girls.
So who actually buys most of the Pandora jewelry, women or men, in recent years? That was my first question. Secondly, is the turnover of jewelry in the stores 30-90 days, or at what level? I would like some figures. I understand that you had a good turnover in the products in the stores, and I hope that you always have goods in the stores, but in what way do you deliver? Is it a franchise or is it another system? Because we know McDonald's, et cetera, uses franchises a great deal. How many diamonds do you trade and sell every year? And which countries have you bought diamonds for in the past three years?
I assume some of the diamonds are lab grown, and it's something the Chinese use a great deal, so I expect a lot of diamonds to come from there, but I would like to have some details on that. My fourth question: After visiting the Emirates, it's my impression that more diamonds are sold to both men and women, and that gold now, after reaching record prices, are seeing progress still. Is that different from what Pandora experiences? In some countries, I understand that there's a drop in sales, like in the US. And I would like to get back to a big, to a large market, and that's India. India is a market you should try to penetrate to a greater degree.
It's probably the country in the world that uses most paste jewelry, and it's a large market, so it would be a good place to start, for instance, in Punjab or Goa. So accessing areas with good purchasing power. India is a fantastic market. I understand they also have quite a few commodities, especially up north, which might have your interest. Fifth question: Let's disregard Russia, which we hope Pandora doesn't trade with, neither imports or exports. It would be very sad if it turns out that 80% of the diamonds come from Russia. That's not something I would support. Question six: We would like Pandora to write a Danish annual report, which, just like American companies now, also offer Danish translation, especially also when we call it, talk about the medical sector.
I noticed when I visited the Emirates that many of the Scandinavian women bought maybe 80% of all sorts of things, right down to McDonald's. They come out with one or two burgers, and I just thought, how can you offer those burgers for 25 DKK? But maybe it's because of their petrol. On the other hand, water is expensive there. Finally, when we get to the future, you design and sell new jewelry, but I think also retro jewelry is a good idea, and of course, it was a Danish goldsmith who started Pandora. I hope some of the families still have some shares or at least benefit from those original jewelry. And when I arrived, I met a young lady, and I asked her whether, "What was the first ring you bought or was given?" And that was a princess ring.
How many of those have you sold? Because that must be millions with that princess design. I wish you continued good growth and good profits. That was from Bjørn Hansen, from private shareholders.
Thank you for those questions. I'm looking at maybe Alexander? Yes, please.
Thank you. Very good questions. So first, on who is buying? So our end customer is typically a woman, okay? So the Pandora brand has always been targeted at women. The reality is 50%-60% of our customers, i.e., the people that are buying, are men, okay? So a lot of the purchases are men, but they're buying typically for women. This is the, the normal split. So our main focus from a marketing standpoint is women, okay? You asked on stock turn. So we have roughly a stock turn of 2 in a year, okay? So it's a, well, 180 days, roughly, for each item. That's the, that's the average. I didn't fully get the question on network, but today, fundamentally, our network is comprised of, let's say, three main channels.
So we have what we call the concept stores, which you would find down on Strøget, and they can be either owned by us or a franchise partner. I'll come back to that. Then we have what we call multi-brand partners, so stores where you would find many different brands. And then we have e-commerce, which fundamentally is a Pandora-owned platform. So roughly 80% of all the customer transactions we do are directly with our customer, okay? Which is a very important point, because essentially, we're a direct-to-consumer brand, and it's incredibly important for the future of our strategy. If you remember the growth pillars, we have four. One of them is talking about personalization. Since I have 80% of the transactions happening with our end customer, I can now start collecting information about he or she, and then we can target our efforts much better.
On diamonds, I think last year we sold something like 65,000 pieces of diamond jewelry. We are buying from the Western world. We have not disclosed who we work with. That's an agreement we have with the vendor, but it's a Western-based company, so it's not India nor China. There are three ways to get to a diamond. Either you dig it up from the ground, or you replicate mother nature, so you apply high pressure with high temperature, big machines. This is predominantly what the Chinese and Indian suppliers are doing. And then there's a more modern technology, which is called chemical vapor deposition. In layman's terms, it's like a microwave oven. You put in like a plate with a lot of small carbon pieces.
You put the microwaves on, and you bombard it with carbon oxide, and essentially, you grow it like you do buns in your oven at home. And from this, you get a rough. All three end products is like a piece of rough. And there's absolutely no difference. Then this goes into cutting and polishing, and then finally, setting. Okay? On gold development, actually, the way we think about the business is not through a metal lens, okay? This is a producer mindset. We are not a producer. We are a brand. So what we try to talk to our customers is about the brand, about the beautiful designs, and then we have accessible price points.
Typically, since the mission all the way back from Per Enevoldsen was about democratizing the jewelry space, silver is a beautiful vehicle to bring beautiful designs at very affordable prices. So predominantly, we are using silver. We have a quite significant portion of the business today where we plate the silver with gold in different color variations. So we are not really looking at it through the lens of, is gold price up or down? Yes, of course, from a cost of goods standpoint, we are concerned when it goes up. But the way we go to market is to think through concepts and designs and making sure that it's affordable for the many people as we target. You mentioned India. Today, Pandora is not present in India, but we're looking to enter.
And again, there you need to be very mindful of if you enter as a, a metal play, then we should not enter, because the way the Indian consumer buys, they would not stand a chance. Because our pricing builds on the fact that we can kind of generate some of the- some affinity to the brand and, and therefore, charge a slightly different premium for, for the actual product. Russia, we immediately pulled out of Russia when they invaded Ukraine. We do no business with Russia or Belarus, for that matter. We do not buy anything, we do not transport, so we have nothing to do with Russia and Belarus, and we'll continue to do that for as long as they keep doing what they do to Ukraine.
Regarding the annual report, there is actually now a Danish smaller version available, so you can get that. Then I think you were talking about the Danish jewelry market and retro and all of those things. Denmark is an incredibly small jewelry market, but nevertheless, when we do innovation, we roll it out simultaneously across the globe, so we don't start here. The only exception to that rule was when we entered diamond, because it was a new segment for us, which we needed to learn about. That's why we just rolled out in one market, and now we've sequentially rolled it out in more markets. But that was essentially exception to how we run our business. In terms of whether we roll out retro products or other type of designs, we use a quite analytical approach.
We try to size up the opportunity, because remember, if we're gonna grow the type of numbers that we put up there, we need to grow by several million pieces each year. And you're all familiar with the Georg Jensen Company. So we need to grow more than the size, the entire size of a Georg Jensen Company every year in order to hit those numbers. So therefore, we need to be very analytical and very choiceful on where we enter with the various design ideas that we work on. So there's a lot of math and consumer research that sits behind this. And retro today is a rather a niche proposition, so that's not on the cards. I think those were the most questions there. Thank you.
Thank you for good questions and very thorough answers. I think we have also a Dansk Aktionærforening present, and I'll invite Bjarne Kongsted.
Yes, good afternoon. Good morning. As mentioned, my name is Bjarne Kongsted. I'm here at the AGM, representing the Association of Danish Shareholders. We're a shareholders association with 17,000 members, representing private investors and their interests. We have previously participated in Pandora's AGM, and we do so with great pleasure. Pandora has always been a share that prioritized paying their shareholders, and thereby their owners, through share buybacks and dividend, which is also the case for the financial year 2023. The company proposes to the general meeting a dividend of 18 DKK per share. That's an increase of 2 DKK compared to last year's, and that's a payout ratio of 136%, taking into account the announced share buyback program of DKK 4 billion. That's quite extraordinary with such a high payout ratio. But it's not that unusual for Pandora.
You've done that before. Throughout the past six financial years, the dividend percentage has been more than 100% for five of these six years. The dividend is DKK 1.5 billion, and the share buyback is DKK 4 billion this year, and that means that you benefit the shareholders more through the share buyback, which is the vast majority of the total payout to shareholders. It's probably no coincidence that the share can be bought for DKK 1,150 today. Last summer, you could buy it for DKK 550. That's a doubling in less than a year. Many companies in the Danish Stock Exchange could learn from Pandora when it comes to spoiling your owners, that is your shareholders, by giving them a part of the profits. Here, you don't just get a part of the profits, you get more than the profits.
So we were quite skeptical, rather the management was quite skeptical, to these issues last year at the general meeting. Last year, you said you expected a very difficult 2023, and in spite of that, you really ended up with a very good result. You have a profit for 2023 that was less than the year before in spite of good sales, but on the bottom line, it was a bit less than the DKK 5 billion of 2022. But the good result doesn't come out of the blue. It's been a busy year for the company in 2023, opening more—no less than 223 new stores.
As we heard in the report, of course, there are different kinds of stores and concepts, but in the last half of the year, you saw very good sales, particularly Christmas sales, and you saw organic growth of 9%. That bodes very well, and I hope that you are not as conservative when it comes to your guidance for 2024. But of course, it's always good to be cautious, and the share market always likes an upward adjustment along the way. The lab-grown diamonds is very interesting, and as I understand, it is an area that you expect a lot from in the company management. These diamonds should have a very little impact on the climate, which is great, and that could really disrupt the entire jewelry sector.
I would like to encourage the board of directors and the management to continue to focus on innovation and the development of new products, all the while being aware of the risks of operating in a global economy. I would also like to express my joy of the latest results we've seen from the company, including the fact that you continue to deliver growth and strong financial results. And now that old and well-known markets are back at full speed, including the US, which I suppose is still the largest market, we're also seeing a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to operate in. We've recently seen the financial markets being challenged with bank collapses, however, outside of Denmark's borders. But these changes can affect a large jewelry producer like Pandora?
We hope not, but how does the American market and the exchange rate of the US dollar impact Pandora? And in this connection, how does it look for the exchange rate of the US dollar, and what influence does it have on the company for the current year? Two years ago, the Danish Business Authority asked Pandora to report on sustainability in the annual report, and here the management said that they found it natural that the sustainability reporting to begin with would be a little off, compared to the expectations of the authorities. I would like to hear your view on that issue now. Finally, I would just like to thank you for your ongoing engagement in order to drive growth and making sure that the share continues to be of interest to shareholders.
I would like to wish you the best for the year ahead of us. Thank you.
Thank you very much for the comments, and there were a few questions, and I think, Anders Boyer will answer on behalf of Pandora. Please, Anders.
Thank you for those questions. Starting out on the U.S. Even though the U.S. is already, by far, the biggest market for Pandora, we see it's also one of the markets where we have the greatest and biggest growth opportunities in the years ahead. The U.S. jewelry market is very big, and we only have less than 2% market share in the U.S. And if you look across Europe, as an example, we have around 10% market share, both in the U.K., Italy, Spain, Australia as well. That's not in Europe, but they have 10% market share. So from that perspective, the U.S. market is still quite under-penetrated from a Pandora perspective, even though it's already almost a third of the revenue that we have there.
So a lot of opportunities in the years ahead. Also, in terms of opening up new stores, there's a lot of what we call white space in the U.S., meaning cities, areas where Pandora do not have a concept store or a store yet. So a lot—hopefully, a lot of growth to come in the U.S., in the years to come, again. And on the U.S., given that we have so much revenue in the U.S., a strong U.S. dollar is good for Pandora. We also have quite some cost in U.S. dollars, including silver. Silver is traded in U.S. dollar, but net-net, a strong U.S. dollar is good for Pandora.
So when the dollar weakened last year in 2023 compared to 2022, that hit us on the revenue line by roughly a quarter of a billion DKK, 250 million DKK, and it drags down the EBIT margin by 0.5 percentage points. So not a lot of help from the US dollar last year. This year, in 2024, it's turning around slightly, a little bit, so there will be 0.1-0.2 percentage points of help from a slightly stronger US dollar, but roughly neutral impact.
And then on the advice or the letter that we got from the authorities a couple of years back on the sustainability report, the thing that was brought up back then was not about what was disclosed as such, the sustainability information disclosed, but about the timing of the announcement. And back then, in 2021, we did not announce the annual report and the sustainability report at the same time. The annual report came first in early February, and then some weeks later, the sustainability report came. And in order to address that advice that we got from the authorities, then since then, we have been announcing them at the same time, both in 2022 and in 2023.
The sustainability report and annual report came at the same time. And then next year, in 2024, they're gonna be merged into one document based on the, on the new, EU regulation. Then it's all being merged into one big document. Thank you.
Thank you for that, Anders. Are there any additional comments at this stage? Then we will move to the next agenda item, which is adoption of the annual report for 2023. And I will show you here the auditor's statement included in the annual report, saying that in the auditor's 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 of the parent company as at thirty-first of December 2023, and of the results of the groups and the parent company's operations and cash flows for the financial year in 2023. It has been presented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, as adopted by the EU, and additional requirements of the Danish Financial Statements Act. So I'm just checking any additional comments or questions for the annual report?
I will then conclude that the annual report has been approved by the general meeting, and we'll move to the next item on the agenda concerning presentation of the remuneration report for 2023. The remuneration report has been prepared by the board and has been available on Pandora's website since this meeting was convened, and I will invite Peter to make a short presentation of the report.
Thank you, Pernille. The report was reviewed by the independent auditor, EY, and the auditors have not reported on any deficiencies in the report. The total fee for the board of directors increased by 22% in 2023 versus 2022, to ensure that the company's remuneration is in line with general market practice. The total remuneration of executive management in 2023 was unchanged from 2022. I would just like to add one note regarding the increase of 22% of the board fee, just so that you're aware, that the fee was not increased since the IPO of the company in 2010 until 2022, and that was why, primarily why the growth was so high. Then I hand over to Pernille. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. As mentioned in the introduction, and in accordance with the Danish Companies Act, the remuneration report is only subject to an advisory vote. So I would like to ask if any shareholders have any comments or questions for the remuneration report? Otherwise, I will consider it adopted. So thank you for that, and then we will move on to the next agenda item, which is adoption of proposal on the board's remuneration for 2024. And actually, I will skip this agenda item for now, because we have a proposal later on regarding amendment of the remuneration policy, which will affect the remuneration of the board. So we will come back to this item a bit later on, but for now, we will skip it and move to item number five, which is the proposed distribution of profit. No big surprises here.
You have already heard a bit about it, but I will give the word to Peter to present the plan for cash distribution.
Thank you again, Pernille. Based on the strong performance that we heard about today in 2023, 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 shareholder to approve a dividend of DKK 18 per share, and this is a growth of 13% versus the dividend paid last year, reflective of Pandora's progressive dividend policy. The board of directors already has 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. Our capital structure policy remains unchanged, and the leverage remains low. So I will now give the word back to Pernille, please.
Thank you for that, and I think we have a slide here showing the proposal by the board regarding the buyback and the dividend. Are there any questions or comments for this agenda item number five? I will consider this approved then also by the shareholders. Thank you for that, and we will move to the next item, which is election of members to the board. We have here, shown on the screen, all the seven members of the board are all up for re-election, and information about each of the board members has been available on the website in connection with the notice of the meeting. I would like to ask if there are any questions or comments regarding re-election of members to the board?
That doesn't seem to be the case, then I will conclude all the board members have been re-elected and congratulate each one of you on your re-election. Then we will also move to... Thank you, Bjørn, for the applause. That's in place. Thank you. Let's see if the auditors can get an applause also, because now we have election of auditor for Pandora. This year it's not only the audit of the annual report, but we are also proposing the company is also proposing that EY will be elected auditor to give a statement on the sustainability report that we just heard Alex explain a while ago, will be part of the annual report going forward. So two tasks for EY going forward. Are there any questions or comments for that?
Thank you, then we consider EY to be re-elected, and congratulations to you also. We will then move to item number 8, which is a proposal on a resolution on discharge of liability of the board and executive management. This means that only matters that have been disclosed in the annual report are included in such a decision. Are there any questions or comments for that? Then I will consider discharge to be granted by the annual meeting. Thank you. We'll move to item number 9, which is proposals by board and/or shareholders. We have not received any proposals by shareholders, but the board has included 4 or 5 proposals this year. 5? Thank you. It's a lot, that's why I was confused. We will now go by them one by one.
I remember it's a bit hard to look at the agenda at the beginning, so we will take one proposal at a time, and the first one is 9.1, regarding reduction of the company's share capital. And this is a proposal due to the share buyback. So according to the Danish Business Authority's practice, cancellation of the treasury shares that were purchased by the company in the buyback is to be considered a capital reduction by distribution to the shareholders. So in the notice convening the meeting here today, the board stated that the nominal amount of 7 million treasury shares has been acquired in the period between February 2023 and January 2024, for a total amount of DKK 4,676,617,114.
This means that in addition to the nominal amount of DKK 7 million, an amount of DKK 4,669,617,114 has been distributed to the shareholders. Any... That was a lot of figures. They're all on the screen, and I think in the notice also, if I do like this. Any questions or comments for this item? I consider this approved also, and we will go ahead and register the capital decrease, and then there will be a four-week waiting period until we can actually affect it. So it will be a while before you will see the updated articles of association. The next item on the agenda is approval of amendments to the indemnification scheme that has previously been approved by the annual meeting.
In April of 2023, so shortly after the annual general meeting last year, the Danish Business Authority expressed its general opinion on indemnification schemes benefiting board members and members of management. And following this general opinion from the Danish Business Authority, the board reviewed the wording of the company's remuneration policy, and on that basis, the board proposes to amend the wording of the paragraph called Directors and Officers Liability in Section seven of the Remuneration Policy. And we have included the whole wording here on the screen. I think for the sake of everybody, I will not read it all aloud.
It has been fully disclosed prior to the meeting, but I will highlight that, the purpose is, to, be able to indemnify, in addition to directors and liabilities insurance, board members from, liability or loss arising out of claims raised by any third party. That means not the company or a company within the group. Also, any applicable personal taxes for board members will be covered by the indemnification. The indemnification shall be for the sole benefit of members of the board, and no third party shall be entitled to rely on or derive any payments therefrom. It will be secondary to the normal D&O insurance taken out by the company, and it will not include claims raised due to fraud, criminal offenses, willful misconduct, or gross negligence by any members of the board.
It will be limited to a specific period, counted from the time of departure from the board. And the board will be authorized to manage and administer the scheme, and take any decisions under the scheme in accordance with the general meeting's decision. Any questions or comments for these precisions to the already adopted indemnification scheme from previous years? ... Does not seem to be the case. I will consider the changes adopted. Thank you for that. We will move to item 9.3. This is an item regarding approval of the remuneration policy and includes three sub-items. The first one is a specification of the derogation clause. The derogation clause concerns which items of the remuneration policy that the board can deviate from in specific instances. And it's all included here. So, now it's been, I think previously it was just a general derogation clause.
Now it has actually been specified what can be derogated from. Any questions or comments for this clarification for the remuneration policy? I consider this adopted also, and we will move to the next proposal, which is amendment of the terms for the maximum opportunity in the short-term incentive plan, also called the STIP, for executive management in section four of the remuneration policy. So the proposal is to increase the maximum short-term incentive plan payout to executive management from 100% to 160% of the fixed annual base salary when we're reaching maximum performance under the short-term incentive plan. Any questions or comments for this?
I will consider this approved also, and we will move to the next proposal, which is an amendment on the method of calculating the travel allowance, allowance for members of the board, and this proposal is the reason we didn't deal with the proposal for the board's remuneration in item four. So we'll come back to that in a short while, because there's a proposal that the travel allowance included in the remuneration policy today is amended, so that it's changed to be a fixed percentage of the base fee. Yeah. So it's six percent for continental travel and twelve percent for intercontinental travel. But the general meeting will, as normal, decide on the base fee as always. So this is just a way to calculate the travel allowance. Any questions or comments for that? I will consider this approved also.
Now we're moving back to item four that I left out previously regarding adoption of proposal on the Board's remuneration. As you can see here on the screen, it's a proposal to, let's see, that the Chair of the Board will receive DKK 1.7 million, Deputy Chair DKK 855,000, and members of the Board, each DKK 570,000. That is all in accordance with the remuneration policy and the multipliers for the Board fee stated therein. Also, we have fees for the Chair of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee and members of the committee, and also for the Chair of the Audit Committee and members of the Audit Committee.
As you will see at the bottom of this slide, the travel allowance is stated within a continent as DKK 34.2 and intercontinental, DKK 68.4 compared to the DKK 33 ,000 and the DKK 66, 000 of last year. These are in thousands. So any questions or comments on the board's remuneration? I will consider this approved also by the general meeting. Thank you for that, and we will go back to the normal agenda order. Come back to the authorization to the board to let the company buy back own shares. This has been mentioned previously also, which will enable the board to initiate buyback programs. The authorization will run until 14th March 2029, and Pandora may acquire own shares up to a nominal value of 10% of the share capital.
The purchase price to be paid in connection with acquisition of own shares must not diverge from the price quoted on any regulated market where the purchase is carried out by more than 10%. So it will be purchased at market price. Any questions or comments for the authorization for the board to buy back own shares? I consider this approved also. And then the final item on the agenda is an authorization to the chair of the meeting, and that would be me, in order to actually register the decisions made by the general meeting here today. So I hope I will have a positive vote on that also. Thank you for that. Now, we will move to the last agenda item, which is any other business.
This means that all the agenda items have now been dealt with and handled by the general meeting, and if there are anybody else has any comments or questions, please. Yes, I'll let you know in a minute. Yep, thank you. Just a note that at this point in time, it will not be possible to have any proposals to vote on. The formal part of the general meeting is over, but please, if you have a comment, approach.
Yes, my name is Keld Beyer. As I usually say, my website is kjeld beyer.dk. My question is: what will the sustainability report cost the company? And I would also like to ask what you pay the auditors for auditing this sustainability report. I mean, this environmental stuff has become quite an industry of its own, particularly CO₂. But trees and plants can't grow without CO₂. But even if it's only a very small part of the total amount of air, this is something that has been blown out of proportion to a big problem. So you take out the key, which is giving life to our plants and trees, and you make it into a problem, and you get a lot of people to spend a lot of time on this issue.
I mean, all of these environmentalists are flying all over the world in their own private jets, but that is no problem at all. Even though that emits a lot of CO₂, they also use their own luxury cars, but we, the ordinary people, we need to be put under pressure. So this is a big problem, and I also think that you get this muddled up with the whole CO₂ emission thing, and then the exhaust gas from the exhaust pipes of the cars, that's a completely different thing, different emissions altogether. That's not something the plants need. So it's kind of like you abuse this agenda. Our normal use of cars and so on, and you mix that together with air quality and so on. But now you educated a lot of people for this, so now what should they do?
Well, we should establish a ministry of environment. I mean, it's one big bluff, this whole CO₂ thing. I hope you will look into these matters that I mentioned here. And about the weather, we have these machines that can actually change the climate. They can change the weather. They can create rain or snow or storms. You can use these machines for any kind of weather you want to create. I would like to know how many of these machines have been used for creating the weather systems and weather events that we've seen in recent years. They have one in Norway, I know, and they can completely change the weather, and that means that now we need even more environmental control, but they create the weather themselves. It really, it's really smart.
And the same with COVID. I mean, Bill Gates already had a patent taken out on COVID back in 2018, and then the disease came about in 2020. They created the disease, but they also produced the vaccines needed for the disease. I mean, it's very smart, and I think the Danes should really wake up. And the people who are raising the flags and saying that something's wrong here, they are being lynched. I mean, I'm not gonna mention any names here, but in 2024, we're going to see a lot of big conflicts in the world because these fraudsters are going to be disposed. The American election is going to be very interesting as well.
Thank you for those comments. I'm sure Pandora has nothing to do with the weather today, but and also not the the requirements regarding sustainability reporting and the auditor's role is something that is required by law. But I don't know. Would you like to add a few comments?
Okay, so this is an AGM for Pandora, not a political platform to have opinions about sustainability. So if we stick to Pandora, we're following the regulations. We have actually the most ambitious sustainability agenda within the industry, so we're trying to show the way. So consumers can choose to buy jewelry that's made of recycled silver and gold today if they buy from us, so that's a choice you can make. The cost of the report, I think, is DKK 1 million-DKK 2 million. I don't think it's the biggest expense we have in the OpEx lines of this company. And I think I'll just end on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Alexander. We have another speaker. Yeah. Lars Skov Andersen, please.
Yeah. I mean, I fully support the previous speaker that the reporting has gone overboard, that it is the number of parameters that need to be taken into account and reported on is enormous, and it is really not, in my opinion, valid. In a project I had in Vietnam, the Danish Water Sector Program, the biggest Danida ever had, I managed to reduce the number of pages in the half-annual report from 1500 to 150. So using KPIs, so it is possible to report sensibly, much less detail than is required by legislation. But what I wanted to say, I look forward to the next...
I apologize, I have not time to read your report, but I look forward to learn in the next report, sustainability report, what is the CO2 balance of producing a diamond?
[audio distortion]
That's good. That's the Danish version. Congratulations. But how much we tie up? Of course, we tie up carbon in trees, in vegetation, in the soil, but how much do we tie up in an artificial diamond? And is it, how does this match with the energy used to produce the artificial diamond? I don't know if it, if it is in the report, but I would like to see it next year. Thank you.
So when you, when you dig up a diamond from the ground, you will expend at least 160 kilos of CO2. When you produce it, the way we produce it, it's around 8 kilos, so it's less than 5% of the CO2 emission. And on top of that, we only use renewable energy. So actually, this is the equivalent of a pair of jeans, and the diamond will last a little bit longer than your jeans, I submit. So that's it.
Thank you. Any further questions regarding Pandora's business? That doesn't seem to be the case, then I will conclude. No further business to be transacted here today. I'd like to thank the board and management, and all the participating interested shareholders for a good meeting. Close the formal part of the meeting, and invite Pandora's chair, Peter, to give the final words, please.
Thank you, Pernille, and thank you to all your shareholders, who attended our annual meeting, today. It's been a great pleasure to see you all, and I look forward to seeing you again next year. So the only thing, left for me to say is that the meeting is adjourned, so thank you very much.