Very welcome for the presentation of the annual results 2022. 2022 that still was not a complete year in that sense that the 1st quarter we were still impacted in several markets by the COVID restrictions, going from limitations in operating our theaters to extremely the closure of some of our theaters. The 1st quarter was as well the period with almost no content. It was the end of the 1st quarter that the first blockbuster was released by Hollywood. Despite all of this, we made 27%-- sorry, 72.7%, sorry, or 19.6% of our turnover. I think that this is a really good performance. What encourages us is the fact that the customer is demanding more for premium products than ever before.
We continued to push and to invest in those premium products as well in Europe, essentially rolling out those new, what we call here, Cosy Seats combined with recliners in Canada and as well in Landmark. As we speak, we are rolling out after that we tested in the American market as well the Laser ULTRA as the Cosy Seats, called their Premier Seats and VIP Seats. We are negotiating with the local teams because they ask for more, and more CapEx to go faster and faster because the occupancy of those seats is easily double of what we made in normal seats. Combined with this, we see a much higher demand and take-up rate in our shops. We thought in the beginning, is this an after pandemic effect and impact?
It continues. We are very disciplined as well, in, you know, raising our product prices with inflation. This makes that 2022 is amongst one year, over the last 10 years, one of the years where we made most cash flow. The fact that Hollywood is still recovering, and I will talk about that later, makes for us that we are very proud that we made this result already with the attendance, the visitors that we only made in 2022. That might be a little bit disappointing compared to what we all expected in terms of recovery for 2022. Essentially, and I'm missing. Voila. Here, you can see it on the slide as well.
Essentially what has been going on, if I go back two, three years, the image we had was that 2022, so the period after the pandemic, that we were not or we would be in a situation that we would not know what to show first in terms of blockbusters because Hollywood essentially continued to postpone their blockbusters, and in the meantime continued with their sets and to record their movies. That's something that didn't happen. We were not, let's say, overwhelmed by blockbusters. There are three essential reasons for that. The first reason is China. China that was a very uncertain market until the end of the year in terms of the pandemic. You have to know that Hollywood, for a blockbuster, the Chinese market is as important as the North American market in volume.
When you release a movie, you start your marketing campaign two to three months upfront. Once you push the button for your campaigns, it's a machine you can't stop. That's the reason why Hollywood continued to postpone movies to 2023 and even 2024. For the fourth quarter only, we had the equivalent of 2.6 million visitors that we had in our budget. Our budgets are, in terms of visitors, never aggressive, as you know. We had for 2.6 million visitors that were postponed to this year. That's one of the elements that impacted heavily the end of 2022 and the results we made. The second bottleneck for Hollywood is the capacity of the editing studios.
As I said, during the pandemic, the studios continued to record their movies, but the editing became an issue once that home working became an obligation, and it's not on a laptop that you can edit a movie. Still today, that is an issue. And we told you before, with some of you, that even a week before Avatar, we were not certain that we were going to have Avatar in all the versions that it was going to be available in. We succeeded, that's still an issue. This is I think for me one of the reasons that excites me the most, the studios waited for one and half to two years during the pandemic to green-light new movies.
It's not because they didn't have the time to green-light movies, but my reading is that they waited to see how streaming, and essentially Premium VOD was going to perform. For a streaming and a Premium VOD, so for a home entertainment market, you make different, read cheaper, content. Right now they learned, and there we were not wrong, because that's something we did talk about as well at that moment in time. Today, Premium VOD is dead. Streaming is very popular, but it's not profitable. Disney Plus is losing EUR 1.5 billion a quarter on its streaming platform.
That's the reason why most of the studios are coming back on their approaches and going back to the old strategy, and are telling us as a new fact that the more you make in a theatrical environment, the more successful a movie will be in a home entertainment environment. As if we didn't know that, they would have consulted us better two t o three years ago. That's essentially what is going on. Studios like Warner, where you have a new management and are very open on what the situation was. I remind you that Warner, during the pandemic, was announcing that 17 of their blockbusters were going to go day-and-date straight to HBO Max. They came back after two movies on their steps.
Their ambition is to come back in 2024 on the old rhythm of movie releases. We had eight Warner Bros. movies in 2022. We will have 12 movies this year, they will come back to 23-24 movies from 2024 on. What the case of Warner Bros. is illustrative for most of the other blockbusters or Hollywood studios. That's, let's say in French, the fil rouge, that's what is behind these results. We made 90% of our revenue with only 72% of the visitors. If because we do this with a slightly larger group, we builded five new theaters during the pandemic, we acquired three more theaters, we have to annualize the acquisitions that we made during 2019.
If we would, if every visitor would come back like for like, we would make around 52 million visitors. If you look at the performance of the group today, there is still a lot of potential. Am I stating with this that 52 million visitors will come back? I don't know. What we know is that we are not at the saturation point. Even for this year, if you would replace the first quarter of last year, that was very poor in content, and we were even closed in some markets, with the performance of this year, that would give you already a completely different result for 2023. We're very excited about that. On top of that, we started very strong in the month of January.
We made close to the 2019 visitors in Europe, but we did 125% of the revenue. We did less visitors in North America because their local content is non-existent. We did close to 76%, but we made more than 100% of the revenue of 2019 in those markets. A very strong start of the year. We have more content to come, not as much as pre-pandemic. That will be still a year. Let's say that where we had a couple of big movies last year, now we have releases in every month. For the time being, Titanic works well and Ant-Man is as the next blockbuster to be released, is very promising.
For those who are following us longer, it's the 15th year that we have on slide 5, the three strategic pillars. We continued to work and to deepen those out and with maybe a couple of projects that will be more promising for the future than what we have been doing so far. First of all, we launched the Movie Club, first in Canada, later in Belgium and in the Netherlands. The Movie Club is a subscription formula, but not an unlimited one. The entrance is easier and cheaper for the customer because it's in Belgium at EUR 9.95, that which is around 25% discount compared to the normal 2D adult ticket. You commit for six months. We will deliver you a voucher at EUR 9.95 every month.
You can bring a companion at the same price. Only one. It's not a group formula. You get 10% discount in the shops. Essentially, we are today working on more premiumization. We see that the blockbuster moviegoer, the one who comes twice a year on average, is less price-sensitive. On top of that, we have been very disciplined, like in the past, but this year a little bit more challenging, to increase our product prices with inflation. In fact, we launched this product because we know that the frequent moviegoer who is maybe a little bit more price-sensitive and who was already before looking at buying vouchers, the 10 to see formulas and essentially already paying a lower average ticket value. Well, in this way, we give them a little more discount.
This needs to result in a slightly higher visitor frequency. That's in fact the approach and the background of the Movie Club. We launched as well Cine K in Belgium. Cine K is something that we established years ago in France and is more for the fan of the more cultural, not really art house, more the crossover movie. It's still popcorn is still allowed. You know, you have an introduction to the movie, and after the movie you can have a drink and talk to other customers who saw the movie about the movie. That's working very well. That's something that we launched last year in Belgium as well, and it's going quite well. We executed, and it was on the slide before as well, our Entrepreneurship plans.
We talked about that before. We already confirmed for the H1 results that those plans were fully executed and effective. Those contribute as well to the result of the group, as well in supporting of more sales, as in supporting efficiency. Jeroen will explain you later on that the, let's say, the general operating costs of the company are absolutely under control, and at the level of 2019. This in the background of more theaters that we have in the portfolio, and so more overhead costs. That demonstrates in fact, what the Entrepreneurship plan had as impact. Together with that, we are working on our Star plans. Our Star plans will need to create and stimulate innovation, new product development.
Essentially the difference between the entrepreneurship plan is that, as we explained before, it are proven business cases. We lowered our break-even point, and every year we do our 5% exercise, but based on, let's say, proven business cases, where the star plans are non-proven business cases. It's more entrepreneurship, so maybe we should have swapped the names of the star plan, and the entrepreneurship plan, but okay. That's something we are working on and where we do have the ambition to launch every year, new products, new approaches, and to increase with, you know, new concepts and entrepreneurship, the revenue per visitor or attract new visitors. Finally, and that took a lot of time, for us and essentially for the ICT departments to develop is the project MovieNow.
I talked a bit during the coffee, but not everyone was at the table. MovieNow is in fact, born out of the conviction that we have that, and the observation that we have that after a big blockbuster, we saw a long tail, more visitors in the period to come with, let's say, more average movies or non-blockbuster movies. Essentially, this was caused by the fact that someone who comes for the blockbuster often says, "Okay, we should do this more often, coming to the movies. After all, it's fun." It's the cheapest night out on top of that.
Often people decide when they saw the trailer in the pre-show, "Let's come and see that movie." First thing that we did with that insight was the so-called Discovery Day, something that we still organize, and where we invite customers for free to come and watch trailers for the movies we will have for the upcoming season. We started there in a non-digital communication approach. So we gave them a list. You could leave us your email address and say, "Keep me posted on that movie, that trailer, and that yes and no." We tested, and we saw that the take-up rate was two to three times higher. That's something that we want to organize in a permanent way. The QR code is a unique code for each seat in each theater.
you know, you just can scan with your mobile phone, what you already did in a restaurant, I guess. But here, the app that you will open will be unique in that sense that it's, it correlates with what is going on on the screen. The first thing that we are going to launch, and we have one theater to test in Antwerp, is what I just said is keep me posted for the trailer. We are thinking about launching in-seat dining. In the Cosy Seats, you will be able to open a menu, only those seats. We will bring you a more upscale product. Think about a sushi, think about a good glass of wine, a cocktail, or a mocktail. Adding even more experience for the customer and pushing, of course, our revenue per visitor.
What we will need to test, and to learn in the future, in the near future is, can we do that in a profitable way? 'Cause that's quite labor-intensive. We could create interaction with, screen advertising as well. If, BMW makes publicity for the new Mini Cooper, you want a test drive? Yes, we give those data to BMW, which has much more value than just showing a publicity. Or you have a voting system in the B2B environment and so on. I'm very excited and probably a lot of things we never thought about, maybe we could ask analysts to make an instant evaluation of what we are telling you. That's maybe for the future.
That's pretty much what we are developing within our strategic pillars, and we are as well preparing, could we, for future growth of the company, make that some of the concepts that we developed and the way of working, the way of managing, that it can be easier implemented in a more efficient way in new targets. That's another topic we are working on. We are behind the scenes, clearly preparing for a further expansion of the Group. Talking about expansion, Metz Amphitheatre was the fifth theater in a row, as new build that we opened. It was one of the five theaters that were under construction the moment that the pandemic did hit us.
At that moment in time, we decided to continue with the construction, which was going to impact, of course, the cash capacity and the cash or deposit, the strength to survive the pandemic. As you all know, we came out of that from a financial point of view very well. That's the fifth. We did the first, what I would say, cheap or free M&A with the acquisition of two cinemas in Spain, in Barcelona, and in Marbella. Essentially, why I'm talking about free M&A, because we are and we are in other markets as well approached by landlords that were not paid during the pandemic, but even after the startup, during 2022 that were not paid. They approach us to find out if we would pay them.
Of course, there we go into a negotiation and try to come to a lower break-even point. It's not our goal to solve the problem of the landlord, but to do a deal. That's what we did with those two theaters. We told you before that we're thinking in scenarios. Not that we are saying that's going to happen, but we're thinking scenarios. Even if we would lose 35% of the visitors that we made in 2019 in those theaters, we would still be above break even. That's essentially what we try to do.
Amneville was an acquisition where we, at a low multiple and with an important improvement potential, acquired Amneville, which is for us in the catchment area, of Thionville, Metz, Nancy, and which gives us, let's say, which makes us one of the only players in that catchment area. Next to improvement potential, it will give us some pricing power on top. Yeah, that's another acquisition, and is including the real estate where we are excited about. We will continue and are working as we speak on a couple of other build-on acquisitions. We are approached as well for, let's say, bigger acquisitions, even for extreme big acquisitions. We always told you before the pandemic that we wanted to be an operator that combines a lower than average risk with a higher than average return.
That hasn't changed, the risk profile of the group, in the background of some entrepreneurship is still on the table. I told you before that, we worked on the rollout successfully of Kinepolis concepts in Canada and the U.S. We have been working as well on an acceleration of the laser transition going from xenon projectors to laser projectors. We focused essentially on Europe, because going to laser projectors, comes with an important saving on energy consumption. In the North Americas, we are confronted with 10%-15% higher energy prices, while in some markets in Europe, the prices went up 5x, 6x.
Although we were still hedged in some markets during 2023 or 2022 and some for 2023, this is something that in terms of cost is absolutely under control. It speaks for itself that your return on investment in Europe is much higher, and even in some markets, even higher. One of the markets we focused on in the first step was Spain, for example. We again ordered an important number of installations to roll out this year. At the end of this year, we esteem that 77% of our theaters in Europe will be lasers. Something that fits as well, we will come back on that later on in our ESG strategy. As well, we see that for the customer, we bring more light.
Essentially, after Avatar, we see that 3D on a laser projector is just performing much better and that the customer satisfaction on 3D on laser is much higher than before. Hopefully promising for the take-up rates for 3D, for future 3D movies. Here you have some pictures of the new theater we opened in Amphitheatre in Metz. Here you have a picture of Mataró in Barcelona and in La Cañada in Marbella, two theaters that were former Cinesa theaters. Cinesa is a daughter company of AMC that you all know. These will be remodeled in the near future, and both theaters are already from day one, equipped with laser projectors. Here you have Amnéville from Gaumont Pathé. In the meantime, we have, of course, Kinepolis on the façade. Brings us to the dividend proposition for this year.
This week, the board of directors, let's say, decided to propose to the general assembly again, to go for a dividend. What we will propose is EUR 0.26 gross dividend per share, which corresponds to 25% payout ratio, while before we were at 50%. We think that this is, let's say, a sign of confidence in the future. In the background of this, we said, "Let's go for a lower payout ratio until we can work further on deleveraging the company, and building up again more the solvency, and preparing the company for external growth." That's essentially what is in the background of this decision. We think that the recovery of the result could go very fast with more blockbusters and visitors coming back.
We thought that this was the right moment in time to start thinking and talking about this. This will make that even in the next period to come, we will be probably at a lower dividend, and we did set an internal target for ourselves. It could be that in a year or two years from now, the capacity will be back to go back to a 50% payout ratio. It will depend on, you know, opportunities in external expansion in the meantime. This will be something that will be evaluated year by year, by the board of directors. Here you have an overview of the number of theaters we have in the portfolio today, with two closures of two small cinemas as well in Canada.
We told you the moment that we acquired the portfolio in Canada that from the 43 theaters that we at that moment in time acquired, that half of the portfolio were multiplexes, some megaplexes, but that we had as well, like in Yukon for instance, very small theaters with a very limited visitor number. Where we knew that the day that we were going to be in the need of replacing the heating installation, that probably we're not going to have any longer a return. That's what is going on here. In the meantime, we have been building bigger theaters, serving bigger catchment areas in the Canadian market. Here you see the results. You know, the economies of scale that we make in the company, the operational leverage is quite high.
Making with only EUR 29.3 million compared to EUR 40.3 million, 90% of the revenue and a EBITDA of EUR 140 million is very strong if you ask me. You see as well the EBITDA margin where we compare to 2019, where we made EUR 3.54 with 40 million visitors. We made now with 29.3 million, EUR 3.89 EBITDA per visitor. Very exciting. This is the result of, on the one hand, the Entrepreneurship plan, and on the other hand, the higher demand and the higher revenue per visitor. This is very promising, the day that we will make or that we will have more blockbusters and will make more customers.
I guess this year already will show the impact of this because just by replacing the startup first quarter of last year with the quarter we are making right now will give a, will give a completely different image for 2023. We made EUR 27.5 million compared to EUR 54.4 million. We have of course more depreciations and so on, but Jeroen will lead you through all those numbers. The free cash flow with EUR 70 million is except for one year the highest that we realized in the past 10 years.
You see as well the leveraging of the group ending the year with EUR 420.5 million net financial debt compared to EUR 474.5 million beginning of the year in the background that we did invest again a lot in as well internal as external expansion. Here you have the adjusted key financials, very minor adjustments and Jeroen as well will go more in depth. The conclusion is not different. On the contrary, the adjusted EBITDA per visitor is EUR 0.02 higher at EUR 3.91 per visitor for 2022. We took as well, as we said before, the opportunity of the closures and the fact that we had as management more time to work on other things to come to what would be our...
or what is going to be our ESG strategy for the future. Here you see an overview of the different building blocks, and what we are going to work on. You see here as well what we realized in the past year. We are working on translating this in KPIs for each of the objectives and the goals. This year, and it's part of the incentive program for the budget owners, so the 10% of the employees that we have in the group, to work on a an improvement plan for each of those KPIs. Essentially, we have been working for 10 years under, for instance, the Green Star umbrella on reducing our carbon footprint. This time we wanted to do that in a more structured way, in a more uniform way per country.
Essentially, we, in a self-learning organization, we wanted to have the involvement, and the sense for detail and what is going on on the floor from our budget owners to become here as well, let's say, one of the leaders in the industry in terms of executing an ESG policy that is strong, and contributing to all the stakeholders. Here an overview of the periods that we were closed, red, or that we were still partially impacted, light blue compared to the blue periods where we were open, and that as well for 2021 as 2022. Having this in mind, that's what you need to have in mind to, let's say, read these results. If you ask me, that's not learning us a lot because of the slide I just showed.
I think comparing to 2019 is the better approach what we did before, because that gives you a better view on what the further potential of recovery is. Here as well, revenue by country impacted by what I just described. Revenue by activity to some extent. But we see here, for instance, in Belgium, although the first quarter there were almost everything was starting up again, and business to business events, you know, for a B2C customer coming back to the movies is impulse tomorrow. In business to business, an event that's planned. The first quarter, there was barely no activity. In some markets like Belgium, we did the same revenue as in 2019 already, and the year started very strong for that department.
I would say that the rhythm of recovery is less content-driven than the B2C market. That's why, in 2022 B2B represents 12% compared to the 9% the year before. Top five movies. There you see that, let's say the weight of that top five in the total tickets is slightly decreasing. In 2019, that was around 22.9%, if I recall that well. You see here back that the weight of the top movies is let's say that more, and more mid-sized movies, and other content is launched. That's what this slide illustrates, and that's something that will come back to the old normal as well, if you ask me.
We have now some footage to show you about the way we launched Avatar in different markets, and then I will be back to talk a bit about the lineup. In the coming slides, you will see an overview of the upcoming movies for the rest of the year. As we said, it's better spread through the year, and we have more of for everyone this year. Last year it was a big couple of very big movies like James Bond, Top Gun, Avatar and Zillion in Belgium. Here it's better spread during the year. More content again. We see, let's say, a couple of very positive things happening in the market.
Amazon, who announced that they were going to invest $1 billion on a yearly basis in theatrical content, that comes in addition of what is already invested. You have to imagine $1 billion is the equivalent of four James Bond movies on a yearly basis. The new Ben Affleck movie from Amazon was announced as well to go exclusively for theatrical release, which is of course exciting news. Amazon is a new player buying MGM, as you know. Lionsgate, in the meantime, announced in the past three weeks to come as well with eight new movies. As we speak, in the industry, we are talking to companies like Apple, we'll invest as well in theatrical releases.
If you ask me, I think that there will be, let's say, that Asian players will come to the market as well. I would like to remind you that youngsters are much more oriented to the Asian markets, and culture as well, referring to TikTok, that is Chinese, but referring as well to Deadpool. That was the most successful series on Netflix and is from Korean origin. I'm happy to hand over now to Jeroen, who will guide you through the financial results for 2022. Jeroen, the floor is yours.
Good afternoon to everybody. Also from my side, very welcome to this review of the 2022 financials of Kinepolis. Quite excited actually, looking at the market circumstances that Kinepolis did that well. Eddy already talked a bit about the visitors, and that it brought half a billion EUR of turnover, and it's actually what we do with those turnovers, how we bring it to the bottom line and create cash out of it. That is really what excites us. If you look at the different activities that we have here on the screen, you can see that not only did the diversifying in countries, but also by activity, has been very rewarding. All activities, all countries, and every activity have been growing versus 2021.
If you look at the EBITDA and EBITDA per visitor, we have been increasing versus 19. That means that the strategy taken by the company many years ago is really fruitful. The EBITDA margin versus 2021, we're not there yet, huh? That was close to 26%. We are at 23%. These economies of scale are still playing a little bit against us with the number of visitors. This will come. If we can return some visitors, add some M&A, we are sure that the economics will work better. Second part of the financials is the net financial debt part, yeah? The leverage we have.
Also there we have, I would say, exciting news that the cash that we took out of the P&L can return, can turn our debt downwards, also keep on investing, we're still investing, and I will have a separate slide on that, on the maintenance part and the expansion. I think not all companies on our sector can say the same. The debt goes down by EUR 51 million. Free cash flow, as Eddie said, has been extremely high. The second highest in the last 10 years, for sure. EUR 70 million. Most of them, those proceeds come from operations, of course. We paid some interest. We're back in a tax payable situation. That's good, huh? Because we have income.
Working capital plays a little bit in our favor in 2022. If you look at our covenants, taking into account the club deal covenant definition, we are at 3.6. The max we could have according to the covenant was 3.75. We extended in December until the 30th of June, the holiday covenant, out of prudence. At the end, we did not need it. That's I'm very happy about that. It shows the powerful power we have to convert the cash into a very strong balance sheet. Here, an overview of revenue by country. If you compare it to 2019, you can see that every country is picking up again.
We're back on track there. You will see that the U.S. is doing more than its fair share. This is mainly related that in 2019, U.S. was there only for a couple of months. If I look to the box office, which is a bit more than 50% of our turnover, there, I think we can be very excited. EUR 261 million revenues on box office. Of course, a big increase versus 2021. We're not there yet versus 2019. Still 14% off, huh? If you look at it per visitor, 2019, we were at EUR 7.55, and now we're at EUR 8.90, which is a very nice increase.
partially inflation, but also partially because we have been investing in premium formats, and the customers like it. They pay extra for these premium formats, and that you can see in this ticket price. quite excited by that. I think the next one is even more exciting is that the in-theater sales, so the shops, we are actually in absolute numbers, EUR 155 million. We're in line with 2019. If you look at that, it's a very good result. And we have been seeing this also just pre-pandemic that people were picking up more in the shops and picking up a little bit more expensive items. And this continues. This continues after pandemic, I would say even with a little acceleration behind it.
This is not only inflation-driven, it's also habits of people that are in our favor. We're going to EUR 5.20 per visitor, which is a very nice increase versus 2019. B2B revenue, Eddy already announced it, 22, some theaters were still closed in Q1. It always takes some time for companies to invest back into B2B. Customers started to come back in second quarter and that we saw that the second half of the year, we were at a very nice beat in B2B, and this continues to be the fact in 2023 as well.
Still a little bit behind on 2019 on-screen advertising, but in B2B, we are even above 2019 already, even with 1 quarter, with some closure of people having no interest in B2B activity. We're very excited about this one. Real estate, also there, not still not at the level of 2019, but catching up, catching up quickly, increase of 26% versus 2021. Also, we are not giving any holidays there anymore. Everybody's needs to pay its concessions. Brightfish, 1.5% of revenue, increasing, not at the 2019 levels. The market is what we notice there is that it's quite sensitive to economic situation, but we do see the second half of the year that it's picking up.
2023, it continues to be there. The highest growth we saw in film distribution, of course, this is only 1% of revenue, but we're proud to be an important distributor in Belgium. This is mainly linked to our local content, The Zillion: Your Nature really brought a lot of visitors to our theaters and theaters of competitors in Belgium. We beated here 2019 by 50%, and 24 releases. This on the revenue part. If you look at our operating costs, marketing and selling expenses, I would say we are still a little bit below 2019 levels. They are quite linked to the number of visitors.
I would say we're almost at the same pace per visitor. If you look at administrative expenses, Eddy already referred to it, Entrepreneurship plan, we are below 2019 by a couple of EUR millions. This is really looking in-depth during the pandemic on what expenses should be abolished, and looking at 2022, we really succeeded in that. Operating profits, there you see EUR 5 million. That's also still some COVID-related grants that we received. They will normally go back to 2019 level in 2023. Okay, we talked about number of visitors per country and revenue per country. Here you can see the EBITDA and the EBITDAL per visitor. Let's take EBITDAL, EUR 114 million spread per country.
As you can see, Belgium is still the most important country, followed by the France, and the Netherlands, and have excellent EBITDAL margins, those countries. The economies of scale, if you would add visitors, will be mostly seen in those countries and have immediate effect in those countries. All right, depreciation. What we can see is that this is of course, quite stable over the years. If you take into account, if you translate this per visitor, which is not the driver of the cost, you can see that versus 2019, this is a higher amount. We're above EUR 80 million there.
In 2023, we are expecting a similar number in absolute EUR as in 2022, depending a bit on the CapEx that we will spend. So I think there you can expect the same amounts coming up. Financial result, they have increased a bit versus 2021. And this is not due to the interest because we have been paying the same amounts to the banks. This is not it, but it's if you look at the last one, other, this is bank charges. They are linked to visitors. Every transaction, most of the transactions we are doing on mobile devices or desktops, they have financial transactions linked to it. This is mainly to be found in this line. Taxes.
Yeah, we are back to a payable situation, about the theoretical tax rate, 20%, 26%, 27%. there, if we look at DTAs, that were set up a couple of years ago, they are fully still defendable on the balance sheet approved by our auditor, KPMG. The waterfall on EBITDA to net results, EUR 114 million to start with. We're adding some rent, and to that to come to the EBITDA definition of IFRS, EUR 150 million. Taking out depreciation brings us to EBIT, EUR 68 million, the basis for the ROCE calculation later on. Financial result and taxes, we deduct that, and we arrive to a net result, EUR 27.5 million or EUR 1.02 per share.
Okay, I told you we come to a slide on investments. This is the one. As you can see on the left-hand side per country, there's quite a nice spread over the countries. We are, as you can see, in 2022, we invested quite a lot in maintenance, about EUR 13 million, a bit more than EUR 13 million. We accelerated there on maintenance. We think it's important for the experience of our customers. If we ask the ticket price as we do, they have to have a nice experience, and then we add with external expansion some premium experience to that. As you can see, we doubled our investments versus 2021 on that one as well.
external expansions, that's the start up of the new greenfields, and the acquisitions that we have done. EUR 35 million on CapEx in 2022. That's, I would say, looking additionally to the decrease of our financial debt, the combination, and investing substantially and decreasing our debt. This is a very good performance and demonstrating the ability to generate a lot of free cash. Having said that, we come to the free cash flow slide waterfall. On EUR 142 cash from operations, and we are deducting then the taxes. We have some positive effect of working capital, and then we deduct the CapEx, and we arrive to the EUR 70 million of free cash flow in 2022. Okay.
If you look at this, per half year, you can see that we have accelerated. Excuse me. If you compare it to 2019, which was at EUR 90 million, now we're at EUR 70 million, you can see that there's quite some acceleration in the second half of the year versus the first half of the year. I think you can be proud of that. Q3 was still some effort, but Q4 was tremendously good. Okay, net financial debt evolution. As you can see, a lot of cash coming from operations, and it flows directly to our CapEx or debt reduction.
If you look at the leverages, which are mentioned up there, 3.72, we are according to the IFRS definition. Bank definition is 3.6, as I said before. Good. Maturity of our debt. Also there, we are monitoring this very closely. On average, this is about 3.8 years still. Early 2023, we are paying back the bonds of EUR 15, almost close to EUR 16 million. Early 2024, we should be in the repayment of the bullet loan, EUR 80 million. Looking at this, if we continue the pace we are, there is absolutely no issue on repayment these loans.
This will depend on how much CapEx or M&A that is to come. Balance sheet. As I said, the balance sheet is for me, it's exciting. As you can see, the cash is almost at the same level as last year, but our solvency improved while we are still investing in CapEx and in debt reduction. The solvency is above 13% again. This will keep on improving in the coming years. This is an important focus for us. We also mentioned the ROCE on that one. We're almost at 10% again. We should go above the 10%.
That's important to show the rentability of the operations on the capital that we employ. The shareholder structure has not changed versus last year. Okay. The free float is still 51%. I think this is the last slide, if I remember correctly. Yeah, this is the financial calendar.